After they removed the parasite and left the wound open to drain, Emil hovered near death for days. Adeline and the boys kept vigil over him, but never once lost faith that he would survive.
When Emil finally awoke, he was weak but happy to be alive. Within a day, however, he’d turned agitated and gloomy, not like his post-escape self at all.
After a week, as he lay in bed, his torso wrapped in gauze, Adeline asked him what was bothering him. Somehow, Emil understood that he would never know peace unless he stopped hiding part of his past from her.
“I will only speak about this once,” he said, “but you deserve to know. Do you remember when we first returned to Friedenstal, and I took the wagon and horses and went to Dubossary to get roofing supplies?”
Adeline did remember and felt her stomach grow queasy. “What happened?”
Over the course of a long afternoon while the boys were in school, Emil told her everything: how he’d been stopped leaving town by then captain Haussmann; how Haussmann had forced Emil and other ethnic Germans to go to a remote ravine where members of the SS were shooting Jews; and how he’d begged God not to make him participate; how Haussmann had handed him a Luger and told him to prove his loyalty to the Reich by shooting a Jewish teenager and two younger girls; how he’d refused at first; and how Haussmann had put a gun to his head; how he’d changed his mind so he could see his own family again; and how he was preparing to shoot, when he was stopped by Haussmann’s superior who invoked Himmler’s order that no one be forced to kill Jews; and how instead he’d spent the night burying the hundreds shot there.
“But make no mistake, Adella,” Emil said. “I made the decision to kill them before I was stopped. I didn’t see God’s hand in Haussmann’s superior showing up until I was at my worst moment in Poltava and Corporal Gheorghe showed me that I had done the right thing, and even though I’d decided to shoot, I was prevented from doing it.”
Adeline had listened in growing dread of what Emil might have done until he’d described the entire sequence of events. Hearing how the Romanian who’d survived Stalingrad had saved Emil’s mind and soul in the prison camp completely erased her fears.
“Corporal Gheorghe was right,” she said, squeezing his hand. “You refused, Emil. You didn’t know about Himmler’s order, and yet you refused. That took staggering courage, my love. The kind of courage that most men lack. I’m . . . I’m proud of you, Emil, proud to be your wife.”
Emil felt his eyes mist. “I’m proud to be your husband. I have never known anyone as courageous and loving and good as you.”
“Stop.”
“It’s true. We are all together because of your courage and your refusal to quit.”
Adeline smiled and brushed away a tear. “Thank you.”
They held hands for several minutes, just loving each other before Adeline said, “Do we know what happened to Haussmann?”
Emil nodded. “I saw it in the newspaper. After we left the refugee camp outside Lodz, he was transferred to a combat unit. He survived the war, was arrested, and was going to be tried at Nuremberg as part of the Einsatzgruppen case. But he committed suicide in his jail cell before the trial began.”
“Coward.”
“Yes. But I don’t want to talk about Haussmann or that night in Dubossary ever again. Okay?”
She nodded. “And thank you for telling me.”
On the foredeck of the General R. M. Blatchford, Emil and Adeline heard a horn blare in the darkness and the fog. Within minutes, they heard a bell clanging.
“We’re close,” Emil said. “We have to be.”
“I’ll get the boys while my stomach’s still calm,” she said, kissed him, and walked away.
Emil continued to peer off the bow, sure that he’d be seeing lights by now. But like everything the past three years, events were happening much more slowly than he wished.
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. With the sponsor in place, the Martels were moved north to yet another displaced persons camp where they studied English and their immigration application wound through the maddeningly slow process of verifying their identities and pasts.
Finally, nine days before Emil would come to be searching for lights beyond the bow of the ship, and after living as refugees for more than seven years, the Martels went to Bremerhaven, boarded a transport that had brought US occupation troops to Europe, and finally set sail west. During the week-long voyage to America, Adeline was seasick almost every day. Still, she, Walt, and Will made deep, lasting friendships among the other ethnic Germans aboard. His family aside, Emil had kept largely to himself, spending every afternoon on the foredeck near the bow, watching the sunset and dreaming about their life to come.
Emil did not see himself being a full-time farmer again. Not for long, anyway. As Corporal Gheorghe had noted, deep down he was a hammer, not a plow. Despite being imprisoned in Poltava, he’d actually enjoyed seeing buildings materialize right in front of his face, the magic of one man’s dream set down on paper and made real by a crew of men’s hard work and skill. He’d decided long ago that he believed at least part of what Corporal Gheorghe had taught him. Was the world, the universe, all one entity? Was God inside
