The Natashas

by Yelena Moskovich

  “Me dio dos luceros, que cuando los abro,

  Perfecto distingo lo negro del blanco”

  As she sang, she lowered her hands and turned towards César. Her hair was much thinner now, flat, parted straight in the centre. Her cheeks were rounded, her mouth wider, curved downward, and her eyes closer together.

  7

  César watched Rosa’s face changing. Her features were becoming someone else’s, and he recognised them immediately. His chest swelled with awe and his eyes grew tender.

  “Violeta Parra …” he said enamoured.

  The woman smiled at him and continued to sing. César picked up, mouthing along with her words. He trailed Violeta’s voice like a child stumbling to keep up with the grown-ups.

  As his voice stumbled on, he noticed an odd sound, underneath their singing, like a strange woodwind. His voice faded and it was just Violeta Parra singing. Still, that odd sound persisted, light, sweeping like dust underneath her voice.

  A wind blew, and the half-breath whistle rose beneath her voice. Her eyes deepened like two cotton balls soaked in ink.

  She was turning her head away from César. As she turned, César saw it. The bullet hole in the side of Violeta Parra’s head. It tunnelled precisely through from one side to the other. A gust of wind blew through the hole. Flute music came out of her head.

  8

  Violeta raised her hands and placed them over the holes in her head. Her wrists turned towards each other and covered her eyes. When she took her hands away, it was Rosa’s face looking at César.

  “You’ll carry a bit of my pain, won’t you, César?” Rosa said. “If you carry it long enough, it’ll become your own.”

  She leaned into him and placed her lips upon his temple. She whispered each syllable into the flesh of his scalp, into the bone of his skull: Pres-ta-das cos-as nos po-seen. “Borrowed things possess us.”

  Then, she turned around and began to walk away. “Rosa!” César tried to call out, but the name did not leave his mouth. It curled on his tongue like a leaf-worm. Now, as she was leaving, she was frightening him. “ROSA!” he tried again, but nothing sounded. Just when he felt his heart would burst, a voice came close to César and fogged his ear like a whisper.

  “I’ll email you,” Rosa said.

  9

  The marble twilight of the sky faded into a blue-grey of early evening. Lights in the windows. Voices in the buildings. This street was inhabited. The city was alive.

  From far off, in the horizon, a black dot continued to breathe. It breathed with the breath of the people in the city of Paris, and the people of other cities too. It breathed with the breath of a girl far away, stepping into a car one leg at a time. And the breath of the actor on the TV screen. And the breath of the singer in the spotlight. And the breath of those who breathe and breathe and still can’t remember who they are.

  VII

  Young woman, in window, from the waist up, hair undone and brushed

  1

  Béatrice is flat-chested, ten years old, blonde as the sand. The seawater drools on to the shore. The sky is erased, ragged with clouds. They’ve rented a house, her father and the good friend he’s kept from childhood, Marcel. Marcel has brought his family.

  Marcel’s daughter, Sabine, has her hair in two thick chestnut braids. She likes to go scavenging and give names. “Glinglink” she says and points at a cap from a beer bottle poking out of the sand. After that, every time anyone sees a bottle cap, they must pronounce it “glinglink”. Emmanuelle plays in the sand joyfully with her mother. Béatrice is told to play with the girl who insists that the world must be named, though she would rather bury her toes in the sand one by one.

  The girl takes her hand and they run off together. When they’ve reached the top of the beach, she lets go and runs far ahead. Béatrice calls out her name so she’ll wait for her. The girl abruptly stops her sprint, turns around and runs straight back to Béatrice. The girl grabs her wrist and looks her straight into the eyes.

  “I didn’t give you permission to say my name.”

  Béatrice tries to excuse herself, but it’s already too late, as the girl’s hand is pinching her jaw open. The girl shoves two fingers in Béatrice’s mouth and pushes into her jaw hinge so she can’t bite her. The girl’s fingers go deep, and Béatrice gags immediately and twists in every way she can.

  “Next time you say it without permission, you’ll have to throw up your lunch.”

  The girl pulls her fingers out and lets go. Béatrice wipes off her mouth. She turns to look back at the shore where her mother is playing with her sister. She sees Marcel open a new beer bottle and hand it to her father. As the father takes it, he catches the figure of his daughter in the distance looking at him. He lifts the bottle high and shouts, “Haaaving fuuuunn, aaaannngggeeelll …?”

  Béatrice nods, not sure if she is nodding to her father or to the girl’s newly set rule. The girl takes Béatrice’s hand into hers.

  “Come on, angel,” she says.

  Béatrice is now careful not to call the girl Sabine. The girl leads her through the dunes, away from their parents. She tells her which rocks to pick up. She tells her snail shells are where people hide their diamonds. She tells her to hurry up. Béatrice feels her white shoulders burning up and tells the girl that they are starting to sting. The girl replies that everyone’s made of fire and whenever we get angry, pieces of ourselves spark off. That’s what stars are, she explains, crumbs of our anger.

  The girl has Béatrice examine the rocks they’ve collected because she left her glasses with her mom so they wouldn’t fall off and break. After they’ve collected enough rocks, the girl finds a dry tree over the hump of a dune and sits down in its shade. Béatrice stands idle until the girl tells her to come and sit down. Béatrice sits, facing the girl.

  The girl speaks in a factual tone, and Béatrice is afraid to contradict her. Together, they crouch and place the rocks in a circle formation between them, piling them as high as the middle of their thighs. “This is a portal,” the girl explains. “Now we can see the future.”

  The girl bends her body over the rock circle, until the tip of her nose is directly facing the sand. “Hold my feet so I don’t fall in,” she tells Béatrice. Béatrice comes around behind the girl, crouches back down and takes hold of the girl’s ankles.

  “What do you … see …?” Béatrice asks timidly.

  “Ha! I see YOUR future!” the girl responds.

  Béatrice flinches. She regrets asking the question. She wants nothing to do with her future. Béatrice suddenly has the sharp sensation that knowing any part of your future is knowing how you will die. Her bottom lip coils under. Please, please don’t tell me how I die.

  “WELL, YOU WANNA KNOW WHAT I SEE?” the girl yells into the sand, as if her voice has to carry far, now that she is inside Béatrice’s future, years away. Béatrice tries to push the sound out, the sound that will tell the girl to close the portal. She pushes from her toes up, but her throat is dry.

  “HELLO, CAN YOU HEAR ME?” the girl shouts again into the sand.

  Béatrice tries again. She must tell the girl to get out of her future. She pushes, but only the sound of a leaf shaking comes from her mouth.

  “OH, YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT I’M SEEING! READY TO KNOW YOUR FUTURE?”

  Béatrice grips the girl’s ankles as if to signal her to stop. Please, please, please. But already a different voice is on its way. An inhale deepens her eyes and rises to the surface, like a metal gate lifting from a bull’s cage. The voice comes. It is not a child’s voice. It’s a woman’s voice. Béatrice’s voice, twenty-some years later.

  “Tell me,” the voice speaks from Béatrice’s mouth.

  Béatrice’s hands go limp and let go of the girl’s ankles. The girl falls into the future, blood from her nose stains the sand, now, then.

  On the shore, near their parents, the ocean water coils and rolls forward. For years to come, the waves wash the girl’s scream away.


  2

  Béatrice stood wearing the long, black-lace dress, her hand on the green curtain, opening an eye-hole into the boutique. She peered out towards the shopkeeper who had just welcomed a woman named Polina.

  The woman in question had her back to Béatrice. Her beige trench coat hung to her calves. Her brown hair curled over her shoulders. Her hands were leisurely resting in her coat pockets. Behind her, through the window on to the street, rows of bodies walked in both directions. Their mouths were moving, but made no perceptible sound. The only noise in the shop was the static coming from the radio. Then, the singer’s voice emerged. “Vida,” the woman sang again. This time like a question. The strum of the guitar rose just then and seemed to calm the singer’s question. Béatrice pulled the curtain a little wider and two wooden rings clacked into each other. The shopkeeper turned her head. The tips of her black hair scraped the paper of the open notebook on the desk. The woman in question took her hands out of her pockets and turned towards Béatrice as well. Their eyes met.

  “Now, then,” Polina said, “let’s see the dress.”

  3

  The singer’s voice from the radio was fading away and only the guitar played her footsteps, leaving the song. Then the white walls were once again filled with the sound of dry hands rubbing together.

  Béatrice stood in the boutique light, right in front of the open curtain. The skin of the black lizard dress was tightly wrapped around her body, stark against her blonde chignon and her mauve lips.

  The green curtain behind her was gathered to one side and hung like a sheet of moss. Polina stood in the middle of the room, her hands in her coat pockets, observing Béatrice’s body. The shopkeeper turned to face Béatrice.

  Béatrice was held in place by their gaze. She felt herself leaning from the eyes of one woman to the eyes of the other.

  She was not sure where to look. She wanted to observe Polina, to take the time to study her face, but as she traced her shoulder, up her neck, around her chin and to the hairline behind her ear, she felt her eyes were being repelled from seeing her face.

  Béatrice’s eyes drifted from Polina’s body on to the street behind her, outside the glass window of the shop. She saw a pigeon-faced man veering towards the window. He shuffled forward so eagerly that he almost ran his nose into the glass. He pulled his chin back and adjusted his head to a secure distance from the glass. Since it was difficult to estimate exactly where this invisible surface was, his head bobbed like a slow-boiling potato.

  Behind the man, a teenage boy came forward. One side of his mouth was stretching up as his eyes protruded, glossy like saliva from a kiss. He was staring. Then he cut his face to the side and let out a bark. He brought his arm out and wound his hand toward himself, until his two friends came to join. There they stood, the boiling potato, the saliva-eyes and his two chicken-legged friends in their bunched-up jeans, all staring at Béatrice.

  She felt her skin tighten beneath the lace. She was cold. Goosebumps pushed towards the surface. Béatrice looked down at her breasts. They were abundant, white, held up by a thick, black satin bra. Beneath them, her white stomach, then her underwear, black lace as well. She felt her pubic hair reaching between the thinly woven black strings. She looked down. There were her legs and her bare knees.

  She had nothing on beneath the long black lace dress except for her structured bra and her transparent underwear. Béatrice wanted to snap her arms over her body and run behind the curtain, but the women’s eyes would not let her move. The potato man’s mouth was hanging open. Behind him, a woman walking past, stopped and darted her eyes at Béatrice. Her mouth was sour, as if preparing to say the word “unfortunate”. She quickly looked away and walked off.

  One of the boys tapped on the glass of the window with his knuckles and said something that made another boy lick his puffy bottom lip. The third boy pushed his tongue into the side of his cheek repeatedly.

  It was unbearable to be on display like this, fastened in place by the women’s gaze. Béatrice grew light-headed, as if she were stretching away from herself. Just then, Polina turned sharply towards the boys behind the window. They stumbled into each other, then scattered. Béatrice’s forearms sprang closed over her breasts and she ran back behind the green curtain.

  The older man continued standing there, his mouth open, bobbing to the memory of Béatrice’s breasts.

  4

  Béatrice stood alert behind the curtain, her arms still wrapped over her chest.

  She heard the women continue talking uneventfully, sometimes one of their heels took a step this way or that, but neither came back to see her.

  Good. Stay away.

  Her teeth clenched down and sucked in the flesh of her cheeks. A taste accumulated in her throat, bitter as grapefruit, thick as yoghurt. She thought of the shopkeeper’s bare forearms lain apathetically upon the starched pages of the open notebook as she looked Béatrice up and down. She thought of the woman named Polina and her black-magnet face that repelled the eyes from seeing. Those boys behind the window staring at her, those boys and their easy adolescence. Yes, it must be easy, Béatrice thought. And the old man and his open mouth and his breath like a fly’s wings rubbing together. His eyes on Béatrice, assuming a right to her body. The memory rippled through her like nausea.

  A set of fingers slid around the curtain’s edge and began to pull. The shopkeeper walked in, past Béatrice as if she were not there, to the table with the sewing machine. She pulled off the woollen shawl and swung it around her shoulders. She paused then, and looked at the metal needle of the sewing machine.

  “Well, have you decided about the dress?” she said as if to the needle.

  5

  The woman named Polina came into the doorway, the beginnings of a smile playing across her burgundy-painted lips.

  Béatrice’s gaze drew upwards over the small valley below her nose where the skin stretched into a smile. Over each wide eye, the dark stroke of an eyebrow. Her hair was much lighter, an almond colour. It fell generously to the left.

  Béatrice began hesitantly. “How … much is it?” she asked.

  Polina’s eyes glimmered like shards from broken bottles.

  “How much is the dress. How much is the dress …” the shopkeeper echoed to herself.

  Béatrice waited. Polina relaxed her lips and took a long breath in.

  “… You know sometimes people pay more for a dress than …” she finally said.

  Béatrice waited. The shopkeeper was already gone and the heavy green curtain was swaying.

  6

  “The dress is on me,” Polina said. She walked over to the stacked chair, took it off the boxes and set it on its feet beside Béatrice. “Take a seat.”

  Béatrice did not know if she should sit here with this woman. But her spine made contact with the wooden back of the chair and she knew she had accepted.

  “You are very rigid, don’t be so rigid.”

  “Okay,” Béatrice said.

  “You wanted a dress, you got one.”

  Béatrice stayed silent.

  “Don’t you like the dress?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. There’s no reason you shouldn’t. You’ve got a very beautiful body, are you aware of this? Of course you are aware. I won’t make you go through the banality of the beginning of this conversation. Your breasts are especially nice.”

  “I know,” Béatrice said like a sullen child.

  “Well then. Why are you so unhappy?”

  “Who says I’m unhappy,” Béatrice said. Her arms locked across her gut.

  “No one. Are you happy?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Good. I value sincerity. I am being sincere with you, I hope you know. Now, if you’re satisfied with your body, why aren’t you happy?”

  “I don’t care about my body.”

  “Maybe you don’t, but others seem to. Don’t you care about them?”

  “If they care about my body I don’t care about
them.”

  Béatrice was now in sync with Polina. She was ready to strike back. Polina raised her hand towards Béatrice’s face. With the tips of her fingers, Polina dabbed Béatrice’s temple, then slid her fingers up Béatrice’s chignon.

  “I don’t care about your body, Béatrice.”

  The way Polina said her name pulled Béatrice open like a tin can. Her mind was full of questions that squirmed against each other.

  “There are people who leave their bodies and their bodies go on living without them,” Polina said. “These people are named Natasha.”

  7

  “Na … ta … sha …” Béatrice repeated unconsciously under her breath. She heard the individual sounds, but could not hear the name they were meant to form.

  “Telo … Nomer … Chiffre …Youpka …” Polina said very quietly as if counting.

  Béatrice’s eyes grew thin, trying to listen.

  “Anja … Sofia … Salomeya …Viktoria …” Polina continued her count.

  VIII

  To Moscow!

  1

  César stood motionless in the street where the woman who was at once Rosa and Violeta had left him. A persistent buzz rummaged in his pocket. He pulled out the object and held it in his palm. It was his cell phone, ringing. He read the name of the caller out loud: “Marcel.” His agent was calling.

  2

  The last time his agent called him was a month ago. César had grabbed the phone eagerly, ready to run to an audition. But Marcel was just calling to check that the height listed on his CV was still good-to-go. The time before that, he needed César to come by and re-sign some papers on which he had accidentally spilled coffee. Once he even called César on New Year’s Eve. César had been handing a glass of cheap champagne to a new friend he had made at a party, José, when his phone rang. He pounced, dropping the glass, ready for some ground-breaking news regarding his acting career. If his agent was calling on such a day and at such an hour, it had to be important. But it turned out that all Marcel wanted to know was whether César still had all his teeth. When César confirmed that he did, the agent was disappointed. “Oh, just got word of a spot, they need a young Hispanic with missing teeth.”