‘Eat your soup, then have your bread or save it for later,’
Cilka says to Josie. ‘Sometimes it is better to save it, just like we did on the train, until we know how often and
how much we are going to be fed.’
She can see from looking at some of the women’s sunken
faces that it won’t be frequent or nutritious.
The two girls slowly sip the brown liquid. At least it is
hot. There is no real substance to it. Josie notices others
sitting at the table with spoons, scooping out what look
like bits of potato or possibly fish.
‘They didn’t give us a spoon.’
‘I think that might be something we have to obtain for
ourselves,’ says Cilka, seeing the beat-up-looking utensils
some of the old-timers are using, ‘when and however we
can.’
Soon, Cilka and the other newcomers are gathered by
their brigadier. Antonina Karpovna corrals the women
together and leads them back to their hut.
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As the last woman enters the room, Antonina watches them wander either to their bed or to the stove in order
to be comfortable.
‘In future, when I enter the room you will immediately
go and stand at the end of your bed. Do I make myself
clear?’
Women jump from their bed or scurry to it, and all
stand to attention at the foot.
‘You will also turn and face me. I will give instructions
once only and I want to look into your eyes and know
you have all understood. Who understands what I am
saying?’
Several hands meekly rise, including Cilka’s. The rest
had seemingly just followed what the other women were
doing.
‘Then those who understand better teach the rest,
quickly.’
She pauses to watch the women look to the person
standing next to them and a few of them pass on what
had been said, mostly in other Slavic languages.
‘These are the rules you will live by while you are here.
We have already determined when and how you will work,
receive food and how long you will sleep. Lights will go
out at 9 p.m., though in summer you won’t really notice
. . . Between now and then is when you will clean the
floor in here, restock the coal for the next day, shovel any
snow away from the front of the building, do any mending
of your clothes, whatever is required for you to live here.
I will not stand for this place looking like a pigsty – I
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want to be able to eat off the floor. Do you hear me? You will hear the wake-up call, you won’t be able to sleep
through it. Two of you will empty the toilet buckets, I
don’t care who does it, just make sure it is done. No one
will eat until it is.’
Not a word is spoken, but all heads nod.
‘If you fail to do any of this, but especially if you fail
to do your share of work – letting down my brigade – you will be thrown in the hole.’ She sniffs. ‘The hole is a solitary confinement cell in the lagpunkt. It is a dank, mouldy place where your body is forced into a crooked shape
whether you stand, sit or lie down. There is no stove, and
through a barred open window the snow will come in on
you from outside. You’ll be lucky to get a bucket for your
waste, as there’s a ready-made stinking hole in the floor.
You will receive barely a third of your normal ration – and
a black, hard piece of bread at that. Do you understand?’
The heads nod again. A shiver runs down Cilka’s spine.
From a bag draped over her shoulder Antonina produces
strips of rag, and a crumpled piece of paper from her
pocket.
‘When I call your name come and get your number.
You have two: one you must put on your hat, the other
on whatever outer garment you wear. You must never be
seen outside without your number visible on at least one
garment.’
As names are called out the women respond and take
the two rags handed to them, examining the number
roughly written in paint.
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Another number. Cilka subconsciously rubs her left arm; hidden under her clothing is her identity from that other place. How many times can one person be reduced, erased?
her and examines her new identity. 1-B494. Josie shows Cilka hers. 1-B490.
‘Sew the numbers on, and do it tonight, all of you. I
want to see them all in the morning.’ She pauses, lets the
translations come through, looks at the confused stares.
‘I expect to see some interesting needlework, it will tell
me a lot about you,’ she sneers.
A brave voice pipes up, ‘What do we use for needle
and thread?’
From her bag the brigadier produces a small piece of
fabric with two needles punched through. They look like
they’ve been fashioned from wire and sharpened to a
point. She hands them to the nearest woman.
‘So, get to it. I’ll be back in the morning. Tomorrow,
you work. Six o’clock wake up.’
‘Excuse me,’ says Natalya, ‘where do we get coal from?’
‘Work it out for yourselves.’
As the door shuts behind her the women gather around
the stove. Cilka is relieved no one received a beating for
their questions.
Josie offers, ‘If we go outside, we might see the others
getting their coal; then we will know where to go.’
‘Knock yourselves out,’ says the bully, Elena, lying back
on her bed. ‘This could be our last day off.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ says Cilka.
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‘Me too,’ says Natalya. ‘The rest of you start sewing.’
‘Yes, master,’ says Elena coldly.
Josie has placed the remaining few pieces of coal beside
the stove and picks up the empty bucket.
The three of them cautiously leave the hut, looking
around. Darkness is closing in, and spotlights light the
yard. It is cold. They can see prisoners darting here and
there between buildings, and a group of young women
walking quickly towards the hut near them, carrying
buckets brimming with coal.
‘This way,’ says Cilka.
Natalya steps in front of the women. ‘Can you tell us
where the coal is, please?’
‘Find it yourself,’ is the reply.
Natalya rolls her eyes.
‘They came from here,’ Josie says, pointing to a building.
‘From behind there somewhere, let’s go and look.’
They arrive back in the hut after taking turns carrying
the heavy bucket. Natalya goes to place it on the floor.
Her soft hands slip from the handle, the coal spilling on
the floor. She looks at the other women, apologising.
‘It’s all right, I’ll sweep up,’ volunteers Josie.
Two women are quickly sewing their numbers to their
hat and coat.
&nbs
p; ‘Where did you get the thread from?’ Natalya asks
before Cilka gets the chance.
‘From our sheets,’ says the older woman, speaking a
halting Slavic, close to Slovak, and repeating it in Russian.
Possibly the oldest in the hut, a lifetime of hard work and
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making do evident in her abrupt words. She tells them her name is Olga.
Cilka looks around and sees other women carefully
stripping away thread from the end of their sheets.
‘Hurry up. What are you doing taking so long with the
needle, Olga?’ an impatient Elena asks, looming over the
older woman.
‘I’m trying to do a good job. If you do it properly the
first time you won’t have to do it again.’
‘Give me the needle now, you stupid bitch. There’s a
time and place to show off your embroidery skills and it’s
not here.’
Elena reaches her hand out impatiently.
‘I’m nearly there,’ Olga says patiently. Cilka admires the
way she’s dealing with the hot-tempered Elena, but she
also understands the urge to lash out when all is not going
as planned. This must be Elena’s first camp. Olga increases
her sewing speed, snapping off the end of the thread with
her teeth before handing the needle over. ‘Here you go,
Tuk krava.’
Cilka suppresses a grin. Olga has just called Elena a fat
cow in Slovak in an endearing voice. She winks at Cilka.
‘My father was Slovakian,’ she says.
Elena scowls, snatching the needle.
Cilka sits on her bed, looking at Josie, who forlornly
fiddles with her number patches. She seems to go from
capable to overwhelmed in a matter of moments.
‘Hand it over,’ she says.
Josie looks pained.
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‘One day at a time,’ Cilka says. ‘All right?’
Josie nods.
Cilka starts stripping threads from her sheet. When a
needle is handed to her, she quickly sews the numbers on
Josie’s and her own garments.
Each time she stabs the needle through the fabric she
feels the pain of a needle stabbing into her left arm.
Another number. Another place. She grimaces.
To have lost everything. To have had to endure what
she has endured, and be punished for it. Suddenly the
needle feels as heavy as a brick. How can she go on? How
can she work for a new enemy? Live to see the women
around her tire, starve, diminish, die. But she – she will live. She does not know why she has always been sure of
that, why she feels she can persist – keep picking up this
needle even though it’s as heavy as a brick, keep sewing,
keep doing what she has to do – but she can. She starts
to feel angry, furious. And the needle feels light again.
Light and quick. It is this fire, then, that keeps her going.
But it is also a curse. It makes her stand out, be singled
out. She must contain it, control it, direct it.
To survive.
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CHAPTER 4
The fearsome clanging of a hammer on metal wakes the
newest arrivals at Vorkuta Gulag at 6 a.m. Antonina
was right – it is an unmissable wake-up call. The women
have taken turns putting coal in the stove throughout the
night, just enough to keep it burning. Though the sun still
shines through most of the night, there had been frost on
the ground when they walked back after their meagre
evening meal in the mess. They had all slept in the clothes
they had been given the previous day.
The door opens, sending in a blast of cold air. Antonina
Karpovna holds the door open, watching the women run
to the foot of their beds, their eyes turned to her. She
nods approval.
She walks up the hut inspecting the newly sewn
numbers on the women’s coats. Pausing at Elena, she
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barks, ‘Do it again tonight. That’s the worst needlework I’ve ever seen.’
When she is back at the door, she turns to the two
nearest girls. ‘Grab the buckets and I’ll show you where
to empty them. Tomorrow, one of you take another zechka
and show her where to go and so on, you follow?’
The two girls scamper to the toilet buckets at the rear
of the hut, directly opposite Cilka’s bed.
While Antonina and the two girls with the buckets
disappear, the rest of the women stay standing, no one
prepared to move. When the girls return, ashen-faced,
Antonina tells them all to head to the mess for breakfast
and be back by 7 a.m. for rollcall.
Outside, the two girls who emptied the toilet buckets
bend down and rub their hands across the frost in an
attempt to wash the stench and urine away.
If this is the end of summer, Cilka thinks, as she walks
with Josie over to the mess hut, and there is already
light snow on the ground and air like ice, then none of
them will be prepared for what is to come. Working
outdoors will be unbearable.
Breakfast is a thick, tasteless gruel. Josie remembers to
place her precious piece of bread up her sleeve. Like the
day before, there are no vacancies at any of the tables.
This time, the newcomers know what to do, and lean
against the walls.
It is obvious the gruel cannot be drunk. The women
look around. There are others using two fingers for a
spoon. That will have to do for now.
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* * *
Rollcall. This is very familiar to Cilka. She only hopes with the twenty of them it will go quickly. That no one has
gone missing in the night. She remembers a night standing
out in the cold – all night – until an inmate was found.
The ache in her knees, her ankle bones. And that was not
even the worst night in the other place. Not even close.
Antonina Karpovna starts calling out names. Names. I’m
not a number. And yet I have a number. Cilka looks at
her covered-up left arm and the number now emblazoned
on her brown, scratchy coat. I have a name. She answers
loudly, ‘Yes,’ when it is called. They are told to get into
four rows of five.
Groups of women file past them, each headed by a
brigadier. Groups of men are also coming from the other
side of the camp. Cilka and her hut fall in with them as
they march to the gates that lead out of the compound.
From what Cilka observed on arrival, there was only one
way in and one way out. A simple barbed wire fence
defines the boundary. Groups of men and women swarm
forward.
They slow down, coming to a halt as they near the
exit and see for the first time the ritual of going to work
each day. As Antonina’s turn comes, Cilka observes her
approaching a guard or administrator and showing him
&nbs
p; the list of names. Antonina then beckons for the first row
of women to approach. The guard walks along the row,
counting out five, roughly patting them down in a search,
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and then pushing them onward, before doing the same with the next three rows. He nods to Antonina, who goes
along with the women, telling them to keep walking behind
the others. They follow a train line, occasionally tripping
over the rails, thinking it will be easier to walk on them
than pull their feet through the sucking mud that drains
them of energy they know they will need for work.
Guards walk up and down the rows of men and women
trudging to the large mine that looms ahead of them. It
looks like a black mountain with an opening that disap-
pears into hell. Piles of coal tower beside small ramshackle
buildings. At the top of the mouth of the mine they can
see the wheel that is drawing coal up from the depths
below. Open train carts line the track as the women get
closer.
As they reach the mine, those in front peel off, going
to jobs and areas they are already familiar with. Antonina
hands the new arrivals over to a guard before following
some of the women from the other huts, who are also part
of her brigade.
Walking amongst the women, the guard pushes several
to one side, separating them out.
‘Hey, Alexei,’ he calls out, ‘come and get this lot. They
look like they can swing a pick.’
Another guard comes over and indicates that the fifteen
women should follow him. Cilka, Josie and Natalya remain
behind. The guard looks at them.
‘Couldn’t swing a bloody pick with all of ya hanging
on to it. Follow me.’
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They walk over to one of the mountains of coal, arriving just as the crane dumps a load on the top. They are showered in dust and small chunks of the hard, sharp coal.
‘Grab a bucket each and start loading. When it’s full,
take it over to one of the carts and dump it in,’ he says,
indicating the carts sitting on the train rails. Others are
already at work, and again it seems a matter of following
their lead.
The women pick up a bucket each and start filling them
with pieces of coal.
‘You better go faster or you’ll find yourselves in trouble,’
a woman says. ‘Watch me.’
The woman takes her empty bucket and uses it as a