Sapphire Skies

by Belinda Alexandra

  When Papa saw us, he put down his notebook and took off his glasses. ‘Well, here are the two children that Comrade Stalin has ordered me to be proud of.’

  I ran to my father and hugged him, then he and Alexander embraced. Papa went to the cupboard and pulled out a package wrapped in brown paper.

  ‘Here you are,’ he said, handing it to me. ‘There is something there for both of you.’

  The package felt lumpy. I untied the string and handed it to Alexander to roll up — nothing could be wasted. I gasped in delight when I unwrapped the package and saw a pair of dancing shoes. They were silver satin with d’Orsay-style T-straps and pink roses on the toes. Next to the shoes was a box with a fountain pen in it. I handed it to Alexander, then picked up the shoes and held them to the light. Foreign goods were frowned upon, but how could such beautiful shoes come from anywhere but some exotic faraway place? I pulled off my school shoes and tried on the dancing slippers. They fitted perfectly.

  ‘This is a fine pen,’ said Alexander, admiring the gold nib. ‘I wonder why Comrade Stalin chose this for me.’

  ‘So that you will write to your mother more often,’ said Papa, slapping Alexander’s back jovially before looking at me. ‘The shoes are not all Comrade Stalin sent you, Natasha.’ He reached into his desk drawer and handed me an envelope.

  ‘What’s this?’ I asked, too mesmerised by my beautiful shoes to imagine what else could be in store for me.

  ‘Open it!’

  I slit the envelope open with my finger and saw that it contained a letter signed in red by Comrade Stalin himself. My gaze flew to the sender’s address — the Moscow Osoaviakhim — before scanning the contents. When I understood the letter’s meaning, I jumped so high that I nearly knocked over one of Papa’s flasks and had to quickly steady it.

  ‘What does it say?’ asked Alexander.

  I passed the letter to him and cried, ‘It says I am to be admitted to the local glider school — immediately!’

  On the walk home, I danced around the lampposts and stretched my arms out, pretending I was a glider plane. Stalin had remembered me!

  ‘You really did impress Comrade Stalin,’ said Alexander, his voice bright with pride. ‘Only exceptional children are admitted to glider school at your age. I hope you don’t join the air force and try to outrank me. I’ve worked hard for everything I’ve achieved. You received all the musical talent. Leave protecting the Motherland to me.’

  I linked arms with him and inhaled a breath of the fresh evening air. Suddenly the happiness I had felt drained from me. The government’s encouragement of young people to learn flying and parachuting skills was not purely for fun but to qualify citizens to form a rearguard army.

  ‘Sasha, do you really think there will be a war with the Fascists?’ I asked.

  Alexander looked away. It was obvious that he knew something he didn’t want to tell me. ‘I think Comrade Stalin will do all that he can to avoid it,’ he said finally. ‘But Hitler … well, he is an unknown quantity. The Soviet Union is rich in resources and we have many enemies: Nazi Germany, the Capitalist countries and Japan.’

  ‘If we do go to war,’ I said soberly, ‘I will serve the country much better by knowing how to fly planes than by playing the piano.’

  Alexander stopped and rested his hands on my shoulders. ‘Natasha, war is an ugly thing. The world will desperately need beauty if it does break out. Pretty things like the shoes Comrade Stalin gave you might seem trivial, but look how happy they have made you. Soldiers who are fighting need people who can give them hope.’

  We walked the rest of the way home in silence, lost in our own thoughts. While I understood Alexander’s point about people needing beauty, I thought that if war broke out, the most important thing would be to protect the Soviet way of life. Afterwards we could worry about music and art again.

  When we approached our apartment building I noticed a black van and a dark car parked out the front. There was a commotion taking place on the first floor. I recognised the sound of furniture being dragged around and the contents of drawers being thrown on the floor. I counted the windows to determine whose apartment was being searched. It was Amalya and her husband’s. No, surely not!

  I was about to count the windows again when Alexander grabbed my arm. ‘Quick!’ he said, pushing me into a doorway.

  I didn’t see why we had to hide. We had done nothing wrong. The government was exposing enemies of the people, anyone whose activities were sabotaging the Soviet Union to weaken it in case of war. There had been several arrests in our street. Suddenly the door to the building burst open and Amalya and her husband were marched out by NKVD agents. Amalya’s husband walked with his shoulders slumped and his head down. Amalya was crying. Another woman, a neighbour I had only seen a few times stood in the doorway holding Amalya’s baby. The agents pushed the couple into the van as Amalya struggled for one last look at her son, but the men shoved her back and slammed the door.

  ‘Mind the child tonight,’ one of the agents ordered the woman. ‘The orphanage representative will be here tomorrow to pick him up.’

  The car engines started and the vehicles took off down the street. Alexander waited until they had disappeared from sight before he would let me leave our hiding place. Inside the building everything was quiet. As we passed Amalya’s apartment I saw that a seal had been placed on the door. Who would have thought that lovely Amalya and her husband were enemies of the people? They had seemed so nice.

  Inside our apartment we found Mama and Zoya kneeling in front of the icon of St Sofia that was usually kept hidden in a cupboard. Alexander rushed about shutting all the curtains. ‘Mama! Zoya!’ he said under his breath. ‘You must be more careful. Now more than ever.’

  ‘Only God can help us!’ cried Mama. ‘Don’t you know, Sasha, they are arresting people for nothing now! Amalya and her husband were perfect citizens while we were once “former people”!’

  Alexander pushed me into our small bedroom and told me to read a book before closing the door behind him. I wanted to hear what he, my mother and Zoya were speaking about, but they whispered and I couldn’t make out what they were saying. I assumed Alexander was upset about the icon. Religion was frowned upon but I sometimes took the icon out myself and prayed to it. I saw nothing contradictory in my behaviour. It was religion and the church that were corrupt and oppressed the poor, not God or the saints. I was faithful to the State but I thought my belief in something higher than myself made me a better citizen.

  Since Alexander had returned home on leave, he’d been doing all sorts of strange things. He threw away a pair of binoculars my father used for bird-watching and made my mother get rid of her typewriter. He said anything like that could be used as evidence of spying. Us spies? What NKVD agent would believe that? A chocolatier, his artistic wife and two model children?

  I opened the package Stalin had sent us and lay on the bed with the dancing shoes in my hand. Alexander and I shared the room. A curtain on a rope divided it. His side was orderly with a neatly made bed and a desk with only a notepad and pen on it. My side of the room was another matter. I loved pretty things and I put them on display. Apart from the pictures of Stalin and the aviator heroes and heroines on my wall, my writing table was cluttered with ornaments of birds, frogs and bears. Whenever Mama made me a new dress, I hung it on the outside of my wardrobe so I could admire it. It would stay there until Zoya complained of the dust collecting on it and told me to put it away.

  I ran my fingers over the satin material of the shoes, then hung them on my bedpost by their straps so that I would be able to see them first thing in the morning and last thing at night.

  Out in the living room I heard Alexander say ‘Papa’ but then he lowered his voice again.

  Mama had said that the NKVD was arresting people for nothing now, but that couldn’t be true. Stalin would not let that happen.

  I thought of Amalya and wondered what sinister secret had lurked behind those shining eyes. Did sh
e and her husband spread subversive material or make contact with foreign agents? I folded my arms under my head and admired my shoes again before turning to stare at the ceiling. The memory of Amalya’s stricken face intruded. But I squeezed my eyes shut to make the image go away.

  No, Amalya and her husband were guilty for sure. After all, bad things only happened to bad people.

  EIGHT

  Moscow, 2000

  Lily watched the television with the sound turned low. Images of the atrocity of the previous evening flashed across the screen: bleeding people covered in soot; paramedics working flat out. Seven people had been killed. Sixty people were in hospital, many of them seriously injured. ‘I saw a young woman die before my eyes,’ one eyewitness told a journalist. ‘She was horrifically burned and crying. The medics didn’t reach her in time.’

  Nobody had claimed responsibility for the explosion but everyone blamed the Chechens. The bombings of the apartment buildings in Moscow and other cities the previous September were fresh in everyone’s memories. Although there were conspiracy theories about the attacks, most people believed that the Chechens had been involved and so had supported the Russian Federation’s second war on Chechnya. Lily rubbed her eyes. She hadn’t slept and was still wearing her clothes from the day before. She’d returned home to five increasingly desperate messages from her mother on her answering machine. She had called her parents and spoken with them for over an hour in order to reassure them that the city officials were responding quickly to the crisis, and that the bomb hadn’t been directed at foreigners.

  There was also a message from Betty. Lily called the bank where her friend worked in human resources and Betty stepped out of an interview to speak to her. They could only talk briefly but Lily was grateful to have people who cared about her.

  Her eyes drifted to the bedroom where the old lady was asleep with Laika by her side. Why wasn’t there anyone to care about her? She still refused to give Lily her name so Lily had started referring to her as Babushka, grandmother.

  She hadn’t told her parents or Betty about Babushka. If Betty thought Lily was crazy for rescuing stray cats, what would she have said about her taking in a stranger and her dog? But after witnessing the horror that human beings could inflict on one another, Lily had been overcome by a desire to reach out to someone. Babushka was shocked and confused and needed care. Giving her shelter made Lily feel as if she was doing something to counteract a situation that made no sense.

  There was a knock on the door. It was Oksana. Lily had gone to see her the previous night, after putting Babushka to bed, to tell her what had happened.

  ‘Is she still asleep?’ Oksana asked, carrying a bag of groceries into the kitchen.

  ‘She hasn’t stirred at all,’ Lily told her.

  ‘Poor thing,’ said Oksana, pulling out a packet of roasted buckwheat and rummaging around in Lily’s cupboards for a saucepan. ‘And poor you.’

  Lily shrugged. Compared to what other people were suffering today, she didn’t feel she had a right to complain.

  ‘The cats are calm, I see,’ said Oksana, indicating Pushkin, Max and Georgy, who were asleep on the windowsill. Mamochka was in her usual place under the telephone table. ‘They haven’t reacted to having a dog in the house?’

  ‘Not so far,’ Lily said.

  ‘Strays are like that,’ said Oksana, pouring the buckwheat into a saucepan of boiling water. ‘They are accommodating. When we had those floods last year, I drove around Moscow and picked up anything that was still alive. Although my jeep was soon full of dogs and cats, there wasn’t one hiss, snarl or spit.’

  ‘They were probably grateful,’ said Lily.

  Oksana touched Lily’s cheek in a motherly way. ‘Antonia is coming over to look after Babushka this morning, and then I will keep an eye on her until you get back. Are you still okay to pick up Aphrodite and Artemis this evening? If you don’t feel like it, say so.’

  Lily did feel like it. She had an urge to do things, including going to work today. Anything to get those awful images out of her head. She dreaded taking the metro but she knew that if she didn’t get back into normal routine as soon as possible, fear would take hold of her. ‘Lightning doesn’t strike the same place twice,’ she’d told her parents the night before, and the Moscow Metro and streets would be full of police, federal agents and soldiers now.

  While Oksana made the buckwheat kasha, Lily showered and dressed. She reached up to apply her mascara and realised her hand was trembling.

  Oksana had left some kasha for Babushka when she woke up. She and Lily sat on the sofa to eat theirs and watched the news. Lily had a hollow feeling in her stomach and what she was seeing on the screen ruined her appetite. She thought that perhaps she should change the channel, but she couldn’t make herself do so. Somehow she needed to watch the story again and again, to analyse every nuance with the rest of the anxious population. According to eyewitnesses, two men had left a briefcase, which was believed to have contained the bomb, outside the kiosk that sold theatre tickets. ‘We are a country at war and we must act like a country at war,’ one city official stated. ‘Muscovites must be vigilant now. They must watch their neighbours and report anything suspicious.’

  Lily shivered. The menace of the Cold War had dissipated with the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Was this a new type of war?

  The television announcer said that the city blood centres needed more donors to help the victims. Lily saw another opportunity to take action.

  ‘Do you mind waiting here until Antonia arrives?’ she asked Oksana. ‘I want to go and give blood.’

  She rang Scott to tell him that she would be late. His voicemail activated and she left a message. On her way down the stairs, she saw her Chechen neighbour, Dagmara, disappear into her apartment and close the door behind her. Dagmara had been evicted from her previous apartment by her landlord after the apartment bombings. Oksana had been one of the few Russians prepared to rent her accommodation.

  ‘The problem with terrorists is they act as if they represent the entire nation when they don’t,’ Oksana had said. ‘They don’t care about the consequences for all the innocent citizens when they provoke another nation to war with them.’

  Dagmara must be terrified of the reprisals that would result from this latest atrocity, Lily thought.

  The line of people waiting to give blood extended out of the hospital and down the street. Lily was glad to stand with Muscovites in solidarity against violence but it was going to be a long wait. After she’d queued for an hour, a nurse came out and told everyone that the hospital had as many donors as it could handle and if more blood was needed they would put out another call on the news broadcast. Lily had no choice then but to leave.

  When she came out of the metro and headed towards the Tverskaya underpass the first thing she saw was a city worker washing blood off the tiles. The air was still acrid with the smell of smoke and electrical wires dangled from the tunnel’s blackened ceiling. She braced herself to pass the places where people had died or been so badly injured that their lives were now irrevocably changed. As she had suspected, there were police with dogs everywhere. She kept her passport ready in case anyone demanded it.

  The kiosks were cordoned off, but the vendors had been allowed to return to see what they could salvage in the piles of crooked metal, shattered glass, pieces of CDs and bits of clothing.

  The bomb crater had been turned into a makeshift shrine with bouquets of flowers, icons and candles. Lily stood with the others who had gathered there to say a silent prayer. She now saw how lucky Babushka, Laika and the flower vendor had been. It was only because they were near the stairs that they had escaped serious injury.

  The atmosphere at the hotel was subdued. The bellhops spoke in hushed tones to each other and it seemed to Lily that the front desk staff looked at her in a peculiar way. Lack of sleep had left her feeling fragile and she was aware of her rushed blow-dry and hurried make-up, but that didn’t seem enough to warrant furtiv
e glances.

  Although it was already eleven o’clock she was surprised to find the sales-and-marketing department empty except for Scott, who was in his office, and Mary, who was staring at her computer screen. Scott stood up when he saw Lily. She thought he was about to announce his affirmation of the week — ‘The positive advantage is always mine’ — and desperately tried to recall her own.

  ‘Did you get my message?’ she asked, hoping to divert the conversation to something else. ‘I went to give blood this morning.’

  He didn’t seem to register that she’d spoken. ‘I’ve told the others to go home,’ he said. ‘Mary’s cancelling some meetings and then she’s going home too. Colin has gone to guest relations to see if there’s anything we can do to help Rodney.’

  ‘Help Rodney?’ Lily asked.

  Something wasn’t right. Hotel departments didn’t send people home because of city disasters unless … her mind started to churn in an odd slow-motion way … unless they were somehow affected. She looked at her colleagues’ desks. She knew that Colin and Mary were in the office. A full cup of takeaway coffee sat next to Richard’s computer; he must have come in during the morning at some time even if he wasn’t here now. Her gaze moved to Kate’s desk with its display of family photographs and the swatches of bridal lace pinned to her memo board. She suddenly saw a vision of Kate in her silver dress and remembered her words the afternoon before: ‘I’m lining up for theatre tickets. It’s Rodney’s birthday next month and I want to take him to see The Seagull.’