Cilka's Journey

by Heather Morris

  “Makes sense,” says another woman, who lies back down and turns her head away.

  Cilka slowly walks back to the end of the hut to her bed. The small drop in temperature from the middle of the room to the end, only a matter of a few meters, has Cilka rethinking the decision she made in placing perceived privacy over warmth. She checks Josie, who appears to be asleep, before lying down.

  The sunlight goes on and on. Cilka has no idea what time it is. She watches as Natalya approaches the fire, which is cooling, throwing a small amount of coal into the stove. Funny how people naturally fall into roles.

  She falls asleep at some point, while it is still light, or light again … she’s not sure.

  Cilka is startled awake by the loud clanging outside. The door to the hut opens and the brigadier, Antonina Karpovna, is back.

  “Up and get out, zechkas.” She gestures with her head, her hands staying firmly entrenched in the pockets of her coat.

  Cilka knows the drill. She is the first to stand but doesn’t move, hoping those at the front of the hut will leave first. She knows that standing somewhere in the middle is the safest place to be. She helps a drugged-looking Josie to her feet and pulls the blankets up on their beds.

  Pushing her way forward, she guides Josie along with her and out of the building.

  They see others like them exiting the huts all around. Where were they when we arrived? The women from Cilka’s hut huddle together outside in a ramshackle manner until they observe orderly rows of women walking around them. Copying, they form into two rows of ten.

  With the hut empty, they follow the lead of the others slushing through thick mud toward a larger building. The rough fabric of her new clothes is chafing Cilka’s skin. Mosquitoes bite at her exposed neck.

  She notices the stares, both sorrowful and threatening. She understands. Another hut filled with inmates, more mouths to feed, more people to fight with for the better jobs. It is the newest arrivals who will have the hardest time adjusting and finding their place in the pecking order, until they are no longer the newest arrivals. She had been a long-timer in that other place—her and the other surviving Slovakian girls. They had seen it all. They had stayed alive. She wonders if she can find a way to advance her status, and Josie’s, without standing out. Or maybe she is here because of thoughts like that. Maybe hard labor is what she deserves.

  They enter the mess building, observing the established tradition of lining up, accepting what is given to you, finding a bench to sit on. Eyes down, don’t stand out.

  A tin mug is thrust into her hand. She checks on Josie. Her nose is swollen, bruising beginning to appear. Shuffling along, something resembling soup, full of little white unidentifiable bits, is slopped into the mug, a chunk of stale bread thrust at her. Josie’s hands shake and she spills half her food in her attempt to grab it. Soup and bread lie on the floor. Slowly Josie bends down and picks up the bread. Cilka has a horrible urge to yell at her. How much these small portions are worth!

  There are not enough tables and benches for all to sit. Many women stand around the walls looking, waiting for someone to finish and vacate their seat. Several eat while they stand, too hungry to care about table manners.

  One of the women from Cilka’s hut sees a space being vacated and hurries to reach it. She is met with a backhand from the person sitting next to the vacated spot, sending her mug flying, its contents splattering over both the floor and nearby diners.

  “Wait your turn, novichok! You haven’t earned the right to sit with us.”

  The pecking order is on display for the newcomers to observe and learn. Just like in Birkenau, with the swarms of new arrivals. She and Gita and the other Slovakian girls had dwindled from thousands, having lost all of their friends and families. And the new ones didn’t understand, couldn’t understand what their bodies and minds had been through, what they had done in order to survive.

  “Eat your soup, then have your bread or save it for later,” Cilka says to Josie. “Sometimes it is better to save it, just like we did on the train, until we know how often and how much we are going to be fed.”

  She can see from looking at some of the women’s sunken faces that it won’t be frequent or nutritious.

  The two girls slowly sip the brown liquid. At least it is hot. There is no real substance to it. Josie notices others sitting at the table with spoons, scooping out what look like bits of potato or possibly fish.

  “They didn’t give us a spoon.”

  “I think that might be something we have to obtain for ourselves,” says Cilka, seeing the beat-up-looking utensils some of the old-timers are using, “when and however we can.”

  Soon, Cilka and the other newcomers are gathered by their brigadier. Antonina Karpovna corrals the women together and leads them back to their hut.

  As the last woman enters the room, Antonina watches them wander either to their beds or to the stove in order to be comfortable.

  “In the future, when I enter the room you will immediately go and stand at the end of your bed. Do I make myself clear?”

  Women jump up from their beds or scurry to them, and all stand to attention at the foot.

  “You will also turn and face me. I will give instructions once only and I want to look into your eyes and know you have all understood. Who understands what I am saying?”

  Several hands meekly rise, including Cilka’s. The rest had seemingly just followed what the other women were doing.

  “Then those who understand better teach the rest, quickly.”

  She pauses to watch the women look to the person standing next to them and a few of them pass on what had been said, mostly in other Slavic languages.

  “These are the rules you will live by while you are here. We have already determined when and how you will work, receive food and how long you will sleep. Lights will go out at nine p.m., though in summer you won’t really notice … Between now and then is when you will clean the floor in here, restock the coal for the next day, shovel any snow away from the front of the building, do any mending of your clothes, whatever is required for you to live here. I will not stand for this place looking like a pigsty—I want to be able to eat off the floor. Do you hear me? You will hear the wake-up call, you won’t be able to sleep through it. Two of you will empty the toilet buckets, I don’t care who does it, just make sure it is done. No one will eat until it is.”

  Not a word is spoken, but all heads nod.

  “If you fail to do any of this, but especially if you fail to do your share of work—letting down my brigade—you will be thrown in the hole.” She sniffs. “The hole is a solitary confinement cell in the lagpunkt. It is a dank, moldy place where your body is forced into a crooked shape whether you stand, sit or lie down. There is no stove, and through a barred open window the snow will come in on you from outside. You’ll be lucky to get a bucket for your waste, as there’s a ready-made stinking hole in the floor. You will receive barely a third of your normal ration—and a black, hard piece of bread at that. Do you understand?”

  The heads nod again. A shiver runs down Cilka’s spine.

  From a bag draped over her shoulder Antonina produces strips of rag, and removes a crumpled piece of paper from her pocket.

  “When I call your name come and get your number. You have two: one you must put on your hat, the other on whatever outer garment you wear. You must never be seen outside without your number visible on at least one garment.”

  As names are called out the women respond and take the two rags handed to them, examining the number roughly written in paint.

  Another number. Cilka subconsciously rubs her left arm; hidden under her clothing is her identity from that other place. How many times can one person be reduced, erased? When her name is called, she takes the fabric handed to her and examines her new identity. 1-B494. Josie shows Cilka hers. 1-B490.

  “Sew the numbers on, and do it tonight, all of you. I want to see them all in the morning.” She pauses, lets the translations c
ome through, looks at the confused stares. “I expect to see some interesting needlework; it will tell me a lot about you,” she sneers.

  A brave voice pipes up. “What do we use for needle and thread?”

  From her bag the brigadier produces a small piece of fabric with two needles punched through. They look like they’ve been fashioned from wire and sharpened to a point. She hands them to the nearest woman.

  “So, get to it. I’ll be back in the morning. Tomorrow, you work. Six o’clock wake-up.”

  “Excuse me,” says Natalya, “where do we get coal from?”

  “Work it out for yourselves.”

  As the door shuts behind her the women gather around the stove. Cilka is relieved no one received a beating for their questions.

  Josie offers, “If we go outside, we might see the others getting their coal; then we will know where to go.”

  “Knock yourselves out,” says the bully, Elena, lying back on her bed. “This could be our last day off.”

  “I’ll come with you,” says Cilka.

  “Me too,” says Natalya. “The rest of you start sewing.”

  “Yes, master,” says Elena coldly.

  Josie has placed the remaining few pieces of coal beside the stove and picks up the empty bucket.

  The three of them cautiously leave the hut, looking around. Darkness is closing in, and searchlights illuminate the yard. It is cold. They can see prisoners darting here and there between buildings, and a group of young women walking quickly toward the hut near them, carrying buckets brimming with coal.

  “This way,” says Cilka.

  Natalya steps in front of the women. “Can you tell us where the coal is, please?”

  “Find it yourself,” is the reply.

  Natalya rolls her eyes.

  “They came from here,” Josie says, pointing to a building. “From behind there somewhere. Let’s go and look.”

  They arrive back in the hut after taking turns carrying the heavy bucket. Natalya goes to place it on the floor. Her soft hands slip from the handle, the coal spilling on the floor. She looks at the other women, apologizing.

  “It’s all right, I’ll sweep up,” volunteers Josie.

  Two women are quickly sewing their numbers to their hat and coat.

  “Where did you get the thread from?” Natalya asks before Cilka gets the chance.

  “From our sheets,” says the older woman, speaking a halting Slavic, close to Slovak, and repeating it in Russian. Possibly the oldest in the hut, a lifetime of hard work and making-do evident in her abrupt words. She tells them her name is Olga.

  Cilka looks around and sees other women carefully stripping away thread from the ends of their sheets.

  “Hurry up. What are you doing taking so long with the needle, Olga?” Elena asks, looming over the older woman.

  “I’m trying to do a good job. If you do it properly the first time, you won’t have to do it again.”

  “Give me the needle now, you stupid bitch. There’s a time and place to show off your embroidery skills and it’s not here.”

  Elena reaches her hand out impatiently.

  “I’m nearly there,” Olga says calmly. Cilka admires the way she’s dealing with the hot-tempered Elena, but she also understands the urge to lash out when all is not going as planned. This must be Elena’s first camp. Olga increases her sewing speed, snapping off the end of the thread with her teeth before handing the needle over. “Here you go. Tuk krava.”

  Cilka suppresses a grin. Olga has just called Elena a fat cow in Slovak in an endearing voice. She winks at Cilka.

  “My father was Slovakian,” she says.

  Elena scowls, snatching the needle.

  Cilka sits on her bed, looking at Josie, who forlornly fiddles with her number patches. She seems to go from capable to overwhelmed in a matter of moments.

  “Hand it over,” she says.

  Josie looks pained.

  “One day at a time,” Cilka says. “All right?”

  Josie nods.

  Cilka starts stripping threads from her sheet. When a needle is handed to her, she quickly sews the numbers on Josie’s and her own garments.

  Each time she stabs the needle through the fabric she feels the pain of a needle stabbing into her left arm. Another number. Another place. She grimaces.

  To have lost everything. To have had to endure what she has endured, and be punished for it. Suddenly the needle feels as heavy as a brick. How can she go on? How can she work for a new enemy? Live to see the women around her tire, starve, diminish, die. But she—she will live. She does not know why she has always been sure of that, why she feels she can persist—keep picking up this needle even though it’s as heavy as a brick, keep sewing, keep doing what she has to do—but she can. She starts to feel angry, furious. And the needle feels light again. Light and quick. It is this fire, then, that keeps her going. But it is also a curse. It makes her stand out, be singled out. She must contain it, control it, direct it.

  To survive.

  CHAPTER 4

  The fearsome clanging of a hammer on metal wakes the newest arrivals at Vorkuta Gulag at 6 a.m. Antonina was right—it is an unmissable wake-up call. The women have taken turns putting coal in the stove throughout the night, just enough to keep it burning. Though the sun still shines through most of the night, there had been frost on the ground when they walked back after their meager evening meal in the mess. They had all slept in the clothes they had been given the previous day.

  The door opens, sending in a blast of cold air. Antonina Karpovna holds the door open, watching the women run to the feet of their beds, their eyes turned to her. She nods approval.

  She walks up the hut inspecting the newly sewn numbers on the women’s coats. Pausing at Elena, she barks, “Do it again tonight. That’s the worst needlework I’ve ever seen.”

  When she is back at the door, she turns to the two nearest girls. “Grab the buckets and I’ll show you where to empty them. Tomorrow, one of you take another zechka and show her where to go and so on, you follow?”

  The two girls scamper to the toilet buckets at the rear of the hut, directly opposite Cilka’s bed.

  While Antonina and the two girls with the buckets disappear, the rest of the women stay standing, no one prepared to move. When the girls return, ashen-faced, Antonina tells them all to head to the mess for breakfast and be back by 7 a.m. for roll call.

  Outside, the two girls who emptied the toilet buckets bend down and rub their hands across the frost in an attempt to wash the stench and urine away.

  If this is the end of summer, Cilka thinks, as she walks with Josie over to the mess hut, and there is already light snow on the ground and air like ice, then none of them will be prepared for what is to come. Working outdoors will be unbearable.

  Breakfast is a thick, tasteless gruel. Josie remembers to place her precious piece of bread up her sleeve. Like the day before, there are no vacancies at any of the tables. This time, the newcomers know what to do, and lean against the walls.

  It is obvious the gruel cannot be drunk. The women look around. There are others using two fingers for a spoon. That will have to do for now.

  * * *

  Roll call. This is very familiar to Cilka. She only hopes with the twenty of them it will go quickly. That no one has gone missing in the night. She remembers a night standing out in the cold—all night—until an inmate was found. The ache in her knees, her anklebones. And that was not even the worst night in the other place. Not even close. Antonina Karpovna starts calling out names. Names. I’m not a number. And yet I have a number. Cilka looks at her covered-up left arm and the number now emblazoned on her brown, scratchy coat. I have a name. She answers loudly, “Yes,” when it is called. They are told to get into four rows of five.

  Groups of women file past them, each headed by a brigadier. Groups of men are also coming from the other side of the camp. Cilka and her hut fall in with them as they march to the gates that lead out of the compound. From
what Cilka observed on arrival, there was only one way in and one way out. A simple barbed-wire fence defines the boundary. Groups of men and women swarm forward.

  They slow down, coming to a halt as they near the exit and see for the first time the ritual of going to work each day. As Antonina’s turn comes, Cilka observes her approaching a guard or administrator and showing him the list of names. Antonina then beckons for the first row of women to approach. The guard walks along the row, counting out five, roughly patting them down in a search, and then pushing them onward, before doing the same with the next three rows. He nods to Antonina, who goes along with the women, telling them to keep walking behind the others. They follow a train line, occasionally tripping over the rails, thinking it will be easier to walk on them than to pull their feet through the sucking mud that drains them of energy they know they will need for work.

  Guards walk up and down the rows of men and women trudging to the large mine that looms ahead of them. It looks like a black mountain with an opening that disappears into hell. Piles of coal tower beside small ramshackle buildings. At the top of the mouth of the mine they can see the wheel that is drawing coal up from the depths below. Open train carts line the track as the women get closer.

  As they reach the mine, those in front peel off, going to jobs and areas they are already familiar with. Antonina hands the new arrivals over to a guard before following some of the women from the other huts, who are also part of her brigade.

  Walking among the women, the guard pushes several to one side, separating them out.

  “Hey, Alexei,” he calls out, “come and get this lot. They look like they can swing a pick.”

  Another guard comes over and indicates that the fifteen women should follow him. Cilka, Josie and Natalya remain behind. The guard looks at them.

  “Couldn’t swing a bloody pick with all of ya hanging on to it. Follow me.”

  They walk over to one of the mountains of coal, arriving just as the crane dumps a load on the top. They are showered in dust and small chunks of the hard, sharp coal.