aware of Antonina’s mood. She has learned to read the
faces of captors, guards, those with power over the rest.
When all names have been checked off at rollcall
Natalya looks over to Cilka. Cilka and Josie have had their
gruel, and both have bread tucked up into their sleeves.
Antonina’s face has a little more colour, too. Cilka nods
to Natalya.
‘Excuse me, Antonina Karpovna,’ says Natalya. Cilka
hears the formal use of first name and patronymic.
The brigadier gives Natalya her full attention.
‘As you may know from your visit in the evening, Josie
has acquired an injury on her right hand. Is there a sick
bay she can go to?’
‘How did it happen?’ asks Antonina.
Natalya looks reluctant to reveal who is at fault. Despite
the nastiness of the act, they don’t want to get anybody
thrown in the hole – the punishment cell. Starvation,
disease, madness could result. Despite Cilka’s fury at Elena
– particularly at her cowardice; a push in the back – she
thinks she deserves another chance.
It seems Josie does too.
‘I tripped near the stove,’ Josie says, ‘and put my hand
out to break my fall.’
Antonina beckons Josie over to her, chin raised.
Josie approaches the brigadier, her bandaged hand
outstretched.
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‘How do I know you’re not just trying to get out of work?’
Josie understands her. She begins unwrapping the
bandage. She can’t stop the tears that accompany the pain
as she removes the last layer, revealing the raw blistered
hand.
Cilka steps forward so she’s beside Josie, not wanting
to stand out but wanting her to know she is there, to
comfort her. Antonina looks at the two of them, sizing
them up.
‘There’s not much to either of you zechkas, is there?’
She looks at Cilka. ‘Take her back inside. I’ll be back for
you.’
Cilka is startled. Worried. But she does what she’s told.
They hurry back inside the building, Cilka casting a back-
ward glance at the others as they shuffle off to work. The
snow whips up, enveloping them, and they disappear from
sight. What has she done now?
Cilka and Josie huddle by the stove, blankets wrapped
around their shivering bodies. Cilka desperately hopes
they will acclimatise. It’s not even winter yet. An icy blast smacks them from their contemplation. Antonina stands
in the doorway.
Cilka nudges Josie and they walk quickly to the door
and follow Antonina out, Cilka making sure the door is
securely closed behind her.
She has often seen Antonina with another brigadier –
with whom she shared a hut in the cluster of huts that
make up their brigade – so she supposes they must share
responsibility for the women. Or perhaps the other woman
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was an assistant to Antonina. Either way, she must be the one keeping track of the brigade in the field while Antonina
takes on this duty.
While the distance to the sick bay and hospital is not
far, the blizzard conditions make walking slow and painful
as the snow is so deep they are forced to push their legs
through it, rather than take steps. Cilka tries to gain an
understanding of the size of the complex by the number
of huts that resemble theirs. The other, larger buildings
that stand a little apart must be administration or stores,
but there is nothing to indicate their use. The hospital
building Antonina points out to them also has no outward
sign of its purpose.
A guard stands outside. Antonina, her eyes barely visible,
is forced to remove the scarf wrapped around her face,
and shout into his face. Cilka wonders what he can possibly
have done to be punished with this duty. It doesn’t seem
much better than being a prisoner, though he probably
has better living quarters and more food. With apparent
reluctance, he opens the door and pushes the women
unceremoniously inside. Presumably he is under instruc-
tion not to let any snow in.
The warmth of the building hits them immediately, and
they unwrap their scarves, Josie using her good hand.
‘Wait here,’ Antonina tells them. They stand just inside
the door, taking a first look at the room they have just
entered.
It is some kind of waiting room. Prisoners – men and
women – sit on the few available chairs, with more on the
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floor, hunched over, pain etched on their faces. Others are curled up, sleeping, unconscious, dead – it is not
obvious which. Several groan quietly, a distressing sound,
a too-familiar sound for Cilka. She looks away from them,
up at the portrait of Stalin on the wall.
Antonina is at the desk at the front of the room, speaking
quietly to the matronly figure seated behind it. With a nod
of her head she returns to Cilka and Josie.
‘You are number 509 when it is called.’ She repeats the
numbers slowly in Russian: ‘ Pyat’sot devyat.’
Without further word, Antonina walks back to the door
and is replaced by a sheet of fresh snow, which quickly
melts into the puddle on the floor.
Cilka takes Josie’s arm and steers her to a small patch
of bare wall they can sit against. It is only as they slide
down to the floor that Cilka notices several heads lift
and fearful eyes appraise the newcomers. Is there a
hierarchy even here? Cilka meets their stares. They look
away first.
* * *
Cilka hears their number, accompanied by some yelling.
She startles from a daze. ‘Last chance!’ the matronly
woman is saying.
Disorientated, she sees Josie is asleep, her head resting
on Cilka’s outstretched legs.
‘Here! We’re coming!’ she calls as loudly as she can.
She shakes Josie and they scramble to their feet, heading
quickly to the desk and the scowling woman behind it.
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She stands, thrusts a clipboard at Josie, and walks to a door leading to the back of the room. Cilka and Josie follow.
Through the door, the woman leads them past beds that
line both sides of the room. A ward. Cilka glances at them.
The sheets are white. The blankets grey, but possibly
thicker than those they have in their hut. Pillows are tucked beneath the heads of the men and women lying there.
Through the ward, they enter a clinical area screened
off from the rest of the room. The smell of disinfectant
assaults their nostrils.
Josie is shoved into a chair next to a table laden with
bottles, bandages and instruments.
The woman indicates the clipboard Josie is holding, and
hands Cilka a pen. Cilka understands that they are to fill
it out.
The woman turns away and is gone.
‘I can’t do this,’ Josie whispers. ‘I write with my right
hand.’
‘Let me,’ says Cilka.
She takes the clipboard, pushes some of the instruments
on the table to one side and places it down.
And then she sees it is in Cyrillic script. The letters are
like tunnels and gates, with surprising added curves and
flourishes. It has been a long time since she has read it.
Writing in it will be difficult.
‘Right then,’ she says. ‘The first entry is always your
name. What is your family name, Josie?’
‘Kotecka, Jozefína Kotecka.’
Cilka writes the name slowly, as best she can, hoping
the doctors will be able to read it.
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‘Let’s see, I believe this is date of birth?’
‘November 25, 1930.’
‘And this asks for your place of residence.’
‘I don’t have an address anymore. They arrested my
father after he missed a day from work. He was a forest
worker, and he went looking for my brothers, who had
been missing for three days. They arrested my mother next.
My grandmother and I were so afraid, all alone together
in our house. And then they came and arrested us too.’
Josie looks pained. ‘No one in my family lives there now.’
‘I know, Josie.’ Cilka puts a hand on Josie’s shoulder.
She was the same age when everyone was taken away from
her too.
‘They put me in prison.’ Josie begins to cry. ‘They beat
me, Cilka. They beat me and wanted to know where my
brothers were. I told them I don’t know but they refused
to believe me.’
Cilka nods to show she is listening. It’s strange how and
when the past wants to reveal itself, she thinks. But not
for her. There is no way she could find the words.
‘Then one day, they loaded me and my grandmother
onto a truck and took us to the train station, and that’s
when I met you.’
‘I’m sorry that I’ve brought it all up, Josie. Let’s . . .’
She looks down at the form.
‘No, it’s all right,’ Josie says. She looks up at Cilka. ‘Will you tell me why you’re here? All I know is that you are
Slovakian. And that woman on the train said she’d been
with you somewhere . . . Did your family get arrested too?’
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Cilka’s gut clenches.
‘Perhaps another day.’
‘And you knew what to do, when we got here.’ Josie’s
brow furrows, puzzling.
Cilka ignores her, makes out she is studying the form
again.
Cilka and Josie hear someone behind them and turn to
see a tall, slim, attractive woman wearing a white lab coat,
a stethoscope hung around her neck. Golden yellow braids
encircle the back of her head and her blue eyes crinkle at
the edges in a smile.
She looks at their faces and immediately addresses them
in Polish, a language they can both understand. ‘What is
it I can help you with?’ Her accent is unlike any Cilka
has heard.
Josie goes to stand up.
‘No, sit, stay sitting. I take it you are the patient.’
Josie nods.
‘And you are?’
‘I’m her friend. I was asked to stay with her.’
‘Are you having trouble with the form?’
‘We were getting through it,’ Cilka says. And then, she
can’t help asking, ‘How did you decide what language to
address us in?’
‘I’ve been a doctor for a long time in the camps and
I’ve learned to make a good guess.’ The doctor smiles
warmly, and confidently, the first open face Cilka has seen
since she arrived here.
‘Let me look,’ she says, taking the clipboard from Cilka.
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‘Well done.’
Cilka blushes.
‘Why don’t you finish filling it out? I’ll read you the
questions.’
‘In Russian?’
‘Do you know any Russian?’
‘I can speak it but writing is a little more difficult.’
‘OK, I think you should continue in Russian in that
case, yes. The quicker you learn it the better in here. What
other languages do you know?’
‘Slovak, Czech, Polish, Hungarian and German.’
The doctor tilts her head. ‘I’m impressed.’ Though she
says it quietly. ‘The next question on the form is: what is
the purpose of your visit to the hospital?’ She asks it in
Russian.
Cilka goes to write something.
The doctor looks over her shoulder.
‘Hmm, close. Why don’t you try asking the patient and
then writing down what she says?’
Cilka feels panicked. She’s not sure if the doctor is
playing a game with her. Why is it that she always stands
out, no matter how hard she tries not to? She asks Josie
in Russian. Josie looks at her, puzzled.
Cilka tries to write ‘burned hand’ in Cyrillic on the form.
‘Not bad,’ the doctor says. ‘Enough of that for now. I
can take care of the rest. I had better take a look at the
patient.’
Josie holds out her hand. The doctor pulls a nearby
chair in front of her and gently starts unbandaging.
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‘Who wrapped this up for you?’
‘Cilka did.’
The doctor turns to Cilka.
‘And you’re Cilka?’
‘I made her hold it in the snow for a while first, then
got some sheeting and wrapped it as best I could.’
‘Well done, Cilka. Now let’s have a look at the damage.’
With the bandage removed the doctor turns Josie’s hand
over, examining it closely.
‘Wiggle your fingers for me.’
Josie makes a painful attempt to wiggle her fingers, the
swelling preventing much movement.
‘It was very lucky you had someone with you who knew
to get something cold onto the burn straight away. That
has saved you from a far worse injury. As it is, you have
what looks like a first-degree burn to fifty per cent of your hand and eighty per cent of your four fingers. Your thumb
seems all right.’ She looks up into Josie’s face. ‘You’ll need daily dressings for two weeks, and no work is to be
attempted inside or outside.’
She turns to Cilka. ‘Pass me that tube . . . the one that
says maz ot ozhogov.’ Burn cream.
Cilka hands her the tube of cream, taking the top off
as she does so.
Gently, the doctor applies the cream to Josie’s hand.
‘Now look on the shelf behind you and find me a large
bandage.’
Cilka does as she is told, handing back the correct
item.
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It is expertly wrapped around Josie’s hand, the end placed between the doctor’s teeth as she tears a small section in
two, tying the ends together to hold it securely.
‘Now, hand me that pad and pen on the table. I had
better write a note.’
Cilka watches as she writes, folds the note and gives it
to Josie.
‘I have written here just what I said. You are not to
work inside or outside and are to come here every day
for at least the next two weeks to have the dressing
changed. We will see how you are healing after that time.
‘Now, Cilka . . .’ the doctor says, ‘I am impressed that
you were so helpful to your friend, and your writing is
not as bad as you think.’ She studies Cilka. ‘You have a
capacity for languages. You know, we are understaffed
here at the hospital with these new intakes. Would you
like to work here?’
Cilka realises the opportunity. In a camp there are the
bad jobs – the outdoor, manual labour jobs – and then
there are the good jobs. In the other place, a ‘good’ job meant more food, and warmth, but in Cilka’s case, it also
meant being repeatedly and incessantly used, and witnessing
the very worst conditions in the camp. Her role as leader
of Block 25 was a punishment, but one she also still feels
she needs to repent for. For surviving. For trading food
for cigarettes for warm clothes. While the women came
in and out and went off to die. And in and out and in
and out, ceaselessly.
She is dumbstruck. Again, she wonders why she always
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stands out. She looks at Josie, feeling that if she says yes, she will be betraying her friend. She will be betraying all
of the women in the hut.
Josie says, ‘Of course she will.’
Cilka looks at her. Josie nods encouragement.
‘I . . .’ If Cilka refuses, will she be put in the hole?
Maybe, at least, the job would mean she can smuggle more
food to those who need it, or trade it for cigarettes, boots, coats for the others .
The doctor looks confused. Cilka supposes no one
would ever say no.
‘I don’t think I can,’ she says.
‘I’m sorry?’ says the doctor. ‘We all must work.’
‘And I am happy to work at the mine,’ she says, but
she hears how flat her voice is. Once she had thought she
deserved more, or better, but she knows there is always a
very great cost.
‘Well,’ says the doctor. ‘How about for the next two
weeks, when Josie comes for her treatment, you help me,