Sapphire Skies

by Belinda Alexandra

Laika lifted her eyes to look at Lily but didn’t move from her position.

  ‘Your mistress has gone,’ Lily whispered to her, ‘but her love for you will always remain.’

  She leaned over and put her arms around both Natasha and Laika. She kissed Natasha’s forehead and saw her as a young pilot again, taxiing down the runway before soaring into the sky.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Moscow, 2000

  Natasha’s funeral was held in a small church not far from the hospital. Polina had put Oksana and Lily in contact with a Russian Orthodox priest who was willing to officiate over a cremation — because Natasha had left them with a specific request about what she wanted done with her ashes.

  It was a sunny but icy-cold day and the mourners who gathered around the church door were wrapped in coats, scarves and gloves. Oksana and Lily had brought Laika, and Doctor Pesenko, Polina and two other nurses who had cared for Natasha were there too. Lily was about to go into the church when she saw Luka arrive in the Yelchin Veterinary Hospital’s van. The sight of him lifted her spirits but she wondered why he had brought the van instead of his car. Then he opened the doors and Lily saw that he had six elderly ladies with him all carrying bunches of red carnations. She recognised Alina from Natasha’s apartment building and assumed that the other women were also residents.

  Seeing Alina reminded Lily that Natasha was being farewelled as Zinaida Rusakova. When she had explained this to Polina she’d been relieved that the matron didn’t even raise an eyebrow. In a country of revolutions, purges and wars that had left millions orphaned, widowed, separated from their families or suffering trauma, there could be any number of reasons for going by one name while being cremated under another.

  Lily went with Oksana to help the old women into the church. ‘Thank you,’ she said to Luka. ‘I didn’t know Oksana had organised for you to bring the ladies.’

  Luka smiled. ‘You should know that when there is a task to be done there’s no one better than Oksana to find the right person to do it.’

  Despite the heaviness in her heart, Lily managed to smile back.

  When everyone was seated inside the church, the priest began the ceremony by singing prayers and waving a censer. Lily’s eyes drifted to Natasha in her coffin. She knew that what she was seeing was only a shell; the spark that animated human life was gone. And what a spark Natasha had possessed! She’d been courageous and strong-willed until the end.

  Lily remembered what it had been like to touch Adam’s body after his heart had stopped beating. The nurses had allowed her and Shirley to sit with him until the time finally came to take him away. When she’d seen his coffin at the funeral she couldn’t grasp that the man who had been so full of life was now silent and shut away in a box. That was how she felt about Natasha now, and the idea of it made her weep. Oksana put her arm around her and Luka sent her a sympathetic glance.

  The mourners formed a guard of honour as Natasha’s coffin, covered in red carnations, was driven away to the crematorium. The old women wept but Lily cried the hardest. The ceremony had been different from the lavish State funeral with all its pomp, but Lily knew that Natasha would have preferred this one. She and Oksana had arranged everything as if Natasha had truly been their relative; and had done everything with love, including washing Natasha’s body and dressing her in white. Medals and glory hadn’t meant much to Natasha; love had meant everything.

  Doctor Pesenko hosted the wake at his apartment in the Arbat. As Oksana drove through the streets of the quarter, Lily stared at the buildings and stores and imagined Natasha as a young woman, looking in the windows and fixing her hair.

  Doctor Pesenko’s mother had made blintzes, crepe-like pancakes filled with sweet cheese that were traditional at funerals, and everyone gathered in the living room to eat them. Although Lily was sad, she enjoyed listening to Alina and the women talking about ‘Zina’ and her dogs.

  ‘Mushka was my favourite,’ said one of the women. ‘She bit my husband on the backside once. She knew he was a good-for-nothing drunkard!’

  The story brought laughter from the other women.

  Lily went to the kitchen to help Doctor Pesenko’s mother with the tea and found Oksana and Luka talking there.

  ‘Oksana’s been telling me about all the cats you have in your apartment now,’ Luka said, with a twinkle in his eye that warmed Lily’s heart.

  ‘Not for long,’ Lily replied. ‘Laika and Pushkin will stay with me, but Scott and his wife have found homes for all the others.’

  ‘We should have enlisted them earlier,’ said Oksana. ‘That couple are a godsend!’

  Lily took the teacups out on a tray to the women. When she returned to the kitchen, Luka was preparing to leave. He kissed her and Oksana on the cheeks.

  ‘I’ve got a hip replacement to perform on a Rottweiler this afternoon,’ he said. ‘The dog’s in a lot of pain and I couldn’t postpone it.’

  As he walked to the door, Oksana grabbed his arm. ‘Now that Scott has found homes for the cats Lily’s been looking after, I want to re-do her apartment. It’s time to strip that old wallpaper and paint everything white. Lily can add her own dashes of colour with cushions and lamps.’

  Lily lifted her eyebrows. It sounded wonderful but Oksana hadn’t mentioned these plans to her.

  ‘Lily and I can do all the painting,’ Oksana continued. ‘But there are these terrible tiles in the kitchen that will be difficult to chip off. Your uncle told me that you did the remodelling of your apartment yourself? Perhaps you can come over to show us what to do?’

  Lily felt herself blush. Luka had been right: Oksana was good at finding the right person for the task. But she knew that this enlistment had another purpose. That’s why her heart skipped a beat when Luka replied, ‘I’d love to. Just call me and let me know when you need my help.’

  ‘That wasn’t half obvious,’ Lily said to Oksana after they’d shut the apartment door.

  ‘Well, it’s up to you now,’ Oksana replied with a grin. ‘You can’t expect me to do all the work.’

  The Sunday after the funeral, Lily experienced a beautiful dream. She found herself sitting at a long table outside a dacha. The house faced a lake and was surrounded by a vegetable garden brimming with cucumbers, onions and beets, and bordered by beds of pink and red asters, tulips and chrysanthemums. At the table sat everyone Lily had ever loved, those who were living and those who had died. Her grandmother glowed with good health and strength. Lily’s parents flanked her, looking blissfully relaxed. Adam was there too, strong and tanned as he’d always been before he got sick. Lily looked up to find a young Natasha sitting opposite her and pouting her perfectly made-up red lips. Even Lily’s old cat Honey was there, rubbing everyone’s legs under the table. Vitaly and Irina appeared along with Betty and her siblings, and Oksana and Luka came out of the house carrying platters of sliced watermelon and peaches. Out of the woods emerged people Lily had never met but somehow recognised: a handsome man with ginger hair, and two little girls with white bows on their heads.

  She was filled with joy, which didn’t leave her even when she awoke and stared at the ceiling. She didn’t know how it was possible, but she understood that every person she’d loved and who had died was still with her, living alongside her.

  Later that day, she walked to the metro station, intending to visit some of the stations she hadn’t seen before. She still felt exhausted with grief over Natasha, but inside her a sensation of buoyancy stirred, something she could not remember experiencing before. Even before Adam had got sick, she’d never felt so weightless. It was as if she’d stepped away from the tragic family history that had haunted her and into a plane of light.

  She’d just taken a seat on the train when a caramel-coloured dog entered the carriage and jumped up onto the seat opposite her. He lay his head on his paws and fell asleep. The commuters stepped around him to avoid waking him up.

  The woman sitting next to Lily looked around with a concerned expression on her face. ‘That
dog must have got separated from his owner,’ she said. She had an Australian accent and obviously hoped someone in the carriage understood English. ‘We’d better call the guard or they’ll never find him again. He could end up anywhere.’

  ‘He’s a metro dog,’ Lily told her.

  ‘A what?’ asked the woman, looking surprised to find a fellow Australian sitting next to her.

  ‘A stray,’ Lily explained. ‘You often see them on the trains, and some people swear they know exactly where they’re going. Sometimes a guard shoos them away, or a cruel person kicks them or gives them a poisoned sandwich. But most of the time people either feed them or let them be.’

  The woman looked flabbergasted and Lily giggled. The woman was so Australian — used to order, public safety and rules. In Russia, those things contradicted each other. Lily wondered whether she was more Russian than Australian now. She looked at the dog again. A woman in a leopard-print coat took a sausage from her shopping bag. She snapped it into pieces with her manicured fingers and fed it to the dog.

  Russia was all contrasts, Lily thought: breathtaking beauty alongside hideousness; it was brutal yet compassionate; shabby yet grand. It was a country of traumas that ran so deep they were passed from one generation to another. Even Lily, born in Australia, hadn’t been left untouched by the gaps in her family tree. But perhaps Russia had shown her how to stand up again after receiving a blow; and that no amount of evil could obliterate hope.

  Lily remembered what Oksana had said when she and Lily had taken Natasha to see Doctor Pesenko. She’d told Lily that she believed the dying animals that came to her were angels in disguise, because in caring for them she found they left her with a gift.

  Is this Natasha’s gift to me, Lily wondered. This sense of renewal?

  Lily saw Luka walking towards her along Tverskoy Boulevard and rose from the wrought-iron bench she’d been sitting on. ‘I’m glad you could come,’ she told him. ‘I want to show you the house where my grandfather lived.’

  She pointed to the yellow-and-white mansion opposite and invited Luka to sit down next to her.

  ‘It’s magnificent!’ he said. ‘And they’ve restored it beautifully.’

  ‘The exterior only. Unfortunately the interior’s now ultra-modern.’

  ‘Still,’ said Luka, ‘at least the whole thing hasn’t been torn down like in other parts of the city.’

  ‘I thought you’d like to see it,’ Lily said, loosening her scarf. Despite the snow that had started to fall she was feeling very warm. ‘I know you like history.’

  ‘I love this whole area,’ he said. ‘When Napoleon invaded, the French soldiers pitched their tents here and hanged any Russian resisters from the lampposts. They cut down the trees for firewood. But when the French retreated, the Muscovites restored their beloved boulevard to its former glory.’

  Lily looked at the house again. ‘I’d like my parents to come and visit me here — I want my mother to see it for herself. But she’s too afraid.’

  ‘Really?’ Luka looked at her with interest.

  Lily explained about the trip her parents had made in 1969 to smuggle her grandmother out of Russia.

  ‘What a story!’ he exclaimed. ‘But your mother’s fear is common among Russian émigrés, especially after what went on here during the Stalin years.’

  Lily thought of Natasha and flinched.

  Luka nudged her. ‘I can think of a way to get your parents to come here for sure.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Lily asked, curious to hear what Luka was about to suggest.

  He put his arm around the back of the bench behind her. ‘Well, say for instance you were to meet this Russian guy who really liked you and who you liked. If your parents are anything like mine, I’m sure they’d want to meet him right away.’

  Lily shifted in her seat. ‘I thought we might go slow,’ she said. ‘This is a big step for me.’

  ‘I know it is,’ said Luka, looking at his lap. Then he turned to her again, a bright smile on his face. ‘But it isn’t for me. I figure if you know someone is right for you, you know.’

  ‘Is that how you feel?’ Lily asked him.

  He nodded and gazed at her intently.

  I’m not fighting this any longer, Lily told herself. When Luka kissed her she didn’t pull away. His lips were as beautiful to kiss as she’d imagined they would be.

  ‘Well,’ she said afterwards, ‘now that my parents are coming to Moscow, you’d better help me fix up my apartment.’

  Luka looked into her eyes. ‘I intend to. There’s nothing that us gay guys can’t do!’

  Lily punched his arm. ‘You’re never going to let me forget that, are you?’

  He shook his head and grinned. ‘No, it’s the story I intend to tell our grandchildren about how we met.’

  Lily laughed. Luka took her hand and together they walked towards the metro. She stopped for one last glance at her grandfather’s house, and thought about Adam and about her mother’s words: … you don’t leave your first love behind when you meet someone else. You carry him with you always — in your heart. But it is possible to live in both worlds — with your past love and your new one — and still be true to both.

  She turned to Luka and smiled. It’s going to be okay, she told herself, with a conviction that penetrated every bone and muscle in her body. Everything’s going to be great. I’ve got an adventure ahead of me and I intend to live it.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Moscow, 2000

  The afternoon was turning dark and icy when Lily arrived at Novodevichy Cemetery. Oksana was waiting for her by the gate, clutching an oversized handbag. At that hour the cemetery was too cold and spooky for the tourists, which was how the women had planned it. They wanted as few people around as possible.

  ‘I’ve had a look at the grave,’ Oksana told Lily. ‘There’s a gap under the base of the statue that opens into the tomb itself. We can slip the box in there. It’s a much better plan than our one of scattering the ashes around the grave. I’m sure Natasha would approve.’

  When they reached Natalya Azarova’s grave, Lily was touched to see that the number of bouquets of brightly coloured flowers that covered it hadn’t diminished with the cold weather.

  Oksana opened her bag and took out the wooden box that contained Natasha’s ashes. She and Lily held the box together and recited the Lord’s Prayer. Then they each kissed the box reverently, and Oksana showed Lily the gap she’d found earlier.

  ‘I declare that Senior Lieutenant Azarova is no longer missing,’ Lily announced, and she and Oksana pushed the box through the gap. It landed inside the tomb with a thud.

  ‘There,’ said Oksana, ‘Svetlana and Natasha are together again. And when people come to visit this grave, they will be honouring both of them.’

  They spent some moments at the grave in contemplation, then the two women linked arms and walked back to Oksana’s car. They were pleased — and somewhat amazed — that they’d accomplished their sacred task without being seen, or stopped by the cemetery officials.

  ‘Natasha must have been watching out for us,’ Oksana said.

  Valentin Orlov had visited Novodevichy Cemetery every day since the funeral. He liked to come early in the morning or last thing in the afternoon to avoid the tourists, students and other visitors. It was bitterly cold that afternoon as he stepped out of the taxi and noticed the two women who passed him, deep in conversation. He recognised the younger of the two as the woman who had lost her keys near Natasha’s grave. He wondered what her interest in his beloved was. He was tempted to follow her and ask her, but the cemetery gates would close soon.

  He placed the single rose he always brought with him among the bouquets left by admirers. He had hoped that once Natasha’s body and plane were recovered, and she’d been recognised officially as a heroine of the Great Patriotic War, he would gain a sense of finality. But the feeling never came. Time was supposed to heal all wounds, but his was still a black hole inside him. The skeleton he and Ilya
had discovered in Orël Oblast was buried here, but Natasha’s essence wasn’t. I found her and yet I didn’t find her, he thought.

  But the sculpture on the grave captured Natasha’s femininity and strength, and it was something tangible that he could touch, like the photograph he kept at home of himself and Natasha standing by his Yak. That was why he came to the cemetery every day: to have some contact with her. He expected his life would continue in this same melancholic manner until he was too old and weak to come any more. But then something happened that changed everything.

  He was standing by the grave, looking at the flowers, when he saw a flash of light. Now, the bouquets shimmered with vivid colours. A warm sensation surrounded him and he felt a gentle pressure at his side. It was her, Natasha! He knew it!

  He couldn’t see her but he could hear her. She was saying something, but not using words that were part of any human language. Then she laughed and Orlov found himself laughing too, and his whole being seemed to rise above the earth and expand with joy.

  He remembered when she had first joined the regiment in Stalingrad. It had been exactly like this: she had come into his life and unshackled him. Did you ever consider the possibility that I might surprise you? she’d asked him; and she had. After all these years of separation, she had returned to him.

  Orlov touched his side. ‘Natasha?’

  This time she spoke clearly and straight into his heart: ‘I love you, my dear Valentin. We will meet again in heaven.’

  ‘I love you too,’ he said out loud. ‘I never stopped waiting.’

  ‘I know.’

  Then she was gone.

  Orlov sat on a bench near the grave, trying to digest what had happened. The weight that had pressed on his chest for so long had lifted. The ever-present regret had fallen away. The world seemed to be adjusting itself into a new pattern and he was filled with a sense of optimism. If he didn’t feel so peaceful, he might have wondered if he’d lost his mind.

  I’m eighty-three, he told himself. Maybe I have one year left. Maybe I have ten. Why waste them?