Cilka's Journey(34)

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.

Once the two dead women are carried outside, Cilka watches the truck drive away. She is left with the squeak and scratch of hungry rats. She will go inside in a moment and put on her clean nylons, bought with bread. If he comes to visit, he likes her clean. And she has a favor to ask him, for her friend Gita, concerning the man she loves. Cilka finds “love” a strange word—it bounces around in her mind but doesn’t land. But if Gita is able to feel it, Cilka will do what she can to preserve that. Before going inside, she glances in the direction of the gas chambers and crematoria. When she started here in this hell on earth she had always sent a prayer. But now the words will not come.



* * *



In her hut, desperate to drive away the memories, Cilka wills sleep to come.

Thirteen years to go.





CHAPTER 10


A small child screams. Patients and staff turn as the door to the ward is flung open, and a woman runs in, holding a little girl. Blood covers the child’s face and dress; her left arm hangs at an impossible angle. Two guards follow, shouting for a doctor.

Cilka watches as Yelena runs to the woman. She is well-dressed, clad in a warm coat and hat; not a prisoner. Her arm around the woman’s shoulders, Yelena ushers her to the end of the ward. As she passes Cilka, she calls to her, “Come with me.”

Cilka falls in behind the procession, the child still screaming. In the treatment room, Yelena gently takes the child. She places her on the bed and the child appears to go limp. Her cries subside to a whimper.

“Help her, help her!” the mother begs.

“What’s her name?” Yelena asks calmly.

“Katya.”

“And what’s your name?”

“I’m Maria Danilovna, her mother.”

“They are the wife and daughter of Commandant Alexei Demyanovich Kukhtikov,” one of the guards offers. “The officers’ hos pital is at capacity because of the ward being rebuilt, so we brought her straight here.”

Yelena nods, asks the mother, “What happened?”

“She followed her older brother up onto the roof of our house and fell off.”

Yelena turns to Cilka. “Get some wet cloths and help me wipe the blood away so I can see the extent of the injuries.”

A small pile of towels rests on a chair next to a basin. Cilka drenches two of them. There is no time to wait for the water to warm up, cold will have to do. Handing one to Yelena, she follows her lead in wiping blood from the little girl’s face. The wet, cold towel seems to revive her, and her screams resume.

“Please, help my malyshka, please,” sobs Maria.

“We are helping,” Yelena says softly. “We need to clean some of the blood away to see where she is hurt. Be careful of her arm, Cilka, it’s broken and will need to be set.”

Cilka glances at the arm hanging over the bed next to her and repositions herself to avoid it. Bending down, she speaks to Katya in a quiet, soothing voice, telling her she is not going to hurt her, she is just cleaning her face. Katya responds, her whimpering now accompanied by shivers that rack her small body.