Sapphire Skies

by Belinda Alexandra

  ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘I want to talk to you.’

  His voice surprised me. It was rough but not uneducated. From his appearance the most I’d have expected from him was a grunt.

  ‘I want to talk to you,’ he repeated. ‘Not now because I have to get back. But sometime.’

  I was struck dumb. A polite request for a conversation wasn’t what I’d been anticipating. Nikita nodded as if we’d made a firm agreement, then he released my arm and strode off towards the camp.

  Although cutting my hair seemed to protect me from unwanted attention, I still kept up my guard. The criminals assaulted old women and men too; they even raped each other. But there was a greater threat to our survival up here in the Arctic: winter.

  ‘Come on, what’s the temperature?’ we pestered the prisoner whose duty it was to check the thermometer.

  It was four o’clock in the morning and we were assembled in the snowy yard waiting for roll call to commence. We jumped up and down and slapped our arms and legs. The clothing we’d been issued was inadequate for the climate. The chill tore through my padded jacket and I had no warm scarf to protect my head. I rubbed my face and ears to prevent frostbite. A woman in my barracks had lost her nose that week: it had come off in her hand. The image of it wouldn’t leave my mind and I was frightened that the same thing would happen to me.

  ‘It’s only minus forty,’ the prisoner reported.

  We let out a collective moan. Work wasn’t called off until the temperature fell to below minus 45 degrees Celsius.

  The roll was called and we walked off to our worksite. I slipped in the snow and pulled myself up quickly; not because I was afraid of the guards but because I didn’t want to freeze. The cold and starvation were the real threats now. The food we were given wasn’t enough to sustain us and the soup poured into our bowls for our daytime meals often froze before we could eat it.

  One evening, Agrafena was chewing a piece of bread when she winced and touched her mouth. Blood ran down her hand. Our eyes met. A bleeding mouth was the first sign of scurvy. Over the next few weeks, I watched Agrafena decline. Her skin broke out in boils and she suffered constantly from diarrhoea.

  ‘You must go to the hospital,’ I told her.

  Agrafena worked in the camp laundry. I only saw her at night because those who worked in the camp didn’t have to get up as early as the lumber gangs did. The following morning I helped Agrafena to rise at the same time as me and took her to the hospital. The staff were only allowed to admit two patients a day so getting there first was important. But when I returned in the evening I found Agrafena lying in her bunk.

  ‘They said I wasn’t sick enough to be exempted from work,’ she told me. ‘I don’t have a fever.’

  I looked at her pale face and the suppurating sores on her neck. How sick did she need to become before they’d put her on anti-scurvy rations? She needed vitamin supplements, or at least carrots and turnips. If I didn’t do something to help her, Agrafena would die. While working in the forest I searched for berries or mushrooms to feed her, but everything lay under a thick layer of snow. Then one evening when I was walking back to the camp, I saw Nikita striding through the snow ahead of me. He was wearing military boots, a scarf and padded gloves. Of course, criminals knew how to get everything. I quickened my pace to catch up with him.

  ‘Nikita!’

  He turned and glared at me with wild eyes. I took a step back, frightened. ‘What?’ he growled, showing no recollection of our last conversation.

  ‘You wanted to talk to me?’

  ‘What is it you want?’

  There was no small talk in Nikita’s world. I got straight to my point. ‘Do you know how I can get some supplements? My friend has scurvy. They won’t take her into the hospital. They say she’s not sick enough!’

  Nikita’s lips curled into what looked like an unpleasant smirk. I’d been foolish to approach such a dangerous man in the forest alone.

  ‘Yes, I can get those supplements for you,’ he said. ‘Everyone who works at the hospital owes me something.’

  Part of me was relieved but I was also aware of what he would expect in return. When I’d first come to the camp the idea of trading my body was unthinkable, but desperation changed everything. I looked at him, not sure how to proceed.

  ‘I have syphilis,’ he said.

  The blood drained from my face. In order to save Agrafena I had given myself a death sentence.

  ‘I don’t expect anything from you,’ he said. ‘I only want to know what you did before the war.’

  I was surprised at the request. ‘Why?’

  ‘In my barracks we gamble on what the political prisoners did before they were arrested, then we bribe a guard to confirm who’s right. I’m famous for never being wrong.’

  My toes were turning numb from the cold but I had to hear what Nikita was going to say. I guessed criminals were good at being able to read people so they could swindle them.

  ‘According to your records you were a medical student,’ he continued. ‘There’s no way that’s right. So either you altered your records or the government did. Which one?’

  My breath froze in my throat. ‘What do you think?’

  Nikita grinned. It was the first time that I’d seen his teeth; except for the two front ones, all of them were gold. ‘Definitely not a medical student. If you were a student, you’d look at things like a short-sighted person does because you were used to staring at books and notes. But you’ve got a deliberate way of walking and you squint at the horizon a certain way. My guess is that you were a pilot.’

  I couldn’t believe it. Either Nikita was a genius at reading people or this was a trick and he’d found out who I was some other way.

  ‘I can’t say,’ I told him. ‘It could cost my life.’

  He nodded. ‘You don’t have to. I can see I was right. Come on, let me carry you back to the camp. You’re turning blue.’

  He bent to allow me to climb onto his back. His torso was so wide that my legs barely made it around him. When we reached the camp he walked straight past the guards with me still on his back and they said nothing.

  He put me down and grinned at me again. ‘Let everyone know that you are with me. That way the other men will leave you alone.’

  The piggyback ride brought back memories of my brother, Alexander. ‘I would make a terrible criminal,’ I said to him. ‘I didn’t read you correctly at all.’

  A few nights later, one of the female criminals slipped a bottle of powder into my hand while we were lining up to get our soup. ‘It’s from Nikita,’ she said.

  I looked around for Agrafena but she wasn’t in the meal hut. I quickly finished my supper and headed back to our barracks. I found her in her bunk, struggling to breathe. I mixed the powder Nikita had sent me with some water and held it to her chapped lips.

  She shook her head. ‘It’s too late for me. You take it. Save yourself.’

  I wrapped my arm around her to keep her warm, but it caused her pain so instead I put the pieces of sacking I used as an extra blanket on top of her. Agrafena’s eyes were dimming; she wouldn’t last until the morning. How had this happened? How had the clever university professor become one of the dokhodyagi? I knew the answer to that. But I would never understand why.

  Agrafena turned her face to me. ‘Would you like to hear it?’ she asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The joke I told about Stalin.’

  I nestled closer to her. ‘All right.’

  She smiled. ‘Stalin is dying and isn’t sure if he wants to go to heaven or hell. He is given a tour of each. In heaven he sees people playing harps and singing. In hell he sees people eating, drinking and dancing. Stalin opts for hell. When he dies, he is led through a labyrinth and into a great hall where people are being burned on stakes and lowered into boiling cauldrons. Two of the Devil’s henchmen grab him and drag him towards some hot coals. Stalin protests, “But on the tour, I was shown people enjoying themselves!” “Tha
t,” replies the Devil, “was just propaganda!”’

  Agrafena died in the early hours of the morning. Her uniform and underwear were too soiled and threadbare now for even the most desperate criminal to scavenge. But she had bequeathed me her mittens. They were in better condition than mine but I didn’t wear them. I kept them hidden inside my mattress: something to remember her by.

  Winter in the Arctic Circle lasts nine months. As time wore on I could no longer make my norm and the reduced food ration was further draining my strength. Our gang lost three prisoners in one week. Two of them dropped dead where they stood in the forest. The third walked towards the forbidden zone of the camp despite the warnings of the guards. He was shot. There were no prisoners strong enough to replace those we had lost and the camp commandant accused the brigadier of sabotage by not taking care of his team. Now the whole gang had a group norm to fulfil, including the brigadier and Katya.

  The brigadier hated me now and often beat me. ‘Work, you lazy slut! Or we’ll all suffer!’

  One day, when I was sawing the branches off a tree and shivering violently from the wind chill, my saw slipped from my hand. I reached to pick it up but I couldn’t bend. The muscles in my legs stopped trembling and my arms and shoulders stiffened. My hand was a claw and when I tried to move my fingers they wouldn’t straighten. My breath echoed in my head. I felt like a clock that was winding down. I’m freezing to death, I thought.

  I struggled against it and tried again to reach for the saw. Failing that, I strained to call for help but I had no voice. Exhaustion overcame me and I collapsed backwards into the snow. At first I was terrified. I wasn’t supposed to die: Valentin and Mama were waiting for me. But then a sense of peace came over me. I accepted my fate. I had done all I could to survive, but Kolyma had won, as the major who had interrogated me had said it would. As the last vestiges of heat left my body, I felt myself lighten as if I were about to float away.

  ‘Get up, bitch!’

  Something sharp hit me in the side but I didn’t feel any pain. The brigadier’s red face came close to mine. He was screaming. ‘Get up, you lazy bitch! Get up!’ He pulled me up by my coat, shook me and slapped my face. But as soon as he let me go, I fell back into the snow.

  I gazed up at the trees. I’m sorry, I told them. You are so beautiful. I had no right to kill you.

  I heard Katya laugh and smelled vodka on her breath when she bent down to look at me. ‘Let’s see how long it takes you to die, hey? Don’t linger now, you piece of shit!’

  She looked warm in a deerskin coat and high boots, impervious to the cold that was killing me.

  ‘Let’s take her clothes,’ she said to the brigadier. ‘She’ll die quicker that way.’

  ‘No!’ said the brigadier. ‘I’ve lost too many prisoners to the cold. We’ll make it look like the tree fell on her.’ Even though our lack of food and adequate clothing was not his responsibility, he was supposed to notice if one of his charges was freezing to death.

  From the corner of my eye I saw the brigadier move a short distance away from me. Then he ran towards me, leaped into the air and landed with his two feet on my chest. My heart stopped for a second and pain shot through every part of my body. Inwardly I was writhing in agony but I couldn’t move.

  The brigadier stepped back, ready to jump on my chest again. I closed my eyes. Why couldn’t he let me die in peace? But this time I heard shouting and blows. Suddenly my body was lifted from the snow. Somebody had picked me up, but who? I tried to open my eyes but I couldn’t.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Kolyma, 1946

  No one expected someone who had suffered a crushed chest as well as hypothermia and malnutrition to survive. My death certificate was filled out in the hospital file; all it required was the doctor’s signature and date and time of death. But while patients with lesser injuries died around me, I didn’t. When Doctor Polyakova, who had examined me when I first arrived in Kolyma, ordered me to be moved to the side of the ward where the patients who were expected to recover were situated, I asked her who had plucked me from the snow when I’d lost consciousness.

  ‘Another prisoner,’ she replied. ‘He’s been dropping off bread and sugar for you, but as you haven’t been able to eat it I’ve been giving it to the other patients.’

  It was Nikita who had saved me. A few days later, he came to see me and handed me two books: Anna Karenina and War and Peace by Tolstoy. The books were stolen, of course, probably from another prisoner. He pulled up a stool and sat beside me, staring at my face intently. The nurse gave him a disapproving look but said nothing.

  ‘You know, you look how I imagine my little sister would if she’d reached your age.’

  Now I understood the true reason for his interest in me.

  ‘What happened to her?’ I asked him.

  ‘She died of typhoid fever.’

  Nikita’s rough outer appearance did not reflect the inner man at all. I sensed he was struggling to reconcile some pain in himself.

  ‘Was it during the famine?’ I asked, wondering if he had come from a peasant family.

  Nikita shook his head. ‘No. My family was well off. My father was an engineer. He was arrested as a saboteur in 1929 and executed. My mother was thrown into prison and my sister and I were sent to an orphanage. That’s where she died.’

  We had more in common than I’d realised. ‘Did your mother survive?’ I asked him.

  Nikita knotted his fingers and stared at his hands. ‘Every day I waited for my mother to come and collect me. While the other children played, I sat by the gate watching for her. One of the women in the orphanage realised what I was doing and told me, “Your mother is an enemy of the people! You must forget her. If she comes back for you, you must chase her away and tell her that you won’t go with her.” Every day that bitch said the same thing to me. She brainwashed me. A year later, my mother did come back. She wasn’t young and pretty any more. She was thin with lines on her face. But she smiled at me with the same expression of love as always. “I’ve come to take you home, my darling,” she said. There were tears in her eyes. She must have known about my sister. “No!” I screamed, picking up a rock and throwing it at her. “I won’t go with you! I hate you! You’re an enemy of the people!”’

  Nikita stopped and drew a breath. ‘I can never forget the look on my mother’s face when I told her that. It was as if something in her died. Later, when I was older and I tried to find her, I learned that she’d hanged herself. I’ve always felt that I killed her.’

  ‘Of course you didn’t,’ I told him. ‘The government did.’

  We lapsed into silence. I expected Nikita to say more about his mother and sister but he didn’t. Instead he stood up.

  ‘I’m being transferred tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I don’t know where.’

  ‘I hope somewhere better.’

  He shrugged. ‘Who knows?’

  I looked at the books he had given me. Although I was happy to have them, I hoped their original owner was dead. I didn’t want to deprive someone of what might have been their only pleasure.

  ‘My two favourite stories,’ I said.

  ‘I told you I was good at understanding people,’ Nikita said.

  As I watched my strange guardian angel leave the ward I sent him a blessing. A few days later, I learned from one of the nurses why Nikita was being sent to another camp. He’d had three years added to his sentence for killing the brigadier who had attacked me.

  ‘We have to find something for you to do,’ Doctor Polyakova told me. ‘Can you sew?’

  I nodded. I knew she was trying to help me. I could no longer work in a lumber gang, and the review commission had decided I wasn’t sick enough to be released. If Doctor Polyakova couldn’t find work for me I would be sent out into the fields. I told her that I sewed well, and after that the nurses brought me sheets and prison robes that needed mending.

  At the end of spring, a guard came to the ward and called out my number. ‘With things,’ he ad
ded.

  I glanced at Doctor Polyakova, who rushed to find me a prison dress and some shoes. ‘With things’ was a command that could mean a number of scenarios, from being released to being shot.

  In my case it meant being transferred to one of Kolyma’s few women-only camps near Magadan. On arrival, I was taken by a guard into a factory where about forty women sat at long tables and operated sewing machines. The forewoman introduced herself as Ustinya Pavlovna Kuklina.

  ‘Now,’ she said, leading me to a seat and plugging the sewing machine’s cord into a socket, ‘have you used a machine before?’

  ‘My mother’s,’ I told her. ‘A long time ago.’

  Ustinya picked up a piece of fabric and placed it under the needle. ‘The machines here have bigger motors than domestic machines and sew faster, but the principles are the same. You’ll get the hang of it. Use this piece of fabric to practise on.’

  She explained that the factory made uniforms for the prisoners and guards and also garments for the free population of Kolyma. My job was to sew the cuffs of the shirts and pants. As I got to work, a couple of the women nodded at me. It was clear that this camp had a better atmosphere than my previous one. No one looked like they were starving or sick.

  When we stopped for our daytime meal, I thought there’d been a mistake when I was handed not one but two slices of bread. The woman sitting next to me, Radinka, smiled at my astonishment.

  ‘Ustinya is a free worker, not a prisoner,’ she told me, ‘so she’s not afraid of the camp commandant. She told him that the factory can only meet the quotas if she has healthy workers.’

  Not only were the working conditions and food better, but the barracks were clean and free of lice and bedbugs. We each had a mattress and a pillow, and there were curtains on the windows. No doubt the better conditions were the reason why the prisoners were in good spirits and even had the energy to entertain each other in the evenings. Several of the women were excellent storytellers and another amused us with her mimes. No one spoke about their personal lives.