It took until the end of February for the thaw to come and the middle of the first week of March 1946 before Emil heard whispers of a coming storm. Within two days, it was all the guards and the foremen were talking about. A blizzard was forecast with heavy snowfall, bitter cold, and high winds. All work would have to be suspended until it passed.
Before dawn on March 9, 1946, Emil woke up, sure that deliverance was upon him, that this morning or this evening he would get his chance to fulfill Corporal Gheorghe’s dream of escape. When he exited the basement, snow was already falling steadily, enough to blur tracks. The wind was picking up as well, and there were two bodies waiting on the pony cart.
I’m leaving this place this morning, Emil vowed over and over again as he walked toward the cart. I will not sleep in that basement tonight or ever again.
He reached the cart and saw an unfamiliar guard there, a big Russian woman instead of the usual male soldiers who accompanied him.
“I’m with the burial detail,” Emil said in Russian.
“Not today,” she said. “Today you are coming with me. Get in that truck there.”
“But the bodies,” he said. “It’s not right they should be here like this all day.”
“Why?” the guard said. “Do you think they care whether they’re eaten by wolves this morning or this evening? No. Get in the truck.”
“Where am I going? I work at the hospital site, making concrete blocks.”
“Not today, because you are almost out of lime and a shipment is coming in.”
Emil knew that they were indeed running low on lime. He glanced at the pony and cart and told himself he’d be back before dark. He’d go alone to the boneyard, he decided before climbing up into the back of the transport. He’d escape that very evening.
Three other prisoners soon joined Emil in the back of the truck. They were driven to the mess hall to eat early and were done by the time the other two hundred and forty-nine men still alive in the prison camp were lining up outside.
They got back in the truck and started to drive. Emil closed his eyes, saw himself in that dream he’d had before Corporal Gheorghe was transferred. He was racing in the low light toward the side of the slowly moving train, ready to grab a rung.
Emil was emboldened by that vision. Tonight’s the night, he thought, and felt grateful for it in his heart. Tonight, the Almighty sends me a miracle.
But when they reached the rail yard and he saw the freight cars full of lime on a spur line that ran beside and beneath a covered loading dock, and the dump trucks on the other side of the dock waiting for the lime to be transferred, Emil began to doubt the job could be done quickly at all.
Indeed, ten backbreaking hours later, Emil and the other three men were only just starting to attack the second railcar of lime. The storm had already dumped twelve centimeters, and it was still snowing hard. He had an hour left until darkness. He kept looking to the big Russian guard, hoping she’d call work for the day. But she didn’t budge.
Finally, he went over to her. “I have to be back for the burial detail.”
“I was ordered to keep you here until it’s done,” she snapped. “Someone else will take care of the bodies today.”
The guard said it all with such finality that Emil turned around, knowing he was defeated, at least for that day. In the past, he would have been enraged at his misfortune, one more example of his brutal, sorry, unlucky life. But he didn’t allow anger to consume him. He just went back to work, knowing that if he did not escape today, he would escape tomorrow. He felt it in his heart and with every fiber of his being.
Darkness fell. The wind swirled snow. Another train rolled into the rail yard on tracks beyond the covered spur line and the loading dock where Emil was shoveling lime into wheelbarrows and then truck beds. Determined to finish so he would not have to return in the morning, he had not taken a break since talking to the female guard more than an hour before.
Emil walked up to her now and said, “Permission to piss.”
Before she could reply, there was a startling clang!
One of the dump trucks leaving the docks had slid on ice and hit another one trying to enter. The guard trotted that way.
Emil called after her. “Permission to piss!”
“Granted!” she yelled, and began to run toward the two drivers, who were out of their cabs, and looking ready to fight.
Emil climbed down off the loading dock onto the coupling between two of the freight cars and jumped off the other side of the spur line, landing in snow about twenty meters from the other train, which had stopped. He started to unbutton his fly, when a 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. He’d imagined the pony and a crazy ride and having to stop the train by downing a tree. This way was simpler. This way was easier.
Emil remembered telling Adeline that he’d know the way to freedom when he saw it, and now, freedom was right there in front of him for the taking.
The westbound train started moving, the wheels screeching and drowning out the shouts coming from
