The Last Green Valley - Mark Sullivan (black female authors .txt) 📗

Schmidt had taken them into the woods earlier and cut down a small tree. The boys were helping him decorate it with tinsel and ribbon and antique ornaments that had been in the Schmidts’ family for ages. Outside it was beginning to snow.

“I wonder how long the Soviets will let you celebrate Christmas,” Adeline said to Frau Schmidt, who was slicing bread on a cutting board. “It was banned for us.”

The older woman stared at her. “Banned? Not even Hitler did that.”

“Hitler’s not Stalin,” Adeline said. “Stalin’s worse.”

“I wouldn’t let my boarders hear you say that.”

“Never,” Adeline said. “Soon there will be secret police.”

“No,” she said. “No more Gestapo.”

“It will be a Communist Gestapo whatever they name it, and within a matter of months, they will have your neighbors, old friends even, ready to inform on you so they’re not shipped east.”

Frau Schmidt sat on a chair near the fire. She gazed into it and then looked at Adeline. “Will you inform?”

“Never,” Adeline said immediately. “Whispers like that took my father away forever. I won’t do it to someone else.”

“Good,” the older woman said. “Then we can trust each other.”

Will came into the kitchen. “It smells so good in here! Can I have some cake?”

“After dinner,” Adeline said. “Out of the kitchen now.”

“Awww,” he said.

Walt said, “Told you.”

“Told you,” Will said in a mocking tone as he walked past his older brother.

“The chickens and the potatoes should be done, Adeline,” Frau Schmidt said, using her cane to get back to her feet.

Before she could answer, they heard the sound of boots on the front stoop, and the three Soviet soldiers billeting with the Schmidts entered. Kharkov, a captain in his midtwenties, came in first. Adeline saw the glaze to Captain Kharkov’s eyes almost immediately and the broad, uncharacteristic smile he gave her and the bottle of vodka in his hands. She looked away and took a long, shaky breath. Frau Schmidt glanced at her in warning. He was a danger to Adeline. She felt it, too.

“Smells good!” Captain Kharkov said as the other men joined him, both junior officers, both younger. “When do we eat?”

Each of the other soldiers had been drinking as well. Each carried bottles two-thirds full.

“We’re pulling the birds out of the oven right now,” Adeline said, turning to the larger of the two ovens and opening it, revealing two golden-brown birds stuffed with onions and surrounded by red potatoes.

She set the pan on the counter and went about moving fresh bread and dishes of steaming boiled cabbage and brussels sprouts from the Schmidts’ garden on the long oaken table before returning to the birds. Using a sharp knife, Adeline quickly dismantled the birds into pieces and slices that she piled on a platter.

Frau Schmidt called out, “Dinner, Peter!”

Herr Schmidt soon arrived with two large bottles of homemade beer and took a seat at one end of the table with his wife at the opposite end. Captain Kharkov sat on one of the benches with his junior officers. Adeline sat by Frau Schmidt with Will to her right and Walt to Will’s right, opposite the Russians.

Adeline looked at all the food a moment and remembered the Christmas Eve before, when they’d had so very little to eat. She knew she should be happy, grateful, but as the roast chicken and the side dishes were being passed around, she could not help but think of Emil and what horrors he might be facing alone. A ball of emotion welled in her throat.

The Russians spoke among themselves as they ate and drank. Adeline was thankful to see they were nursing their vodka, not guzzling it like some Red Army soldiers she’d seen and even Marie, her own cousin, all tortured souls, bent on oblivion. But tonight, the three at the table felt harmless enough that she began to relax.

Still, her plan was to act as if the holiday were a Saturday night. It would be cold in the church, but she would bring her heavy clothes and blankets, and Christmas Day would be dawning before she knew it. She wanted to be back before the boys woke up. Though Adeline did not have the money to buy her sons presents, the Schmidts did, and she wanted to see the expression on Will’s and Walt’s faces when they opened—

“You are lucky, Adeline,” Captain Kharkov said, startling her from her thoughts.

She looked over at him with a puzzled expression.

“Your sons,” he said. “You have them with you while my good wife and baby boy are alone in Leningrad.”

“I am lucky,” she said. “I’d be luckier if my husband wasn’t in a prison camp.”

“That’s true,” Kharkov said, and poured himself another finger of vodka.

“I’m full,” Will said, rubbing his stomach after he’d cleared his plate.

“No room for your mother’s kuchen?” Frau Schmidt said.

Will frowned. “I didn’t say that.”

“You’re sure?” Adeline teased.

“Mama!” Will said. “That’s not nice.”

Adeline smiled, got up, and returned with the cake. The boys each grabbed a slice. Will destroyed his in three bites. Walt took his time, nibbling on his as the plate went around the table. As Frau Schmidt passed the plate with the last piece on it to Adeline, Captain Kharkov finished his vodka and poured another finger.

“That was an excellent meal,” he said, speaking in Russian and raising his glass to the Schmidts and to Adeline. “We thank you because it reminds us of the perversity of a system that allows two old, relatively useless people like the Schmidts here to own so much land and to reap so much bounty from it.”

Adeline realized he’d been saying this directly to her because the Schmidts didn’t speak Russian. She flushed and looked away from him.

Kharkov went on. “Under our system, in the old days, the Schmidts would be judged ‘kulaks’: people who have grossly overbenefited from the labor of others. In the old days, they would have been thrown off this land. Isn’t that true, Adeline?”

Adeline looked up to find him studying her.