Page 38 of Cilka's Journey
“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. Heapologizes. 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.
As they move away from the others, the girl’s screams follow them.
Cilka begs Boris to let her go back to her hut. She wants to be alone. She is turning blank and numb. She assures him it is nothing he has said or done, trying to keep the fear out of her voice; she needs time by herself.
Alone, curled up on her bed, facing the wall, even with her blindfold on, sleep will not come. Absurd images appear and warp in her head. An SS officer, his rifle adorned in lacy embroidery; Gita and Josie sitting beside a mountain of crushed coal searching in the grass for a four-leaf clover, laughing and sharing a secret as Cilka looks on from a distance; Yelena leading Cilka’s mother away from the truck as other women are piled on it, nearly corpses already, and bound for their death; Boris dressed in an SS commandant’s uniform, his arms outstretched, dead flowers being offered to her. She sobs silently at the hopelessness she suddenly feels for her future and the people who will never be in it.
Auschwitz-Birkenau, 1944
Cilka steps foot outside Block 25. Four SS officers stand near the idling truck, just outside the gates of the brick courtyard, waiting to take the overnight residents of her block to their deaths. The women are slowly making their way out the gate, dead women walking. She pushes through them to approach the two nearest SS officers.
“Two have died overnight. Would you like me to have their bodies brought out for the death cart?”
One of the officers nods.
Cilka stops the next four women.
“Get back inside and bring out the two who have cheated the gas chamber,” she snarls.
The four women turn back into the block. Cilka follows them in, pulling the door behind her, not quite shutting it.
“Here, let me help you,” she says. The women look at her as if it’s a trick. Cilka frowns. “They would have stuck their rifles in your belly and dragged you back here if I didn’t say something first.”
The women nod, understanding. One of the women who died is lying on a top bunk. Cilka climbs up to her, and as gently as she can, lowers her down into the arms of two of the waiting women. The body weighs nothing. Cilka climbs down and helps properly place her across their spindly arms, then adjusts the woman’s meager clothing to give her a degree of dignity in death.
