at Alexandr. ‘What do you mean?’
Does Kirill know something about who attacked
Alexandr? Cilka wonders. If so, is there a risk he’ll tell
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the person who beat him up that he’s alive? Her heart races. No, Kirill is Cilka’s friend. He wouldn’t.
‘You and him, what’s going on?’
Ah, Cilka thinks. This is something else entirely.
‘I think you should leave now, Kirill, I have work to
do.’
* * *
At the end of her shift, Cilka takes the chair that has
become a witness to her and Alexandr’s growing friendship
and sits beside him.
He has spoken quietly about his past, and his arrest.
He had been translating for the Soviet administrators but
feeding back information to the resistance fighters. When
he was caught he was brutally tortured, made to sit on a
stool for days until he was completely numb, starving,
soiled. He gave up no names.
He wrote poetry in his head. And, after spending time
in another camp and doing hard labour, when he got the
role in the administration building he could not help
writing some of the poems down. Sometimes he would
disguise the true words of the poem inside paragraphs of
propaganda. And then he realised he could do this with
information too. With every piece of written material
leaving the camp being checked over, he suspects a savvy
counter-intelligence officer caught on.
‘And here I am. But my poems have never been about
happy things,’ he says to Cilka. ‘Now I have met you, they
will be. And I look forward to sharing them with you.’
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Cilka looks him in the eye. Trusts she may be able to share with him too.
‘There is something else I have to tell you,’ Alexandr
says seriously.
Cilka stares at him. Waiting for more.
‘I’ve fallen in love with you.’
Cilka stands, knocking the chair over. Those few words
are so large, so overwhelming.
‘Cilka, please, stay and talk to me.’
‘I’m sorry, Alexandr. I need to think. I need to go.’
‘Cilka, stay, don’t go,’ Alexandr calls out.
‘I’m sorry, I have to.’ She forces herself to look at him
again. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’
‘Will you think about what I said?’
Cilka pauses, looking deep into his dark brown
eyes.
‘I’ll think about nothing else.’
* * *
Cilka knocks on Raisa’s bedroom door, in the nurses’
quarters. The nurses share rooms and the prisoner nurses
are in a larger dormitory within the barracks.
‘Come in,’ a sleepy Raisa calls out.
Cilka opens the door, stands in the doorway, doubled
over.
‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m not feeling well, I don’t think I should go on the
ward.’
‘Do you want me to take a look at you?’ Raisa asks,
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throwing her legs over the side of the bed to sit on the edge.
‘No, I’ll be OK, I just want to go back to bed.’
‘Go back to bed. I’ll get up and start your shift. I’m
sure the others will overlap and cover you.’
‘Can you tell Yelena Georgiyevna I think I’d better be
off for two or three days? I don’t want to spread whatever
it is I have to the patients.’
‘No, you’re probably right. Go back to sleep and I’ll
have someone bring you something to eat in a few hours
and check on you.’
Cilka closes the door and returns to her bed.
Auschwitz-Birkenau, 1944
The footsteps in the block and then the knock on her door startle Cilka. She remains lying on her bed. The knock
comes again.
‘Come in,’ she says, barely above a whisper.
The door slowly opens. A face pokes into the room.
Cilka cries out.
‘Can I come in?’
‘Of course, come in. Shut the door, quick.’
Lale does as he’s been told. Leaning against the door,
he looks at Cilka, who is now sitting on her bed looking
back.
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‘I had to see you. I had to say thank you in person, not through Gita.’
‘It’s dangerous, Lale. You shouldn’t be here. You don’t
know when one of them will come here.’
‘I’ll take the risk. You took a bigger one asking for me
to get my job back. I need to do this.’
Cilka sighs. ‘I’m glad it worked out. It was breaking my
heart seeing Gita so upset, not knowing if you were alive, then hearing where you were working.’
‘Don’t say any more, I can’t bear hearing how it would
have been for her. My stupidity got me into trouble. Sometimes I wonder if I will ever learn.’ He shakes his head.
‘She loves you, you know.’
Lale raises his head again. ‘She’s never said that to me.
I can’t tell you what it means to me hearing it.’
‘She does.’
‘Cilka, if there is anything that I can do for you, within the limits of my ability right now . . . you just have to get a message to me.’
‘Thank you, Lale, but I can take care of myself,’ she says.
She sees his face twist, like he is trying to find the right words.
‘What you are doing, Cilka, is the only form of resistance you have – staying alive. You are the bravest person I have ever known, I hope you know that.’
‘You don’t have to say that,’ she says, shame curling
through her.
‘Yes, I do. Thank you again,’ he says.
She nods. He leaves the room, leaves Block 25.
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CHAPTER 33
‘Cilka, Cilka, wake up.’
Yelena shakes Cilka gently, waking her from a
dreamless sleep; Cilka is disorientated. She pulls the blan-
kets up to her chin, attempting to hide, to escape the
threat she feels closing in.
‘Cilka, it’s me, Yelena. You’re all right, I just need you
to wake up so I can talk to you.’
Cilka registers the voice. Drags herself from sleep.
‘Yelena Georgiyevna, what time is it? What’s going on?’
Cilka moves over so Yelena can sit on the bed beside
her.
‘It’s early morning but I need to talk to you. Something’s
happened to Alexandr.’
Cilka stares at Yelena, but no words come.
‘During the night someone came into the ward and beat
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him up. We don’t know how it happened, but he was found unconscious a short while ago.’
‘How? How could this happen?’ Cilka sits up, fully
awake. ‘Where were the nurses, the staff? How can
someone get beaten up in a hospital?’
‘Slow down, I don’t have all the answers. There was
only one nurse on duty, and it was a busy night for her.
At one point she went for a break and that must have
been when someone came in.’
‘But didn’t another patient see something, say some-
thing?’
‘We’re still trying to find out how this happened. The
nurse came and got me and I wanted to come and tell
you straight away. He’s been taken to the operating room
for assessment. Get dressed and come with me.’
With gowns wrapped around their clothes and wearing
masks, Cilka and Yelena enter the operating room and
approach the table where Alexandr’s beaten body lies.
Raisa stands beside him. She looks at Cilka with sadness
and compassion. Cilka gently touches Alexandr’s shoulder.
She can’t bear how vulnerable he looks. Yelena puts her
arm around Cilka.
‘What can you tell us, Raisa?’ Yelena asks.
‘Must have been two of them. I’d say one of them held
something, maybe a pillow, over his head, while the other
beat him with a piece of wood, judging by the splinters
I’m finding.’
‘And nobody heard anything? What about the patient
beside him?’ Cilka blurts out.
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‘Can’t answer that, Cilka. We’ll have to make enquiries but we have to make a plan, too . . .’ She looks at Yelena.
Yelena explains. ‘Someone obviously wants him dead
and there’s no way of knowing if it’s someone—’ she brings
her voice right down – ‘on the inside, or even connected
to the authorities.’
‘Do you think it’s the same person as before?’
‘If they found out he’s still alive somehow, that’s highly
possible.’
‘But how would they—’ She stops. She’s worried she
knows the answer.
Raisa says, ‘Right now, we need here to help Alexandr.
We might have more answers for you later.’
‘What are his injuries?’ Yelena asks again.
‘He was unconscious when found. He has been hit
around the head but I think he’s unconscious from being
suffocated. Nothing on his body, thankfully, is broken.
I’m so sorry, Cilka,’ Raisa says. ‘Why don’t you leave us,
and we’ll get you when we’re finished here.’
‘I’m not leaving,’ Cilka says angrily.
‘All right,’ says Raisa.
Yelena eases Cilka a pace or two away from the table.
‘We have to work out how to protect him,’ Cilka says.
* * *
Several hours later, Cilka accompanies Alexandr from the
operating room to the far corner of the ward, where a
screen is placed around his bed. A chair is brought for
Cilka and she insists she will be his nurse. Neither Yelena
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nor Raisa argues with her. Food is brought to her, which she barely touches. The hot, calming tea she devours.
Yelena checks on the two of them regularly. As the day
ends, Yelena tells Cilka she has spoken to the man in the
bed next to Alexandr and found out more.
The patient next to Alexandr had been threatened by
two men when he woke to the sound of wood thumping
on flesh. He had received one punch to the mouth to
intimidate him into silence. He was told he wasn’t to say
anything to alert the nurse after they left in case Alexandr
wasn’t yet dead. The man was shaken and very upset.
Whoever it was that carried out the beating must have
been waiting in the reception room outside, which is
unstaffed at night. They may have bribed or threatened
the guards outside the building, and Yelena is reluctant
to question them in case she draws attention to the fact
that Alexandr is still alive.
Yelena then confirms the plan they started hashing out
overnight.
She speaks quietly. ‘We’ve changed his file to say he has
died and created another file using the name of a recently
deceased patient, amending the record to say that patient
had been healed. So as far as the hospital records are
concerned, Alexandr died from his injuries as a result of a
beating. We will keep the screen around his bed for a while
and work out the next step. We’ve told the patient in the
next bed that he is contagious and not to come near him.’
‘Thank you,’ Cilka says, mind racing. That buys some
time, but what’s next?
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‘It is the best we can do for now, Cilka.’
When Yelena leaves, Cilka places her head on the pillow
beside Alexandr’s.
* * *
The next morning, Cilka wakes to see Alexandr looking
at her. For several moments their eyes are locked, word-
lessly conveying their feelings for each other. They are
interrupted by Raisa.
‘I see you are both awake. Now, which one should I
look at first?’
Cilka smiles. ‘Him, of course.’
Raisa tries to explain to Alexandr his injures and how
he is to be treated. Cilka can’t help herself and constantly
interrupts with her positive spin on his recovery. Alexandr
says nothing, nodding, looking grateful but worried,
echoing Cilka’s true thoughts.
* * *
Days pass as Alexandr slowly recovers behind the screen.
His bruises fade, but movement still causes him pain.
When Cilka runs into Kirill going in and out of the recep-
tion area she tries to act friendly and natural, politely
declining his advances without making him angry, not
wanting to draw any unnecessary attention to the screened
area on the ward. She suspects it was him who either
assaulted Alexandr or alerted the original attacker to the
fact that he was still alive, but she has no way to prove it.
Alexandr happily accepts the pain of getting out of bed
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to walk with his arms around Cilka as she helps him. They are told Cilka is not the best nurse to be assisting him,
their difference in height more of a hindrance to his
recovery than a help. This is not the only advice they
ignore. Each night Cilka is found sitting slumped in a
chair, her head on his pillow, sound asleep. She has barely
left his side since the beating.
The number of patients in the hospital has begun to
slow, and word reaches the staff that numbers in the Gulag
are reducing significantly. Prisoners are being released
early on the orders of General Secretary Khrushchev, who
has succeeded Stalin. He is reaching out to the West. The
stain the Gulag system has placed over his empire is
becoming known, and appeasement is required to continue
talks with non-communist countries.
Alexandr is able to walk on his own now, and the screen
has become conspicuous, drawing questions from patients
and staff about how bad the ‘infection’ is behind it. They
need to work out the next step.
‘Cilka, can I see you a moment?’ Yelena calls one morning.
‘I’ll be right back,’ Cilka tells Alexandr.
Yelena steers Cilka into the dispensary.
‘Nothing good ever happened in this room. What is it?’
a concerned Cilka asks.
‘Do you trust me?’ Yelena asks.
‘More than anyone I’ve ever known, besides my family.’
‘Then I need you to trust me now. Alexandr will be
discharged in two days’ time . . .’
‘No, you can’t. You promised,’ Cilka cries.
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‘Listen to me. Not out into the prison population where someone would notice he’s not the dead man whose name
and number we’ve assigned him. He will be discharged
to a hut nearby, where he will be safe. I want you to trust
that I’m doing all I can to help.’
Cilka is speechless. This is a good thing. He will be safe.
But again, someone is being taken away from her.
She tries to smile. ‘You are so good, Yelena Georgiyevna.
I am grateful. He will be grateful.’
Yelena looks troubled, in a way Cilka has never seen
before. She is always stoic, practical and positive.
‘Cilka, there’s something else.’
Cilka’s heart sinks.
‘I’ve put in a request to move to Sochi, where they have
built a new hospital.’
She reaches her arm out for Cilka, but Cilka flinches.
She doesn’t know what to say. Yelena deserves to be
somewhere better, after the years she has voluntarily put
into this awful place. But what will Cilka do without her?
‘Cilka?’
Cilka can’t look at her. She is holding everything back.
She has never had any choices. Everything has simply
happened to her. No matter how much she wants it, she can never hold on to people. She is alone. Completely
alone in the world.
‘Cilka, you have to believe I am doing everything I can
for you too.’
Cilka pushes her feelings down inside her, looks up at
Yelena.
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‘Thank you, Yelena Georgiyevna, for everything.’
Yelena holds her eyes.
It feels like goodbye.
* * *
The women of Hut 29 are all she has left. Cilka keeps
thinking about Lale in Birkenau, how he had told her she
was brave. How other people have told her she is brave.
How Alexandr has opened something up in her, making