Page 97 of Cilka's Journey

“Oh, all right, I’m coming.”

Holding the book open to the page she was reading, Cilka stomps into the kitchen. Her mother is sitting at the table reading a letter. She waves the letter at the two girls.

“What does it say?” Magda squeals.

Cilka stays standing in the doorway, pretending to read, waiting to hear the news.

“Put the book down, Cilka,” her mother says firmly. “Come and sit down.”

Cilka splays the book open on the table as she takes a seat alongside Magda, facing their mother.

“What?” Cilka says.

“Aunt Helena is getting married.”

“Oh! That’s wonderful news, Mumma,” Magda says. “I love all your sisters but especially Aunt Helena. I’m so happy for her.”

“What’s it got to do with us?” Cilka asks nonchalantly.

“Well, my two beautiful girls, she wants you to be her bridesmaids, to be part of her wedding, isn’t that lovely?”

“You mean we get to wear a beautiful dress and have flowers in our hair?” an excited Magda asks.

“Yes, you will both have the most beautiful dresses and I’m sure Aunt Helena would love you to have flowers in your hair. What do you think, Cilka? Do you want to be a bridesmaid, have everyone looking at you and telling you how beautiful you are?”

Cilka looks from her mother to her sister, trying to contain the excitement she feels. She fails. Jumping to her feet, knocking over her chair, she swirls around the kitchen, trying to pull her straight dress out.

“I’m going to be a princess with flowers in my hair. Can my dress be red? I’d really like a red dress.”

“That will be up to Aunt Helena, but you can always ask her. She might say yes, but you will both have to wear the same color.”

“I’m going to tell Papa.”

Cilka rushes from the kitchen, looking for her father.

“Papa, Papa, Aunt Helena’s getting married. She’s in love.”

One day, Cilka thinks, it will be my turn.

CHAPTER 26

The winter of 1950–51 is particularly harsh. The hospital is overwhelmed by severe cases of frostbite and other weather-associated ailments. Amputations of lower limbs become common, the survivors immediately shipped off to places unknown, to free up the beds. Pneumonia claims many; lungs weakened from the constant inhalation of coal dust no match for the infections that spread through the camp. Cases of pellagra barely make it through the front door—the near-corpses are taken with their peeling skin and put on blankets on the floor near the entrance, ready to be taken out to a truck when they expire.

Injuries increase alarmingly as frozen fingers lose their grip on tools; crush injuries rise as weakened prisoners are slow to respond to the dangers of heavy equipment and falling rocks.

Any suspicion of self-harm is verified when doctors question the injured patients. They beg to be kept in the hospital, or at the very least, released from outside work. Some of these self-inflicted injuries are terrible mutilations—among the worst Cilka has seen.

The ambulances struggle to transport the sick and injured,many arriving piled into the backs of trucks, or carried in by fellow prisoners.

With the bleak weather, and Josie’s departure, combined with the lack of hope, Cilka descends into darkness, again. She refuses her breaks from going out in the ambulance—picking up, dropping off and immediately going back out, endlessly caring for the sick, the injured and dying. She is becoming a stranger on the ward.

The mine supervisors praise her bravery in never refusing to go into a dangerous situation. They say her size and competence make her the best person to enter the mine to look for casualties. That word “bravery” again—Cilka still thinks she is yet to earn it.

“Ambulance going out.”

“Coming.”

Kirill, Pavel and Cilka race to the mine.