Cilka's Journey(25)
* * *
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 that I 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.
In darkness. In snow.
At dinner Josie makes a big deal about holding a piece of bread in one hand, her tin mug in the other. She offers to fetch the coal and grabs a bucket to head out the door. She is stopped by Natalya and told to wait a few days—they don’t want her struggling and spilling their precious supply of heat.
When the men invade the hut that night Vadim notices the unbandaged hand. He asks Josie about it. Strokes it gently. Kisses it. Cilka overhears this display of tenderness. These men only treat you with care in order to soften their own image, so you might be more open to them. It is still a selfish act, a trick.
CHAPTER 7
Cilka drags her feet the next morning, walking through spotlit darkness to the hospital. She will tell Yelena again that she has been very grateful for this opportunity, but she should return to working in the mines, or digging, or building—anything as difficult as the work her hut-mates are being forced to do.
She watched Josie walk away from the camp this morning, her body nudging Natalya’s. The two of them have become close. A pang of jealousy gripped Cilka. The small thaw in Josie yesterday as she showed her her unbandaged hand had given her hope they might regain the closeness they had.
In truth, the hospital work has been challenging and draining, despite her fortune in being indoors. Not only does she have to communicate in Russian and in the Cyrillic script, and learn to understand the established ethics, relationships and hierarchies, but most of all, she has to deal with the unexpected reactions of her body and mind to being around the sick and dying. She has managed to hide—she hopes—what is going on, but Raisa did mention the other day that it was amazing how Cilka was not at all squeamish. That she could be around blood and bone and waste without ever flinching. Raisa, who had been sent here after graduating, Cilka found out, said it had taken her months to become used to seeing bodies in these various states of disease, injury and malnutrition. Cilka hated the mixture of horror and fascination on Raisa’s face. She shrugged, turned away, said in a monotone: “I guess some of us are just like that.”
But the job is distracting her from her troubles too. Always a new problem to solve, something new to learn. If she did continue working here it would almost feel like a life, a way of keeping herself shut off from the memories of the past and the horror of her present situation.