Page 61 of Cilka's Journey

“She’s having a baby.”

“Is she now? I wonder how that happened,” Antonina says with disgust.

Cilka chooses to ignore the comment. Josie keeps her head down. Ashamed, humiliated.

“Five months, I’d say,” Cilka tells the brigadier.

“I’ll be the judge of that. Open your coat.”

Josie opens her coat, shivering against the wind and in fear of what she is being publicly subjected to. Rough hands press hard against her obvious baby bump. Feel all around her sides, pushing hard from top to bottom.

Josie cries out in pain. “Stop it, you’re hurting me.”

“Just making sure it’s not rags stuffed up there; wouldn’t be the first.”

Cilka pushes the brigadier’s hands away. “Enough. Satisfied?”

“Get off to work, you. As for the slut here, she can go too, there’s no reason she can’t continue in the soft job she has. I’ll have to tell Klavdiya Arsenyevna about this. She won’t be pleased.”

Cilka and Josie hurry toward the hospital buildings.

“I don’t mind working, it’s not as though it’s difficult and it is a distraction for me, during the day; the nights, however…”

That evening, Josie is made a fuss of by the women. They want to feel the baby in her belly; some lucky ones receive a kick for their efforts. “You’re carrying just like I did with my boys,” Olga says, her eyes smiling but with tears in them.

Someone remembers Natalya, the only other pregnancy in the hut, and the tragic ending that was.

Olga notices the effect talking about Natalya is having on Josie and quickly changes the subject. She suggests they all get involved in making clothes for Josie’s baby. She is immediately designated the designer; sheets are inspected to see who can afford to lose a foot or two, the embroiderers excited at having something meaningful to create for a new life.

Hannah is sitting at the back of the group, watching all the activity with a look of distaste.

“How do you all have the energy,” she says, “to delude yourselves?”

“Hannah,” Olga says sharply, “finding a little hope in the darkness is not a weakness.”

Hannah shakes her head. “Like a nice fur coat, ha, Cilka?”

The women look at Cilka. Her face burns and there is bile in her throat. She can’t think of any reply—an explanation or a retort. She coughs and clears her throat.

“Hannah’s right though,” Josie says, putting down the strip of sheet in her hand. “It’s silly to forget where we are.”

“I don’t think it is,” Olga says, determinedly unpicking some thread. “I think it helps us to go on.”

It is well over a week before Vadim comes knocking. As he starts his groping and pawing of Josie, she stops him.

“I have to tell you something.”

“I don’t want to talk just now.”

“I’m having your baby,” she blurts out.

Cilka has turned her head away from Boris to listen to the exchange.

“What’s wrong?” asks Boris.

“Nothing, shhh.”

“What did you say?” Vadim growls.