Page 29 of Cilka's Journey
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 simplylooking 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 thatI 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 back.
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.
