Cilka's Journey

by Heather Morris

  “But why? Why has someone done this?”

  “Klavdiya Arsenyevna is the senior guard for this hut and the larger brigade; she is looking for things you shouldn’t have.”

  “We had everything taken from us; how could we have something we’re not meant to have?” Josie asks.

  “She knows that. This is her warning to you. And it might be because she has found out about your job, Cilka. You have access to things others don’t now. If she finds something she doesn’t like you can expect to be sent to the hole for punishment.”

  Antonina turns and leaves the hut, letting the door stay open, the icy air being blown in. Josie closes it. But what does Klavdiya not want to find? she thinks. They seem to be allowed to have some possessions. The rules change here day to day, she thinks. And though this camp has a different purpose—to get them to work for the Soviet Union, rather than kill them for being Jewish—in these conditions, and with constant rape, always the threat of violence and the “hole,” Cilka can see that she has gone from one cruel, inhuman place to another.

  She goes to the stove and attempts to coax it back to life by gently placing small amounts of coal ash from the bucket on top of the dulling embers. What should they do about the upturned room? she wonders.

  “I think she was right,” she says to Josie. “We should leave it for the others to see and we can tell them what Antonina said.”

  Josie ignores her and goes to her bed, struggling to right it with one hand.

  “Here, let me help,” Cilka says.

  “I don’t need your help.”

  “Fine,” Cilka says harshly. She looks away from the spectacle.

  Eventually she turns around to see Josie buried under the blanket, her back to her.

  * * *

  Day has turned to night; the stove is pumping out as much heat as Cilka can get from it when the door opens and the other women stagger in. The solitary lightbulb casts eerie shadows over the chaos, making it difficult, at first, for the women to see what they have arrived home to. Slowly, as they each make their way to their beds, it becomes evident. Several of them turn on Cilka, who is standing by the stove.

  “What the fuck have you done?” says Elena.

  It hits Cilka that she and Josie are about to be blamed.

  “No, no, it wasn’t us.” She fights the urge to scream at the woman. “See, my bed is the same. This is how we found the place.”

  “Then who did this?” says Hannah.

  “It was a guard, a guard named Klavdiya Arsenyevna. Antonina told us about her.”

  “And why?”

  Cilka quickly explains.

  Hannah looks very pale. “Oh no.”

  “What is it?” Elena asks her. Hannah throws her sheet and blanket and mattress around, looking for something.

  Elena slaps her, hard and sudden. “It was just a crust, Hannah!”

  Hannah lets out a sob. “I was saving it for you.”

  The other women look away, set about restoring their beds, awaiting their call to dinner.

  * * *

  After dinner they return to the hut, a reluctance to go to bed obvious in the way the women linger over even the unsavory chores. In the brighter light at the mess Cilka had been able to see other injuries from the night before on the faces of some of the women and noticed one held her right arm limply, supporting a painful wrist.

  Josie still avoids Cilka, preferring to talk to Natalya. This fracture in their friendship must be obvious to the other women but no one comments.

  “Do you think they will come again?” Olga whispers. She is whipping a needle and thread through a small piece of fabric, with hands crooked from overuse and cold. She will unpick her stitches and do them over, perfecting her work several times before bed.

  No one attempts an answer.

  With the light off, the outside searchlight throws a diffused shadow that dances around the room as falling snow plays within the beams. The women slowly move onto their own beds. They have learned already the need to be as well rested as possible for the labor they will have to endure tomorrow.

  CHAPTER 6

  The two weeks of treatment for Josie’s hand pass quickly. It heals, with the ministrations of Yelena Georgiyevna, beyond the point at which she should have returned to normal work. The cold continues to intensify, along with the hours of darkness. The women in Hut 29 have gotten to know each other, or at least, become used to each other. Friendships have formed, and shifted, and re-formed. Fights have taken place. Josie remains distant, and Cilka accepts this. She understands that her role in the hospital might distance her permanently from her hut-mates. She supposes she ought to take the job and survive. The reaction of those around her is just something she has to deal with. Some, like Olga and Margarethe, have expressed gratitude and already say they are relying on the extra bits of food she brings, the bandages and fabric to keep them warmer. So far, only Elena has expressed hostility. But although she has yelled and hissed at Cilka, she hasn’t laid a hand on her. The men still visit at night. The women are raped, abused, injured. And there are other indignities. Two have been sent to the “hole” for misdemeanors, including Hannah, Elena’s hanger-on, for simply looking at the guard Klavdiya Arsenyevna the wrong way. When she returned, for days afterward, she was not even able to speak.

  * * *

  Yelena smooths cream into Josie’s hand before placing it back in her lap. Josie looks down.

  “I’m sorry, Josie, it has healed well. I cannot continue to bandage it. In fact, I might compromise it by continuing to wrap it up; it needs to breathe now.”

  Josie looks around the room, her eyes coming to rest on Cilka, who is standing by the doctor.

  Yelena notices. “I am sorry, Josie. If I could give you work here I would, but they only allow so many prisoners to work with us.” She looks genuinely pained. Cilka has learned over the past two weeks that Yelena is a good person, always doing her best for everyone, but also having to make hard decisions. She can’t be seen to be too favorable toward the prisoner patients, for example, in front of the other doctors, as it would be seen as being favorable toward counterrevolutionaries, spies, criminals. With Cilka, it can always appear that Yelena is instructing Cilka in her work. Raisa and Lyuba too. But Cilka does notice they often talk to her quietly, out of earshot of others.

  She has seen other prisoner nurses and orderlies on the ward, and they are spoken to mostly politely, professionally and directly.

  “If something changes, I promise I will have Antonina Karpovna bring you to me.”

  “Yelena Georgiyevna,” Cilka says, “please, isn’t there any way she can stay on?”

  “We have to be very careful, Cilka,” Yelena says, looking around. “The administrators do not look kindly upon what they call ‘shirkers’—people who want to get out of doing their work.”

  Cilka looks at Josie. “I’m sorry.”

  Josie huffs. “Will everyone please stop saying they are sorry that I can now use my hand? This is ridiculous. We should be happy. We should be happy.” Tears roll down her face.

  Startled by the tone in Josie’s voice, Lyuba comes over. “Are you all right?”

  Josie displays her hand to Lyuba.

  “I see. It has healed nicely.”

  A small laugh escapes from Josie. “Yes, Lyuba, it has healed nicely and from now on I am going to be happy that I can use both my hands.”

  She stands up, pulls her coat tight around herself and turns to face the door. “I’m ready to go.”

  As Cilka opens the door for her, a tall man rushes in, with a piece of paper in his hand. He clips her shoulder.

  “Excuse me,” he says, looking back at Cilka with an apologetic expression as he hurries past. He has dark brown eyes in a pale, elegant face. Cilka is not used to a man being polite to her and doesn’t reply, but she holds his eyes for a moment before he turns to the desk, to his task. He’s in prisoner clothing. As she and Josie head out the door, Cilka looks one more time at the man’s b
ack.

  * * *

  That evening the sight of Josie’s unbandaged right hand receives mixed responses from the other women. Pleased. Indifferent. Some are glad of an extra person to help with the task of moving the coal dug from the mines into the trolleys that take it to waiting trucks and places beyond.

  In darkness. In snow.

  At dinner Josie makes a big deal about holding a piece of bread in one hand, her tin mug in the other. She offers to fetch the coal and grabs a bucket to head out the door. She is stopped by Natalya and told to wait a few days—they don’t want her struggling and spilling their precious supply of heat.

  When the men invade the hut that night Vadim notices the unbandaged hand. He asks Josie about it. Strokes it gently. Kisses it. Cilka overhears this display of tenderness. These men only treat you with care in order to soften their own image, so you might be more open to them. It is still a selfish act, a trick.

  CHAPTER 7

  Cilka drags her feet the next morning, walking through spotlit darkness to the hospital. She will tell Yelena again that she has been very grateful for this opportunity, but she should return to working in the mines, or digging, or building—anything as difficult as the work her hut-mates are being forced to do.

  She watched Josie walk away from the camp this morning, her body nudging Natalya’s. The two of them have become close. A pang of jealousy gripped Cilka. The small thaw in Josie yesterday as she showed her her unbandaged hand had given her hope they might regain the closeness they had.

  In truth, the hospital work has been challenging and draining, despite her fortune in being indoors. Not only does she have to communicate in Russian and in the Cyrillic script, and learn to understand the established ethics, relationships and hierarchies, but most of all, she has to deal with the unexpected reactions of her body and mind to being around the sick and dying. She has managed to hide—she hopes—what is going on, but Raisa did mention the other day that it was amazing how Cilka was not at all squeamish. That she could be around blood and bone and waste without ever flinching. Raisa, who had been sent here after graduating, Cilka found out, said it had taken her months to become used to seeing bodies in these various states of disease, injury and malnutrition. Cilka hated the mixture of horror and fascination on Raisa’s face. She shrugged, turned away, said in a monotone: “I guess some of us are just like that.”

  But the job is distracting her from her troubles too. Always a new problem to solve, something new to learn. If she did continue working here it would almost feel like a life, a way of keeping herself shut off from the memories of the past and the horror of her present situation.

  Yelena is occupied when Cilka gets in, and Lyuba and Raisa understand her mood and conspire to keep her busy and take her mind off Josie. Cilka is grateful for their efforts.

  “Come with me.” Lyuba beckons Cilka to follow her to where a male doctor is standing at a bedside. She has seen him working around the ward and has been briefly introduced, by first name and patronymic—Yury Petrovich.

  The patient is unconscious, his wounds obvious, the bandage around his head soaked with blood. Cilka stands silently behind the doctor and nurse, peering around them to watch the examination taking place.

  The blanket is pulled up from the bottom of the bed. A needle is rammed firmly into the heel of one of his pale, lifeless feet; blood spurts out, covering the sheet. There is no reflexive movement from the man. The doctor turns to Cilka, handing her a clipboard, bypassing Lyuba. Lyuba nods encouragingly and stands beside her.

  “No movement from foot on needle prick.”

  Cilka writes, after first glancing at a clock at the end of the ward to record the exact time of her notation. Lyuba whispers to her whenever she pauses, uncertain. Cilka is concentrating hard.

  The bleeding foot is covered, the doctor walks to the top of the bed and roughly stretches the patient’s right eye open, then covers his face.

  “Pupils fixed and dilated,” Cilka writes next.

  “Slight pulse, irregular.” Again, noted.

  Turning to Cilka, Yury Petrovich speaks quietly, “Do you know how to feel for a pulse in the neck?”

  “Yes,” Cilka replies with confidence.

  “Good, good, show me.”

  Cilka pulls the blanket away from the man’s face, mimicking what she has seen. She places two fingers under the curve of the jaw, applying pressure. She feels the flutter of a faint pulse.

  “Check on him every fifteen minutes, and when you can no longer feel anything, declare him dead and let the porter know. Make sure you note the time in the record.”

  “Yes, Yury Petrovich, I will.”

  He turns to Lyuba. “She’s a quick learner, we may as well use her. They don’t give us enough nurses to have them checking on patients filling beds by taking too long to die. Make sure you sign off on what time she records.” He nods at Cilka and Lyuba and then moves off to another part of the ward.

  “I’ve got to check on a patient,” Lyuba says. “You’ll be fine.” She walks off.

  Cilka looks at the clock, working out exactly when it will be fifteen minutes since she noted the words “slight pulse, irregular.” She is still standing by the bedside when Yelena walks up to her and asks her what she is doing. When she explains, Yelena smiles reassuringly. “You don’t have to wait by the bed. You can go and do other things—just come back every now and then and don’t worry if it’s not exactly fifteen minutes, all right?”

  “Oh, thank you … I-I thought I had to stay here until he died.”

  “You’re really not afraid of death, are you?”

  Cilka drops her head, the image of a pile of emaciated bodies flashing through her mind. Their desperate, final sounds. The smell of it. “No, I’ve been around it enough.” The words slip out.

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” Yelena pauses. “How old are you again?”

  “Nineteen.”

  Yelena’s brow furrows. “One day, if or when you feel up to it, please know you can talk to me about it.”

  Before Cilka can answer, Yelena walks off.

  On her third visit to the dying patient, a prisoner who had an accident while working outside, Cilka writes the time and the words “no pulse.” She takes a moment to pause and force herself to look at the face of the man she has just declared dead. She flicks back through the paperwork, searching for his name.

  Bending down as she covers his face, she whispers, “Ivan Détochkin—alav ha-shalom.” May peace be upon him. She has not uttered these words in a long time.

  Auschwitz-Birkenau, Summer 1943

  “What did he say to you? We want to hear every word, and did he look at you while he was talking? Tell us, Gita, we need to hear.”

  Cilka sits on the grass at the side of Block 29 with her friends Gita and Dana. Magda is resting inside. It is a Sunday afternoon, summer, with no wind to carry the ashes spewing from the nearby crematoria their way. Cilka, in her position as block leader, has been allowed some freedom of movement, but Lale is the only male prisoner they’ve ever seen inside the women’s camp. That morning he had appeared. The girls knew what to do, to lessen the risk for their friends—encircle Gita and Lale, giving them just enough privacy for a whispered conversation. Cilka had strained to hear and had caught snippets; now she wanted the details.

  “He was asking me about my family,” Gita replies.

  “And what did you say?” Cilka asks.

  “I didn’t want to talk about them. I think he understood. So he told me about his.”

  “And? Has he got brothers and sisters?” Dana asks.

  “He has an older brother called Max…”

  “I love that name. Max,” Cilka says, putting on a gushy, girly voice.

  “Sorry, Cilka, Max is married and has two small boys of his own,” Gita tells her.

  “Oh well, never mind. What else did he say?”

  “He has a sister. Her name is Goldie and she is a dressmaker. I could tell he really loves his mumma and
sister. That’s good, isn’t it?”

  “That’s very good, Gita. You want to love someone who is good to the other women in his life,” says Dana, mature beyond her years.

  “Who said anything about being in love?” Gita throws back at her.

  “Gita loves Lale…” Cilka sing-songs to her friends, letting the sunlight and their friendship momentarily block out the horror surrounding them.

  “Stop it, both of you,” Gita says, but she is smiling.

  Exhausted by hope, the three young women lie on the grass and close their eyes, letting the warmth of the sun transport them away from where they are.

  * * *

  That afternoon as Cilka is putting on her coat, readying to leave the warmth of the hospital and face the freezing temperatures outside, she sees Yelena.

  “Yelena Georgiyevna, I need to talk to you—”

  “Cilka! I’ve been looking for you. Yes, let’s talk.”

  Before Cilka can say anything, Yelena continues, “My colleagues are impressed with you. They asked if you had any nursing experience.”

  “No, I told you … I’ve never been a nurse.”

  “That’s what I told them. We chatted about you and we were wondering whether you would like to train to be a nurse.”

  This was all happening so fast.

  “I … How can I do that? I’m a prisoner here.”

  “What better way to learn nursing than by doing it. I’ll be your teacher. I’m sure the other nurses will help and be grateful for the extra pair of hands. What do you say?”

  “I don’t know … Yelena Georgiyevna. I don’t know if I belong here.”

  Yelena puts a hand on Cilka’s shoulder. Cilka tries not to flinch at the intimacy of the touch.

  “I know I don’t know you very well, Cilka. But you are good at this, and we would like your help. Will you think about it?”

  Yelena smiles warmly, like a sister. Cilka swallows. She can hardly bear it. The guilt she feels is overwhelming. She thinks of her hut-mates after they come in, huddling by the stove, unwrapping wet fabric from their frozen feet, groaning. But she also thinks of Olga’s face when she hands her the real tea she has just boiled on the stove. This is a terrible decision and she doesn’t know why, again, she has been singled out.