Cilka's Journey(89)
Auschwitz-Birkenau, 1944
The loud pounding on the door of Block 25 wakes Cilka. Disoriented, she looks around the room. She has been dreaming, and it takes her a moment to remember where she is. Crawling out of her bed, she takes the coat that doubles as an extra blanket and pulls it on, then slips her feet into the boots waiting for her next to her bunk and pulls on her thick gloves.
Opening the door from her single room out into the large room where dozens of women have just spent their last night on earth, she screams at the pounding door, “Coming, we’re coming.”
She walks between the two rows of bunks, screaming at the women: “Get up, get up and get out of here!”
She shakes each of the bodies awake, giving them a gentler, last message with her eyes. In between her screams, loud enough for the SS to hear, she softly mumbles and whispers—prayers, an apology, a frustrated sort of rumble. Not enough to bring herself to tears. And not looking them in the eye. She can no longer do that. The women in Block 25 know what fate awaits them. No one speaks or resists; an eerie calm surrounds them as they file into the middle of the room.
As Cilka opens the door, the blinding sunlight reflects off the powdery snow surrounding the building. She hears the engine idling on the truck waiting just outside the fence.
The women wait behind her, the keeper of the death block. “Get out!” she screams. “Come on, you lazy bunch, get moving, quicker.”
She holds the door open as one by one the women exit the block and walk between the SS officers guiding them to the back of the truck. The last woman is struggling to walk; a gap has opened up between her and the woman in front. Cilka sees the nearest SS officer pull his swagger stick from its holder on his belt and advance on the woman. Cilka gets to her first, screaming at her as she slips her arm around the woman, half dragging her toward the truck. The SS officer puts his stick away. Cilka doesn’t let up on her screaming until she has helped the woman onto the truck. The doors are slammed shut, and the truck drives off. The SS officers wander away.
Cilka stands watching the truck leave. She is completely hollowed out, though she feels bile in her throat. She doesn’t see the prisoner until she is a few feet away.
“Murderer,” the prisoner hisses at her.
“What did you say?”
“You heard me, you murdering bitch. You have as much blood on your hands as they do,” she says in a shaking voice, pointing to the departing truck.
The woman walks away, turning back, glaring at her.
Cilka looks from her to the truck, as it rounds a building out of sight, to her hands.
She tears at her gloves. Using her teeth, she frees her fingers, throws the gloves to the ground and drops beside them. Burying her hands in the snow, she grabs handfuls of it, rubbing each hand furiously, desperately, tears streaming down her face.
“Cilka, Cilka,” a panicked voice calls out.
Her friends Gita and Dana run to her. Reaching down, they try to lift her up, but she fights them off.
“What’s wrong with you, Cilka?” Dana pleads.
“Help me wash it off, make it go away.”
“Cilka, come on…”
Cilka holds up her hands, now red from the cold and the vicious rubbing.
“I can’t get them clean,” she wails.
Dana takes one of Cilka’s hands and rubs it with her coat to dry and warm it up before pulling one of the discarded gloves on.
“Cilka, we’ve got you. It’s all right.”
Gita helps her to her feet.
“Come on, let’s get you back in your room,” she says.
“The blood, can’t you see the blood?”
“Come on back inside before you freeze,” Gita says.
* * *
“Cilka, are you all right, we could do with a hand here,” a worried Kirill says.
“All this blood,” she says, staring at the ground.
“Cilka.” Fyodor touches her arm gently. She flinches. Then sound and light and air come back to her. She swallows, takes a breath.
She focuses on the unconscious man lying at her feet. Though his face is covered in blood, she thinks she knows who it is.
No, not him. Please.
“Get the stretcher, Kirill. I can’t see his injuries,” she manages to say. “We’ll load him up and I’ll get a better look in the ambulance.”
Once the man is on the stretcher, Cilka walks beside him as he is carried to the ambulance. A prisoner joins them.
“Is he going to be all right?”
“I don’t know yet. Do you know his name?”
“Petrik—Alexandr Petrik,” the man says as he peels off, walking away.
CHAPTER 31
“Check Bed 13 and record time of death,” Yury Petrovich says to Cilka the next morning as he starts his rounds on the ward.
What he doesn’t realize is that Cilka has been checking Bed 13 all night.
“Surprised he’s still with us. I expected him to die overnight,” Yury says.
“Okay, will do,” Cilka says, trying not to reveal any emotion in her voice. After all, she does not really know Alexandr, has barely spoken with him.
Cilka reads Alexandr’s notes again as she walks back over to Bed 13. She looks down at his unconscious figure. His face is badly swollen, she can see his nose and left cheekbone are broken. She pulls back his right eyelid, gently, noting his pupils are pinpointed and swim in liquid. It is strange to be touching him after all this time, and in these circumstances.