Authors: Belinda Alexandra
As Lily and Luka made their way to the car after saying goodbye to Yefim, Lily tried to sort out her thoughts. Why hadn’t Svetlana told them that her father had denounced Natasha’s father? Svetlana had hinted at a rift between herself and her mother. Maybe that was the cause of it and she hadn’t mentioned it because she felt guilty.
Luka opened the car door for Lily, then went around and got into the driver’s seat. ‘You sure have been doing your research on Natalya Azarova!’ he said. ‘I’m impressed.’
He turned the key in the ignition. ‘You should come on a dig with me next summer. You meet some great people: a lot of history buffs and some nutters too. You know the types — grown men who play with toy soldiers.’
‘If I’m here next summer, I might,’ Lily said. ‘I understand your interest in relic hunting much better now.’
Luka glanced at her. ‘Are you thinking that you’ll go back to Australia before then?’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I miss my parents and my friends. On the other hand, I’m not sure I’m ready to go back yet and my boss wants to extend my contract.’
Luka pulled out into the traffic. ‘Oksana told me about your fiancé, Lily. I’m sorry. That must be hard.’
They passed the Elektrozavodskaya metro station, which was next on the list of stations Lily wanted to visit. She wondered if she would forever associate the Moscow Metro with her solitary weekends.
‘I don’t seem to be making much progress with the grief,’ she confided in him. ‘I still wake up hoping that none of it ever happened and then I have to spend the rest of the day living with the fact that it did.’
Luka reached over and touched her shoulder. ‘Don’t let anybody rush you or tell you what’s right or wrong to feel,’ he said. ‘I deal with many people who feel ashamed about grieving over their dog or cat. I tell them that the loss of an animal companion is as real as that of any family member or close friend, and to not let anyone belittle what they’re going through. In a way grief is beautiful.’
Lily turned to him. ‘Grief is beautiful?’ She thought it was the most dreadful feeling possible. At best she viewed the world through a haze, and at worst everything looked black.
‘It means you’ve loved another with all your heart,’ Luka said. ‘What’s the use of being alive if you’ve never loved like that, not even once?’
A sentiment like that would normally have reduced Lily to tears. But to her surprise instead of thinking about Adam she found herself thinking about Valentin Orlov. She remembered his stony face on the television. What a price he paid for loving Natalya Azarova.
The next morning Lily went to tell Oksana what she’d learned from Yefim about Svetlana. From the meowing coming from inside Oksana’s apartment, she knew the cats were waiting for their breakfast.
‘You’re just in time to help,’ Oksana said, when she opened the door.
The cats’ morning meal was a chicken and vegetable stew that Oksana cooked up on weekends and stored in the freezer. She warmed the defrosted stew on the stove, spooned it into wide bowls and mixed supplements into it.
Lily placed the bowls on a tray and headed to the cats’ room, which was the largest in the apartment. She opened the door to see thirty expectant faces looking at her. To house so many cats and keep things in order, Oksana had arranged plastic chairs around the room, with a cushion on each seat and another underneath the legs so each chair served as a double-storey bed. Most of the cats Oksana rescued went up for adoption on the Moscow Animals website, but she kept the older ones or those who had lost an eye or an ear, as it was much harder to find them homes. The cats that knew the routine gathered around the door, nearly tripping Lily over, but the newer arrivals waited cautiously on their chairs and stared at her. The sight always made Lily laugh: it was like walking into an audience of felines waiting to be entertained.
‘Here we go, kitties,’ Lily said, placing the bowls on the floor.
She checked the water dishes, and the litter trays, which were out on an enclosed balcony. The trays were children’s wading pools filled with pellets Oksana made herself by soaking and drying shredded paper. ‘If I feed them like clockwork they do their stools like clockwork,’ she’d told Lily. Oksana was scrupulously organised with her animals. None of the neighbours complained about her cats because there were never any bad smells or fleas.
Lily looked around at the orderly room and the climbing ladders and platforms. Oksana had once said that caring well for thirty cats wasn’t much different from caring well for ten. Lily loved cats but she didn’t want to test that theory out.
After the cats were fed, they returned to their cushions and groomed themselves. Lily and Oksana washed the bowls and saucepan then sat down for a cup of tea in the kitchen.
‘I met Luka’s friend Yefim last night,’ Lily told Oksana. ‘He said Svetlana’s father was responsible for the arrest of Natasha’s father. He denounced him.’
Oksana gasped and put down her teacup. Lily could see that her friend was as stunned as she had been the night before. ‘Something’s certainly not right,’ Oksana said finally. ‘And I’ve been doing some investigating myself. After Svetlana told us that she’d taken the name of Zinaida Rusakova, I asked a friend in the police department if there was an address for an elderly woman by that name in Moscow. He found one. Interestingly enough, she’s been reported by a neighbour as missing, though of course nobody has done anything further about it. We can go there now, if you like, and visit Svetlana afterwards. We’ll leave Laika in your apartment.’
The address was for an apartment building in Kapotnya, near the oil refinery. Lily looked up at the five-storey building. It was made out of prefabricated concrete panels, like many buildings that had been hastily constructed during the housing shortage of the 1950s, and now stood dilapidated, with peeling paint and broken drainpipes. A rusted Lada, stripped of its wheels, sat in the courtyard. Svetlana’s apartment was on the ground floor. It had bars on the window and the net curtains made it impossible to see inside.
‘Who are you looking for?’
Lily and Oksana turned their eyes upwards. An elderly woman wearing a kerchief on her head was addressing them from a first-storey window.
‘We’re here on behalf of Zinaida Glebovna Rusakova,’ Oksana answered. ‘She’s in hospital. We believe someone made a missing person’s report. We came to tell them that she’s unwell but she’s being looked after.’
‘Ah, Zina!’ said the woman. ‘I made that report. Just a moment. I will come down.’
A short while later she appeared at the door to the courtyard. ‘Come in,’ she said. ‘I’m so happy to hear that Zina is alive. She hasn’t been well this past year. I thought she might have dropped dead in the street and nobody knew who she was. What about her little dog, Laika?’
‘She’s with me. I’m looking after her,’ Lily said.
The woman’s relieved expression showed that she was pleased to hear that.
‘I’m Oksana Alexandrovna Fyodorova and this is Lily Nickham from Australia,’ Oksana explained to the woman. ‘Thank you for reporting her missing. Too many elderly people become ill with no one to look out for them.’
‘I’m Alina Markovna Barsukova,’ said the woman. She held up a key and directed them down the corridor. ‘I can show you Zina’s apartment. I cleaned out the food to prevent rats but everything else is as she left it.’
The sight of bandages under Alina’s dress saddened Lily. It seemed Alina shared her grandmother’s affliction of ulcerated legs as well as her name.
The apartment Alina showed them into was bare but clean, with a single bed in one corner and a kitchenette in another.
‘We share the bathroom down the corridor,’ Alina explained. ‘This place is falling down around us. Zina and I and some of the other residents put our names down for better housing but we’ve been on that list for ten years. I understand there are plans to tear this building down now yet nobody has told us where we’re to go.’
Apart from the rose-patterned bed quilt and a red polka-dot apron with lace around the edges that hung on the armoire, the room was bare. A couple of dog-eared books —
War and Peace
and
Anna Karenina
— sat on the floor by the bed, next to two dishes that might have been Laika’s food and water bowls. No pictures adorned the walls and no photographs or bric-a-brac gave away the identity of the apartment’s occupant. There was no television, radio or telephone, either. What did Svetlana do with herself when she was alone?
Lily turned to Alina. ‘How long has she lived here?’
‘She was allocated this apartment in 1963, a few years after I arrived here. She worked at the refinery.’
‘Do you know anything about her life before that?’ Oksana asked.
Alina shook her head. ‘Zina would never speak about her past. In fact, she hardly spoke at all. She was the quietest person in the world. She never had visitors and she never went to see anyone, not that I know of anyway. Her greatest joy came from her little dogs. She took them in as strays from the metro. Laika is two years old. The doggie before that was named Mushka and the one before that was Pchelka.’
‘They’re the names of dogs the Soviet space program sent into space,’ Oksana said. ‘The ones who didn’t come back.’
Alina shrugged. ‘I don’t know why she gave them those names. I always thought it was sad.’
Lily opened the armoire but it had only a couple of worn dresses inside; she and Oksana had already bought better ones for Svetlana.
With nothing else to see, Lily and Oksana took the books and apron with the intention of giving them to Svetlana. They offered the quilt, clothes and other items to Alina to give to someone in the building who might need them.
‘Could you take something to Zina for me?’ Alina asked.
‘Of course,’ replied Oksana.
Alina went to her apartment and returned with a bunch of pink carnations wrapped in newspaper. ‘Tell her that everyone here misses her — especially her beautiful singing,’ she added with an impish smile.
‘Her singing?’ asked Lily.
‘Yes,’ said Alina. ‘She didn’t sing often but when she did it was wonderful. She has such a melodious voice. I don’t think she had any idea that the rest of us were listening.’
Oksana and Lily thanked Alina again and headed towards the car. Oksana was opening the door when Lily stopped in her tracks. She brought her hands to her face. Her head was spinning.
‘What is it?’ asked Oksana. ‘Are you unwell?’
She had such a melodious voice
. Lily’s thoughts were flying. Pieces of things Svetlana had told them were coming together, but not in the order Svetlana had given them. She remembered the items they had seen in the apartment. The pretty quilt and the apron on the armoire, Tolstoy’s books by the bed. Then she recalled the way Svetlana had spoken about Stalin:
When Stalin paid someone attention, it was like the light in heaven shone upon them. But when he turned cold, that person was doomed.
Those were the words of someone who had experienced Stalin’s treachery first hand. ‘Oh my God!’ said Lily, leaning against the car. ‘Why didn’t I see it before?’
‘What is it?’ asked Oksana, moving towards her.
‘That’s not Svetlana Novikova in the hospital bed,’ Lily told her. ‘That’s Natalya Azarova!’
Oksana looked shocked, but then understanding dawned on her face. ‘You’re right. But whose body did they find?’
Lily took a breath. ‘I believe that was Svetlana Novikova … and that Natalya Azarova killed her.’
Polina was on duty at the hospital. ‘Thank goodness you’re here,’ she said when she saw Lily and Oksana. ‘I left messages on both your answering machines. Svetlana hasn’t been at all well today. She won’t eat or drink and she refuses to tell me what’s wrong. I believe she’s upset about the funeral. If she doesn’t drink something soon, I’ll have to put a drip in her arm. In her condition, becoming dehydrated is especially dangerous.’
The old woman was alone in her room when Lily and Oksana entered. She wouldn’t look at them and kept her eyes fixed on the window. Lily was afraid to speak at first. What if she said that they knew she was Natalya Azarova and it made things worse? But Oksana nudged her and so Lily moved around to the side of the bed near the window where Natasha was forced to notice her. Whatever she had done, Lily couldn’t help feeling pity for the poor worn-out human being in front of her.
‘I know who you really are,’ she whispered. ‘I know that you are Natalya Azarova.’
The old woman didn’t respond. Lily put her hand on her shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze.
‘I also know that you killed Svetlana Novikova,’ she said. ‘Was it because you found out that she’d betrayed you?’
Natasha’s gaze shifted and she looked into Lily’s face. Her mouth moved painfully and tears came to her eyes. ‘I did kill Svetlana,’ she said. ‘But not for the reason you suggest. Svetlana
never
betrayed me.’
A
fter I had seen the NKVD officer watching me, I didn’t think things could get worse. But they did. Much worse.
I ran towards the command bunker, intending to warn Valentin that I was about to be arrested, but he was in his plane on the runway with the rest of his squadron. Sharavin was standing next to him, ready to move the chocks from his wheels. Svetlana was working on my plane, which had taken some hits on my last sortie. I would tell her.
I headed towards the hangar but was stopped by Lipovsky. ‘Where are you going in such a hurry, Comrade Lieutenant? You can’t gossip with your mechanic now. She has to assist with the other planes as well as yours.’
I was of equal rank to Lipovsky and his pompous tone was out of order. But I couldn’t afford to make trouble.
‘Here,’ he said, handing me a wad of envelopes. ‘The mail has arrived. Make yourself useful and take these back to the women’s bunker.’
Personal letters were checked and censored by Lipovsky and their distribution was highly confidential. Was he getting pleasure out of treating me like a subordinate and making me deliver the mail? Perhaps it was Lipovsky who had reported me to the NKVD. I took the mail and was thankful to find none of the other women were in the bunker when I arrived. I planned to write two notes: one to my mother and one to Valentin. I would entrust them to Svetlana.
I placed Alisa’s mail on her pillow and sorted through the rest of the pile. The sloped feminine hand on the envelope addressed to Svetlana was that of her mother. The return address brought me to a standstill:
Apartment 23, 11 Skatertny Pereulok, Moscow
. It was where I had lived with my family before my father was arrested. My mind turned to fog. How could Svetlana’s family be living in our former apartment?
The fog cleared. People who denounced their colleagues or neighbours, I’d learned, were often rewarded with the accused’s possessions. I’d heard of a professor at Moscow University being given the head of the department’s position after he had denounced his superior, and an opera singer ‘inheriting’ the furs belonging to the wife of the company’s director after her accusations saw the both of them sent to a labour camp. Why shouldn’t a traitor be rewarded with an apartment she coveted for doing the same? Lydia’s strange behaviour on the evening of Papa’s arrest was now plain. She’d known what was coming. Or had she been unnerved when she saw the brooch Stalin had so falsely sent?
She had got what she wanted. I remembered the new doormat and the smell of fresh paint and floor polish I had noticed when I’d returned the scarf Mama had borrowed from our former neighbour. My thoughts turned black. It no longer mattered if the NKVD were about to arrest me because everything that I had lived was a lie. Svetlana, to whom I daily entrusted my life, was a traitor to me and my family.
I thought that when Svetlana returned to the bunker I would slap her, but instead I stood rooted to the spot and said coolly: ‘My father was executed — and for what? Because your mother wanted our apartment?’
Svetlana’s gaze fell to the letter that I held in my hand. The colour drained from her face and her shoulders slumped. She sat down on her bed and put her hands over her eyes.
‘And you had the gall to pretend you were my friend!’ I went on.
‘I didn’t know. I didn’t know what my mother had persuaded my father to do.’
‘You didn’t know?’ My voice was hoarse. ‘You lived in our apartment — in our home — and you didn’t know?’
Svetlana dropped her hands into her lap and looked at me. Her eyes were tear-filled. ‘Not at first. My mother said it was a coincidence: that they’d applied for a better apartment and happened to get yours because it had become available. But of course it was obvious.’ She clenched her hands. ‘I was so ashamed of her … so ashamed of my own mother!’
Svetlana pleaded for me to understand but I couldn’t feel anything for her. All I could think about was Papa. He had been dragged from our home, imprisoned and then killed. How could I forget that look on his face when he was arrested? The Novikovs had done that to him!
I wanted to lash out at Svetlana, to shove her and punch her, but she looked defeated and would have collapsed at the first blow. Instead I threw the letter at her and fled into the night.
I sat in one of the sunflower fields, anger ripping through me. My mother had been generous with Lydia. My father had said that he would take the Novikov family to the dacha in summer. In return, she had put us in hell! I thought of Lydia living in that lovely apartment while my mother sat alone in a tiny place without her family. The fact that the betrayal had happened years ago and I had only just found out, made everything worse. I wanted to hate Svetlana but I couldn’t. It had been Lydia’s doing. As I sifted through things in my mind, I began to see why, with all her qualifications, Svetlana had come to the front to work as my mechanic. She felt the shame that her mother didn’t. I stood up, intending to return to the bunker to sleep for a few hours, but Captain Panchenko announced over the loudspeakers that the regiment was to assemble immediately. Valentin described to us the seriousness of the day ahead. The Luftwaffe was amassing armadas of aircraft to halt our advance.
‘The fighting will be fierce,’ he said. ‘I want to take this opportunity to say how honoured I am to have been your commander.’
Valentin’s squadron and mine — to be led on this occasion by Alisa — along with the others, waited in our planes all morning but it seemed that the Germans were holding off their attack. I kept looking over my shoulder around the airfield, wondering where the NKVD agent was lurking. He was taking his time to arrest me. The sun was scorching and the controls burned my hands when I touched them. My throat was parched. Svetlana and the other mechanics took shelter beneath the planes’ wings. It was a convenient way for Svetlana and me not to face each other. ‘We can’t keep sitting out here,’ Valentin said. He directed all the pilots to wait in a hut by the runway. When we joined them, he studied me with concern. ‘Are you unwell, Natasha?’
He wanted to replace me with another pilot but I refused. How I loved my precious Valentin! I’d been so shocked by what I’d discovered that I hadn’t written the notes for him and my mother. If I was killed or arrested, Valentin would be told that Papa had been executed as an enemy of the people. He would wonder why I’d kept that from him. I needed to explain to him what a good man my father had been. I thought that if I told him about attending the reception at the Kremlin for Valery Chkalov, Valentin would realise the high esteem in which Stalin and the other commissars had held Papa. He had created hundreds of new types of chocolate. His joy in life was to give people pleasure. He’d had no interest in destroying the Soviet Union.
‘I met Stalin once,’ I began. ‘I thought it was the most exciting day of my life. I was fourteen years old.’
Valentin’s expression changed in an instant. He grimaced as if he’d tasted something bad. ‘Listen, Natasha, there is something you should know. Stalin personally signed your father’s execution order.’
I felt as if I’d been struck on the head. For once I could see things clearly. My mother had written to Stalin many times but had never received a reply. Whatever arrows Svetlana’s parents had shot at my father, Stalin could have overturned the accusations with a stroke of his pen. But he hadn’t. I didn’t know how Valentin even knew about Stalin and my father’s death, but I was certain that he was right. It was as if he had yanked down a curtain and I saw Stalin for who he was unblinkered by my foolish veneration.
I wanted to run to Svetlana to tell her that I forgave her. But the call came to scramble. A frantic message from the frontline told of massive formations speeding towards our troops.
Valentin and I sprinted to our planes, followed by the other pilots. Svetlana was waiting by mine to help me with my parachute. I handed her my identification capsule but she kept her eyes averted from me. There was no time to reconcile now.
The sky had been clear in the morning, but in the afternoon clumps of dense cloud had formed. Three squadrons took off for the first sortie: Valentin’s crack quartet, of which I was one; Alisa’s covering quartet; and a reserve group led by Filipp. We taxied together, turned to the wind, opened our throttles and lifted into the air. The familiar vibration of my aircraft calmed me. There was nothing to think about now except fighting.
When we reached the frontline it seemed that the sky was a mass of planes. I counted sixty Junkers covered by ten Focke-Wulfs and twenty Messerschmitts. The first Junkers of the formation were diving in attack. The roar of the bombers’ engines and the whines of those of the fighters were deafening. ‘Stay in tight formation,’ Valentin ordered us over the radio.
He led our quartet to attack the bombers while Filipp steered his group to engage the fighters.
Valentin closed in on a Junker and let forth two bursts of fire. The first killed the rear gunner and the second set one of the engines ablaze. The aircraft was loaded with bombs and exploded into a fireball that rocked my plane. Alisa shot down a Focke-Wulf that was close to my tail. It gushed smoke and spiralled to the ground.
The crack and covering squadrons took turns in attacking the Junkers. There was crossfire, terrifyingly close at times. Tracers whizzed past me. Planes were going in all directions but I kept my eyes on Valentin. No matter what, I had to protect him.
Two more Junkers broke apart and fell to the ground. A Focke-Wulf on fire plunged between us and I pulled away to avoid being taken down with it. I lost sight of Valentin. A Messerschmitt appeared under me and I moved it into my sights. Something hit my plane. It was either debris or bullets but in the chaos I couldn’t tell. Everything shook and for a moment I thought I was finished. But the gauges read normally. I pressed the gun button and claimed my fighter. The plane flipped and went down belly up.
I spotted Valentin and moved back into position. Our quartets had driven the Junkers away from their target. We’d lost two of our fighters but I’d seen one of the pilots bail out on our side of the front. Filipp’s plane was shot full of holes but seemed to be operating. At least we had helped our troops. It was up to them now to advance.
Valentin’s voice came over the transmitter. ‘All right, back to the airfield now. Well done!’
It was the most ferocious battle we had fought in together and yet Valentin sounded as calm as ever. ‘Doesn’t anything faze you?’ I radioed back to him, but he didn’t respond. My transmitter must have been damaged. He couldn’t hear me although I could hear him.
The airfield came into sight through the clouds. A sense of relief washed over me: now I could reconcile with Svetlana and explain to Valentin about my past. If I could do those two things, I no longer cared what the NKVD might do to me.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw shapes in the clouds. Had one of the quartets moved out of formation? Then I saw them again. No! Three planes. Messerschmitts!
I tried my transmitter again but it was no use. The German planes burst through the clouds and headed straight towards Valentin. Even if he had seen them he wouldn’t have had a chance. He’d already begun his descent. His landing gear was down and he’d tapered off his speed. He was at too low an altitude to bail out and survive. I increased my speed and flew parallel to the lead pilot. I dipped my wing as if I was having trouble controlling my plane. My mask covered most of my face but he would be able to tell I was a woman. He might even guess who I was. Colonel Smirnov had said that there was a high price on my head. The pilot took the bait and followed me as I turned away from the airfield and in the direction of the front. To my surprise, the other two pilots did too; neither stayed behind to finish off Valentin. They couldn’t have been ace pilots if they were so easily distracted, but I was glad they had fallen for my trick.
I flew through the clouds with the three enemy planes on my tail. I knew with multiple pursuers to never fly straight but keep turning and attacking. But my main concern now was leading them away from Valentin and the airfield. I had blundered with the Black Diamond and I didn’t intend to fail this time.
The clouds thinned and disappeared. Below lay open fields with forest beyond. I didn’t have to look at my map to know that I was over enemy-held territory. It was time to engage the fighters. I turned and flew full power towards the three Messerschmitts. The centre pilot opened fire and tracers flashed past my cockpit. I knew that if I wavered, I’d be shot up. Captured German pilots had revealed to us their airmen considered Slavs fatalistic and prone to suicidal tactics. They also knew that we had the NKVD at our backs if we failed in our missions. That belief gave me the upper hand. They did exactly as I hoped: they lost their nerve, opening up their formation like a fan. I hit one plane with my cannon and it dropped to earth, trailing smoke behind it. I was clear now to retreat to our side of the frontline. I glanced at my fuel gauge: I might have just enough to make it.
But the two other Messerschmitts weren’t prepared to let me go. They turned and followed me. I could lure them low to the trees, but on this side of the front I was in danger of antiaircraft fire. If I was going to go down, better to do so in those remote fields I’d seen than in the middle of the German army.
I turned and made another pass. I pressed my gun fire button but it clicked. I was out of ammunition and my fuel was too low to keep fighting. The Germans would realise that and catch me in the pincer manoeuvre they were so fond of and force me to land. I had one final trick up my sleeve. It had a high fatality rate, which was why only the most desperate used it. Those who survived were awarded the Order of the Red Banner.
I approached one of the fighters from the side, shearing off part of its wing and piercing its fuselage with my propeller. The plane wobbled and went nose down, but I had ruined my chances of crash-landing. My Yak lurched. I pulled back on the control but it was like a piece of string in my hands. I had no choice but to bail out now.
I tore off my mask and headphones and reached for the canopy. It was stuck and I struggled with it as my plane began to plummet. Finally I managed to rip the canopy open. Blinded by the rushing wind and battered and buffeted by the air around me, I struggled to lever myself against the cockpit rim. Suddenly I was sucked out. The plane fell away from me. I was sorry that I hadn’t been able to save it. It plunged into the forest with a loud rumble and a lightning flash.