Page 96 of Cilka's Journey

As they reach the car door, Josie looks from Yelena to Cilka. “I don’t want to go. I don’t want to leave you.”

Cilka laughs. Josie’s words are the most beautiful and absurd she has heard for a long time. She keeps the smile on her face, tries to fight back the tears.

“Get in the car. Go. Find your brothers. Have a good life—for me, for all of us—and make sure that little girl does too. I’ll think of you always, and with nothing but happy thoughts.”

One last hug, Natia squeezed between them.

The car door is slammed shut. Yelena and Cilka watch it disappear, neither wanting to move.

“Of all the things I’ve seen since I’ve been here, this is what I will remember, what I will cling to when the darkness of this place threatens to envelop me. I don’t know how the commandant and his wife have managed it. Someone high up must have owed him a favor. Now back to work, there are other souls to save,” Yelena whispers.

The sun breaks through the thick clouds for a moment. Cilkafeels like she is breaking apart. “Leich l’shalom,” she whispers quietly, to Josie.Go toward peace.

That evening, Cilka tells the others of Josie and Natia’s departure, making light of her role in their release. Tears are shed. Memories relived. Happiness and sadness in equal measure.

The conversation opens up, as it often does these days, about their lives before Vorkuta.

Their reasons for being there are as varied as their personalities. As well as having been in the Polish Home Army, Elena had been accused of being a spy. And then she speaks to them in English, which has everyone in awe of her.

“I knew, of course,” says Hannah, smugly.

For five years they have lived with someone who speaks English. Several ask if she would teach them, just a little. A secret act of resistance.

Other girls from Poland were also charged with helping the enemy, in a variety of ways. None of them mention prostitution. Olga shares again the story of how she found herself on the wrong side of the law for having made garments for a wealthy general’s wife. When her husband ran afoul of Stalin and was shot, she was arrested and transported.

Margarethe begins to sob.

“I die a little more each day, not knowing what has happened to my husband.”

“He was taken with you, wasn’t he?” Olga asks, as though trying to solve the puzzle aloud.

“We were taken together but sent to different prisons. I never saw him again. I don’t know if he is alive, but my heart tells me he is dead.”

“What did he do?” Anastasia asks, having not heard the story yet.

“He fell in love with me.”

“That’s it? No, there has to be more.”

“He’s from Prague; he is Czech. I call him my husband but that is the problem. We dared to attempt to marry. I’m from Moscow and we are not permitted to marry a foreign citizen.”

Cilka’s heart has been racing throughout this whole conversation. She has been here five years and the women know she is Jewish and Slovakian, but nothing of her arrest. Josie had gathered a bit of information from asking Cilka questions, though Cilka never elaborated. She had told her about her friends, like Gita and Lale, wondered aloud with Josie about where they were, whether they were safe. She had told Josie about her mother and sister dying, but had not gone into the details. She is ashamed that she had not told her everything. But if Josie had turned away from her, it would have broken her all over again.

The hut falls into silent contemplation.

“It is time to take my advice again,” Olga says to the group. “A happy memory. Force it into your head and your heart.”

Bardejov, Czechoslovakia, 1939

“Cilka, Magda, come here quickly,” their mumma calls out.

Magda drops the book she is reading and hurries to the kitchen.

“Cilka, come on,” she says.

“In a minute, let me finish this chapter,” Cilka growls back.

“It’s something wonderful, Cilka, come on,” her mother says.