Page 117 of Cilka's Journey

“Kirill, what are you saying? What has my decision got to do with you?”

“Obviously nothing,” he says, with barely concealed fury. “See you around, Cilka Klein.”

“Kirill, wait. Can’t we at least be friends? Kirill, please, don’t leave like this.”

Without a backward glance, Kirill walks away, leaving Cilka stunned.What is it he was saying? What is it he wasn’t saying?

CHAPTER 32

“Two more days, that’s all I can keep you for, I’m afraid,” Yelena tells Alexandr and Cilka.

“Thank you, we’ll make the most of them, won’t we, Cilka?”

Cilka blushes. “I have work to do,” she stammers as she rushes away.

“She’ll be back,” Yelena tells Alexandr with a wink.

Cilka spots Kirill at the nurses’ desk.

“Kirill, hello, it’s nice to see you back,” she says as she approaches.

“What’s going on there?” he snarls at her.

Perplexed, Cilka looks where Kirill is indicating, back 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 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 labor, 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 realized 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.”

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.”