Sapphire Skies

by Belinda Alexandra

  When the pelmeni were ready for cooking, she took three plates out of the cupboard and then set knives and forks on the dining table. Poor Rodney, she thought. He’d been so devastated by Kate’s death that he’d returned to England, asking friends to close his affairs in Russia. He’d said he never wanted to return to the country that had given him many happy memories and then wiped them out with one horrific blow. Lily folded the serviettes. She knew that everyone expected Rodney, who was only twenty-six, to eventually find love again. She stopped mid-action when she remembered what Adam’s mother had said to her at the funeral. ‘You’ll get on with your life, and in a year or two you’ll meet someone else. But for our family, the grief will last forever.’

  Shirley had been like a second mother to Lily, and together they’d tended to Adam through his illness. But after his death, Shirley couldn’t bear the sight of her. It had been crushing to be thrust so coldly from Adam’s family when she’d needed them most.

  ‘Mrrr!’ Lily looked down to see Mamochka sitting at her feet. This was the closest the cat had come to her.

  Since they’d moved into Yulian’s more spacious apartment, Mamochka had stopped hiding but she still didn’t let anyone touch her. Now, she stretched out her paw towards Lily’s foot. Lily reached down so Mamochka could sniff her fingers.

  ‘Good girl,’ she said. She knew it was a courageous step for Mamochka and didn’t try to pat her. Trust had to be earned slowly.

  Lily glanced towards the bedroom, where Babushka was resting on the bed with Laika. With the extra guests, Lily was glad that Oksana had let her use Yulian’s vacated apartment. Like her own apartment, it was decorated in Russian froufrou style, with teal damask wallpaper and white laminated furniture, but the living room was four times bigger and had a sofa long enough for Lily to stretch out on when she slept on it.

  ‘I have some raw beef for Laika,’ Lily said to Babushka, placing the plate under the bedroom window, next to Laika’s water bowl. ‘Oksana is going to join us for dinner. She is so busy caring for sick kittens that she doesn’t have time to cook for herself.’

  Laika jumped down off the bed to eat her food. Babushka stared at the wall as if she hadn’t heard anything Lily had said. Babushka was often lost in her own world, Lily had noticed. Was it simply age or something else?

  There was a knock at the door. Lily assumed it was Oksana and was surprised to find Luka the vet standing in the hallway, casually dressed in a black T-shirt and jeans.

  ‘Hi,’ he said, ‘I have some medications for Oksana’s cats. She was in the middle of syringe-feeding a kitten and couldn’t open the door so she asked me to leave them with you.’

  Lily was so taken aback to see him that she took the package of medicine without saying anything.

  Luka glanced at the table. ‘You’re about to have dinner. I won’t keep you.’

  It was bad manners in Lily’s family not to offer food to someone who turned up at a mealtime. Although she hadn’t been expecting extra company, she had to ask. ‘Would you like to stay? I’ve made plenty of pelmeni.’

  Before he could answer, Oksana appeared out of the elevator carrying a bottle of wine.

  ‘How’s the kitten?’ Luka asked her.

  ‘She ate well. She’s asleep on a heat pad now. Thank you for not charging me for Artemis and Aphrodite, by the way.’

  ‘My pleasure. You can put the money towards feeding the colony cats instead.’ He turned back to Lily. ‘Thank you for the invitation to join you for dinner, but I’m vegetarian and I don’t want to impose.’

  ‘You could never impose, darling,’ Oksana told him, ushering him inside, ‘and besides, Lily makes her pelmeni with mushrooms.’

  Lily helped Babushka to the table and left Oksana to introduce Luka to her while she went to the kitchen to boil water for the pelmeni.

  ‘She’s a dear friend of the family,’ she heard Oksana telling Luka. ‘Lily has kindly lent her room, as I have no space in my apartment.’

  Lily placed the pelmeni in the water. Oksana was sharp. She’d given an explanation that wouldn’t raise too many questions.

  Lily returned to the dining table and put out the wine glasses. ‘But don’t you find it creepy — hunting for the dead?’ Oksana was asking Luka.

  ‘Not at all,’ he replied. ‘My grandfather never came back from the war and my grandmother went to her grave still hoping he would return. I wasn’t able to find out what happened to him, but after one dig I was able to give a man the control column of the plane his father had been flying when he was shot down in 1942. The man wept. “My father held this,” he said. He thanked me for giving him a connection to the man who had died before he was born.’

  ‘Your relic hunting is healing work then,’ said Oksana, pouring everyone a glass of wine. ‘You bring comfort to other human beings. It’s no coincidence that your parents named you after the beloved physician in the Bible.’

  Lily returned to the kitchen and dished out the pelmeni before adding dill and sour cream.

  ‘Mmm, smells good!’ said Luka when she placed his serving before him.

  ‘Your uncle tells me that you are an excellent cook,’ Oksana said.

  Luka shrugged. ‘He exaggerates, but I’ve learned a few things from my mother who is indeed a very good cook.’

  Babushka picked up her fork. Lily was surprised when Luka stood to push the old woman’s chair closer to the table. In Lily’s experience, men with his exceptional good looks were often insensitive to others but Luka seemed the opposite.

  Lily took her seat at the table. ‘Can you salsa dance?’ Oksana asked her. ‘Luka goes out salsa dancing with friends a few times a week. You should go too.’

  Lily looked at Oksana askance. She should know that Lily wasn’t ready to go out dancing with attractive men.

  ‘You only need the basic steps to enjoy yourself,’ Luka said. ‘It’s up to the guy to do the rest. I can teach you.’

  Lily smiled awkwardly. She’d gone to salsa lessons with Betty because Adam had thought that Latin dancing was ‘too girly’ for him. Now, the idea of lively South American music and people dressed in skimpy clothes didn’t appeal to her.

  Babushka put down her fork and turned to Lily. ‘When he paid you attention, it was like the light in heaven was shining on you,’ she said. ‘But when he turned cold, you were truly in the dark.’

  Lily waited for her to say something more, but her expression went blank again and she turned back to her food. Lily glanced at Oksana.

  ‘Babushka gets a little confused sometimes,’ Oksana whispered to Luka. In a louder voice she asked him, ‘And how are Valentino and Versace doing?’

  Lily was relieved that the interruption had taken everyone’s minds off the salsa dancing.

  ‘Oh, they’re great!’ replied Luka. ‘They zigzag, step over, roulette and drag their toy balls like professional soccer players.’

  ‘Who are Valentino and Versace?’ asked Lily.

  ‘Luka’s cats,’ replied Oksana.

  When everyone had finished eating, Lily collected the empty plates from the table to take to the kitchen. Something dawned on her and she stopped short at the sink. Of course! Now everything made sense about Luka: the snappy dress sense; the dancing; the cooking; two cats named Valentino and Versace. He was gay! Oksana wasn’t being insensitive at all. She was simply trying to get Lily to go out with people her own age.

  Luka appeared in the kitchen doorway. ‘I’m sorry that I have to leave so early,’ he said. ‘I’m giving a lecture tomorrow and I need to finalise my presentation.’

  ‘Let me show you out,’ said Lily, appraising him with new eyes. Of course! He was too perfect in every way to be straight.

  ‘So would you like to come salsa dancing next week?’ he asked, stepping out into the corridor. ‘I can pick you up Thursday night at seven?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Lily. The invitation wasn’t threatening now that she realised Luka wasn’t interested in women. After all the generous help he wa
s giving Oksana, she didn’t want to come across as unfriendly. She waved as he disappeared into the elevator.

  ‘Do you mind if I turn the television on?’ Oksana asked after Lily shut the door. ‘There’s going to be something about the court case regarding the site in Zamoskvorechye. If it gets the go-ahead we’ll have to somehow get those cats out of there sooner.’

  ‘Of course,’ replied Lily.

  She washed and dried the dinner plates, put them back in the cupboard, then turned the kettle on to boil. The sound of the evening news program came on as she made tea and arranged dried fruit and nuts on a plate. Then the volume faded. Lily placed a cup of tea in front of Babushka and went to help Oksana with the controls.

  ‘The sound goes in and out sometimes,’ she said. ‘There must be a loose wire. It’ll come back in a moment.’

  The sound returned a second later and an image Lily recognised appeared on the screen. It was the black-and-white photograph of the female fighter pilot she’d read about in the Moscow Times, the one whose plane had been recovered.

  ‘The Kremlin announced today that the body found in a village in Orël Oblast is in fact that of missing war heroine Natalya Azarova,’ said the newsreader. ‘Since the pilot went missing in 1943, controversy has surrounded her disappearance.’

  The image changed to that of a middle-aged man in a beige jacket with the words Ilya Kondakov: Airplane Archaeologist highlighted on the lower part of the screen. Next to him stood a distinguished-looking gentleman in a military uniform with rows of medals on his chest.

  ‘The dedication and persistence of General Valentin Orlov in searching for Azarova’s plane and body is recognised today. It is thanks to his faith in the loyalty of his wingman that her name will now be cleared and her remains given a dignified burial.’ The camera returned to the newsreader. ‘According to the Kremlin’s findings, after surviving a parachute jump from her damaged plane, Natalya Azarova was shot from behind at close range, which was a common military execution method at the time. However, German officials maintain that they have no record of Natalya Azarova ever being captured or executed. The commanding officer of the German air regiment stationed in the area at the time was killed in July 1943 when he was shot down by General Orlov. Therefore, while her plane and the body have now been recovered, who killed Natalya Azarova remains a mystery.’

  Lily and Oksana were startled by the sound of china smashing. They turned towards the dining table. Babushka had risen from her chair, her face deathly white. Her teacup and saucer were in pieces on the floor.

  ‘Oh God,’ cried Lily, rushing towards her. She was certain the old woman was having a heart attack. ‘Call Doctor Pesenko,’ she said to Oksana. ‘And get an aspirin from the bathroom.’

  Lily attempted to get the old woman to lie down. But Babushka pushed her away with more strength than she expected.

  ‘No, wait,’ Lily said to Oksana. ‘She’s only weeping.’

  Babushka dropped to her knees and tears poured from her eyes. ‘Never make promises to each other, that’s what everybody said. But we thought we were invincible.’ She wept harder.

  Oksana crouched beside her and held her by the shoulders. ‘Listen!’ she said, in the same gentle but firm tone she used with misbehaving cats. ‘We’ve had enough of this game. Do you understand that you are very sick and that this young woman,’ she indicated Lily, ‘has taken you, a stranger, into her home? We want to help you, but you’re going to have to give us your name. You need to tell us what happened to you. That would be the decent way to treat us after all we’ve been doing for you — and for Laika.’

  The woman’s weeping grew softer. Her mouth twitched as if she was trying to remember a word she hadn’t spoken for years. She looked from Oksana to Lily.

  ‘My name is Svetlana Petrovna Novikova,’ she said finally. ‘I was Natalya Azarova’s mechanic during the war. I know exactly how she died.’

  FOURTEEN

  Moscow, 1939

  My audition for the Moscow Conservatory went splendidly. I sang the ‘Letter Aria’ from Eugene Onegin, which was long and demanding, and some classical Russian songs. But afterwards I was called into the administrator’s office to face a hostile board of examiners.

  ‘Why have you wasted our time?’ asked the chief examiner. He tossed Bronislava Ivanovna’s letter of recommendation across the table. ‘Your father was an enemy of the people,’ he said. ‘There are no places here for the children of scum.’

  I wanted to reply that Comrade Stalin himself had said that the son does not pay for the sins of the father, but as Papa had been innocent I simply stood up and left.

  It was humiliating that I, who loved the Soviet Union so much, should be regarded with suspicion and disgust. The time since my father’s death had changed me. I was no longer the frivolous girl I had been at fifteen. The only way to claw my way back into society was to transform myself into the brightest citizen of all.

  I applied for jobs at the steelworks and at the porcelain factory to improve my proletarian credentials but was rejected by both of them. I refused to give up. I heard that the Moscow aircraft factory was hiring workers. This time when I filled in the application and reached the section that asked applicants to declare if any relatives had been arrested for crimes against the State, I left the space blank. To my amazement, I was given a job as a riveting machine operator.

  ‘Here comes the factory beauty,’ Roman, the foreman, said one morning after I had been working at the factory for a week. ‘I’ve never seen anyone look so fetching in overalls.’

  Roman was in his twenties with blond hair and blond eyebrows. He even had blond hair on his chest and arms. I had noticed that several of the girls at the factory had eyes for him. I smiled flirtatiously and said, ‘Thank you, Roman.’

  I may have become serious in my mood but my appearance was more important to me than ever. It wasn’t childish vanity or a desire to emulate Valentina Serova that made me pay attention to my grooming any more. It was a form of defence. With my hair bleached, my face powdered and my lips rouged, I could hide behind a powerful mask of womanhood. Pravda had said that the perfect Soviet woman was not only strong physically and mentally, but was feminine and attractive. If that was the ideal Soviet woman, I was determined to be her.

  ‘Slut!’ muttered Lyuba, who assembled engines, when I passed her.

  Did Lyuba think that her greasy hair and dull skin made her a good Communist? Lenin might have agreed, but Stalin didn’t. He had given a directive that good citizens should pay attention to their personal appearance and hygiene.

  My mother and brother also refused to be crushed by our loss of status. Alexander became a plasterer and tiler for the new stations that were being built in the metro. He left for work each morning at four o’clock in his overalls and workers’ boots. My mother obtained a position with the Moscow City Committee of Artists. The committee produced portraits of the Soviet leaders, which were hung in factories and offices and were also used as banners for parades. After Stalin told the committee leader that he liked the portraits my mother painted of him — she always gave him a benevolent expression and a divine aura — Mama was made a specialist in portraits of Stalin. She saw it as nothing but chance, but I was convinced that Stalin knew the artist was my mother. Because it was too late to save my father, demanding that his portraits be painted by her was his way of helping us. When I told Mama this, she quickly changed the subject. She was too humble to believe that she had been singled out for special attention. But I recalled the regard with which Stalin had treated Papa at the reception at the Kremlin Palace, and I knew it was true.

  Thanks to the incomes we were earning, Zoya was able to continue to line up for food and other goods for us.

  What crushed me was not being able to fly. As I riveted the inner wing assemblies of planes, I thought about the aviators who would operate them. The previous year, my heroine Marina Raskova, along with Polina Osipenko and Valentina Grizodubova, had broken another long-dis
tance record when they flew from Moscow to Komsomolsk in the Far East. Stalin had awarded each of them with the Hero of the Soviet Union. They were the first women to receive the honour. How I longed to win such an accolade too. I imagined Stalin pinning the medal on me and how I would tell him that I still had the dancing shoes and sapphire brooch that he had given me.

  My disappointment intensified when I saw a book poking out of Roman’s bag one morning when he arrived for work. ‘What’s that?’ I asked.

  Roman gave me his usual bright smile. ‘It’s an instruction manual for parachute jumping. The factory has an aero club affiliated with it. You should join.’

  My heart sank. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Roman. ‘You look fit to me.’

  To join a club associated with the factory, especially a paramilitary one, I had to be a Komsomol member. The Komsomol was the youth division of the Communist Party. It wasn’t compulsory to join, but anyone serious about being a good Soviet citizen and getting ahead became a member. As the child of an enemy of the people, the only way for me to become a member was to publicly denounce my father. Mama had once told me that I should condemn my father in order to enjoy the advantages of Komsomol membership. ‘Natashka,’ she had said, weeping, ‘Papa would have understood. He is gone but you must survive. No, not only survive, you must thrive. Just because you criticise him with your words doesn’t mean you deny him in your heart.’ But no matter how strong my desire to succeed, I couldn’t betray my father.

  ‘You aren’t afraid, are you, Natasha?’ Roman teased.

  I couldn’t tell him that my reason for not joining was because I had lied — or least omitted the information — about my father on my work application form.

  ‘Yes, I’m scared of heights,’ I said.

  ‘Bullshit!’ Roman brought his face close to mine. ‘I know why you can’t join. You don’t want to denounce a relative. Is that right?’