Cilka's Journey

by Heather Morris

  Cilka looks at Kirill, seeing him differently. The bravado he has shown her, even the contempt he has shown toward her, has gone.

  He briefly touches her hand with his big hairy one. “Get better. I’ll come and check on you in a couple of days. And Cilka, Pavel wasn’t the only one who cared about you.”

  Before Cilka can respond, Kirill walks away.

  * * *

  Cilka doesn’t keep her promise. Over the next ten days as she recovers, she is growled at, yelled at, threatened with being tied down. She is most active at night when staff numbers are low. Several times she attempts resuscitation on patients she hears having trouble breathing. Mostly she just visits other patients and comforts them.

  Her injuries heal, her headaches reduce and the stitches are removed from her scalp. She hides the continued pain in her back, not wanting to prolong her stay on the ward, and asks Yelena to release her so she can go back to the hut. She shouldn’t be taking up one of these precious beds.

  “You can go soon,” Yelena tells her.

  * * *

  A few days later, as Cilka and the medical team emerge from surgery—Cilka’s first since she has been back on her feet—the camp long since closed for the night, they are met by several senior camp officers. The officers inquire about the explosives expert and are relieved to hear he is doing well and will, after a few more days of care, be able to resume his duties. Cilka tries to slink away from the conversation, moving to the back of the group. As she tries to leave the room, one of the men calls out.

  “Nurse, please stay where you are.”

  Cilka freezes. She doesn’t know what she has done wrong but no good has ever come from being spoken to directly by a camp commandant. When the doctor has finished his report, the commandant walks over to Cilka. Tall, slim, the cap on his head resting off to the side, he resembles someone she once knew, someone who used her. She starts to shake as memories she fights hard to bury flood back.

  “Are you the nurse who went into the mine and saved the injured men?”

  Cilka can’t answer. He repeats the question.

  “Yes,” she stammers. “I went in, but it was the doctors who saved the patients.”

  “That’s not what I heard. Your bravery saved many men and I want you to know we are grateful.”

  “Thank you, I was just doing my job.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Cilka Klein, sir.”

  “Are you a registered nurse here?”

  Before Cilka can answer, Yelena butts in. “Cilka has been trained here by many senior doctors and other experienced nurses. Her skills are exceptional and we’re very grateful to have her.”

  The commandant acknowledges the comments.

  “Nevertheless, you are a prisoner here.”

  “Yes,” Cilka murmurs, her head lowered.

  “Do you live in the nurse’s quarters?”

  “I live in Hut 29.”

  The commandant turns to the doctor. “She may move into the nurse’s quarters.”

  With that, he leaves, his entourage trailing behind him.

  Cilka slides down the wall that had been holding her up, trembling.

  Yelena helps her to her feet.

  “You must be exhausted. It’s been quite a time for you. Let’s find a bed here for you to sleep in for one more night. I don’t want you going back to your hut tonight, and tomorrow we’ll talk about moving you.”

  Cilka allows herself to be led away.

  CHAPTER 27

  Cilka wakes up on the ward and can see clear blue skies outside the window. Sunrise has been creeping forward, and the coming light makes her think about the women in her hut even more.

  When Yelena comes in, Cilka tells her, “I’m so grateful for the offer to sleep in the nurses’ quarters, but I’ve decided I want to stay where I am.”

  Yelena looks at her, stunned.

  “If it’s all right, I’d like to stay with my friends.”

  “Where you are unsafe…”

  Cilka knows that Yelena is aware of what happens at night, in the camp—she has seen the injuries. Cilka understands why it might seem unfathomable.

  “Where my friends are,” she says again. Olga, Elena, Margarethe, Anastasia. And, she thinks fearfully, if Hannah has told them, then I need to face up to that. To her. “I don’t expect you to understand.”

  Yelena takes a deep breath. “It’s your decision and I’ll respect it. Should you change your mind…”

  “You’ll be the first to know.”

  She has to go back because the women Cilka shares a hut with have become her family. Yes, they don’t always agree. There have been many fights, some of them physical, but that is what large, complex families endure. She remembers the arguments and pushing and shoving that went on between her and her sister while they were growing up. But the cooperation, and the sharing, outweighed the conflict. Women had come and gone, but the central unity of the hut remained, with the gruff Antonina Karpovna an integral part.

  * * *

  When Cilka enters the hut the women look at her sadly. They know, she thinks. She could walk straight back out, but she forces herself to stay, to face them.

  “Oh, Cilka,” Margarethe says. “Olga has gone.”

  “What do you mean, gone?” Cilka asks, forcing a deep breath.

  “They took her away this morning as we were going to work. Her sentence was up.”

  “But I didn’t get to say goodbye,” Cilka says. She doesn’t know if she can fit any more missing inside her.

  “She said to say goodbye to you. Be happy for her, Cilka. She will be able to go back to her children.”

  Anastasia enters the hut, joins them. “Cilka! Did they tell you?”

  “Yes,” Cilka replies. “I’ll miss her.”

  Anastasia wraps her arms around Cilka.

  “We missed you.”

  * * *

  The hut is unusually quiet that night, Olga’s empty bed a constant reminder that she has gone, and they are left behind.

  Several men come after lights out, including Boris. He is subdued. Cilka lies quietly beside him.

  “Don’t you ever want to talk about us?” he finally asks.

  “I don’t know what you mean by us.”

  “You and me, what we mean to each other. You never tell me how you’re feeling.”

  “What do you care? You just want my body.”

  Boris leans on one elbow, trying in the dark to see Cilka’s face, to read her expression, look into her eyes.

  “What would you think if I told you I’m in love with you.”

  Cilka doesn’t respond for several moments. He waits.

  “That’s a very nice thing to say.”

  “I really thought about it when you were away, in the hospital. And what do you feel for me?”

  Nothing, she thinks. I have merely tolerated you. And not for the first time, the kind, attractive face of Alexandr comes into her head. But she should not tease herself like this.

  “Boris, you are a very nice man; there is no one in this camp I would rather have lying with me,” she says, able to make out his ruddy nose, the wetness on his lips in the half-light. She looks back at the ceiling.

  “But do you love me?”

  “I don’t know what love is. If I was to allow myself to fall in love with someone, I would have to believe there was a future. And there isn’t.”

  But she does know that it is possible for her to be drawn to someone, in the way she has heard people speak about. It is also cruel to be so drawn to someone in a place like this.

  “How can you be sure? We could have a future together. We won’t spend the rest of our lives here.”

  It is better to feel nothing, she thinks.

  “Do you see that empty bed over there?”

  Boris peers into the dark.

  “No.”

  “Well, there is an empty bed. Olga slept there every night since the day we arrived here.”

  “Yes…” B
oris says, uncertain.

  “Do you know why she was here?” Cilka’s voice rises, eliciting a “shut up” from the darkness.

  “How could I know why she was here when I don’t even know why you’re here?”

  “She was Russian and she fell in love and tried to marry a man from Prague. That is against your laws. For that they were taken away; she ended up here and she has no idea what happened to him but she suspects he is dead.”

  “What does that have to do with us?”

  “I am from Czechoslovakia and you are Russian.”

  “Things can change,” he says plaintively.

  “Yes, they can, but right now this is our reality.”

  Boris snuggles into Cilka, his passion gone, seeking comfort. Cilka tolerates it.

  * * *

  Boris’s affection, and his abuse, remain constant; the injured and sick remain constant; the friendships in the hut remain quietly expressed through the sharing of resources, through the consoling of one another over their conditions, their losses. Margarethe, Anastasia, Elena and Hannah remain, but Cilka does not feel as close to them as she had to Josie. Hannah reminds Cilka, whenever possible, that she could disrupt the peace of the hut, that she could reveal all. And Cilka still cannot face that. Cilka remains connected to Yelena, even if it remains mostly unsaid—expressed through looks and gestures across a patient’s bed, across the ward. And though she tries to deny the feeling to herself, Cilka looks out for Alexandr—a figure smoking, his eyes closed in momentary pleasure, near the administration building. In snow, through rain, in brief sun—his face turned up to the light. When she sees him, her heart leaps, but still she hurries on, thinking that to let in such longing can do no good.

  All this continues as the seasons change—darkness to light, white nights to long dark winters. Cilka’s nightmares still often wake her: emaciated bodies, whistling doctors, the commandant’s black, shiny boots. She grasps for the good memories, but they are getting further and further away. She fantasizes about Josie and Natia’s life, about Lale and Gita’s. She imagines them safe and warm and holding each other. She endures.

  CHAPTER 28

  Vorkuta Gulag, Siberia, June 1953

  Another white-night summer. The first few Sunday evenings of venturing out “after dark” lack the enthusiasm and enjoyment of summers past. Their eighth summer, eight years of their lives stolen.

  There is an echo of restlessness throughout the camp. As summer reaches its peak, Cilka overhears talk on the ward of a strike. Men in one area of the camp are refusing to work. That evening she tells the others what she’s heard.

  A level of excitement spreads through the hut at this rumor. Elena has heard nothing in the sewing room where she now has a job, thanks to Olga’s lessons. She and Cilka are entreated to find out all they can.

  The next day, Cilka asks Raisa what she knows. In a hushed voice, Raisa tells her she has heard other workers have gone on strike.

  Out on the ambulance that day, something Cilka still does along with ward duty, though not as often, she sees several dozen men sitting on the ground outside one of the administration buildings.

  Kirill slows down to stare at the extraordinary sight of men sitting around during the day. Several guards stand nearby, watching.

  “Well, that’s different,” Fyodor—the ambulance officer Cilka is now often paired with—comments.

  “Haven’t you heard?” Cilka says. “They’re on strike. They’re refusing to work.”

  “Maybe we should join them. I’ll turn the ambulance around,” Kirill says.

  “Keep driving, it’s not as if it’s true hard labor you’re doing,” Cilka fires back.

  “I love it when you’re feisty, Cilka Klein. I’m surprised you’re not one of the ringleaders running the strike.”

  “How little you know me, Kirill.”

  “Oh, I think I know you pretty well.”

  “Excuse me, there’s three of us here,” Fyodor chimes in.

  * * *

  Back on the ward, the staff gossip is all about the growing strike and how the authorities will handle it. The options available to settle the dispute seem limited and likely to end in an increased workload at the hospital. Nobody knows if there is a specific aim to the unrest, or a new group of prisoners influencing the older ones, men still with the energy to protest the way they are treated.

  That evening, Elena shares what she knows. The strikers want better living conditions, she says. The women look around their hut, which they have made into the best home they could. An old jug containing a few flowers sits on a nearby table, embroidered artwork is tacked to walls, and they each have a bed, something they know is a luxury.

  “What else?” someone asks.

  “They want the barbed wire removed from around the camp and they want us to remove the numbers from our uniforms; they say it is degrading.”

  This last demand causes Cilka to rub her right hand over the coat sleeve of her left arm, thinking of the number permanently stamped onto her skin.

  “Oh, and we should be allowed to write letters home to our families once a month.”

  “Anything else?” Margarethe asks.

  “I heard something about demands for political prisoners,” chimes in Anastasia, “but I didn’t take much notice.”

  “Why not? It affects us,” Margarethe says.

  “We’re not all political prisoners,” Anastasia says.

  “We are all victims of an unjust, harsh dictator,” Elena pronounces.

  “Elena, don’t say that. Not even here,” Margarethe whispers firmly.

  “She can say what she wants,” Hannah says proudly.

  “I’m not interested in politics; I’ve never voted or marched or protested,” Anastasia says. “I stole bread so others could eat.”

  “Can we all stop talking like this? It can only get us into trouble,” Margarethe says.

  Cilka nods. “Let’s not say or do anything to get us into any more trouble than we are in just by being here.”

  “That’s your preferred way to do things, isn’t it, Cilka? Just lie down and take it,” says Hannah.

  Elena glares at Hannah.

  “It’s all right, Elena,” Cilka says. “Anger is what we feel when we are helpless.”

  Hannah pushes herself violently off the bed and spits at Cilka’s feet, before storming out of the hut. Elena balls her fists and goes to follow her.

  “Don’t,” Cilka says. “Let her go.”

  * * *

  Over the next few days, the unrest grows. The number of prisoners on strike reaches the thousands. Calls for the ambulance at the mine cease as the prisoners down tools. The machinery grinds to a halt. Thousands of prisoners sit in the compound, no one threatening to escape its confines. Just a passive, peaceful sit-down.

  An orderly regales Cilka, Raisa and Lyuba with his version of a speech made by one of the leaders of the uprising.

  “No matter our nationality or where we are from today, our fate is sealed. Very soon, brothers, we will know when we can return to our families.”

  Raisa and Lyuba listen before hurrying away, anxious not to be involved.

  “What else did he say?” Cilka asks, fired up. She may not have a family to go to but she could look for Josie, for Gita. Does she dare hope?

  “Not much. He was asking everyone to stay sitting and not cause trouble, give the pigs no reason to attack us.”

  “Us? Were you sitting with them?”

  The orderly looks sheepish.

  “For a while. I’m with them, I support them, but my work here is important.”

  “Good for you,” Cilka says to him.

  The rumors are rife. Cilka soaks up all the information she can. Each evening she relays what she knows. Elena does, too. Clandestine groups have been forming since the death of Stalin in March of this year; communication between camps has increased, spreading plans for a mass strike at Gulags across Siberia. A month earlier, they were told, strikes had occurred in Ea
st Berlin, and this convinced the organizers in Vorkuta to do something about their living and working conditions. Hannah has begun to sit very quietly during these conversations.

  The doctors working with Cilka discuss the nonviolent nature of the strike, grateful bloodshed has been avoided. So far.

  * * *

  “They’ve stormed the jail!” an orderly runs into the ward screaming one morning.

  The staff gather around him. His news is scant. Hundreds of men have stormed the area housing maximum-security prisoners and have released many. The newly freed prisoners have joined the others and the sit-in has resumed.

  Five days later, guards move on the prisoners. Cilka is advised not to leave the hospital. Prisoners have erected barricades and concerns grow that the guards and camp authorities may be planning retaliation.

  Cilka is terrified for her friends, hoping they are safe. And she fears for Alexandr, too.

  The next day, the stalemate is broken.

  “Prepare for casualties,” Yelena warns the staff.

  Gunfire reverberates around the camp. Within minutes, Cilka and her colleagues are overrun with prisoners bringing in wounded men, and some women. The ward is awash with blood. The initial chaos is organized by one of the doctors like a military operation. No one gets past the treatment area at the front of the ward without being assessed by medical staff. Cilka works without stopping.

  They keep coming. Many are dead on arrival and are quickly taken away by those who carried them in. Those with life-threatening injuries are sent immediately for treatment, the others ordered to wait in the reception room outside.

  Like all the medical and nursing staff, Cilka is threatened verbally and pushed around by panicked men insisting she treat their comrade first. With no one to ensure their safety, she and her colleagues stand up for themselves, looking for and getting support from nearby prisoners.

  With no change in the light outside, Cilka doesn’t know when day becomes night becomes day again.