The Last Green Valley by Mark Sullivan (best manga ereader txt) 📕

“But we kept eating the grass and anything we could find because we wanted to live. I ate worms and bugs and a dead bird because I wanted to live. Even with my head kicked in, I wanted to live so someday I could eat a bowl of good stew like tonight. What did you eat to survive the Holodomor, Mrs. Martel? What did you do to live through it?”

Emil’s mother stood there, staring at the ground for a few moments before glaring at Malia. “You have no idea,” she said, and walked off behind their wagon.

The rest of them ate in uncomfortable silence. When the dishes were done, Will came over and hugged his mother’s skirt. “I’m tired, Mama.”

“Bedtime,” Adeline said. “Bedtime, Walt.”

Their older son was dozing by the fire. Emil went to him, meaning to wake him, but then squatted and scooped him up and carried him to the wagon. The boy never stirred.

Adeline had already laid out the blankets inside beneath the bonnet. Emil handed Walt to her. She laid him on one blanket before covering him with another. Adeline helped Will in beside his sleeping brother and promised him a second blanket when she returned.

The fire was dying. Only Johann was still up, sitting on his stump and staring into the fading embers of his life. Beyond Emil’s father, other campfires had already gone to coals, and voices in the surrounding darkness dwindled with each passing minute.

Emil looked above the trees to the clear night sky, seeing the tapestry of stars and feeling suddenly small, insignificant, as if his life meant little. A truck passed. A German soldier yelled that the bridges ahead would open before dawn and the convoy would begin moving soon after. That worsened Emil’s mood, made him feel like a pawn, made him want to retreat and fight at the same time.

“Emil?”

He startled. Adeline had crept up on him.

“What are you looking at?”

The trance was broken. “The moon and the stars.”

“What about them?”

“When I was a boy, I’d go outside almost every night to look at them, and now I rarely think about them at all.”

Adeline stepped into Emil’s arms, rested her cheek on his chest, and held him.

“Give thanks. We made it through the first day,” she said.

“Somehow,” he said, seeing himself whipping the horses over and over.

“Because of you and because of God.”

He pressed his face to her hair. “We’ll get farther away from the tanks tomorrow.”

Adeline kissed him, said, “Stay strong, Emil.”

“Always.”

“And pray for us. God helps those who ask.”

Emil offered only a noncommittal grunt. “I’ll check the horses.”

He did not wait for a reply but went to Oden and Thor, feeling irritated, and thinking, Pray? A waste of time. You do what you want, Adella, but I’ll figure my own way, thank you. No reason to get God involved if he does not exist.

Emil had been raised Lutheran just like his wife. Miraculously, she had retained her faith through thick and thin, but Emil’s had been taken from him piece by piece over the past fifteen years of calamity, persecution, and situations no man should ever have to face, making decisions no man should ever have to make.

He tried not to but had another memory of himself the day he lost his faith completely, saw himself shaking his fist at the sky, lonelier than he’d ever been. Emil shivered as he tried to block out that hated time and saw to his horses, checking their lead ropes and halters. They fluttered their noses and puttered their lips as he put more salve on their wounds.

When Emil returned to the wagon, Adeline had already retrieved the rest of the blankets and spread another across Will. She was lying down beside their younger son. He blew out the lantern and climbed in beside Walt before reaching across both boys to squeeze Adeline’s arm good night.

The night fell cold and silent for a moment before Will whispered, “Tell me again, Mama, about where we’re going.”

“It’s a beautiful place,” Adeline whispered sleepily. “It’s surrounded by mountains and forests. And snow up high. And below there will be a winding river and green fields. We will live in a warm home, and every morning I will bake bread for you, and there will be a big garden in the back, and we’ll have so much food, we won’t know what to do with it all.”

Emil had closed his eyes and was trying to listen to his wife, trying to see such a magical place in his mind. But despite his every effort, images from the day cycled and wormed through him, made him deaf to Adeline’s description of paradise. He relived the tank battle before drifting toward sleep and hearing the echoes of Malia’s voice from the campfire. What did you eat to survive the Holodomor, Mrs. Martel? What did you do to live through it?

Chapter Five

March 1933

Birsula, Ukraine

In his fitful dreams that night, Emil was twenty-one again and wandering through the misty streets of a small city northwest of Friedenstal. He weighed less than fifty-five kilos by then, not an ounce of fat left on his frame. Though the sensation of hunger came and went, he ached constantly and everywhere, joints, muscles, and bones. Deprived of fat reserves, his body was beginning to eat him from the inside out.

Apathy had begun to set in as well. A fog seemed to shroud Emil’s mind as he roamed far and wide in yet another desperate hunt for food. His most recent meal had been three days before when he’d gone out beyond the city limits and into the farm fields where he’d found a shriveled, soil-caked pumpkin that had survived the winter and other scavengers. After washing it in a stream, Emil had eaten pumpkin until he was beyond full, sat in the sunshine feeling fat and happy, and then promptly slept right there on the bank. When he awoke, he ate the rest of the pumpkin and