Cilka's Journey(6)
CHAPTER 3
Vorkuta Gulag, Siberia
The temperature is dropping. It hasn’t been sudden, more a gradual change noticed at night when Cilka and the others have found themselves snuggling into each other. They are all in summer clothing. Cilka doesn’t know what month it is, though she guesses August or September, and she does not know where they are going, though the language at each stop is Russian.
One day bleeds into the next. Illness creeps through the carriage. Pitiful coughing drains the women of what little energy they have. Conversations become fewer and shorter. At the last few stops, men had taken pity on the cargo, had stripped and thrown in their kal’sony, as they called it, off their own bodies. Cilka and Josie had pulled the loose, still-warm undergarments up over their goosebumped legs, waving a weak thank-you.
It has been three days since they last stopped when the train screeches to a halt, the heavy doors flung back. A vast, unpopulated landscape of dirt and yellow-green grass lies before them.
This time it isn’t one or two guards greeting them. Dozens of men in uniform, rifles at the ready, line the length of the train.
“Na vykhod!” they yell. Get out!
As the women struggle to their feet, many collapsing on legs no longer capable of bearing weight, the shouting continues.
Cilka and Josie join the others outside for the first time in weeks. They link arms with two older women who are struggling to stand. They don’t need to be told what to do; with a line forming in front of them they know which way to face. They can see some crude buildings in the distance, on the broad, flat plain. Another camp, thinks Cilka, surrounded by nothingness. But the sky here is different—an impossibly vast gray-blue. They trudge along with the flow of the others toward the faraway buildings. Cilka tries to count the number of carriages, some disgorging men, some women and children; people of all different ages, in varying states of ill health and distress. Some who’d been on the train since the beginning, some who’d been added along the way.
Time stands still for Cilka as she remembers lining up to go into the other place. That line led to an existence that bore no end date. This time she knows her end date, should she survive to see it. Fifteen years. Will having an end date make the labor more endurable? Is an end date even to be believed?
Before long, Cilka is standing in front of a large woman dressed in a thick khaki uniform. Her own clothing is still too light for this weather. They must be far north. She can barely feel her hands and feet.
“Imya, familya?” the woman barks at Cilka, scanning a list on a clipboard. Name.
“Cecilia Klein.”
Her name ticked off, Cilka follows the line into a large concrete bunker. Immediately she looks to the ceiling for the telltale signs of showers. Will it be water or gas? Her relief at not seeing anything threatening is palpable and she holds on to Josie to steady herself.
“Are you all right?” Josie asks.
“Yes, yes, I’m fine. I thought we might be going to have a shower.”
“I’d love a shower—it’s what we need.”
Cilka forces a small smile. There does not seem any point in explaining what she had feared. Looking at the bafflement on the faces around her, it dawns on her that few of them will have gone through something like this before. Only survivors from that other place, or those from other camps, carry the burden of knowing what may be in store for them all.
As the room fills, several male guards enter.
“Clothes off. Now.”
Women look around for guidance. The words are whispered through the gathering in different languages, and they catch on as several slowly start removing their clothes.
Cilka whispers to Josie, “You have to take your clothes off.”
“No, Cilka, I can’t, not in front of men.”
It seems Josie had only had her head shaved in prison, not the full ordeal. Cilka knows that all the hair on their bodies will be shaved.
“Listen to me. You have to do as you’re told.”
Cilka starts undoing the buttons on the front of Josie’s dress. Josie pushes her hand away, confused, looking around at the other women in various stages of undress. The naked women hold their hands in front of their pubis and across their breasts. Slowly Josie begins to undress.
“Hurry up,” Cilka says. “Just drop your clothes where they are.”
Cilka looks up at the men standing in front of the doors, yelling out instructions. The smirks and nudges between them sicken her. She looks down at the pile of her clothes at her feet. She knows she will not see them again.
The men in front of the doors part as four other guards enter, each dragging with them a large hose. The blast of freezing water sends the women crashing into each other, screaming, shouting, as they are knocked down, bundled together by the force of the water. The smell of chlorine becomes overpowering and the screaming changes to gagging and coughing.
Cilka is smashed up against a cracked tiled wall, grazing her arm as she slides to the ground. She watches as sadistically the guards target older, frail women who attempt defiance by trying to stand firm. They go down fighting. Cilka curls up in the fetal position and stays there until the hoses are turned off and the laughing guards leave.
* * *
As the women pick themselves up and shuffle toward the door, several grab at a dripping article of clothing to cover themselves. They exit the building and are handed a thin gray towel to wrap around themselves. Barefoot on the gritty cold ground, they walk to a nearby concrete building identical to the one they have just left.