Cilka's Journey

by Heather Morris

  “It’s just what happens here.”

  “Yes, it’s just what happens here. It’s what happened there to me. I was kept hidden away so the officers would not be seen to be polluting themselves. Do you know what that is like? For you and your family and friends, your whole race, to be treated like animals for slaughter?”

  Hannah looks away, keeps her face blank.

  “And did this person who claims to know so much about me say why she was here?” Cilka asks.

  “Yes, I got that out of her. The Russians said they didn’t like people who told on others without being asked, so sent her here too. It seems like you were all weak in the end, all turning on each other.”

  “No one can judge us,” Cilka says through gritted teeth. “You can’t know what it was like. There were only two choices: one was to survive. The other was death.”

  Hannah chuckles quietly. Cilka is seeing double with rage. She should be used to this by now—people creating hierarchies of good and bad, deciding where you fit in.

  “But that’s not all there is, is it?” Hannah says.

  Cilka looks at her.

  “Would you really want me to tell the others—Josie, Natalya, Olga, Elena—about your role in the death block?”

  Cilka tries not to let her expression falter.

  “I thought so,” Hannah says. “I will tell you what I need, soon, and you will give it to me.” She walks away, across the patchy grass and dirt.

  Cilka looks up at the women standing around in a circle, sharing a rare moment of leisure. Josie turns and smiles at Cilka. Cilka forces a smile back. She does not want to go back, in her mind, to that other place; she wants to take each day and get through it the best she can, with her new friends. She does not want Hannah to ruin this for her. Her gut churns.

  * * *

  All too soon, the women wake to frost on the ground. The air is thick and wet in their throats. Cilka has now been here a year. Their scarves are put away, their hats and heavy coats retrieved from under their mattresses where they have spent the past two months.

  Hannah does not yet seem to have decided on her “price” for keeping quiet. But she reminds Cilka frequently, with a look or a gesture, of what she knows. Cilka tries, most of the time, to block from her mind her fear of the women finding out.

  The transition from autumn to winter is swift. Seasonal rain dampens the ground and the mood. The evening strolls in the camp end and the women struggle to adjust to only having their own company once again.

  The rain becomes sleet, the sleet becomes snow. There is constant darkness.

  The hut feels small and close with Hannah’s knowledge.

  CHAPTER 9

  A day for making plans. A day for thinking ahead. For most people, but not for Cilka.

  For the first time today, she writes in a patient’s file:

  January 1, 1947.

  Patient making good progress, expected discharge tomorrow.

  She hears the words spoken by the doctor, transcribes them, forces a smile as she looks at the man lying in the bed in front of her, his eyes full of tears.

  “Please, just a little longer. Can I stay a little longer? Two, three more days. I am still weak.”

  The doctor looks at the man without compassion. Turning to Cilka—“What do you think, Cilka? Shall we let this malingering piece of shit take up a bed some ailing fellow prisoner should have? Or kick his sorry arse out of here tomorrow?”

  Cilka has learned the game some of the doctors like to play, involving her. Making her the person who determines whether or not a patient gets another twenty-four hours in a warm hospital bed with nourishing food. She has also learned which doctors might agree to her suggestion that a patient may have a day longer, and which will do the opposite.

  This doctor often agrees with whatever Cilka says. She carefully grants days to the sick and infirm that she never could in her old life. Though in all of these places, it is always one person for another. One person’s comfort, one person’s food. Nothing is fair.

  “It is the first day of a new year. Perhaps in the spirit of this”—she glances at the file in her hands—“Georgii Yaroslavovich would benefit from an extra day with us. Shall I amend his file to say discharge in two days?”

  “Amend.” The doctor walks away.

  Cilka glances up at the poster on the wall above the bed. A smiling worker in a sunny field. Liberation through honest toil.

  She amends the file.

  “Thank you, Cilka Klein, thank you, thank you. You are an angel sent from heaven.”

  Cilka winks at him. This time her smile is genuine, “It’s all right, Georgii Yaroslavovich, you know I’ll take care of you.”

  As she walks back to the desk to drop off Georgii’s file and collect another, Yelena is waiting, having watched the game play out.

  “Cilka, I have some good news for you.”

  The smile returns to Cilka’s face. She’s almost too scared to ask what. She waits.

  “I’ve spoken to the head of the hospital and convinced him you now qualify to be called a nurse.”

  “Really? That’s wonderful, thank you so much,” Cilka says. But she feels numb. Her position makes a marginal difference to her hut-mates’ lives, but still she wishes she could do more. Behind Yelena, outside the frosted window, there is howling darkness. “I don’t know what else to say.”

  “You don’t have to thank me. You did the hard work—you’ve earned the right to be recognized for it.”

  There is a churning deep down inside her. Something like shame. Would Yelena feel differently if she knew everything about Cilka’s past?

  “I won’t let you down,” Cilka says.

  “I know you won’t. And, Cilka, one more thing.” She hands a note to Cilka. “Give this to Antonina Karpovna tonight. It is my request for Josie to start work here tomorrow as a clerical assistant. She will learn some of your old duties to free you up for nursing.”

  Taking the note with a shaking hand, Cilka turns away to compose herself. Finally. She has been agitating for this to happen for as long as she has been in the hospital. She stuffs the note in the pocket of her hospital apron. With a nod of thanks she picks up another file and walks briskly, with purpose, to another patient.

  For the first time in a long while Cilka arrives back at her hut before the others. She paces the small room, her nose still aching from the cold of the walk, waiting for Josie, for Antonina, to share her news. It is, not the news that she is to be called a nurse that excites her so; it is that Josie will no longer be working outdoors but in the comfort and warmth of the hospital. She knows it comes from a selfish place—she wants to be closer, physically, to Josie. So she can watch over her.

  The women enter the hut in a state of fear and panic. Cilka’s first thought is of Hannah, what she knows—or thinks she knows. Has she told the women and are they going to attack her? But then she realizes it is something else entirely. One of the women is sobbing and groaning at the same time. She is being supported by two others, each holding her up by one arm as the woman doubles over in pain. The others are in a fluster, issuing instructions on what to do with no one listening, no one taking control.

  Cilka grabs Elena, pulling her from the pack. She sees now that the groaning woman is Natalya, her blond hair stuck with sweat and soot to her forehead.

  “What’s happening? What’s wrong?”

  Antonina has followed them in. As they place Natalya on her bed they step away and let the brigadier see her.

  “How far gone?” Antonina asks.

  Natalya shakes her head in pain and fear. “I don’t know.” Her scarf is still bundled around her neck. Her gloved hands clutch at it.

  “Weeks or months?”

  “Months, five or six, I don’t know! Help me, please help me.”

  “What’s wrong with her?” Cilka asks Elena again.

  “She’s bleeding and she is pregnant. We think she is having the baby.”

  Antonina looks up and se
es Cilka standing back.

  “Come here,” she says. “You work in the hospital—take charge. The rest of you, get ready to go to dinner.”

  Cilka opens her mouth to object, changes her mind. She has no idea how to deliver a baby, but she wants to be there for Natalya.

  “Excuse me, Antonina Karpovna, can I have Josie and Elena stay and help me? I have a note here for you from the doctor, Yelena Georgiyevna.”

  Cilka unfolds it and puts the note in Antonina’s gloved hands. Antonina reads it and looks around to find Josie, says in a monotone, “Well, another one of you wins a prize, congratulations.” She looks back at Cilka. “The two of them can stay with you. I’ll have some towels and sheets sent over. The rest of you, get out.” She wraps her scarf back over her mouth, only her eyes showing.

  Before the women leave for the mess, Cilka says, “Can I ask if anyone here has had a baby or attended anyone giving birth?”

  The brigadier looks around at the women, pushes her scarf down again. “Well?”

  “I’ve helped birth plenty of cows but no humans,” says Margarethe, matter-of-factly.

  “You can stay also.”

  Natalya’s screams from the bed refocus the attention. Sweet, beautiful Natalya, Cilka thinks. Josie kneels down beside her, pushes the damp blond hair off her face.

  “How bad is the bleeding?” Cilka asks.

  “There was a lot of it when I went to the latrine on the worksite. Help me, please, Cilka, save my baby.”

  She wants the baby, Cilka notes. There is something within Cilka that understands, if this happened to her, she might cling to that idea of life, too. But it won’t happen to Cilka. She doesn’t think her body is able to get pregnant.

  Josie looks pleadingly at Cilka. “You know what to do?”

  Cilka keeps her face blank, serious. “We will do all we can, Natalya. We need to take your clothes off so we can see how you are, all right?”

  Fifteen women gather at the door, wrapped up, eager to get away, keen not to bear witness to tragedy. Cilka, Josie, Elena and Margarethe tend to Natalya as best they can.

  A guard delivers two towels and two sheets. Greeted by the screams of Natalya, he throws them into the hut without a word.

  While the rest of the hut is having dinner, Natalya gives birth to a baby boy. He makes no sound; he gives no movement. Taking one of the towels, Cilka wraps his little body in it and places him in Natalya’s arms. The four women stand over her as she cries herself to sleep, clutching her son to her chest for what will be their one and only night together. Josie stays by her bedside all night.

  The next morning Antonina tells Elena and Margarethe to stay with Natalya. Cilka and Josie are to take the baby and report to the hospital for work. Josie looks pained.

  “We’ll look after Natalya, Josie,” Elena says.

  Taking the dead baby from his mother’s arms is one of the hardest things Cilka has done in her twenty years.

  * * *

  In the hospital, Josie is slow to catch on. Cilka finds herself spending more time teaching and doing the job herself at the expense of nursing. She perseveres, and Yelena looks the other way as slowly Josie learns the art of determining what information from a doctor needs to be in a patient file, what was only comment and not for recording. She can speak Russian well now but she struggles greatly with the Cyrillic, with the names and spellings of drugs. She is shy toward the medical and nursing staff, preferring to interrupt Cilka for help than ask for instructions to be repeated.

  Cilka, however, excels at every task. She is now expert at drawing blood; her suturing, while not to the standard of Olga and the others in the embroidery class, is admired by her more experienced colleagues. She effortlessly combines caring for the emotional needs of her patients with their practical ones.

  Josie is grateful and warmer to Cilka now, whispering to her in the hut as they lie side by side on the nights Boris and Vadim haven’t visited. She is anxious, and overwhelmed. “How will I learn? How will I keep up?”

  Cilka sometimes does not have the energy to reassure her, though she wants to be good to her. She just knows it’s possible things will get even harder, that they have to take each moment as it comes.

  One day, they return from work and Natalya is gone. Antonina Karpovna refuses to give them answers, which Cilka knows is not good. Usually, they know when a woman has gone to the hole, because it is a warning to the rest of them. Cilka cannot stop the images of women leaping onto electric fences in that other place, preferring a quick death to the hell on earth that was the camp, or the gas chamber they knew awaited them all. The blankness is coming over Cilka, cold and flat as snow on the ground, and she just wants to lie down. But she knows what Natalya meant to Josie. She sits by her and silently offers a hand for her to hold until she falls asleep.

  Winter seems relentless, all-consuming in its freezing darkness, but weeks become months. The seasons make their dramatic changes and once again small flowers push their way through the melting snow and ice. The light in the hut goes out and the sun remains high in the sky.

  A second white-night summer has arrived.

  There are a few more changes in the hut, besides Natalya’s departure. Two of the original women get involved in a fight. When a guard attempts to break them up he is struck. The women are sent to the hole, and do not return. Three young Ukrainian girls arrive and sleep in their beds. Olga, Elena, Margarethe and Hannah remain.

  The walls of the hut are covered in the women’s craft. When a piece deteriorates due to the damp conditions, it is quickly replaced. The lace adorns the collars on the women’s coats, their dresses, the edges of pockets, on their hats and scarves. It is a small reclamation of an identity, a femininity, an expression of something other than a functional body put to work daily.

  * * *

  Cilka has managed to avoid being alone with Hannah for months until, one evening, when they are all walking back from the mess to go straight into the hut, Cilka slows, telling Josie she’ll be in soon.

  “Are you all right?” Josie asks, frowning at Hannah standing next to Cilka.

  “Yes, of course,” Cilka says, forcing a smile.

  Josie shrugs and walks on, leaving Cilka and Hannah alone.

  Cilka takes a deep breath.

  To her surprise, Hannah does not look threatening but vulnerable. She licks her dry lips, her eyes darting about.

  “In the hospital…” she says tentatively, “you have drugs for pain, right?”

  “We do, but they are limited. We only use them when we really have to.”

  “Well, you have to get me some,” Hannah says. Her eyes flare in their sockets, desperate.

  “There’s not enough—” Cilka says.

  “You know the consequences,” Hannah growls, digging her hand back into the flesh of Cilka’s arm until it hurts. “If you don’t get me a steady supply, I will tell everyone in there”—she nods toward the hut—“that you not only fucked the Nazis but you stood like an angel of death in a fur coat and watched, and did nothing, as thousands of your kind were killed before your eyes.”

  Despite the mild weather, Cilka’s insides turn to ice. She begins to shake. She wants to explain to Hannah: I was sixteen! I did not choose any of it, any of this. I simply stayed alive. But no words come. And she knows, too, how they would ring out hollow and desperate to her hut-mates. How they would not be able to stand to be around her. How she would seem cursed, wrong. She does not want to steal drugs badly needed by patients for Hannah. But she also can’t lose her friends—her only solace. And what if Yelena found out about the death block too? Raisa and Lyuba? She might lose them, and her position. She wouldn’t be able to bring extra food for her hut-mates, helping to keep them strong enough to do their grueling work. Everything would unravel.

  She sees on Hannah’s face that she has guessed Cilka’s thoughts.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Cilka says in a flat voice, defeated.

  As she is about to go back into the
hut, to lie down and try to close her mind to this dilemma and all that it has brought up, she hears a voice call her name.

  “Cilka, Cilka!” It is Boris.

  She turns as the stocky, ruddy-faced Russian bounds over to her. How can she deal with him right now? Their relationship has gradually changed. He tells Cilka often that he cares for her. She forces herself to tell him the same, for her safety, but she never means it. Many times, when he visits, he just wants to be held, cuddled. He tells her about his childhood, one of rejection, of never knowing the love and comfort of caring parents. She pities him. She wonders if her feelings for men are to be only fear and pity? Her own childhood was full of love and attention, her parents always interested in what she said, appreciating the stubborn, willful daughter they were raising. There is a remnant of this sense of family, and belonging, tucked deep down, that cannot be touched. Her father was a good man. There must be other men like her father. Like Gita’s Lale. Love against terrible odds is possible. Maybe just not for her.

  She thinks again of the messenger she has seen in the hospital. His kind, dark eyes. But can a look of apparent kindness really be trusted? She doesn’t even know his name. It is better that she doesn’t.

  “Walk with me,” Boris says firmly. She doesn’t know what will happen if she protests. So she goes. He takes her to a part of the camp she and the others have avoided, an area full of men, often arguing, always fighting.

  Boris tells her he wants her to meet some of his friends. He wants to show her off. For the first time since her arrival in Vorkuta, Cilka is genuinely scared. She knows Boris is a powerful trustie in the camp, but the vile comments of the men, who attempt to grab her and touch her as she walks past them, make her fear that he cannot protect her. One of the others has a young woman with him and is savagely having sex with her in full view of his comrades. The calls for Boris to prove his manhood and take Cilka the same way make her break from him and run. Catching up to her, Boris insists he would never do anything like that to her. He apologizes. A heartfelt apology. Confirming what she suspected. He cares for her. But how can he care for her when he does not know her? He only knows her as a body: face, hair, limbs.