Cilka's Journey(95)

As they walk through the compound, she can see men eyeing her from a distance, but they do not approach. She opens the door to the hut, while the guards wait outside.

“Cilka!” Margarethe rushes toward her, enveloping her in a hug. “What are you doing here? It’s dangerous.”

Cilka begins to shake. “I need to talk to you all.” She looks around. There are a couple of new faces, but the hut is still mostly women she recognizes, including her oldest hut-mates, Elena and Margarethe.

“Please, sit down,” she says.

“Is everything all right?” Elena says.

“It is,” Cilka begins. “Well, I have met someone, and I feel something for him, and I may lose him yet, but I never even knew I would be able to feel something for a man, because of everything I have been through.”

The women sit politely. Elena gives Cilka an encouraging look.

“You all shared your pasts with me, your secrets, and I was too afraid. But I should have reciprocated. I owe it to you.”

She takes a deep breath.

“I was in Auschwitz,” Cilka says. Margarethe sits bolt upright. “The concentration camp.”

She swallows.

“I survived because I was given a privileged position in the camp, in the women’s camp in Birkenau. A bit like Antonina. But…”

Elena nods at her. “Go on, Cilka.”

No one else speaks.

“I had my own room in the block. A block where they would put the”—she struggles to say the words—“sick and the dying women, before they would take them to the gas chambers to murder them.”

The women have their hands over their mouths, unbelieving.

“The SS officers, they put me there, in that block, because there were no witnesses.”

Silence. Complete silence.

Cilka swallows again, feeling light, dizzy.

Anastasia starts to cry, audibly.

“I know that sound, Anastasia; it is so familiar to me,” Cilka says. “I used to get angry. I don’t know why that emotion. But they were all just so helpless. I wasn’t able to cry. I had no tears. And this is why I have not been able to tell you all. I had a bed, I had food. And they were naked and dying.”

“How … how long were you there?” Elena asks.

“Three years.”

Margarethe comes to sit near Cilka and holds out a hand. “None of us know what we would have done. Did those bastards kill your family?”

“I put my mother on the death cart myself.”

Margarethe forcefully takes Cilka’s hand. “The memory is giving you a shock. I can tell by your voice. And you’re shaking. Elena, make a cup of tea.”

Elena jumps up and goes to the stove.

The rest of the women remain quiet. But Cilka is now too numb to think about how her words have been received. There’s an exhaustion taking over her.

Such a small space of time has passed, but the words have been so large.

When Elena returns with the tea, she says, “Hannah knew, didn’t she?”

Cilka nods.

Margarethe says, “I hope this isn’t more of a shock, Cilka, but many of us had guessed that you had been there. You being Jewish, not talking about your arrest.”

Cilka begins shaking again. “Really?”

“Yes, and things you would say here and there.”

“Oh…”

“You survived it, Cilka,” Elena says. “And you will survive here too.”

Anastasia, the youngest, still has her hand over her mouth, silent tears falling down her cheeks. But none of them has reacted as Cilka had always played over in her mind, had always feared. They are still beside her.

And so maybe she can tell Alexandr, too. Maybe he can know her, and still love her.

“I’d better go,” Cilka says.

Elena stands with her. “Come back again, if you can.”

Cilka lets Elena put her arms around her. And Margarethe. Anastasia still seems too shocked.

Cilka goes out into the night, dizzy and trembling.



* * *



“Good morning,” Cilka greets the receptionist as she heads toward the ward. She has one more day with Alexandr. She doesn’t know yet how she can possibly say goodbye. Will she dare to promise that she will try to find him, many years from now, on the outside? Or should she just accept her fate, her curse?

But though she is losing him, losing Yelena, and though she has lost everyone dear to her, Alexandr has kindled a fire within her.

Not to anger, but to something like hope.

Because she never thought she could fall in love, after all she’s been through. To do so, she thought, would be a miracle. And now she has.

“Cilka,” the receptionist says.

Cilka turns back.

“I’ve been asked to tell you to go to the main administration block, they want to see you.”

Cilka pulls her hand back from the door to the ward.

“Now?”

Alexandr is just inside. She could say good morning, first. No, she’ll get this out of the way and then have the day with him before he is discharged. A day where she can tell him everything, and then never speak of it again.



* * *



Entering the administration block, Cilka is confronted by several other prisoners, all men, standing around complaining about why they are here. She reports to the only person looking official, standing behind a desk.