Sapphire Skies

by Belinda Alexandra

  Part of me wanted to run to him straight away and fall at his feet: ‘Darling, I’ve been waiting for you for so long!’ But I stood still for a moment to take him in. He was wearing the parade uniform of an air-force general and medals crowded his chest. Yes, of course Valentin would have made something of himself. We hadn’t seen each other for seventeen years and he had lived a life I knew nothing about. But I had found him, and he was waiting for me, here in Sokolniki Park, just as we’d promised each other.

  Tears of joy ran down my face and I started towards him. He rose, still looking into the distance, and lifted his arm to wave to someone. I stopped and turned to see a dark-haired woman in a tailored dress and a boy in his teens walking towards him. When they met, Valentin embraced the woman and they kissed each other on the lips. Pins and needles pricked my flesh. No! It was impossible!

  Valentin and the woman linked arms. All three were well dressed; it looked as if they were about to attend an official event together. The boy peered up at the sky and I saw how closely he resembled the woman. My throat tightened and my head ached as the truth hit me: the woman was Valentin’s wife and the youth was their son. I was an invisible ghost staring at the life that should have been mine. I had lived on my youthful memories of Valentin, but he had moved on. He hadn’t been waiting for me at all.

  I watched the happy threesome walk off while I trembled like a dying bird. Valentin was lost to me forever.

  I lay on my mattress and sobbed. What was left for me now? Nothing! The dream of being reunited with Valentin had sustained me, but all I saw before me now was emptiness. Everyone and everything I loved had been taken from me. I didn’t even have my own name any more.

  I caught sight of the copy of Anna Karenina that Nikita had given me. Poor tragic Nikita. Was he still alive? I thought of Anna when she realised that Vronsky no longer loved her and only misery lay before her. She had thrown herself under a train. I sat up and understood what I needed to do. It was the only choice left to me. It was what should have happened all those years ago when I shot Svetlana.

  It was drizzling as I headed towards the metro station. Moscow was only pretty in the sunshine and the snow; the overcast sky robbed it of all its allure. As I made my way along the street I felt as if I were pushing through a thick fog. I pictured how the final moments of my life would play out: I would descend the escalator, step onto the underground platform and then … into oblivion.

  I was about to enter the station when I heard strange cries. I stopped to listen. Was it a child?

  The noise stopped. I rubbed my temples and stepped onto the staircase when the sound came again. I looked around for its source. Curled up in the doorway of a disused shop was a female dog with puppies. I moved closer. The mother was dead, with blood around her nostrils and mouth. Perhaps she had eaten something poisonous, or some cruel person had beaten her to death. Three of the puppies were dead too, but when I lifted the mother’s body I saw where the cries were coming from. Two black-and-white puppies looked at me with sorrowful eyes. They reminded me of Ponchik, the stray dog my father had rescued from the metro when I was a child.

  I lifted one of the puppies, a girl. She was so cold! I picked up her sister and her paws were cold too. If I left the dogs here they would be dead by the evening. I leaned against the wall, thinking about what I had planned to do. But these two creatures needed my help; I was no good to them dead. I remembered the space dogs the foreign man had told me about. The Soviet government had used them and betrayed them, just as it had me. I couldn’t help those dogs, but I could save these ones.

  I tucked them into my jacket and headed back to my room. I no longer had a glorious and happy life ahead of me, but I did have a reason to go on living. The puppies that I had decided to rescue had in turn saved me.

  THIRTY

  Moscow, 2000

  Lily sat on the train in a daze, thinking over all that Natasha had revealed the night before. Something was unravelling inside her; she thought about the helplessness she’d felt when Adam was diagnosed with cancer. When he died, Lily had been alone with her loss. Her friends couldn’t fully understand what she was suffering: none of them had lost a fiancé, or even a close friend. She hadn’t met anyone her own age who had experienced that kind of misery; not until Kate’s death. The tragedy Natasha had suffered had been shared by millions of people. She had survived but many others hadn’t. And the lives of those like her who returned from the camps were never the same. Lily couldn’t stand it. As soon as she arrived at the office she called Oksana.

  ‘The State funeral was so wrong!’ she whispered into the receiver. ‘Natalya Azarova didn’t die in the war. She was screwed over by the government! The Russian people should know that!’

  ‘It’s too late for justice, Lily,’ Oksana told her calmly. ‘What Natasha needs now is peace. The last thing we’d want for her is the frenzy of attention that opening a can of worms like that would cause.’

  Oksana was right, Lily knew, but there was something else that bothered her. From what she’d seen of Valentin Orlov during the broadcast of the funeral, he didn’t look like a man who had forgotten the woman he’d loved. The newspaper article had said that he’d been searching for her crash site for nearly sixty years. Lily remembered what Luka had told her about relic hunting and how people gained a sense of closure from knowing what had happened to their loved ones. Didn’t Valentin Orlov deserve to know what had become of the woman he’d loved?

  Later in the afternoon, an email popped up in Lily’s mailbox from Luka.

  Hi Lily,

  Would you like to join me for a meditation class after work? The Philosophical Society is only five minutes from your office and we can meet beforehand in the café. Let me know.

  Best,

  Luka

  Lily leaned back in her chair and ran her hands through her hair. She felt uncomfortable about going out with Luka now that she knew he wasn’t gay. If she’d never had Adam in her life, she would enjoy being with him: meditation, art-house films, relic hunting and salsa dancing — Luka opened up a world of interesting things to do. But it didn’t matter how much time passed, the pain of Adam’s death remained raw, and nothing and no one could cure it. Still, Luka was a good person and he deserved to be told the truth.

  Lily replied that she couldn’t do the class because she had to visit Oksana’s family friend in hospital, but she’d meet him beforehand for a coffee.

  Luka was sitting in the café of the Philosophical Society when Lily arrived. He stood up and pulled out a chair for her.

  ‘I don’t drink coffee before meditating,’ he told her. ‘I can recommend the Siberian mushroom tea they serve here and the salad sandwiches.’

  Lily nodded and looked around the room with its block-print tablecloths, unfinished wooden floor and a table displaying pamphlets for meditation and yoga classes. The atmosphere reminded her of the alternative therapy centres she’d gone to with Adam.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Luka asked her.

  She shook her head, embarrassed.

  ‘It’s all over your face,’ he said. ‘You’re upset.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Lily replied. ‘I’m not the best person to see before a meditation class.’ She had rehearsed what she was going to say on the way to the café but she found herself stammering. ‘I-I’m not ready to see anyone …’

  Luka looked startled. Perhaps Oksana had misread the situation and he wasn’t interested at all. Now on top of everything Lily felt like an idiot.

  The waitress arrived with the teapot and cups. She poured the tea and left them.

  Luka pushed one of the cups towards Lily.

  ‘Breathe,’ he said. ‘Allow yourself to breathe. I haven’t been pressuring you for anything. I simply like your company.’

  ‘I know,’ Lily said, trying to smile. ‘Don’t think I don’t appreciate your company.’

  The waitress brought the sandwiches. Despite the awkwardness of the situation, Lily had worked up an appetite. The fillin
g of diced tomato, onion, red and green peppers, potato, peas and mayonnaise reminded her of her school days.

  ‘My mother used to make me sandwiches like this to take to school,’ she said. ‘The Australian kids would eat this brown paste called Vegemite. I used to feel odd then, but now I realise what the Aussie kids were missing out on.’

  Luka’s gentle smile pierced her heart. ‘I respect you being honest with me,’ he said. ‘Most people run off without a word.’

  Lily fought the tears that were welling in her eyes. ‘That’s what your ex-wife did, isn’t it?’ she said with sympathy. ‘She was a fool to throw away someone like you!’

  ‘I’m over her,’ Luka said. ‘Oksana thinks I’m not because I haven’t dated anyone seriously since my divorce. But, truth be told, I’ve been busy taking advanced courses and helping my uncle in his practice.’

  He picked up a sandwich and cocked his eyebrow at Lily. ‘This doesn’t have anything to do with me being gay, does it?’

  ‘Oh God!’ said Lily, putting down her sandwich. ‘Did Oksana tell you about that?’

  ‘You didn’t think she’d be able to keep something like that to herself, did you?’ he asked, a grin twitching at the corner of his mouth. ‘I saw her today when she brought me a cat with an ear infection.’

  He laughed out loud and to her surprise Lily found herself laughing too.

  ‘I’m really sorry,’ she said. ‘You’re taking it much better than an Australian guy would. It’s just that you dress well and you’ve got a lot of style.’

  ‘How can that not be a compliment?’ asked Luka, biting into his sandwich and chewing thoughtfully for a while. ‘It must have been strange growing up in Australia and having Russian parents,’ he said.

  He seemed genuinely interested and Lily found herself telling him about life in Narrabeen.

  ‘It’s a beach culture,’ she said, ‘but I wasn’t really the beach kind. My parents sent me to ballet classes and piano lessons and I was studious. Everyone was surprised when I fell in love with a boy who surfed.’

  Luka ordered them more tea and Lily told him about Adam. How they’d met when her father had trained Adam to be a volunteer lifesaver and how he used to make her laugh; she even told him about how he’d come to her twenty-first birthday party dressed as Humphrey B. Bear, which had been her favourite childhood television show.

  ‘He must have been a special guy,’ Luka said. ‘And Australia sounds wonderful. I’d like to go there some day and see the possums, koalas and kangaroos.’

  Lily glanced at the clock on the wall and saw it was time for Luka’s meditation class. But she had something that she wanted to ask him. She took a sip of tea, as if to steel herself.

  ‘When you were on the dig … did you get the impression that Valentin Orlov cared about Natalya Azarova, or do you think he was simply performing his duty to a pilot who had served under him?’

  Luka considered her question for a moment before responding. ‘Well, according to Yefim there was a rumour of a love affair between Orlov and Natalya Azarova during the war, although they were discreet. Orlov married after the war but is a widower now. As to what he feels all these years later …’ He paused and then grinned. ‘Well, he never stopped looking for her so I like to think he is still in love with her, but then I’m a romantic.’

  Luka paid the bill and they stood up to go their separate ways. Despite the tension she’d felt earlier, she had enjoyed their time together.

  ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I’m not going to call you any more although you’re welcome to call me any time you want to. No bad feelings. But there is something I want you to know, Lily: your life isn’t over. I don’t think you came to Moscow to run away from Sydney; I think you came here to find something. Your spirit knows there’s an adventure out there for you.’

  On her way home on the train, Lily thought about Luka’s words. She felt a kernel of hope stirring inside her: maybe there was something more for her out there in the future only she couldn’t see what it was yet.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Moscow, 2000

  Several weeks after the State funeral, when Lily and Oksana were kissing Natasha goodbye at the end of a visit, the old woman caught hold of Lily’s hand.

  ‘There is something I would like to do,’ she said, looking into Lily’s eyes. ‘I want to go to the grave … to see where my dearest friend is buried.’

  ‘We can do that,’ said Oksana. ‘I’ll speak to Polina. Let’s make it first thing Sunday morning when the cemetery won’t be crowded.’

  The matron gave her permission and early on the following Sunday morning Oksana drove Lily and Natasha to Novodevichy Cemetery.

  ‘Why don’t I go and find the grave first?’ Lily suggested, casting a glance at Natasha’s drawn face. ‘That will save walking around unnecessarily.’

  ‘Good idea,’ agreed Oksana.

  Lily had been to the cemetery once before, when she’d first arrived in Moscow, but it had been snowing then and the trees had been bare. This time, when she entered the gate and asked the attendant to mark the location of Natalya Azarova’s grave on the cemetery map, the maples and birches were still in full leaf and were only just beginning to turn gold at their tips.

  Lily had been enchanted by the romantic cemeteries of Père Lachaise and Montmartre in Paris when she and Adam had been exchange students there, and she’d found the monuments in Novodevichy harsh compared to the cherubs and doves in the French cemeteries. During the Stalin era the graves of noblemen had been destroyed, and in their place had risen tombstone blocks showing lifelike sculptures of the deceased. Apart from the occasional ballerina or actress, it had seemed to Lily on that first visit that the statues were mostly masculine: a doctor in scrubs holding a newborn baby; a tank on top of the grave of a major general. Now, softened by the foliage, the blank-eyed stares of the sculptures appeared less severe, and sparrows flitted across Lily’s path as she made her way to the section where Svetlana was buried.

  She saw a bride and groom, and assumed they were paying their respects to an ancestor on their significant day; and she noticed an artist with an easel, painting a view of a mossy path. Other than that, the cemetery was quiet. Lily turned a corner, passed a cluster of birch trees, and found herself before the grave of Natalya Azarova. The life-size sculpture was of Natasha as a young woman looking towards the sky, shielding her face with her hand. She was wearing a flowing robe, and the only homage to her military career was the medals pinned to her chest and the pilot’s cap she clutched in her other hand. Lily thought it was the most beautiful sculpture she’d ever seen.

  The grave was covered by bouquets of hyacinths, roses, lilies and carnations. Lily teared up at the sight of them. Whether the government had any record or not of the fate of Natalya Azarova, she had been immortalised. People from around the world would see this grave and know about her daring and heroic life.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ Lily told Natasha and Oksana when she returned to the car. ‘Come and see.’

  Oksana had brought a wheelchair, but when she offered it to Natasha, the old woman pretended she hadn’t heard her. Instead she slipped her hands through the two younger women’s arms and let them lead her into the cemetery. Despite their slow pace, Lily noted Natasha’s shoulders set straight and that she held her chin high.

  ‘I am glad Svetlana is buried here,’ she said. ‘She deserves to be honoured. She was the most courageous of us all.’

  They walked past the artist Lily had seen earlier, and approached the corner with the birch trees. When the grave came into view, Lily saw there was a man standing next to it, gazing at the sculpture as longingly as a lover regards a real woman. Lily recognised him immediately: it was Valentin Orlov.

  She turned to Natasha. From the look on her face, Natasha had recognised him too. Her body trembled and she loosened her grip on Lily’s arm and brought her hand to her lips as if to stifle a cry.

  ‘He never forgot me,’ she said in a quiet voice. ‘Look. He ha
s never forgotten me!’

  Lily glanced at Oksana, who, for the first time, seemed uncertain about what to do.

  ‘Do you want to speak to him?’ she asked Natasha.

  Lily swallowed the lump in her throat. Were Natasha and Valentin going to find each other again?

  Natasha hesitated, then took a step forward. A legion of emotions seemed to sweep across her face. She stopped and clenched her fists.

  ‘No,’ she said, so softly Lily had to lean towards her to hear. ‘I can’t do that to him.’ Her eyes welled with tears. ‘Look at him! He thinks he has buried me and reclaimed my honour. What would it do to him if he knew that I didn’t die in the war? That for all these lost years we have been living in the same city?’

  Lily could see the struggle that was taking place in Natasha, between the young woman she once was and the wiser woman she had become.

  ‘Let him remember me as I was then,’ she continued. ‘Let him have the pleasure of knowing that a beautiful young woman loved him with a pure heart in the midst of a terrible war. May those two youthful beings remain forever entwined, not destroyed by the broken people we have become.’

  Natasha gazed at Valentin and Lily longed for him to turn around and see the three women watching him, one of whom had been the love of his life. But he continued to stare at the statue.

  ‘I love you, my dear Valentin,’ Natasha whispered. ‘We will meet again in heaven.’ Then she turned to Lily. ‘Please take me back.’

  The determined set of the old woman’s jaw made her wishes clear. With a heavy heart Lily walked with Natasha and Oksana back towards the cemetery gate. Natasha kept her eyes lowered to the path as if every step that took her away from her lover was tormenting her. When they reached the car, she slumped against it for support while Oksana searched her pockets for her car keys. Lily gave the old woman a hug, knowing there was nothing she could say.