Cilka's Journey(74)

They don’t go too far; there are many people wandering around, and the wind has started up. They find protection beside the hut and huddle against the building.

“Cilka, what am I going to do?” So, they are finally voicing this, Cilka thinks. Beyond the one brief conversation last summer when Josie had told her one of the other mothers, who’d had several children, said they were sent to orphanages when they turned two, they have never given words to the fear. The mother had been broken, Josie said. Completely blank-faced, barely looking at her child.

Cilka looks away. She has no answer.

“Can you help me, please, Cilka? I can’t let them take her away. She’s my child.”

Cilka wraps her arms around Josie, letting her sob on her shoulder.

“I can’t promise anything, but I’ll try. I’ll talk to Yelena Georgiyevna, I’ll do what I can, I promise.”

“Thank you. I know you can help, you’ve always been able to,” Josie says, drawing back from the embrace to look at Cilka in such a hopeful, open way that Cilka feels ill. Josie still looks so young, a girl. “Please don’t let them take my baby away.”

Cilka draws her in again, hugs her for a long time. Please don’t let them take you away.

“Come on,” she says. “You need to take Natia back to your hut. The wind has picked up and you don’t want her getting sick.”



* * *



Cilka speaks to Yelena the next day. Yelena is sympathetic but doesn’t think she has any power over the administrators. Both women know there is little chance that they can help Josie and Natia stay together after she turns two, and Josie is forced to return to a general hut without the warm little body to come home to.

Josie will die, Cilka thinks. She will not survive the heartbreak. Cilka has to figure something out.

“Ambulance going out.”

“Coming.”

Tossing the file she is holding to Lyuba and grabbing her coat, Cilka runs from the ward.

Pavel stands holding the passenger door, his big teeth resting over his bottom lip. Seeing her running toward them, he climbs into the cabin. Nothing has changed since their second day together, and so Pavel must sit in the middle.

“Something different today, Cilka,” Kirill offers.

“Wow, speaking first, Kirill,” Cilka laughs.

“No, really,” Pavel says, “this is serious.”

“Aren’t they all? Since when did we decide one accident was more serious than another before we even got there?”

“It’s not an accident,” Pavel says. “We’re going to the house of the commandant, Alexei Demyanovich. One of his children is sick and we have to bring him to the hospital.”

“A child! A boy? How old, do we know?”

“I don’t know if it’s a boy, but it’s one of the commandant’s children.”

For the first time since her arrival in Vorkuta, Cilka travels on a street outside the compound of the camp and mine. A road built by prisoners. She looks at the houses where families live. Women with small children in tow hurry down the street, carrying bags. They pass several cars. She has seen a car only a few times, when someone important visits the camp.

A guard waves them down, indicating for them to stop.

Piling out, Cilka runs ahead with the guard while Pavel and Kirill retrieve the containers from the back. The front door is open, and the guard leads Cilka into the house and to a bedroom, where a girl tosses and screams on a bed. Her mother sits on the edge of the bed, attempting to put a wet towel on her forehead, speaking in a soothing, comforting voice. Cilka recognizes her.

“Excuse me, can I take a look at her?” Cilka says as she takes her coat off, dropping it onto the floor.

The commandant’s wife, Maria, turns around as she stands.

“Hello, you’re…?”

“Cilka Klein. Hello again, what has Katya been up to this time?”

“Cilka Klein, yes. Please, can you help her, she’s in so much pain.”

Cilka moves to the side of the bed, bending down to try to examine the girl who continues to thrash about.

“What can you tell me?” she asks her mother.

“She didn’t eat her dinner last night and complained of pain in her stomach. My husband gave her something to settle her—”

“Do you know what he gave her?”

“No, I don’t know. She didn’t come for breakfast. I checked on her and she said the pain was back and wanted to sleep. I left her but when I returned a short while ago, she was like this, and won’t say anything. Please, what’s wrong with her? You have to help her.”

Maria’s jewelry clatters on her wrist as she gestures emphatically.

“Let me have a look at her.”

Cilka attempts to restrain Katya’s flailing arms.

“Katya, this is Cilka, I’m here to help you,” she says soothingly. “Can you please try to lie still and show me where it hurts? There’s a good girl. I want to look at your stomach.”

Cilka glances back at the door where the guard, Pavel and Kirill all stand watching.

“You three, get out and shut the door. I’ll call you when I want you.”

She turns back to Katya and hears the door close.

“That’s better, now let me see your stomach. You’re doing well, Katya, you’re a brave girl. I know that. We met before, when you fell off the roof and broke your arm.”