Page 56 of Cilka's Journey

“Come here.”

Cilka walks to the bed where the nurse stands. Every bed is occupied. If ever there was a day Cilka could be useful, today is it. Cilka smiles at the new mother holding her baby, just hours old.

“We need this bed, and no one has turned up to take her next door. You need to take them over.”

“I’ll just grab my coat,” Cilka replies. It is spring now, but frosty outside.

“You don’t have time for that; just get them out of here.”

“But where—”

The new mother tugs on Cilka’s skirt.

“It’s all right, I know where to go. I’ve been there before.”

The patient is already dressed, her baby swaddled in a blanket. Cilka helps her into her coat with the baby tucked inside. The patient looks for the nurse; she is nowhere to be seen. Grabbing the blanket off her bed, she indicates for Cilka to wrap it around herself. She does. The patient leads the way out of a back door.

The building they are headed to is only fifty or sixty meters away. Their feet crunch across the frosty grass. The sound of infants crying, jabbering and screaming reaches them before they open the door. Stepping inside, Cilka is confronted by a chaotic scene. A few cots crammed against one wall, small mattresses—more like mats—scattered around. Three staff to care for what looks like twenty babies and toddlers.

“We need to check in here and then go through the door at the end of the room to the dormitory where I will sleep.”

“And we have a full house again,” one of the staff members says as she walks toward them. “Well, hello, Anna Anatolyeva. You’re back.”

“I missed your charming face, what can I say. How are you, Irina Igorevna, still eating little children for breakfast?”

“Oh, Anya, of course, why are you back here?”

Cilka notices the switch to the diminutive and understands that these women know each other quite well.

“One of those ugly pigs looked at me and, you know, I have another baby. This one you will look after properly, or I will send his ugly pig of a father to deal with you.”

“Yeah, yeah, heard it before. What have you got this time?”

“Another girl. Another victim for the cause.”

“Have you named her this time?”

“You did such a great job with the last one, you give her a name. Make it a strong one. She will need to be strong to survive this house of horrors.”

Looking around, Cilka tries to process the meaning of what she sees. The two other staff stand chatting, each with an infant on her hip, jiggling it up and down in an attempt to soothe it. They seem oblivious to the howling babies, the toddlers fighting over a rattyblanket. Several have no nappy on; the smell of urine and feces is overpowering.

The new mother attempts to hand her newborn over.

“Look after her yourself for a while,” Irina Igorevna says. “She won’t bite, or maybe she will when she realizes who her mumma is.”

She turns to Cilka and thrusts her chin at her. “Who are you?”

“I’m one of the nurses. I was asked to bring her over here.”

“All right then. This one knows what to do—you can go.”

Cilka can’t just yet. “Excuse me,” she asks. “How many babies do you have here?”

“Twenty is our maximum; there are only twenty beds next door for the mothers.”

“How long are they allowed to stay here? Some of them don’t look like babies anymore.”

“New, huh? Well,printsessa,here’s how it works. When Anya here produces another bastard, she gets to stay here until the kid is two, then she gets sent back to a general hut to get knocked up again and it starts all over.”