Cilka's Journey

by Heather Morris

  Cilka doesn’t answer.

  “It’s all right, you’re allowed to feel something for a man. It makes me happy to see you thinking about a future.”

  “How can I think about a future while I’m here, really?”

  “You can, and I think you do. Get back to work. Once more out on the ambulance.”

  As Cilka starts to leave the room, Yelena embraces her. “I’m happy for you,” she whispers in her ear.

  * * *

  Cilka doesn’t have to wait long for her final ambulance run. That afternoon she travels with Fyodor and Kirill to yet another mine collapse. This time she is cautious and asks the supervisor to declare the tunnel safe before she ventures in. The two men caught in the collapse cannot be resuscitated and are left for the truck to take their bodies to the mortuary.

  On the drive back to the hospital Cilka tells Fyodor and Kirill she won’t be accompanying them anymore. The other nurses will be rotating that role.

  Kirill goes silent. Fyodor is gracious and tells Cilka how he has enjoyed being in her company and watching her work.

  As they arrive back at the hospital, Fyodor gives her a warm brotherly hug and a kiss on the cheek. Cilka turns to Kirill, expecting the same. He stands away from her, looking at the ground.

  “Kirill, I’m sorry if you don’t like my decision to stop the ambulance run. Will you say something?”

  “Is there anything I can say to make you change your mind?”

  “No. No, nothing. This is what I want, for me.”

  “And what about me? Have you considered what I might want?”

  “Kirill, what are you saying? What has my decision got to do with you?”

  “Obviously nothing,” he says, with barely concealed fury. “See you around, Cilka Klein.”

  “Kirill, wait. Can’t we at least be friends? Kirill, please, don’t leave like this.”

  Without a backward glance, Kirill walks away, leaving Cilka stunned. What is it he was saying? What is it he wasn’t saying?

  CHAPTER 32

  “Two more days, that’s all I can keep you for, I’m afraid,” Yelena tells Alexandr and Cilka.

  “Thank you, we’ll make the most of them, won’t we, Cilka?”

  Cilka blushes. “I have work to do,” she stammers as she rushes away.

  “She’ll be back,” Yelena tells Alexandr with a wink.

  Cilka spots Kirill at the nurses’ desk.

  “Kirill, hello, it’s nice to see you back,” she says as she approaches.

  “What’s going on there?” he snarls at her.

  Perplexed, Cilka looks where Kirill is indicating, back at Alexandr. “What do you mean?”

  Does Kirill know something about who attacked Alexandr? Cilka wonders. If so, is there a risk he’ll tell the person who beat him up that he’s alive? Her heart races. No, Kirill is Cilka’s friend. He wouldn’t.

  “You and him, what’s going on?”

  Ah, Cilka thinks. This is something else entirely.

  “I think you should leave now, Kirill, I have work to do.”

  * * *

  At the end of her shift, Cilka takes the chair that has become a witness to her and Alexandr’s growing friendship and sits beside him.

  He has spoken quietly about his past, and his arrest. He had been translating for the Soviet administrators but feeding back information to the resistance fighters. When he was caught he was brutally tortured, made to sit on a stool for days until he was completely numb, starving, soiled. He gave up no names.

  He wrote poetry in his head. And, after spending time in another camp and doing hard labor, when he got the role in the administration building he could not help writing some of the poems down. Sometimes he would disguise the true words of the poem inside paragraphs of propaganda. And then he realized he could do this with information too. With every piece of written material leaving the camp being checked over, he suspects a savvy counter-intelligence officer caught on.

  “And here I am. But my poems have never been about happy things,” he says to Cilka. “Now I have met you, they will be. And I look forward to sharing them with you.”

  Cilka looks him in the eye. Trusts she may be able to share with him too.

  “There is something else I have to tell you,” Alexandr says seriously.

  Cilka stares at him. Waiting for more.

  “I’ve fallen in love with you.”

  Cilka stands, knocking the chair over. Those few words are so large, so overwhelming.

  “Cilka, please, stay and talk to me.”

  “I’m sorry, Alexandr. I need to think. I need to go.”

  “Cilka, stay, don’t go,” Alexandr calls out.

  “I’m sorry, I have to.” She forces herself to look at him again. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Will you think about what I said?”

  Cilka pauses, looking deep into his dark brown eyes.

  “I’ll think about nothing else.”

  * * *

  Cilka knocks on Raisa’s bedroom door in the nurses’ quarters. The nurses share rooms, and the prisoner nurses are in a larger dormitory within the barracks.

  “Come in,” a sleepy Raisa calls out.

  Cilka opens the door and stands in the doorway, doubled over.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m not feeling well. I don’t think I should go on the ward.”

  “Do you want me to take a look at you?” Raisa asks, throwing her legs over the side of the bed to sit on the edge.

  “No, I’ll be okay. I just want to go back to bed.”

  “Go back to bed. I’ll get up and start your shift. I’m sure the others will overlap and cover you.”

  “Can you tell Yelena Georgiyevna I think I’d better be off for two or three days? I don’t want to spread whatever it is I have to the patients.”

  “No, you’re probably right. Go back to sleep and I’ll have someone bring you something to eat in a few hours and check on you.”

  Cilka closes the door and returns to her bed.

  Auschwitz-Birkenau, 1944

  The footsteps in the block and then the knock on her door startle Cilka. She remains lying on her bed. The knock comes again.

  “Come in,” she says, barely above a whisper.

  The door slowly opens. A face pokes into the room.

  “Lale! What are you doing here? You shouldn’t be here,” Cilka cries out.

  “Can I come in?”

  “Of course, come in. Shut the door, quick.”

  Lale does as he’s been told. Leaning against the door, he looks at Cilka, who is now sitting on her bed looking back.

  “I had to see you. I had to say thank you in person, not through Gita.”

  “It’s dangerous, Lale. You shouldn’t be here. You don’t know when one of them will come here.”

  “I’ll take the risk. You took a bigger one asking for me to get my job back. I need to do this.”

  Cilka sighs. “I’m glad it worked out. It was breaking my heart seeing Gita so upset, not knowing if you were alive, then hearing where you were working.”

  “Don’t say any more; I can’t bear hearing how it would have been for her. My stupidity got me into trouble. Sometimes I wonder if I will ever learn.” He shakes his head.

  “She loves you, you know.”

  Lale raises his head again. “She’s never said that to me. I can’t tell you what it means to me hearing it.”

  “She does.”

  “Cilka, if there is anything that I can do for you, within the limits of my ability right now … you just have to get a message to me.”

  “Thank you, Lale, but I can take care of myself,” she says.

  She sees his face twist, like he is trying to find the right words.

  “What you are doing, Cilka, is the only form of resistance you have—staying alive. You are the bravest person I have ever known, I hope you know that.”

  “You don’t have to say that,” she says, shame curling through her.


  “Yes, I do. Thank you again,” he says.

  She nods. He leaves the room, leaves Block 25.

  CHAPTER 33

  “Cilka, Cilka, wake up.”

  Yelena shakes Cilka gently, waking her from a dreamless sleep; Cilka is disoriented. She pulls the blankets up to her chin, attempting to hide, to escape the threat she feels closing in.

  “Cilka, it’s me, Yelena. You’re all right; I just need you to wake up so I can talk to you.”

  Cilka registers the voice. Drags herself from sleep. “Yelena Georgiyevna, what time is it? What’s going on?”

  Cilka moves over so Yelena can sit on the bed beside her.

  “It’s early morning but I need to talk to you. Something’s happened to Alexandr.”

  Cilka stares at Yelena, but no words come.

  “During the night someone came into the ward and beat him up. We don’t know how it happened, but he was found unconscious a short while ago.”

  “How? How could this happen?” Cilka sits up, fully awake. “Where were the nurses, the staff? How can someone get beaten up in a hospital?”

  “Slow down; I don’t have all the answers. There was only one nurse on duty, and it was a busy night for her. At one point she went for a break and that must have been when someone came in.”

  “But didn’t another patient see something, say something?”

  “We’re still trying to find out how this happened. The nurse came and got me and I wanted to come and tell you straightaway. He’s been taken to the operating room for assessment. Get dressed and come with me.”

  With gowns wrapped around their clothes and wearing masks, Cilka and Yelena enter the operating room and approach the table where Alexandr’s beaten body lies. Raisa stands beside him. She looks at Cilka with sadness and compassion. Cilka gently touches Alexandr’s shoulder. She can’t bear how vulnerable he looks. Yelena puts her arm around Cilka.

  “What can you tell us, Raisa?” Yelena asks.

  “Must have been two of them. I’d say one of them held something, maybe a pillow, over his head, while the other beat him with a piece of wood, judging by the splinters I’m finding.”

  “And nobody heard anything? What about the patient beside him?” Cilka blurts out.

  “Can’t answer that, Cilka. We’ll have to make inquiries but we have to make a plan, too…” She looks at Yelena.

  Yelena explains. “Someone obviously wants him dead and there’s no way of knowing if it’s someone”—she lowers her voice—“on the inside, or even connected to the authorities.”

  “Do you think it’s the same person as before?”

  “If they found out he’s still alive somehow, that’s highly possible.”

  “But how would they—” She stops. She’s worried she knows the answer.

  Raisa says, “Right now, we need to help Alexandr. We might have more answers for you later.”

  “What are his injuries?” Yelena asks again.

  “He was unconscious when found. He has been hit around the head but I think he’s unconscious from being suffocated. Nothing in his body, thankfully, is broken. I’m so sorry, Cilka,” Raisa says. “Why don’t you leave us, and we’ll get you when we’re finished here.”

  “I’m not leaving,” Cilka says angrily.

  “All right,” says Raisa.

  Yelena eases Cilka a pace or two away from the table.

  “We have to work out how to protect him,” Cilka says.

  * * *

  Several hours later, Cilka accompanies Alexandr from the operating room to the far corner of the ward, where a screen is placed around his bed. A chair is brought for Cilka and she insists she will be his nurse. Neither Yelena nor Raisa argues with her. Food is brought to her, which she barely touches. The hot, calming tea she devours.

  Yelena checks on the two of them regularly. As the day ends, Yelena tells Cilka she has spoken to the man who was in the bed next to Alexandr and found out more.

  The patient next to Alexandr had been threatened by two men when he woke to the sound of wood thumping on flesh. He had received one punch to the mouth to intimidate him into silence. He was told he wasn’t to say anything to alert the nurse after they left in case Alexandr wasn’t yet dead. The man was shaken and very upset. Whoever it was that carried out the beating must have been waiting in the reception room outside, which is unstaffed at night. They may have bribed or threatened the guards outside the building, and Yelena is reluctant to question them in case she draws attention to the fact that Alexandr is still alive.

  Yelena then confirms the plan they started hashing out overnight.

  She speaks quietly. “We’ve changed his file to say he has died and created another file using the name of a recently deceased patient, amending the record to say that patient has been healed. So as far as the hospital records are concerned, Alexandr died from his injuries as a result of a beating. We will keep the screen around his bed for a while and work out the next step. We’ve told the patient in the next bed that he is contagious and not to come near him.”

  “Thank you,” Cilka says, mind racing. That buys some time, but what’s next?

  “It is the best we can do for now, Cilka.”

  When Yelena leaves, Cilka places her head on the pillow beside Alexandr’s.

  * * *

  The next morning, Cilka wakes to see Alexandr looking at her. For several moments their eyes are locked, wordlessly conveying their feelings for each other. They are interrupted by Raisa.

  “I see you are both awake. Now, which one should I look at first?”

  Cilka smiles. “Him, of course.”

  Raisa tries to explain to Alexandr his injures and how he is to be treated. Cilka can’t help herself and constantly interrupts with her positive spin on his recovery. Alexandr says nothing, nodding, looking grateful but worried, echoing Cilka’s true thoughts.

  * * *

  Days pass as Alexandr slowly recovers behind the screen. His bruises fade, but movement still causes him pain. When Cilka runs into Kirill going in and out of the reception area she tries to act friendly and natural, politely declining his advances without making him angry, not wanting to draw any unnecessary attention to the screened area on the ward. She suspects it was him who either assaulted Alexandr or alerted the original attacker to the fact that he was still alive, but she has no way to prove it.

  Alexandr happily accepts the pain of getting out of bed to walk with his arms around Cilka as she helps him. They are told Cilka is not the best nurse to be assisting him, their difference in height more of a hindrance to his recovery than a help. This is not the only advice they ignore. Each night Cilka is found sitting slumped in a chair, her head on his pillow, sound asleep. She has barely left his side since the beating.

  The number of patients admitted to the hospital has begun to slow, and word reaches the staff that numbers in the Gulag are reducing significantly. Prisoners are being released early on the orders of General Secretary Khrushchev, who has succeeded Stalin. He is reaching out to the West. The stain the Gulag system has placed over his empire is becoming known, and appeasement is required to continue talks with non-communist countries.

  Alexandr is able to walk on his own now, and the screen has become conspicuous, drawing questions from patients and staff about how bad the “infection” is behind it. They need to work out the next step.

  “Cilka, can I see you a moment?” Yelena calls one morning.

  “I’ll be right back,” Cilka tells Alexandr.

  Yelena steers Cilka into the dispensary.

  “Nothing good ever happened in this room. What is it?” a concerned Cilka asks.

  “Do you trust me?” Yelena asks.

  “More than anyone I’ve ever known, besides my family.”

  “Then I need you to trust me now. Alexandr will be discharged in two days’ time…”

  “No, you can’t. You promised,” Cilka cries.

  “Listen to me. Not out into the prison population w
here someone would notice he’s not the dead man whose name and number we’ve assigned him. He will be discharged to a hut nearby, where he will be safe. I want you to trust that I’m doing all I can to help.”

  Cilka is speechless. This is a good thing. He will be safe. But again, someone is being taken away from her.

  She tries to smile. “You are so good, Yelena Georgiyevna. I am grateful. He will be grateful.”

  Yelena looks troubled, in a way Cilka has never seen before. She is always stoic, practical and positive.

  “Cilka, there’s something else.”

  Cilka’s heart sinks.

  “I’ve put in a request to move to Sochi, where they have built a new hospital.”

  She reaches her arm out for Cilka, but Cilka flinches. She doesn’t know what to say. Yelena deserves to be somewhere better, after the years she has voluntarily put into this awful place. But what will Cilka do without her?

  “Cilka?”

  Cilka can’t look at her. She is holding everything back. She has never had any choices. Everything has simply happened to her. No matter how much she wants it, she can never hold on to people. She is alone. Completely alone in the world.

  “Cilka, you have to believe I am doing everything I can for you too.”

  Cilka pushes her feelings down inside her, looks up at Yelena.

  “Thank you, Yelena Georgiyevna, for everything.”

  Yelena holds her eyes.

  It feels like goodbye.

  * * *

  The women of Hut 29 are all she has left. Cilka keeps thinking about Lale in Birkenau, how he had told her she was brave. How other people have told her she is brave. How Alexandr has opened something up in her, making her want to live, not just stay alive.

  And she knows there is one more brave thing she has to do.

  She talks to the trusties who act as guards for the nurses’ quarters, gives them her stash of extra food, and they agree to escort her that night—a Sunday—to the hut. She needs to talk to the women.

  As they walk through the compound, she can see men eyeing her from a distance, but they do not approach. She opens the door to the hut, while the guards wait outside.