Sapphire Skies

by Belinda Alexandra

  How had Roman guessed that? My heart beat faster. I was in trouble now. I regretted asking him about the manual.

  ‘Forget it!’ I said, hoping to end the conversation and get back to my work.

  ‘You can join the Komsomol, Natasha, and you don’t have to denounce anyone. I promise.’

  I regarded him with suspicion. ‘How’s that?’

  Roman grinned. ‘Because I am the chairman of the Komsomol. I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen.’

  Roman was true to his word. The day I joined the factory’s Komsomol I wasn’t asked any questions about my past. On the contrary, I was praised for the standard of work I produced. I said my oath of allegiance to the Soviet Union with true feeling, and when I was handed the membership card and saw that nothing further was expected of me, I beamed at Roman.

  ‘Now we will go parachuting together,’ he said, giving me a slap on the back.

  I was more excited by the idea of going up in a plane than I was about jumping out of one. Those of us joining the factory’s aero club were required to learn how to pack a parachute and to watch several jumps by experienced parachutists before we were allowed to participate ourselves.

  When it was finally our turn to go up in a plane, Roman nudged me and nodded towards ashen-faced Lyuba. ‘Not so tough now, eh?’ he whispered.

  It was obvious from the attention Roman paid me that he was flirting. He was an amusing and honest man, and I liked him but I didn’t love him. If I was one of those women who could think shrewdly about marriage, he would have been a good match for me. His proletarian origins would have improved my status. But while I had learned to think shrewdly about many things, love was not one of them. If I was going to marry Roman, I needed to feel passion not just fondness.

  The plane bumped and shook along the runway before lifting from the ground. Although most of my view was obscured by Roman’s head, being up high in the air and surrounded by blue sky made my heart leap with joy.

  The aero club’s hangars grew smaller and smaller until the plane banked and the instructor told us it was time to jump. Roman was the first to go, screaming at the top of his lungs as he threw himself into the air. I followed him.

  I tumbled in a freefall and counted to three, as we’d been taught, before pulling the ring on the parachute. For a few heart-stopping seconds nothing happened and then my parachute opened and air hissed into it. The wind pushing at me and the view of the fields below lulled me into a sense of peace. I didn’t realise how fast I was falling, even with the parachute, until I was close to the ground. The field seemed to suddenly rise up. I bent my knees to avoid injury but my landing was clumsy: I was dragged by the parachute with my limbs flailing until I could regain my footing. It was not an elegant end to the fall but I was confident I would get the hang of these landings.

  The other parachutists dotted the sky and I waved to them before turning my attention back to the plane. The pilot was circling, preparing to return to the airstrip. The others in my group might be content to parachute out of an aircraft, but the experience of being in the air had reignited my desire to fly. In an act of boldness, I submitted an application to the club to train as a pilot. Roman wrote me a recommendation and I included my birth and education certificates. Then I had to take a medical examination, which involved nothing more than poking out my tongue for a doctor, submitting to a hearing test and reading an eye chart. I was pronounced fit enough to train. The next step was to appear before the credentials committee, which was made up of Soviet Air Force officers. They asked me to determine the latitude and longitude of various cities on a map. Then they gave me a geography quiz and asked questions from the flight theory textbook. I answered everything confidently.

  ‘She has excellent recommendations from the aircraft factory,’ one of the officers said to the others. ‘It’s good to have pilots who understand how their plane is made.’

  The interview was progressing smoothly until one of the officers asked me about my family. Who was my father and what did he do? Memories of the scorn expressed by the Conservatory’s examination board came back to me. I felt my lip quiver and I tried to deflect the conversation to my mother and brother who were involved in patriotic duties. ‘If you are going to tell a lie then you have to stay with it until the end,’ Papa used to say. Where would this lie take me? It was one thing to deceive a factory manager or even the Komsomol; quite another to lie to the military. To my relief, the interview was interrupted when one of the officers had to take a telephone call. When he returned to the room, the subject of my family seemed to have been forgotten.

  ‘When can you begin training, Comrade Azarova?’ asked the officer leading the committee.

  ‘Right away,’ I replied.

  He closed my file and grinned at me. ‘Then you can commence training next Saturday.’

  So this is it, I thought. My dream is finally coming true.

  Those of us who wanted to be pilots trained on U2 biplanes, which were used as crop dusters as well as for military purposes. The practical training involved sitting in the rear seat with the instructor in front, communicating through an intercom. While the instructor operated the controls, the student mimicked his manoeuvres by lightly touching an identical set of controls in the rear. I loved every moment I was in the air. I was never afraid of crashing; instead I was terrified of someone checking my records more thoroughly and throwing me out of the aero club.

  But the months of flight theory and watching the instructor as he made turns, dives and climbs passed without incident, and before I knew it I was donning my Osoaviakhim overalls, helmet and goggles for my first solo flight.

  The students lined up on the airfield and watched as a sandbag was strapped in where the instructor usually sat to balance the plane. Then the instructor called out. ‘Azarova! To the aircraft!’

  I was surprised to be chosen first, but I marched forward without hesitation and climbed into the cockpit.

  ‘Now, do everything exactly as you have been doing with me,’ the instructor said.

  The mechanic filled the engine and pulled the propeller to prime the cylinders.

  ‘Start your engine,’ the instructor called to me.

  The mechanic gave the blade a forceful turn and stepped out of the way as the propeller began to rotate and the engine came to life. Then he removed the chocks from the wheels and I taxied the plane to the runway. All the instruments seemed to rattle and vibrate more loudly than when I’d flown with the instructor.

  I was given the signal to take off and as the plane lifted into the air and the ground receded, my view of the sky was clear. In that moment the sadness of the past couple of years lifted and I could feel my father’s joyful presence. He would have been proud. I levelled out and drank in the beauty of the fields, farms and rivers, before performing the box pattern that was required for the examination and demonstrating my turns. Then I landed the biplane smoothly and taxied back to the hangar.

  The instructor ran towards me and took hold of the wing, trotting along beside the plane. ‘Well done, Comrade Azarova!’ he said. ‘Flying for you is as natural as walking.’

  The comment went straight to my head. I was sure that I knew everything there was to know about flying now. But I would soon learn differently.

  ‘Natashka, why do you never talk to me about your flying progress?’ Alexander asked one day when I arrived home from the aero club.

  ‘Oh, we only fly slow crop dusters,’ I told him. ‘It’s just a bit of fun.’

  ‘Flying, just a bit of fun?’ Alexander cried. ‘Since you were a child, you’ve been fascinated by it!’

  I sat down next to him and stared at my hands. I had avoided telling Alexander about my progress because I didn’t want to upset him. Before Papa’s arrest he’d been an elite cadet for the air force. There was an aero club affiliated with the Moscow Metro, but Alexander didn’t have someone like Roman to help him join it without denouncing our father.

  Alexander guessed the rea
son for my hesitation. ‘Please don’t worry about me, Natashka,’ he said. ‘I like working on the metro. I’m building magnificent palaces beneath the city — ones that can be enjoyed by everyone.’

  I nudged him affectionately. It was true that Alexander never complained about going to work, even though the long shifts gave him aches in his arms and legs. When the Mayakovskaya station was opened, he had guided Mama, Zoya and me around it with the pride of an artist showing off his best exhibition. The station was indeed ‘a palace’ with its elegant columns and arches. It was so ethereally beautiful and airy it was impossible to believe that we were deep underground.

  ‘Alexander Deineka created the mosaics,’ my brother told us, pointing to the ceiling. ‘They depict twenty-four hours in the Soviet Sky.’

  I marvelled at the images of planes and parachutists, but I couldn’t forget that the station had been built to an unprecedented depth so it could be used as a bomb shelter if war broke out.

  ‘I’m glad you are happy building your palaces, Sasha,’ I said, standing up from the sofa. ‘It’s a lovely day. Let’s go for a walk. We haven’t done that for a while.’

  Outside our building, I linked arms with my brother and admired his beautiful face. I thought he had never seemed more tranquil. I attributed it to his satisfaction in creating something everlasting with his hands, but later I would wonder if it was because he sensed what would happen next and was resigned to it.

  Mama and I decided to go to the cinema that evening to see the film Alexander Nevsky. Zoya was away visiting her sister. We asked my brother to come with us but he had a shift on the metro. It wasn’t his usual paid employment, but volunteer excavation work to complete a tunnel section to meet the new deadline set by Stalin. People thought I was brave for going up into the air in a wood and metal contraption, but Alexander descended into the darkness of the narrow underground shafts on icy ladders. Sometimes the metro workers had to climb down for fifty metres, and even pass each other on the way up or down. The film Mama and I went to see was about Prince Alexander who saved Novgorod from invasion by the Teutonic knights in the thirteenth century. Halfway through it, Mama turned to me and grabbed my hand. Her face was deathly white.

  ‘He’s gone!’ she gasped. ‘I can feel it!’

  ‘Who?’ I asked, not understanding.

  ‘Alexander!’

  At first I thought Mama was talking about the hero of the film but then she rose from her seat and clutched her face. ‘I can’t stand it! First Stepan and now Sasha!’

  She began to wail and the other patrons turned to stare at us. I thought my mother had lost her mind. She was a nervous person and I wondered if the strain of the past couple of years had caught up with her. We didn’t have enough money for a taxi so I had to struggle home with her leaning on me like a deadweight. I tried to get her to sit down while I made her a cup of tea but she kept standing up and pacing the floor.

  ‘Sasha!’ she wept. ‘My firstborn! I will never forget the day I first held you!’

  ‘Mama, calm yourself.’ I placed the teacup on the table. ‘I will go to the work site now and find Sasha. You will see that all is well!’

  I hated leaving my mother alone in that state, but it seemed the only way to settle her would be to present her with the truth.

  The night air had a biting chill to it and I wrapped my scarf around my head as I crossed the river and headed towards Pyatnitskaya Street. The new excavation work was taking place near there. An eerie atmosphere had fallen over the city: shadows leaped towards me from doorways and the trolley buses that passed me seemed to be travelling at unnatural speeds. I imagined myself returning to Mama to tell her I had spoken to Alexander’s foreman and that he was fine. Poor Mama. She needed a rest. She got herself so worked up about those portraits of Stalin. I knew she wanted to do good work for him but it seemed to drain her.

  I stopped in my tracks as soon as I smelled the acrid smoke. I knew that something was wrong then and ran towards the excavation site. A crowd had gathered around it. Policemen were pushing the people back to allow fire trucks through to join those that were already there. That was when I saw the flames leaping from the shaft.

  ‘No!’ I cried, falling to my knees.

  The firemen were pumping volumes of water into the shaft but the flames shot higher into the air and dense halos of smoke engulfed the fire trucks and the crowd. I heard something I couldn’t identify: the roar of the fire or screams? I didn’t know. All I knew for certain was that no one in that shaft could survive such an inferno.

  The horror turned my blood cold and broke something inside me. Mama’s premonition had been right: my dear brother was dead.

  FIFTEEN

  Moscow, 2000

  The first Lily had heard of Natalya Azarova was the article in the Moscow Times revealing that her fighter plane had been found. But one glance at Oksana’s stunned face when Babushka revealed her identity and Lily realised that Natalya Azarova was of special significance to the Russian people, even those born after the war.

  ‘You were the mechanic to Natalya Azarova?’ Oksana asked Svetlana. ‘And you know what happened to her?’

  Svetlana glanced at Oksana warily and nodded.

  ‘But people have been speculating about her disappearance for years,’ said Oksana, placing her hand on Svetlana’s arm. ‘Why didn’t you come forward and reveal what you knew?’

  A look of mistrust shadowed Svetlana’s face and she shrank from Oksana’s touch. Oksana sighed and considered her with wise, compassionate eyes. ‘If you didn’t come forward,’ she reassured Svetlana, ‘you must have had your reasons. But if that knowledge is a burden to you and you would like to share it, we promise that nothing you say will go further than this room.’

  The television sound went off again and the silence was heavy as Lily and Oksana waited for the old woman to respond.

  Svetlana closed her eyes tightly, as if something caused her pain. But when she opened them again, she appeared to have gathered strength. She no longer looked pale and sick, but more like the woman Lily had first met in Pushkin Square: determined.

  ‘Natasha and I had been school friends but we were separated after her father was arrested as an enemy of the people.’ She looked at Oksana and then Lily. ‘But perhaps Natasha should be remembered for who she really was,’ she said.

  Sensing something important was about to unfold, Lily turned the television off. She scooped up the broken cup and saucer and whisked them away to the kitchen while Oksana helped Svetlana up into a chair. Lily brought fresh cups of tea to the table.

  ‘I will tell you what happened to her, but in order for you to understand, I need to tell you this story from the beginning,’ Svetlana said. ‘You have to know who Natasha was … and what she meant to me.’

  Lily and Oksana nodded. The old woman held them in suspense for what seemed an eternity before she began her story in a slow, deliberate voice.

  I was a student at the Moscow Aviation Institute when Germany attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941. I arrived for my classes the morning following the blitzkrieg to find students rushing about in the corridors and speaking to each other in high-pitched voices. Those with shortwave radios claimed that Minsk, Odessa, Kiev and other cities on the western border had been bombed. But there had been no announcement by Stalin, so the reports were impossible to believe.

  ‘Vladimir, that can’t be right!’ I heard one student challenge another. ‘Your French is poor. You have misunderstood. Comrade Stalin made a pact with Germany.’

  ‘I’m not worried,’ piped up another student. ‘The Soviet Union has the largest air force in the world and more tanks than all the other countries combined. If the Germans have attacked us, they will be sorry.’

  But Vladimir was insistent. ‘I’m telling you, the mighty Soviet Air Force has been destroyed in a lightning attack on the airfields. The pilots didn’t have time to camouflage the planes. They were destroyed like rows of dominoes.’

  Those of
us who had not heard the foreign transmissions for ourselves did not know what to believe. A few hours later, our teachers told us to gather around radios in the lecture halls. An important announcement was to be made by Molotov, the minister for foreign affairs.

  ‘Today, in the early hours of the morning, without forwarding any grievances to the Soviet Union and without a declaration of war, the German armed forces attacked our country …’

  ‘So it’s true!’ I gasped.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Nadezhda, one of our Komsomol leaders, ‘the German people are civilised. It’s Hitler who is a brute. I’m sure if we explain to the German soldiers how they are being exploited by Fascism, they will not want to fight us. We are all comrades; all brothers and sisters.’

  ‘Civilised or not,’ said another student, Afonasy, ‘with modern technology it’s not going to be a long drawn-out war of attrition. It will all be decided in a matter of days.’

  I looked from Afonasy to Nadezhda. I wanted to believe them but a sinking feeling in my heart told me that this catastrophe would be neither civil nor short.

  Moscow transformed before my eyes. Only a few days earlier I had been to the cinema with some friends to see Valentina Serova in A Girl with Character and afterwards we had eaten ice-cream in a café. My mother had been packing for our holiday to the dacha, which we had planned to take as soon as I finished my examinations. Now everything was uncertain. Men between the ages of twenty-three and thirty-six were mobilised. Police and guards patrolled the streets, and buildings and statues were reinforced with sandbags. Queues, even longer than usual, formed in front of the shops, which quickly ran out of sugar, salt, matches and kerosene. Artists were called on to paint the streets so that they looked like rooftops, and fake aircraft and munitions factories were constructed out of canvas and wood while the real ones were moved east.

  But for Muscovites the war seemed far away until reports of atrocities from the western border began to reach us: nurses shot while tending to wounded soldiers; prisoners of war taken with no intention of feeding them; villages razed to the ground with the inhabitants locked inside the buildings. Along with other students from the institute, I volunteered for civil defence. We learned that the German army was marching along the same route that Napoleon and his troops had taken when they invaded Moscow. The battle with Napoleon had been termed the Patriotic War; and now this new conflict was christened the Great Patriotic War. We travelled in trolley buses and then by foot to the outskirts of the city to dig anti-tank trenches, alongside elderly men and women and young children.