The Last Green Valley

by Mark T. Sullivan

He was beginning to think that hate ruled the world. Hate was certainly in almost every terrible experience he’d endured in his life.

Where would he be coming out of those shadows and that darkness? Worse, who would he be? Was he destined to die in the East? Or return like his father, a gentle man, but a broken one deep inside?

As weak as Emil had been after the fever broke for good, he’d felt stronger every time she smiled at him that night over dinner. Well, isn’t that what love does? he thought. Makes you stronger?

his lips and eye to the crack in the door and did everything he could not to think about the bleakness of his situation. It was one of the other things his father had told him about surviving the gulag.

The worse it was, the less you thought. You had to figure out a way to go down inside yourself, find a place no one could get to, and just be. Like a bear hibernating.

I am a long, long way from where I left Adeline, but at least I’m not in Siberia, he thought. Ukraine I can escape from. I’ve done it before. I can do it again.

They were warned to protect their clothes. There would be no replacements.

Nikolas shook his head violently and shouted at him. “You don’t understand! I’m doomed, and so are you, Martel! We were doomed for our sins, doomed the moment we took the gun and decided to pull the trigger on those Jews. This is just one step down into the deep hell that awaits us after we shit or cough ourselves to death!”

To combat those thoughts, Emil told himself there was no God, no heaven, and therefore no hell. There was just what happened in front of your face,

and you were the only one who could do a thing about any of it.

Watching Nikolas die in front of him shook Emil in ways he did not expect. He had hated the man in life, and yet he felt some pity for the way Nikolas left it, terror filled and unforgiven, sure that he was about to face judgment. I’m not facing judgment, Emil thought after covering Nikolas’s body and dragging it outside to freeze. There is nothing beyond this life. The only thing you can rely on is yourself.

I am enough. I alone can survive . . . The triangle began to ring, signaling the end of the workday. Emil opened his eyes in a daze, feeling in

I can’t do it. I am not enough. I’m just a man. I’m sorry, Adeline. I can’t do this alone . . . I need help. I need .

. .

Feeling like he was falling away into the darkness, he did the only thing he could think of: he threw back his head, exposed his face to the driving snow, and raised both arms to the night and the storm.

“You hear me?” he croaked. “If you do, take me sooner than later.”

“Eat honey and you’ll live a long life. It’s a gift from God. Makes you

strong. Makes you live long. We’ll eat first? Then the graveyard, yes?”

“Beekeeper,” Emil shouted. “Survivor of Stalingrad!” Two of the men continued on. But the one who’d been leading the pony stopped, pulled back his hood, and turned to look at Emil with a puzzled and then amused expression, as if someone had whispered a joke in his ear that he was only now getting. “Martel,” Corporal Gheorghe said, grinning at him. “I said I’d see you again, and there you stand!”

Kharkov, who thumbed off the pistol’s safety. “You think I won’t?” “Go ahead and shoot me,” she said again. “The town will hear the shot. They will investigate you for murder. You’ll be sent to the gallows, and your young wife will know you not only as a rapist,

but a cold-blooded killer on Christmas Eve. And when you’re in your cell, waiting to die, you’ll be like Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment. You read it. Of course you did. And you remember how the murder ate up his mind. Like a cancer before the gallows. Is that what you really want, Captain Kharkov?”

For a moment, Emil embraced the idea of escaping with the Romanian. He was only half-crazy, and he’d predicted they’d meet again, hadn’t he? What if he’s right? What if we could . . . ?

Emil couldn’t think that way. “I changed my mind. I was going to shoot them.” “But you were stopped, yes?” the Romanian said as they neared the back of the clearing. “You did not have to kill because you did the right thing. Can’t you see the hand of God in that, Martel? Bringing that officer to stop you from murdering the three Jews? I am not a smart man, but I see the Universal Intelligence’s hand in that as plainly as I see this Christmas morning and you.”

For more than four years he had blamed, then denied God for making him decide to kill those Jews. But now, he could see the work of a greater power in all of it. He didn’t have to kill that night because he had refused to do the wrong thing in the first place. Emil’s heart pounded. I was heard. I was. Emil felt breathless

On Christmas morning 1945, after more than fifty months of denying God, Emil began to pray,

“Everything is our choice. Did you not choose to think about Dubossary differently?” “Yes.” “And did it not make a difference?” It was true.

“How can thinking change the future?” “Not change, influence,” Corporal Gheorghe laughed as he picked up his paddle and stirred. “The way you think about Dubossary now will influence your life in the future, won’t it?”

“It’s the same with everything else,” he said. “What you seek is what you will find, but only if you hunt it with all your heart and mind.”

“What do you mean I haven’t lived up to my name?” “You keep trying to be a farmer, but the surname you use—Martel—is telling the Universal Intelligence a different story.” Emil stared at him in total confusion. “What story?” “Martel means ‘hammer’ in old French. Even if you were good at it, you were not meant to be a farmer. You are meant to be a builder. You are meant to be the hammer, not the plow.”

“Because you still hold that dream in your heart where it can’t be taken from you?” He smiled and started stirring again, saying, “Now Martel begins to understand.”

Divine understands those ancient languages of self-destruction, too. The thing is, the Universal Intelligence will help you even if your dreams come from a dark place, but the dreams will end up destroying you in the process. If you don’t believe me, think of Hitler or any other tyrant.”

Gheorghe returned his hand to his heart. “So live here, Martel. Love life like it is a miracle every day, every moment, and dream in a way that helps others, and the Divine will hear you and you will walk through battles untouched and have anything your heart desires.”

squalor of the concrete works amid the disease-ridden and hopeless destruction of Poltava, wanting to sob with joy because he realized Corporal Gheorghe had left him a different person, changed in ways he never expected, feeling blessed and humbled at how miraculous everything around him now seemed.

strange sensation came over him, sent prickles up his back. And then Emil knew why. The other train. If he was right, if he’d kept his bearings, the train right in front of him was headed west. He had a split second of indecision before he remembered how Corporal Gheorghe said that dreams almost always come true in ways you don’t expect, that the Universal Intelligence almost always has a better plan in store for your visions.

knowing for certain that through a man’s unrelenting heart and God’s mysterious grace, dreams really can come true.

Adeline no longer felt threatened enough to spend her Saturday nights in the old church. Working for Colonel Vasiliev had seen to that, giving her an invisible but strong and clearly understood shield of protection. As long as she applied her cooking skills

“You will be you,” Frau Schmidt said softly. “What?” “You are already without him, Adeline. So you will be you without him in the future, and from what I’ve seen, being Adeline Martel is more than enough for anything life wants to throw at her.”

Adeline was jumping down from the first car with Walt and Will right behind her. They ran at each other and fell into each other’s arms. Emil held Adeline tight when both their legs wobbled and they sank to their knees, hugging and kissing each other. The boys came in to hold them, all of them shaking, sobbing, and bursting with a happiness so beautiful and pure, none of them would ever forget it. “We’ll never be apart again,” Emil said. “I promise you that.” “Never,” Adeline said. “Never,” Walt said. “Never ever,” Will said. They held on to each other as if they’d all arisen from the dead, barely hearing the conductor put their little wagon beside them.

Overwhelmed, she choked, “Our life is a miracle, Emil!” “One miracle after another,” Emil said, and kissed Adeline like it was the very first time.

far as the Martels were concerned, every day that had followed their escapes from Communism and their reunion in the West had been one more miracle, a gift from God for which they were deeply and constantly grateful.

they were together again, free to make something out of their second chance at life.

They’d finally found a sponsor the year before, one of Adeline’s long-lost uncles who owned a farm and needed help because his son was about to be drafted. In return for two years of Emil’s labor, the family would receive lodging, food, and a small stipend to use to get on its feet after the work obligation was fulfilled.

Emil was about to say that this was as good as it was going to get for the night, when the breeze picked up and the fog swirled before a vent formed high in the sky to the northwest, revealing the lit torch and the hand of the statue. People began to gasp all around the Martels because the vent was growing with each passing moment, revealing the arm, the face, and then the crown of Liberty.

the fog had blown away to the east, revealing the lady in all her glory. Emil stared up at the statue in awe, shook his fist, and whispered, “Freedom. All a man could ever want.”

Rather than fight the situation, rather than be angry and bitter about the short hand he’d been dealt yet again, Emil drove straight into Baker and discovered that the town’s first hospital was being built. He found the foreman and spoke to him in broken English, asking for work. The foreman told him the only job he had to offer was as a laborer and concrete mixer. “Concrete mixing? That I know how to do from building a hospital in the Russian prison camp I escaped from,” Emil said, smiling. “You escaped from a Russian prison camp?” “Yes. I know cement from this time.” “Then you’re hired.”

From beginnings miles apart, their multicolored arches seemed to erupt out of the verdant hills, to soar, collide, and shimmer red, blue, purple, and gold with sheer, stunning intensity. “I’ve never seen anything like that in my entire life,” Emil said as he put his arm around Adeline’s shoulder. She put her arms around his waist and laid her head on his chest, watching the rainbows pulse and radiate for almost a minute before they faded to pale, colored glimmers and then to cherished memories. “We are never leaving here, Emil,” Adeline vowed, looking west again at the last green valley of their long and improbable journey. “Not until the day we die,” Emil said, and held her tight.

But for occasional short trips and after returning to Baker to pack their things and sell their home, Emil and Adeline Martel never did leave Southwest Montana’s Gallatin Valley. And from that point forward, after all the hardships and tragedies they’d endured, nearly everything the Martels touched seemed to turn to gold.

some point, most people will face obstacles or situations that seem impossible to overcome unless they have the stubborn will to dream and learn to humble themselves and rely on a greater power as they work to make their vision real.

He noted often that everything difficult he’d had to do seemed to have prepared him for the next difficult thing. Being imprisoned now seemed to have been one of the best things that ever happened to him because, after his escape, he had never looked at life the same way again.

at seventy-five, Emil passed on, a content, fulfilled man who’d seen his adult life begin under brutal oppression and unfold in poverty and starvation, only to have it end in freedom, blessed with abundance beyond his wildest dreams.