Cilka's Journey(54)

Sixteen, Cilka thinks. Another young, defiant woman to be ground down by suffering. But Elena is right. Their horror is marginally better than the next woman’s. This hut, the extra rations and fabric, the fact they have a jug in which to boil water! The hard thing will be helping Anastasia to accept that, especially after her first visit from the men.





CHAPTER 15


“She smiled at me!” Cilka joyfully recounts her visit with her namesake to the women in the hut. “She gurgled, looked me in the eyes and smiled.” It tore my heart apart.

“Is she putting on weight, is she healthy?” Elena wants to know.

“Yes, and yes. I think she has become a favorite with the nursery staff, but I’ll need to make sure they’re not feeding her another baby’s lunch.”

Cilka looks around at the women’s thin faces, chapped lips, dark circles under their eyes. Their clavicles protruding. She is glad she can give them some reprieve—something warm to think about and hold inside them during the hard, long days out in the snow.

“You’d know all about that, Cilka. Taking someone’s lunch,” Hannah says.

Cilka’s stomach flips.

“Shut up, Hannah,” Elena says. “Who has given you more of their own lunch than anybody else here?”

“Well, she can afford to.”

“Well, so can you, now your ‘husband’ has got you a job in the mess.”

“I will eat all of my lunch because I fought in a resistance against these bastards, and the Nazis, too. Unlike some people here.” She looks pointedly at Cilka.

“Keep your fucking voice down, Hannah,” Elena says. “Attacking the only Jewish woman in here, one would think you were just like the Germans you fought against.”

Hannah looks indignant. Cilka’s heart is racing. The blankness is coming over her.

“She…” Hannah points at Cilka. She goes to say more, then lets a smile come across her face. “I could tell you about all the things she has done to preserve her own flimsy little life.”

“No life is flimsy,” Elena says.

Cilka feels sick.

“Do you know how Josie is doing?” Olga asks, cutting across the tension, her fingers darting in and out, weaving her spell, embroidering another gown.

Cilka finds her voice. “I haven’t seen her for a while now, not since they made her go back to work when Natia was four weeks old. I’m told she is doing well; she is working in the administration building, and she is feeding the baby herself, plenty of milk apparently.”

“That’s probably why little Natia is getting fat.”

“I never said she is getting fat. Just chubby.” Cilka tries to smile.

“Please give her our love, however you can. Maybe one of the nursery staff will pass it on,” Olga says.

“I will,” Cilka reassures them. “She knows how much you all care.” She looks pointedly at Hannah. “But I will ask the staff to pass it on anyway.”

“What’s going to happen when…” Elena whispers.

“Don’t think about that,” Cilka says. “Two years is a long way ahead.” The truth is, Cilka finds it incredibly hard to contemplate the separation. She knows too much about the pain of mother and daughter being forced apart. She knows too much about whole families being broken up, dehumanized, murdered. She cannot let herself think what might happen to Josie and Natia, or what might happen to Josie if Natia is taken away from her.

“Do you think there is some way we can see her and the baby, I mean, just for a minute?” Olga asks.

“Maybe in summer,” Elena suggests.

“That’s an idea. When it’s warmer and we can be outside on a Sunday. I love that idea, something to look forward to,” Olga says.

Hannah huffs. “There’s no getting through to you all.”

Smiles return to the other women’s faces at the possibility of seeing the baby. The faraway look Cilka sees in their eyes tells her they are dreaming of, visualizing, holding an infant. Cilka knows several of them have children waiting for them, including Olga. It’s not something she is often able to talk about, but when she receives her limited letters she sometimes passes them around to share what her two boys—who are living with an aunt—are getting up to. She is often silent for days afterward, with emotions playing across her face, no doubt picturing every little detail her sister has included in the letter.



* * *



Before the moon and stars disappear and the white nights return, the camp is struck down with typhoid. The accommodation hut nearest the hospital is emptied of its residents to create a new ward. The infectious ward.

In the washroom cleaning up after a birth, Cilka is joined by Petre. She hasn’t seen him in this room before and immediately braces herself for news she suspects she doesn’t want to hear. He leans against the door looking at her.

“Just say it,” she says abruptly.

“We—”

“Who’s we?” she interrupts.

“Sorry, some of the other doctors you’ve worked with, here and on the general ward.”

“Go on.”

“We know you have spent time in another prison, another camp, and that maybe there you were exposed to typhoid.”