Sapphire Skies

by Belinda Alexandra

  ‘To Comrade Stalin, who teaches us and rears us like his own children. Even in the most dangerous situations, we feel his fatherly eyes upon us.’

  I leaped to my feet with everyone else and raised my glass. ‘To Comrade Stalin!’

  The waiters brought us dessert of peach compote and raspberry ice-cream. The fruity flavours reminded me of summer days at our dacha.

  Anastas Mikoyan, the commissar for the food industry, who was seated at our table, leaned towards my father. ‘Ice-cream — like chocolate — used to be available to the working man and his family only on special holidays,’ he said. ‘Now they can be mass-produced by machines. Why would anyone want to eat handmade ice-cream or chocolates when they can have them produced by shiny modern equipment?’

  ‘Indeed,’ replied my father.

  I wasn’t sure that Papa agreed with Mikoyan’s sentiments. His family was once famous for their fine handmade chocolates and pastries. But my father wasn’t a political man. He had not been able to find employment for several years after his family’s disfavour, and now he enjoyed his job at the Red October chocolate factory, where he had been given a free hand in inventing new chocolate recipes. As long as he was allowed to make things that delighted people, he was happy.

  I noticed Stalin was watching us. He stood up slowly and held his glass up to my father.

  ‘I now propose a special toast to Comrade Azarov, chief chocolatier of the Red October chocolate factory,’ he said. ‘The factory has not only overfulfilled its annual plan for the past two years but has, thanks to Comrade Azarov, also improved the variety and quality of chocolates available to the Soviet people. He has invented two hundred new types of chocolate.’

  Papa was caught off guard; he had not expected to be toasted. He blushed and moved his hand to his throat, flustered, and in his usual self-effacing way attempted to deflect the praise onto others.

  ‘Thank you, Comrade Stalin,’ he said, rising to his feet and holding up a champagne glass. ‘And I would like to propose a toast to Comrade Mikoyan, who has not only been responsible for our success by ensuring the supply of the raw materials needed, but also has made champagne available to every man and woman.’

  Stalin’s eyes narrowed for a moment as if he were trying to discern some hidden meaning behind what my father had said. But then he smiled and lifted his glass again. ‘Indeed, comrades, life has become more joyous! Life has become more fun!’

  He turned to the orchestra, which had been joined by a saxophonist and jazz bass player, and nodded. They started up a foxtrot.

  Papa shook off his embarrassment and led me to the dance floor. We weaved and turned to the jazz music playing, which was now officially approved. We were good dancers. We had to be — my mother was a ballroom dance teacher. She had trained to be an opera singer, but after the Revolution things changed. During the hard years, when my brother and I were born and my father and other artisans had no work, she supported the family by giving lessons in piano, dance and art to a small number of students. Now, as my father’s fortunes had changed, my mother’s had too. As I had read in Pravda: Once, the good life was the realm of the tsars and nobles. Under Comrade Stalin, it is for every man, woman and child to live well. My mother not only gave lessons in ballroom dancing to former working-class couples but also taught them deportment, elocution and music appreciation. Stalin encouraged his people to try new things and to show what bright lives the Soviet people lived, unexploited, outside the capitalist system.

  As Papa and I danced, I noticed Stalin moving between the guests with a glass of cognac in his hand, but his eyes were constantly on me. Or, to be more precise, on my feet. My shoes seemed to bother him. Indeed, they did not go with my lovely dress. They were a pair of black court shoes that I had inherited from my mother and kept for special occasions. We had polished them as best we could but there was no hiding that they were old. Shoes were the most difficult item of all to obtain, even for a family like mine who had access to special stores. Occasionally we would hear a rumour that shoes were available at a certain store, but after lining up for hours we would discover that they were only of a single size or of such poor quality that they would fall apart after one wearing. My brother explained that it had to do with supply and demand and a shortage of raw materials. But when I asked him more about it, my mother had quickly cut us short. ‘Never, never say anything that could be interpreted as a criticism of our state!’ she’d warned.

  Papa and I returned to our table and I was surprised to see Stalin approach us.

  ‘Comrade Azarov,’ he said, ‘I must compliment you on your beautiful young wife.’

  ‘Oh no!’ said my father, becoming flustered again and not realising that Stalin was joking. ‘This is my daughter, Natalya.’

  ‘My mother was ill so I came in her place,’ I told Stalin, repeating the white lie she had instructed me to tell if anyone asked why she hadn’t attended.

  ‘You see, Natalya is a budding pilot,’ added my father. ‘I had to bring her tonight.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Stalin asked, taking the seat Mikoyan had vacated to dance. He stroked his thick moustache and studied my face.

  I remembered my mother’s warning not to say too much, but Stalin’s interest in my ambition got the better of me.

  ‘Yes, Comrade Stalin,’ I said, tucking my feet under my chair so that my shoes wouldn’t distract him again. ‘I hope one day to be one of your eagles and bring great glory to the Soviet Union.’

  Stalin grinned and nodded approvingly to my father.

  ‘She wants to do the parachute jump in Gorky Park every time we go there,’ my father told Stalin. ‘We hope that she can commence glider school next year.’

  ‘Next year?’ Stalin took out some Herzegovina cigarettes, broke off the ends and used the tobacco to fill his pipe.

  ‘She will turn fifteen in December, Comrade Stalin,’ my father explained. ‘But she has to wait until she is sixteen to enrol.’

  ‘She’s only fourteen?’ Stalin raised his eyebrows as he lit his pipe, then inhaled deeply. The air became saturated with the aroma of tobacco. ‘Your daughter seems more mature than that.’

  ‘Indeed, you would think so,’ agreed my father. ‘She has studied every book from the library on aviation.’

  Stalin stared at his pipe as if he were thinking something over. ‘I tell my sons that to improve themselves they must study, study, study,’ he said. ‘I myself am an old man and yet I still try to learn something new every day.’

  I was thrilled to be having a personal conversation with Stalin. I was about to ask him what he liked to study when one of the guards stepped forward and whispered something in his ear.

  Stalin nodded and turned towards us. ‘I must go, but it has been a pleasure to meet you, Natalya. You must make your father proud of you.’

  On the way home in the car, I replayed every word Stalin had spoken. He wasn’t the enigmatic figure of my first impression. He was kind and fatherly, just the way Chkalov had described him, although he was more serious and considered than my own good-humoured father. I was more determined than ever to become one of his esteemed pilots.

  FIVE

  Moscow, 2000

  After the meeting with the advertising agency, Lily worked on a promotional brochure for the hotel’s restaurant. She read the brief from the French chef, in which he waxed lyrical about ‘the scientific study of deliciousness’, and wondered if she should use his term molecular gastronomy to describe his dishes.

  ‘What do you think?’ she asked Colin.

  He swivelled on his chair and looked thoughtful for a moment. ‘Leave it in,’ he said. ‘The Yanks will love it. And if you can get the word gastrophysics in there as well, you’ll get the Germans on side too.’

  Lily wasn’t sure if he was serious, or whether he was still in a bad mood from the morning’s traffic. She’d ask him again later to see if his answer was the same.

  When five o’clock came around, Lily printed off Betty’s e
mail, picked up her bag and headed towards the door. Kate and Richard were discussing a new rooftop sushi bar they wanted to go to that evening with Kate’s fiancé, Rodney, and some other staff friends.

  ‘Would you like to come?’ Richard asked Lily.

  She shook her head. ‘Thanks, but I’ve promised to do something else tonight.’

  Kate grinned. ‘A date? You’re so secretive, Lily!’

  ‘I know,’ agreed Richard, winking at Kate. ‘She’s a woman of mystery!’

  Lily wished them a good time and headed towards the reception area, dodging an American tour group with their trolley loads of Italian-designed suitcases and tote bags. As she stepped out into the street she pondered her colleagues’ perception of her. A woman of mystery! What would they say if they knew what she was really going to do later on?

  When she reached Pushkin Square, Lily looked around for the woman with the dog but couldn’t see her. It was possible what the drunk had said was true and the dog was a ploy to elicit money from people. But Lily thought the woman had sounded desperate.

  She made her way to Tverskoy Boulevard, a park set between two lanes of traffic and bordered by the former mansions of the aristocratic class. The ladies walking their Pomeranians and dachshunds in the dappled shade of the lime trees, and the Versace-clad patrons eating French confectioneries in the newly opened Café Pushkin, added to the fashionable atmosphere. She passed a busker playing a bayan, a Russian piano accordion, and stopped in front of an Empire-style mansion with buttercup-yellow walls and a white colonnade. It wasn’t the grandest building on the boulevard but the arched windows and the pair of heraldic angels on the pediment made it elegant. It was the house where her maternal grandfather, Victor Grigoryevich Kozlov, a colonel in the White Russian Army, had lived before he’d fled to China after the Civil War. Lily sat on one of the park’s wrought-iron benches to admire the home. She pictured her grandfather as a young man coming out of the door with his two sisters to promenade along the boulevard with the other noble families.

  After the Civil War, her grandfather’s family were arrested and never heard from again. The year before Lily arrived in Moscow, the house had been converted into luxury apartments. A real estate agent had shown her around and explained that after the building was requisitioned by the Soviets ‘for the people’, it had been turned into a communal living space. The stained-glass windows were vandalised and the carved oak windowsills ripped out and used for firewood. The property developer had restored the exterior but Lily was disappointed to discover that the apartments inside were ultra-modern with open-plan living spaces, chrome finishes and recessed halogen lights. She had no desire to go inside the building again; she preferred to sit opposite it, close her eyes and imagine herself inhabiting her grandfather’s body. She would stroll into the ballroom with its gilded cornices and life-sized statues before wandering into the library, where she would sit down on a chair with swan-head armrests and gaze in appreciation of the shelves of beautifully bound books and the rare engravings on the walls.

  Lily had never met Victor Grigoryevich or even seen a picture of him — all the family photographs had been destroyed in Harbin after the Second World War, along with the house her grandfather had built there. Her grandmother was not allowed to take anything with her when she was deported back to the Soviet Union, nor her mother, Anya, when she’d fled to Shanghai. Still Lily felt a connection with her grandfather. The first time she had come to see the house, a ripple of joy had run through her. She liked to think that in coming here she was somehow bringing Victor Grigoryevich back home.

  When Lily returned to her apartment, she fed the cats and changed into jeans and sneakers before slumping on the sofa with a cup of tea. Acting upbeat at the office all day drained her. Marketing managers were expected to be ebullient not melancholy. It would be easier to be an accountant, she thought, and hide herself behind budgets and figures rather than talk excitedly about new target markets and consumer perceptions. She finished the tea then picked up a canvas bag that she kept near her front door and went out again.

  While Tverskoy Boulevard had retained much of its historic beauty, the rest of Moscow was transforming into a modern metropolis and not all of it was attractive. In the Zamoskvorechye district, not far from where Lily lived, picturesque pastel houses were being knocked down and replaced by gargantuan blocks of apartments and glass-and-steel office towers. Lily’s mother had a saying: ‘Beauty isn’t everything. It’s much more important than that.’ She wasn’t referring to physical beauty or fashion, but the beauty of nature or of something superbly crafted — the kind of loveliness that had the ability to touch the human soul. The destruction Lily saw around her in Moscow made her wince in the same way she did whenever she visited her parents’ bushland home in Narrabeen and discovered that more ancient gum trees had been chopped down to make way for block-like cement houses and gardens of gravel with spiky plants in ceramic pots.

  She approached a construction site with a billboard at the front advertising a ‘New Moscow Signature Style’ apartment block: a hideous mix of neo-classical and neo-Stalinist styles, complete with neo-medieval — if such a term existed — domes and turrets. She looked at the mint-green house with pale pink trimmings beyond it. The workers had left for the day but the damage from the latest onslaught by their jackhammers made Lily’s heart grieve. Only the outer walls remained now, and with the last swing of the wrecking ball the ancestral home of her maternal grandmother would be gone. Alina had been born in China, where her father was an engineer on the Trans-Siberian railway, so she had never seen the house herself. Lily had discovered it through research of the city records: the house from where Alina’s forebears had transformed themselves from enterprising peasants into successful cotton merchants and later engineers. She gazed over the remains of the wrought-iron fence and the broken fountain and decided this would be the last time she came this way. She said goodbye to the house that had seen so much history but was destined to become another victim of progress.

  It hadn’t been Lily’s intention to visit what was left of the house that evening. Her destination was a few streets away: another construction site where a pre-revolutionary house had been reduced to rubble a few months ago. A planning dispute was delaying the construction of a high-rise apartment building on the site and that had bought its remaining residents some time. Lily glanced over her shoulder to make sure no one from the apartment building opposite was watching, then she quickly scaled the safety fence and scurried across the site to an unoccupied caretaker’s van. She opened her bag and pulled out a can and spoon. Gently tapping on the can, she made soft ‘Tchi! Tchi! Tchi!’ sounds. As if she were a sorcerer summoning the spirits, cats appeared from everywhere — out of drains, from between crevices, from behind piles of rubbish. There were ginger cats, tortoiseshell cats, black cats, striped cats and even some Siamese and Russian Blue cats. They headed towards Lily, who scooped food from the cans she had brought onto paper plates. She took out a bottle of water and refreshed the tray that was hidden under the van.

  When the cat colony had finished eating, Lily picked up the plates and crushed them into a plastic bag she had brought. Oksana had instilled in her the importance of feeding the cats inconspicuously, so as not to attract the attention of any cat haters who might be tempted to poison them. When the building work commenced, the cats would have nowhere to go. Lily was helping Oksana and some other volunteers from Moscow Animals trap the creatures and have them desexed, then tame them and find them homes. But it was only Lily and Oksana who could take the felines into their already crowded apartments, so progress was slow: just a few cats at a time. Meanwhile, four volunteers, including Lily, were on a roster for feeding the wild ones.

  ‘Now, go! Shoo! Hide!’ Lily told the cats as she hoisted her canvas bag over her shoulder.

  She scaled the fence back onto the street and as she dropped to the ground she heard a voice behind her say, ‘You like animals … and you have a kind heart.’


  Lily spun around to find the old woman with the dog standing behind her. ‘And you are a foreigner?’ the woman continued. ‘But you speak Russian with such an elegant accent.’

  ‘My parents are Russian,’ Lily replied. She was about to add that she was from Australia, then questioned the wisdom of revealing anything about herself to a stranger. Her mother had once told her the story of how she had been drugged and robbed by a fortune teller when she’d lived in Shanghai.

  ‘You will take my dog?’ the woman asked. ‘You will take care of her? I knew the moment I saw you that I could trust you.’

  ‘You’ve been watching me?’ Lily asked.

  The woman nodded. ‘Every morning. I didn’t know you spoke Russian till this morning. I had to find someone who could make a sign for me.’

  ‘Didn’t you offer your dog to other people?’

  The woman cradled the dog’s head as lovingly as a mother would protect her child. ‘No, of course not. I am not going to give her to just anybody.’