“Why don’t you stay here and help Nina Romanova, she knows what she’s doing. Give me a call when the baby is out.”
With that, he walks quickly to the nurse who called out. Cilka looks over and sees her holding a small baby upside down who appears lifeless. She continues watching as the doctor takes the baby and gives it a quick pat on the bottom before pushing a finger into the infant’s mouth and down its throat. The baby splutters and the ward fills with lusty crying.
“Lovely!” Petre says. “Another citizen for our glorious State.”
Cilka can’t tell if he is just saying this for show or whether he believes it.
She turns her attention back to Nina. She wipes the woman’s face with the corner of a sheet. Useless. Looking around, she sees a basin on the far wall, a small pile of towels beside it. She quickly wets a towel and gently wipes Nina’s face, brushing her wet matted hair away.
“It’s coming, it’s coming,” Nina screams.
Cilka ventures to the end of the bed and looks in fascination as the head pops free.
“Dr.—Petre Davitovich,” she screams out.
“Cilka, let me know when the baby is out. I have my hands full here.”
“Pull it out!” screams Nina.
Cilka looks at her hands, bony and weak, and at the baby who now has one shoulder and an arm out. She pushes up her sleeves and reaches in to take hold of the little arm with one hand, cradling the head in the other. Feeling Nina bearing down, she gently tugs on the slippery baby. The one almighty push expels the baby completely and it lies between its mother’s legs and in Cilka’s hands, blood and fluid pooling around it.
“It’s out, it’s out,” Cilka cries.
From the other end of the ward comes the doctor’s voice, calm and reassuring. “Lift it up and give it a tap—you have to make the baby cry, make sure it is breathing.”
As Cilka lifts the baby up it begins to cry without the need of assistance.
“Well done—that’s what we want to hear,” the doctor calls. “I’ll be with you in a minute. Wrap the baby up and give it to Nina.”
“What is it?” pleads Nina.
Cilka looks at the baby, then to the doctor, who is watching her.
“You can tell her.”
Cilka wraps the baby in the towel left for that purpose. Handing it to Nina, she tells her, “It’s a little girl, a beautiful little girl.”
Nina sobs as her daughter is placed in her arms. Cilka watches, fighting tears that threaten, biting her lip—the emotion of the moment overwhelming. After studying her baby’s face, Nina exposes her breasts and pushes the baby roughly onto a nipple. The baby does nothing at first, seemingly reluctant, and then she finally latches on and Cilka marvels at the little jaw working feverishly away.
The doctor appears beside her.
“Well done. If Nina was a first-time mother, she wouldn’t know to put the baby to her breast as quickly as possible. In that case, you would need to help her. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Go and get some towels. Nina’s work isn’t done yet—she needs to get the placenta out, and having the baby suckle will quicken that.”
“So much to learn,” Cilka mutters as she retrieves a handful of towels.
When Nina has delivered the placenta, the doctor takes it away in a basin he retrieved from underneath the bed.
“Clean her up,” is his parting comment.
One of the other nurses comes over and shows Cilka the procedure for caring for the mother post-delivery. She tells Cilka she and the other nurse are fine with the remaining patients and she should spend some time with Nina and the baby, making sure nothing changes in their condition.
Cilka helps Nina sit up and examine her baby from head to toe. They talk about names and Nina asks Cilka if she has any ideas.
One name comes directly into Cilka’s mind.
“What about Gisela—Gita, for short?”
Newborn Gita is placed in Cilka’s arms and Cilka revels in her smallness, her smell. She goes to give her back and finds Nina sound asleep. Exhausted.
“Get a chair and sit with her awhile,” the nurse who has identified herself as Tatiana Filippovna suggests. Cilka is grateful. She is still aching all over. “We don’t often get a chance to cuddle the babies, as the mothers are very attached to them. Well, the ones who wanted them. A lot of them are all too happy for us to take them away and never look at them again.”
The idea breaks Cilka’s heart, but it is also something she understands. How could anyone bear to think of what the child’s life would be like, or their own life trying to protect them in a place like this?
“Nina will be transferred next door to the nursery hut in a little while,” Tatiana continues.
From Nina’s bedside, Cilka cuddles little Gita while observing the other two nurses and the doctor at work. Always calm, they move from patient to patient, soothing them, offering words of encouragement.
When a guard appears to take Nina and the baby away, Cilka is upset to see them go. Helping Nina into her coat, wrapping the baby inside, she assists the unsteady new mother to the door, and she is gone.
When she thinks about it, she’s never before held a newborn, healthy baby.
She doesn’t dare hope that she has broken her curse. That she could have a role in helping new life come into the world, rather than overseeing death.
“And now you clean up and get the bed ready for the next one,” says Tatiana. “Come on, I’ll show you where the buckets and water are. Can’t guarantee clean linen for everyone but we’ll find the least spoiled.”
“Aren’t there cleaners to do this?” Cilka asks. She wouldn’t normally balk at the work but she has mere threads of energy left.
Tatiana laughs. “Yes, you. You are the cleaner. Unless you think the doctor should do it?”
“Of course not,” Cilka says, smiling, wanting to show she is happy to work. She will grit her teeth and be grateful.
Cilka cleans up after Nina and two others who give birth. Tatiana and her colleague Svetlana Romonovna concentrate on the other patients, and then Cilka, to show her dedication, cleans up after them, drawing from a hidden reserve of energy. Each patient is taken away mysteriously with their newborn, for life in “the hut next door.”
* * *
“Who do we have here?”
Two new nurses enter the ward.
Cilka looks up from her mop, leaning on it. “Hello, I’m Cilka Klein. I started work here today.”
“As a cleaner, I see. Just what we need,” one of them replies.
“Well, no, I’m a nurse…” She tries to steady her breathing. “I’m just helping Tatiana Filippovna by cleaning up.”
“Hey, Tatiana, got yourself a slave here.”
“Get lost, you pathetic excuse for a nurse,” Tatiana responds.
Cilka tries to work out if the exchange is in jest or seriousness. The thumb thrust through the middle and index fingers at Tatiana—a rude gesture—answers her question.
“Well, slave, we’ll be on day shift next week; we’ll see how good a cleaner you are.” The two newcomers go to the front of the ward to the desk area. Pulling up chairs they relax, talking and giggling. Cilka doesn’t need to be told they are talking about her, their body language and calls of “Get back to work” are clear enough. This surprising, joyous day seems also to herald a darker future.
Tatiana finds a moment to reassure her. “Look, you are a prisoner. We are not, we are qualified and must work both day and night shifts. I’m sorry, but every second week you will have to work with those cows. Don’t let them boss you around too much, you are here to work as a nurse.”
“Thank you. I shall look forward to every second week.”
“Our shifts are up,” Tatiana says. “Come on, get your coat and go. We’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Night.”
With mixed emotions, but relieved that her shift is over, Cilka wraps herself in her coat and steps out into the f
rigid air. In her pocket she feels the note Petre has written advising Antonina of her new position.
* * *
That night, Cilka tells Josie, Olga, Elena and anyone else interested about her day and her new role helping deliver babies. Though Hannah lies on her bed, facing the wall, Cilka can tell she is listening, too. She regales them with exaggerated stories of baby Gita’s birth, and how she flew out from her mother and would have landed on the floor if Cilka hadn’t caught her. She declares herself now an expert on all matters concerning childbirth and tells them about the support she received from the nurses and the one lovely doctor who couldn’t be more caring. She doesn’t mention the two night-shift nurses she will have to spend the next week with.
Questions of where the new mothers went and whether they were allowed to stay with their babies, and for how long, are brushed aside. She doesn’t know that yet. And she’s worried about knowing.
Elena says she has heard that they take the babies away from the mothers and force them back to work.
“I’ll find out soon enough,” Cilka promises.
Cilka had been given the same food as the other nurses, twice as much bread as the usual ration, and she has been able to bring that back to share. She is relieved she can still be useful in this way, or the guilt of landing another inside job would be overwhelming.
Cilka is also grateful that the job will be so busy and all-consuming that she will have no time to think about Alexandr Petrik, the Czech man working as a messenger. Because no good would come of that.
As Cilka lies down, Josie pushes her over, crawling in beside her. She sobs, “I’m sorry about the sheet, Cilka. About you having to go into the hole.”
“Please, Josie, you don’t have to keep saying that. It’s over. Can we get back to being friends?”
“You are my dearest friend,” Josie says.
“Well, dearest, get out of my bed and let me get some sleep.”
Auschwitz-Birkenau, 1942
Cilka stares at a fly on the cold cement wall of her room in Block 25. He has not come for her today.
Women and girls stagger into the block to seek out a place to lay their head for the final time. She sighs, stands up from her bed and opens the door, watching the wraiths pass by her, holding her arms around herself.
A woman, being assisted into the block by two others, turns to Cilka—thick gray-brown locks, dark circles under her eyes, sunken cheeks. It takes Cilka a moment to recognize her.
“Mumma!” she screams.
Cilka pushes herself into the trio, grasping the woman in the middle.
“My baby, my beautiful dievča!” the woman cries.
The other women are too distraught, blank-eyed, to pay much attention to the reunion.
Cilka helps her mother into her own room, and onto the bed. For a long time they sit there, holding each other, not saying a word.
The clanging of pans and shouts rouses Cilka. The evening rations have arrived. Gently removing her arms from around her mother, Cilka goes to meet those bringing in urns of watery coffee and small rations of stale bread.
She tells the women around her to come and get some food. She knows from experience that those who have the strength will. The others are too far gone.
Back in her room, she places her mother’s portion on the floor as she attempts to prop her up against the wall. When this fails, she places a small piece of bread on her lips, encouraging her to open her mouth. Her mother turns her head away.
“You have it, my darling. You need it more than I do.”
“No, Mumma, I can get more,” Cilka says. “Please, you have to get your strength back, you need to eat.”
“Your hair…” her mother says. It was still there, tucked behind her ears, falling over her shoulders. She reaches up and runs her fingers through it, like she did when Cilka was a child.
Cilka brings the food up to her mother’s mouth and she opens it and allows Cilka to feed her. Pulling herself up, she drinks the foul-tasting liquid Cilka holds to her lips.
Cilka settles her mother on the bed.
“I’ll be right back, just stay here and rest.”
“Where are you going? Don’t leave me.”
“Please, Mumma, I won’t be long, I have to find someone…”
“Nobody can help us, please stay with me. We have so little time.”
“That’s why I have to go and see someone, so we can have more time. I won’t let them take you.”
Cilka reaches the door.
“Cilka, no.” The voice is unexpectedly firm.
Cilka returns to sit on the bed, cradling her mother’s head in her arms. “There is someone who can help us, someone who can have you put into another block where you can get better and we can see each other, be with each other. Please, Mumma, let me go and speak to him.”
“No, my darling daughter. Stay with me, here and now. There are no certainties in this place. Let us have this night together. I know what awaits me in the morning. I am not afraid.”
“I can’t let them take you, Mumma. You and Magda are all I have.”
“My darling Magda! She’s alive?”
“She is, Mumma.”
“Oh … thank Hashem. You must look after each other, as best you can.”
“And you, Mumma, I must look after you.”
Cilka’s mother struggles to free herself from her child’s arms. “Look at me, look at me. I am sick, I am dying. You can’t stop that.”
Cilka runs her hands over her mother’s face, kisses her shaven head. Their tears mingle and fall together onto the bed.
“What about Papa, Mumma—was he with you?”
“Oh, my darling, we were separated. He was in a bad way…”
Overwhelming waves of sadness and hopelessness threaten to drown Cilka. “No. No, Mumma.”
“Lie here with me,” her mother says gently, “and in the morning kiss me goodbye. I will watch over you.”
“I can’t. I can’t let you go,” Cilka sobs.
“You must, it’s not your decision to make.”
“Hold me. Hold me, Mumma.”
Cilka’s mother embraces her daughter with all her might, pulling her down onto the bed. The two become one.
“One day, if Hashem is willing,” her mother says, stroking Cilka’s face, “you will know a child’s love. You will know what I feel for you.”
Cilka buries her face in her mother’s neck.
“I love you, Mumma.”
* * *
The sun has barely risen when Cilka, her mother and the others in Block 25 are roused by the screaming SS and barking dogs.
“Out, out, everybody out.”
Cilka’s head rests on her mother’s shoulder as they slowly leave the room and join the others heading outside to the waiting trucks.
Swagger sticks are being wielded at those too slow or in any way resisting the final few steps onto the trucks. Cilka pauses. A stick is raised in her mother’s direction by a nearby guard.
“Don’t you dare,” she hisses at him.
The baton is lowered as Cilka’s mother takes the final few steps, Cilka still clinging to her arm.
“Mumma, no, don’t get on the truck!”
The guards watch as Cilka’s mother frees herself from her daughter, kisses her on both cheeks, on the lips and runs her fingers through her hair. One last time. She then accepts the hands reaching down from the truck to help pull her up. Cilka can still feel her mother’s lips on her face. She sinks to the ground as the truck starts up and drives away. A guard extends his hand to Cilka and she smacks him away. The truck drives on.
CHAPTER 13
“You, what’s-your-name.”
Pasting a smile on her face, Cilka turns to the voice. She will not respond, will make the nurse work for it.
“Come here.”
Cilka walks to the bed where the nurse stands. Every bed is occupied. If ever there was a day Cilka could be useful, today is it. Cilka smiles at the new mother holding her b
aby, just hours old.
“We need this bed, and no one has turned up to take her next door. You need to take them over.”
“I’ll just grab my coat,” Cilka replies. It is spring now, but frosty outside.
“You don’t have time for that; just get them out of here.”
“But where—”
The new mother tugs on Cilka’s skirt.
“It’s all right, I know where to go. I’ve been there before.”
The patient is already dressed, her baby swaddled in a blanket. Cilka helps her into her coat with the baby tucked inside. The patient looks for the nurse; she is nowhere to be seen. Grabbing the blanket off her bed, she indicates for Cilka to wrap it around herself. She does. The patient leads the way out of a back door.
The building they are headed to is only fifty or sixty meters away. Their feet crunch across the frosty grass. The sound of infants crying, jabbering and screaming reaches them before they open the door. Stepping inside, Cilka is confronted by a chaotic scene. A few cots crammed against one wall, small mattresses—more like mats—scattered around. Three staff to care for what looks like twenty babies and toddlers.
“We need to check in here and then go through the door at the end of the room to the dormitory where I will sleep.”
“And we have a full house again,” one of the staff members says as she walks toward them. “Well, hello, Anna Anatolyeva. You’re back.”
“I missed your charming face, what can I say. How are you, Irina Igorevna, still eating little children for breakfast?”
“Oh, Anya, of course, why are you back here?”
Cilka notices the switch to the diminutive and understands that these women know each other quite well.
“One of those ugly pigs looked at me and, you know, I have another baby. This one you will look after properly, or I will send his ugly pig of a father to deal with you.”
“Yeah, yeah, heard it before. What have you got this time?”
“Another girl. Another victim for the cause.”
“Have you named her this time?”
“You did such a great job with the last one, you give her a name. Make it a strong one. She will need to be strong to survive this house of horrors.”
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