The train car had no roof. It was a hopper car and nearly filled with snow-covered coal. As the train gathered speed toward a lighted section of the rail yard, Emil threw himself into the hopper and lay flat on the coal, facedown, telling himself over and over to have faith, to believe it was done, that he was already gone.
He felt the train pick up speed, heard voices, but no shouting. And then everything went dark and stormy around him, and all he could hear was the clacking of rails and the whistling and moaning of wind. Emil got up on his knees finally and saw the lights of Poltava fading through the curtain of falling snow behind him.
After two hundred and ninety-five days in purgatory, after watching nearly one thousand eight hundred of his fellow prisoners die around him, and after transporting and praying over many of their bodies, Emil rocked back his head and threw his arms and hands wide to the snowing skies, knowing for certain that through a man’s unrelenting heart and God’s mysterious grace, dreams really can come true.
Chapter Thirty-Three
March 9, 1946
Gutengermendorf, Soviet-Occupied Germany
Some seventeen hundred kilometers away, Adeline tucked the boys into bed, kissed both on their foreheads, and quietly left their bedroom, knowing they’d both be asleep in moments. She went to the kitchen where Katrina Holtz was drinking tea.
“Are they still here?” Adeline asked the middle-aged owner of the house.
“Been and gone, disappointed as usual,” Frau Holtz said, and laughed.
“Should I go tell Erica to come up?”
“No, she says she rather enjoys it down there. Gives her time to read.”
While the two young Soviet soldiers billeted across the hall from Adeline had shown no interest in her, Frau Holtz’s seventeen-year-old orphaned niece, Erica, had definitely attracted their attention. Six nights a week, Erica was around and pleasant with the Russians, but in no way led them on. On Saturday evenings, however, her aunt put her in the basement in a space hidden by a tall, wide set of shelves jammed with jars and books and tools.
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 and kept the colonel fat and happy, she believed she’d be safe. And Vasiliev had given her free rein to go into Berlin to shop at the Soviet officers’ commissary, where she often purchased items for herself, the boys, and for Frau Holtz and Frau Schmidt.
She rarely went up to the Schmidts’ farm anymore, however; Captain Kharkov was still living there, and she preferred to avoid him. But Adeline ran into Frau Schmidt in the village every so often and had learned she needed baking chocolate for her husband’s upcoming birthday.
“I’m going to make a surprise delivery to Frau Schmidt,” Adeline said to her landlord. “I promise I won’t be long.”
“You’re sure?” Frau Holtz said. “It’s Saturday night.”
“I’ll go the back way across the fields. No one will see me, and I’m sure the Soviet officers who live with her have already gone into Berlin for a night of carousing.”
She could see her landlord disapproved but left the kitchen, put on her boots and her coat with a block of baking chocolate in the pocket before wrapping her warm scarf about her neck and head. Stepping outside the front door of Frau Holtz’s low, mustard-colored house, Adeline took a deep breath of chill air, pulled on her mittens, and waited for her eyes to adjust. She turned left, went through the big swinging gates, and padded in five centimeters of new snow past the big brick barn where she’d stowed their little wagon.
Raising the latch on the smaller, rear gate, she went out under the bare limbs of the elm trees and out into the field. The quarter moon overhead reflected off the snow, giving her just enough light to start toward the knoll and the Schmidts’ farm. She was less than halfway across the field when she had her first thought of Emil that day.
Adeline halted in her tracks because she realized she had not woken up early and gone outside to look east for the dawn. When had she stopped doing that? Yesterday? The day before?
Feeling hollow, Adeline understood it had been more than a week since she’d gotten up to pray and to look at the few pictures she had of Emil. The weather had been horrible last week. That was true. But it had been clear since. She had no excuse. And she’d forgotten to pray with the boys before bed!
She bowed her head, closed her eyes, and tried to see Emil’s smiling face. She could remember him the day they’d met quite clearly, such a young, tough, and shy man who’d already survived so much. She could remember how he loved to laugh and sing and dance when he had a little beer or homemade wine in him. But the only other clear memory she could summon was his anguished face as the Polish militiamen dragged him away.
Go west, Adeline! Go as far west as you can, and I promise I’ll find you!
Out there in the cut and snowed-over sunflower field, Emil’s words echoed in Adeline’s head as she opened her eyes and started walking again, trying to calculate how long it had been since he’d been taken from her. When she figured out it was almost a year to the day, she stopped again, her mitten traveling to her mouth, trying to stop the sobs of loneliness and unknowing that erupted from her. Is he alive? Where is he? In Siberia? In one of those mines?
The thought of her beloved
