Authors: Belinda Alexandra
I was marched along a corridor with my hands secured behind my back. Without the buttons, my dress slipped open and I couldn’t hold it closed as before. There were several minutes of going up and down stairs and along corridors, and all the while I was terrified I was going to be tortured like the man I had heard screaming. Then I was pushed into the same cell I had just come from.
The pattern of not allowing me to sleep, or disturbing me when I did, continued for what seemed like weeks but may have only been days. I lost all sense of time. My food continued to be served in the same elaborate way but was always a starvation ration: black bread and a cup of hot water; two spoonfuls of porridge and a cup of hot water; soup that was often nothing more than a cabbage leaf floating in hot water. The bread was fresh and the porridge was tasty, but it wasn’t enough. Then one night the guard woke me and whispered, ‘Time for your interrogation.’ I expected to go through the same farce of walking up and down the stairs and corridors to no purpose other than to frustrate me. But this time I was led down a different corridor and into a spacious room where a man was waiting for me behind a desk. The room was lavishly decorated with carved table lamps, Bessarabian rugs and gold curtains. A portrait of Stalin hung on the wall and a fire gave off a warm glow.
‘The prisoner is ready for interrogation,’ announced the guard.
The man behind the desk was around thirty years of age and wore a major’s uniform, but his pudgy face and pot belly told me that he hadn’t fought on the frontline. His gaze fell to my breasts. I rearranged my dress to cover myself.
‘Please sit down,’ the major said, indicating a mahogany-and-velvet chair opposite his desk. ‘I trust you have been treated well?’
He didn’t wait for an answer and nodded at the guard to dismiss him. A few minutes later a woman came in with a tray of tea things and
pryaniki
. The honey and nutmeg aroma of the cookies made me even more aware of how hungry I was.
The major poured tea into a cup and placed it in front of me. ‘Lemon? A cube of sugar? Jam?’ he asked me. ‘Some
pryaniki
?’
Although I was starving, I shook my head. Surely this was a trick.
‘Why am I here?’ I asked. ‘Why have I been arrested?’
The major took a sip from his own cup and stared at the ceiling for a few moments, giving me a view of his double chin. Then he turned his attention back to me. ‘To confess your crimes,’ he said.
His voice was gentle and encouraging, like a lover. It sent shivers down my spine.
‘I am Natalya Stepanovna Azarova,’ I told him. ‘The pilot. I was downed over enemy territory in Orël Oblast after running out of ammunition and ramming a Messerschmitt with my own airplane. I was captured by the enemy, and although I tried to commit suicide and also to escape I did not succeed in my attempts. I was transported to Auschwitz where I remained until it was liberated by the Red Army on the twenty-seventh of January. I haven’t committed any crime that I am aware of. I never
surrendered
to the enemy. I fought with everything I had.’
The major lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. ‘What did you do at Auschwitz?’
‘I was put to work sorting food and clothing.’
The major turned his penetrating gaze on me. I suddenly felt guilty. But surely sorting clothes in order to receive food for survival wasn’t aiding the enemy?
‘We have plenty of time in the Lubyanka,’ he said. ‘We never hurry. At first it barely hurts and you wonder what all the fuss is about. And then … well, if you continue with these lies you will find out.’
I tried to appear calm but my heart was racing. ‘Everything I’ve told you is the truth!’ I said.
The major rose from his seat and stood above me. ‘Lies! Lies! Lies!’ he screamed. His face was so close to mine that I could smell the vodka-scented sweat of his skin. ‘You are Zinaida Glebovna Rusakova and you worked for the Gestapo!’
‘That’s wrong!’ I replied. ‘Zinaida Glebovna Rusakova was a passenger I met on the train from Katowice to Odessa. She was shot when we arrived at the port!’
‘Do you know the punishment for spying, Zinaida Glebovna?’ the major asked me. A thread of spittle clung to the corner of his lip and his forehead was covered in sweat.
‘I told you, I’m not Zinaida Glebovna!’
Zinaida had said she’d worked in a labour camp in Poland. Either she’d been lying or the major was. I remembered Zinaida’s friendly manner and was certain she hadn’t worked for the Gestapo.
The major took a strand of my hair between his fingers. ‘You have long hair. You haven’t wasted away to skin and bones. You don’t look like someone who has been in Auschwitz. You look like a well-fed German whore. Where did you get that dress?’
Was it worth even replying, I wondered. The more I argued with the major the further I seemed to be dragged into his game. Was he trying to make me believe that there’d been a mix-up and I’d been arrested in Zinaida’s place? But to what purpose? There was probably no logic to the interrogation. It was nothing more than sadism.
I had spent eighteen months in a concentration camp, and two years before that fighting in a brutal war. I was physically and mentally exhausted. I pulled up the sleeve of my dress to reveal my Auschwitz tattoo. ‘What is it you want from me?’ I asked. ‘If you are convinced that I worked for the Gestapo why didn’t you put a bullet through my head in Odessa? If it’s information about the Germans you want, I have nothing to give you!’
The major returned to his chair and put on a pair of spectacles. He opened a folder on his desk and rummaged through its papers as if he’d forgotten me. Then he looked at me over the rim of his glasses.
‘You think it’s going to be as easy as that?’ he said coldly. ‘Yes, you will be killed — eventually — but you’re going to have to
work
for your death. You are going to pay back the Motherland for your crimes against her. Where Auschwitz failed, Kolyma will succeed.’ Kolyma? That was a prison colony in the Arctic Circle. Nobody came back from there! ‘In Kolyma you will become thin and your skin will turn black,’ said the major, emphasising each word. ‘Your teeth will fall out and your organs will shrivel. But not before you have worked with the last drop of your blood to atone for your crimes. We’ll keep you alive long enough to do that.’
‘I am not a criminal!’
The major went back to looking through his folder. He pulled out a piece of paper and placed it in front of me.
‘Sign this,’ he said. ‘It’s your confession.’
My situation was hopeless, I knew, but I couldn’t give in to these ridiculous accusations.
‘I will not sign it!’ I said. ‘I told you: I am Natalya Stepanovna Azarova. I am a decorated fighter pilot. I fought for my country! Did you?’
I expected my taunt to infuriate the major but he didn’t react.
‘I would stop pretending that you are Natalya Azarova if I were you,’ he said. ‘Don’t you know that Natalya Azarova deliberately flew into enemy territory so she could join the Germans? She was a daughter of an enemy of the people, but she lied to get a job at an aircraft factory and then lied to the Komsomol in order to become a member. She even lied to the great Marina Raskova and the Soviet Air Force. She’s already been stripped of her medals.’
I was too shocked to say anything more. So that is what the Soviet people would be told: that I was a spy and a traitor! How could justice prevail as long as Stalin was leader?
The major took some papers out of the folder and made sure that I got a look at them. They were the letters I had written to Mama and Valentin in Katowice. Letters that I now knew they would never receive.
‘Besides,’ said the major, throwing the letters into the fire, ‘if you
were
Natalya Azarova, you would sign the confession.’ He grinned. ‘Natalya Azarova would remember that she has a mother who lives in the Arbat. And … oh yes, a fighter pilot for a lover. His name is Valentin Victorovich Orlov, I believe.’
I understood then that everything was lost. The NKVD knew perfectly well who I was. My beloved Motherland was in the hands of lunatics. ‘Yes, Natalya Azarova would sign her confession,’ continued the major, ‘if she didn’t want something …
dreadful
to happen to those she loved.’ He pushed the paper closer to me and handed me a pen. ‘Remember to sign it by your real name, Zinaida Glebovna.’
My hand wavered over the document. If I didn’t sign it, the NKVD would still kill me, and Valentin and Mama would certainly be doomed. Signing it was the only chance I had of protecting them. My hand trembled as I formed the letters of my false signature. When I had finished, the pen slipped from my fingers and clattered to the floor.
The major opened the curtains to reveal a view of the square below. The snow had melted and the sky was a magnificent blue.
‘Look at Moscow one last time!’ he said, spreading his arms wide. ‘Say goodbye. You won’t be seeing it again. Twenty years’ hard labour without the right of correspondence.’ That was my sentence? In signing the confession Natalya Azarova had ceased to exist and I was as good as dead.
N
atasha was about to continue with her story when Polina came in pushing a mobile drip.
‘Ah, I see she’s been drinking some water,’ she said, pointing to the half-empty jug on the bedside table. ‘I called Doctor Pesenko and he recommended giving her intravenous fluids anyway.’
Polina set about preparing to insert the catheter into Natasha’s arm. Lily was aware that she and Oksana had been with Natasha for nearly two hours, a much longer visiting time than was usually allowed. She wanted to hear the rest of Natasha’s story, but the nurses had a schedule to keep, and Natasha’s health came first.
‘We’ll come and see you tomorrow,’ Lily said, patting Natasha’s hand. ‘And I’ll bring Laika.’
The dismay on the old woman’s face stung Lily. She sympathised. How could the telling of Natasha’s life story be interrupted at this crucial point, like a video put on pause for a toilet break?
On the way out of the hospital, Oksana’s mobile phone rang. While she took the call, Lily thought about what Natasha had told them. It had been a rollercoaster ride and her head was spinning. She had come to Russia to connect with a country that was part of her heritage and had got much more than she’d bargained for.
Oksana ended the call and looked at Lily. ‘That was Antonia. She went to feed the cats this afternoon at the Zamoskvorechye building site and a woman from the apartment block opposite threw a bucket of water over her. She also found several dead kittens. Their heads had been crushed, probably with a brick.’
‘That’s awful!’ said Lily. ‘Does Antonia think it’s the same woman?’
Oksana shrugged. ‘Possibly. We deal with this all the time. People see stray cats as vermin.’
Lily knew the Moscow Animals volunteers had been speeding up their trapping program with winter approaching, but the difficult thing was finding people who could care for the cats. Oksana had recently found a home for Max and Georgy, and Lily expected that she’d miss the kittens when they went to live with their new owner.
‘I can take more cats into my apartment,’ she said.
Oksana shook her head. ‘I can’t impose on you like that. You’ve been generous enough as it is.’
‘Yes, you can,’ said Lily, grinning. ‘I want to be a crazy cat lady like you!’
Oksana laughed. ‘What are you up to tonight? Do you want to come trap some cats?’
‘There’s nothing I’d rather do!’ Lily replied.
She wasn’t entirely joking. After listening to Natasha’s harrowing story, she didn’t want to be alone, and Oksana would understand exactly how she was feeling.
At the building site, Oksana set up the new box trap she’d invented in the hope of outsmarting Tuz, a ginger tom who had figured out how to remove food from a trap without stepping on the trigger plate and getting caught. They needed to trap him urgently because he was one of the toms impregnating the females and adding to the cat population.
‘It’s going to take patience,’ Oksana told Lily. ‘It’s not easy to fool street-smart cats like him, and Antonia has already fed the colony. Normally we don’t give them food on the day of the trapping so the cats are hungry enough to take the bait.’
To work the box trap, Lily and Oksana had to sit some distance away holding the string that set off the trap. While they were waiting for the cats, a woman appeared at the fence.
‘You’re trespassing!’ she told them. ‘I’ll call the police.’
Oksana went over to explain to the woman what they were doing. From their conversation it became apparent to Lily that this was the woman who’d thrown the bucket of water over Antonia and possibly killed the kittens. She’d expected the woman to be a crazy old biddy, but she was smartly dressed in linen trousers and a tailored blouse, and looked to be in her mid-forties. What a bitch, Lily thought, indignant on behalf of all the volunteers who were trying to help the animals.
‘We’re with an authorised animal group and we’re removing the cats,’ Lily heard Oksana say. ‘Leave us to do what we have to and then you won’t have any more cats to worry about, okay?’
The woman pursed her lips and stormed off.
‘People like that disgust me,’ Oksana told Lily when she returned to her spot. ‘They have no compassion at all.’
It was two in the morning before any of the cats ventured near the box trap. By then Lily had resorted to wiggling her toes and fingers to keep the blood flowing. The first cat that approached was a tortoiseshell that looked like Mamochka and might have been one of her daughters. But she only inspected the trap from the outside before scurrying away.
Tuz was the next cat to appear. To the women’s astonishment, he went straight inside the box trap. Oksana pulled the string and the door closed. Tuz spun around in terror and Lily felt sorry for him, but she knew he would be better off after Luka had desexed him, and Oksana had found him a new home.
In his panic, Tuz darted straight from the box trap into a cage with only a poke from Lily. Oksana shut the door.
‘All right, Tuz, my friend,’ she said, about to throw a blanket over the cage to calm him down, ‘off to a new life for you!’
‘Stop! Don’t move! Get down on the ground with your arms and legs spread!’
Torchlight shone over them and Lily and Oksana turned to see two policemen scaling the fence and running towards them.
‘Shit!’ said Oksana.
‘Get down!’ yelled one of the policemen, pointing his gun at them.
Lily wasn’t about to argue. She lay next to Oksana and felt one of the policemen grab her arms and pin them behind her back. It was surreal. She’d never even so much as received a parking fine in Australia and now she was being arrested?
The policemen hauled the women to their feet and pushed them towards the fence. After they’d all climbed back over, they handcuffed Lily and Oksana and led them towards the police van. Oksana tried to explain about Tuz: that he couldn’t be left exposed in a cage like that; he needed to be let out. But one of the policemen told her to shut up.
The sound of the van door slamming shut on them unnerved Lily. She was living Natasha’s story. Were she and Oksana about to be taken to the Lubyanka?
‘So explain to me again what you were doing,’ said the burly sergeant.
Lily glanced at the clock on the wall. It was four o’clock on Sunday afternoon and she and Oksana had spent the whole day in a stinking cell along with a chain-smoking prostitute. The women had been permitted to make one call each, and Lily had phoned the Australian embassy’s emergency line. The official who’d responded had said he would contact her employer, but so far there’d been no word from the hotel. Oksana had used her call to contact Luka so he could provide evidence of their work with animals, but his receptionist had informed her that he was out on an emergency call. She’d also asked the guard to call the hospital where Natasha was, to explain that they would not be able to see her, but he’d just shrugged as if to say it wasn’t his problem. When the prostitute was let out she said to them, ‘I’ll get my things back and then I’ll telephone the hospital for you.’ True to her word, she’d returned a few minutes later to tell them that the nurse on duty had said that Natasha was fine and had been sleeping most of the day.
‘I’m a committee member for Moscow Animals,’ Oksana explained to the sergeant for the second time. ‘My colleague here is a volunteer. We’ve been rescuing stray cats from the building site and re-homing them. We’re trying to get all the cats out before winter sets in.’
The sergeant looked at the policemen who had arrested them. They stood by the door, arms folded, faces stern. ‘You didn’t find anything on them? Narcotics? Dope?’
The policemen shook their heads. The sergeant gave a weary sigh and turned back to Lily and Oksana. ‘An informant from an apartment opposite reported that she saw you selling drugs.’
Lily thought of the woman who had confronted Oksana. Then she thought of Tuz, terrified and trapped in a cage with no food or water. That woman would probably do something terrible to him. It made her want to cry.
The sergeant clucked his tongue. ‘At the very least I’ll have to charge you with trespassing.’
There was a flurry of activity outside the door and Lily’s heart lifted when she heard Scott’s voice asking to see her. He was shown in, and the police sergeant explained what had taken place. Scott’s skin was glowing and he was wearing a plush tracksuit. He looked like he’d come from the gym.
‘You’ve been arrested for rescuing cats?’ he asked Lily, raising his eyebrows.
Lily felt foolish, as if she’d been arrested for riding a unicycle nude down Tverskaya Street, holding a bunch of balloons.
‘No, for trespassing,’ said the sergeant.
‘Because she was rescuing cats?’ asked Scott.
The sergeant looked exasperated. It wasn’t a good sign.
Another policeman came in carrying the cage with Tuz in it. The tomcat was snarling and swiping like a lion at a circus. Lily was relieved to see him still alive.
‘We found this at the site,’ said the officer, placing the cage on the floor. ‘But no drugs, not at the site nor in the suspects’ car.’
Oksana put her jacket over the cage to calm Tuz. ‘You must always cover them,’ she scolded the policeman, ‘or they panic so much they can injure themselves on the wire.’
‘You’re not wrong,’ said the policeman. ‘This one pissed all over the car.’
Lily suppressed a smile. Undesexed male cat urine? It was going to take weeks for that smell to fade.
Scott bent down and lifted a corner of the jacket to look at Tuz in the cage. ‘So this is one of the cats you were rescuing, is it, Lily?’ He went to poke his finger through the wire to pat Tuz.
‘Please don’t,’ said Lily. ‘These cats aren’t used to humans. They need to be desexed and socialised before they can be handled like ordinary pets.’
She realised that everyone in the room was staring at her, and the feeling of being nude on a unicycle grew stronger.
‘So does this cat need a home?’ Scott asked.
‘We have a serious problem here,’ the sergeant interrupted. ‘These women have been arrested for trespassing. One of them is a foreigner and an employee of yours.’
‘I’ve already left a message for our hotel lawyer,’ Scott said, giving Lily an encouraging wink. ‘We’ll organise representation as the embassy advised me to.’
The sergeant sucked in his breath and looked even more infuriated. Lily realised that Scott didn’t understand what the officer had been hinting at. Arresting her and Oksana had been a waste of time and would make the police look foolish. The sergeant wanted to be recompensed, not to become embroiled in messy paperwork and with lawyers. She wondered how to tell Scott that a bribe was what was called for.
As she was trying to come up with a way to take Scott aside and explain, another man was shown into the room. It was Luka. He sent Lily and Oksana a serious look then addressed the sergeant.
‘I believe there has been a misunderstanding and I would like to correct it as quickly as possible,’ he said firmly, keeping eye contact with the man.
He pulled an envelope from his pocket and placed it on the desk along with a bottle of vodka. The sergeant’s mood improved when he saw the envelope was well padded and the vodka was premium label.
‘Well, these things occur,’ he said with a gruff laugh. ‘No harm has been done. We can send everyone home now and not give it too much thought.’
‘I believe there are more cats at the site that need to be rescued,’ Luka said, keeping his gaze on the sergeant.
Lily watched in amazement. Luka had always been so gentle and considerate; she hadn’t imagined he could also be stern and determined, bold enough to stare down the law.
‘Well, we won’t be arresting these two again,’ the sergeant said, indicating Lily and Oksana, ‘and we’ll warn the woman who reported them to stay away from the site.’
With the matter resolved to everyone’s satisfaction, Luka picked up Tuz’s cage and led Oksana and Lily out to his car. Scott followed, looking impressed by Luka’s decisive action.
‘Do you need a lift too?’ Luka asked him, opening his car doors for the women.
‘Oh, no, thank you,’ Scott answered when he realised Luka was talking to him. ‘I drove.’
‘Thanks for coming, Scott,’ Lily said. ‘I’m very sorry for the trouble.’
‘Not at all,’ he replied, still looking distracted.
Oksana got into the front passenger seat while Lily sat in the back. Luka secured Tuz’s cage next to her with the seatbelt.
‘I don’t like resorting to bribes,’ he said, ‘but sometimes it’s the only way to get out of a tricky situation. As we say in Russia, “Let’s put a candle before God and a present before the judge.”’
He settled in behind the wheel and handed Oksana a key from his pocket. ‘I’m sorry, I only got your message an hour ago. I had two animal emergencies today. All the other traps at the site were empty. I put them in your car and locked it. I’ll drive you there now.’
‘The police left the key in the ignition?’ asked Oksana incredulously. ‘I’m amazed it wasn’t stolen.’
Luka was about to pull away from the kerb when Scott knocked on Oksana’s window. Luka lowered the glass so they could speak to each other.
‘Listen!’ Scott said, his eyes shining with excitement. ‘When you ladies next go trapping cats, can I come too?’
It was six o’clock in the evening by the time they picked up the traps, and too late to visit Natasha on a Sunday night. Luka took Tuz straight to his practice to desex him.
‘He’s had enough stress in that cage all day,’ he said. ‘We’d better do it now so we can get him settled into a larger cage.’
He arrived a while later at Lily’s flat with Tuz still drowsy from the anaesthetic and transferred him to a hospital cage Oksana had set up in Lily’s living room.
‘If you aren’t worn out from your brush with the law, would you like to come to the cinema with me tonight?’ Luka asked the two women. ‘
Man with a Movie Camera
is showing. It’s a late session, so we’ll make it in time.’
‘Not me,’ said Oksana. ‘I’m exhausted. But Lily ought to go — it’s a Russian classic.’