Authors: Belinda Alexandra
M
y 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-distance 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?’
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.