Cilka's Journey(26)

Yelena is occupied when Cilka gets in, and Lyuba and Raisa understand her mood and conspire to keep her busy and take her mind off Josie. Cilka is grateful for their efforts.

“Come with me.” Lyuba beckons Cilka to follow her to where a male doctor is standing at a bedside. She has seen him working around the ward and has been briefly introduced, by first name and patronymic—Yury Petrovich.

The patient is unconscious, his wounds obvious, the bandage around his head soaked with blood. Cilka stands silently behind the doctor and nurse, peering around them to watch the examination taking place.

The blanket is pulled up from the bottom of the bed. A needle is rammed firmly into the heel of one of his pale, lifeless feet; blood spurts out, covering the sheet. There is no reflexive movement from the man. The doctor turns to Cilka, handing her a clipboard, bypassing Lyuba. Lyuba nods encouragingly and stands beside her.

“No movement from foot on needle prick.”

Cilka writes, after first glancing at a clock at the end of the ward to record the exact time of her notation. Lyuba whispers to her whenever she pauses, uncertain. Cilka is concentrating hard.

The bleeding foot is covered, the doctor walks to the top of the bed and roughly stretches the patient’s right eye open, then covers his face.

“Pupils fixed and dilated,” Cilka writes next.

“Slight pulse, irregular.” Again, noted.

Turning to Cilka, Yury Petrovich speaks quietly, “Do you know how to feel for a pulse in the neck?”

“Yes,” Cilka replies with confidence.

“Good, good, show me.”

Cilka pulls the blanket away from the man’s face, mimicking what she has seen. She places two fingers under the curve of the jaw, applying pressure. She feels the flutter of a faint pulse.

“Check on him every fifteen minutes, and when you can no longer feel anything, declare him dead and let the porter know. Make sure you note the time in the record.”

“Yes, Yury Petrovich, I will.”

He turns to Lyuba. “She’s a quick learner, we may as well use her. They don’t give us enough nurses to have them checking on patients filling beds by taking too long to die. Make sure you sign off on what time she records.” He nods at Cilka and Lyuba and then moves off to another part of the ward.

“I’ve got to check on a patient,” Lyuba says. “You’ll be fine.” She walks off.

Cilka looks at the clock, working out exactly when it will be fifteen minutes since she noted the words “slight pulse, irregular.” She is still standing by the bedside when Yelena walks up to her and asks her what she is doing. When she explains, Yelena smiles reassuringly. “You don’t have to wait by the bed. You can go and do other things—just come back every now and then and don’t worry if it’s not exactly fifteen minutes, all right?”

“Oh, thank you … I-I thought I had to stay here until he died.”

“You’re really not afraid of death, are you?”

Cilka drops her head, the image of a pile of emaciated bodies flashing through her mind. Their desperate, final sounds. The smell of it. “No, I’ve been around it enough.” The words slip out.

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Yelena pauses. “How old are you again?”

“Nineteen.”

Yelena’s brow furrows. “One day, if or when you feel up to it, please know you can talk to me about it.”

Before Cilka can answer, Yelena walks off.

On her third visit to the dying patient, a prisoner who had an accident while working outside, Cilka writes the time and the words “no pulse.” She takes a moment to pause and force herself to look at the face of the man she has just declared dead. She flicks back through the paperwork, searching for his name.

Bending down as she covers his face, she whispers, “Ivan Détochkin—alav ha-shalom.” May peace be upon him. She has not uttered these words in a long time.


Auschwitz-Birkenau, Summer 1943

“What did he say to you? We want to hear every word, and did he look at you while he was talking? Tell us, Gita, we need to hear.”

Cilka sits on the grass at the side of Block 29 with her friends Gita and Dana. Magda is resting inside. It is a Sunday afternoon, summer, with no wind to carry the ashes spewing from the nearby crematoria their way. Cilka, in her position as block leader, has been allowed some freedom of movement, but Lale is the only male prisoner they’ve ever seen inside the women’s camp. That morning he had appeared. The girls knew what to do, to lessen the risk for their friends—encircle Gita and Lale, giving them just enough privacy for a whispered conversation. Cilka had strained to hear and had caught snippets; now she wanted the details.

“He was asking me about my family,” Gita replies.

“And what did you say?” Cilka asks.

“I didn’t want to talk about them. I think he understood. So he told me about his.”

“And? Has he got brothers and sisters?” Dana asks.

“He has an older brother called Max…”

“I love that name. Max,” Cilka says, putting on a gushy, girly voice.

“Sorry, Cilka, Max is married and has two small boys of his own,” Gita tells her.

“Oh well, never mind. What else did he say?”

“He has a sister. Her name is Goldie and she is a dressmaker. I could tell he really loves his mumma and sister. That’s good, isn’t it?”