The Natashas

by Yelena Moskovich

  “Can’t they just use a make-up artist for that?”

  “Nah, they said they’d rather just get a kid with a couple of his teeth missing than pay one of those expensive make-up people hourly.”

  “Oh.”

  “That’s how it goes. Anyways, keep me posted.”

  “Posted for what?”

  “I mean if you happen to lose any teeth. Needa get back to them by Tuesday.”

  César spent that whole night paranoid he was going to crack a tooth on something. On the one hand, it would qualify him for this gig – whatever it was. On the other hand, teeth were expensive to get fixed, and the money he’d get from this job would most likely not cover repairing his teeth. Unless, of course, it was a well-produced feature film. And his character, a Hispanic with missing teeth, was a lead or at least a supporting character. Then again, what were the chances that there was a feature film being made about a young Hispanic man with missing teeth? Unless it was a sort of biopic story of some revolutionary Hispanic political figure. (Those were really taking off nowadays.) César scanned his historical knowledge for any Hispanic politicians he could remember that had missing teeth in their young adult life.

  The more he tried to think of historical toothless Hispanics, the more his heart began to race. This was big, he thought. You idiot! He had to get a hold of his agent. César locked himself in the bathroom and called his agent repeatedly, but the phone kept ringing and ringing into the void. By the time everyone in the main room was yelling Happy New Year at each other and chugging their cheap champagne, César sat on his toilet seat, convinced he had ruined his life.

  A couple of days later, he’d finally got hold of his agent only to find out that what had grown into a Spielberg biopic of Che Guevara in his head was actually just a walk-on role in a drug-bust scene in a web series.

  3

  So this time, as his cell phone rang, César tried to contain his excitement.

  “Hello. Hello, César. You hear me? It’s Marcel.”

  “Yes, yes—”

  “César, it’s Marcel, your agent. You hear me okay over there. Where are you?”

  “Yes, yes I hear you. I’m on the street, do you hear me?”

  “Yes I hear you. César, listen, I’ve got some pretty good news.”

  Steady, gecko, César told himself. But “good news” bounced around his chest like a racquetball.

  “Yes?”

  “Yes, oh yes, César! Some good news. You hear me over there?”

  “Yes, I hear you. You don’t hear me?”

  “No, I hear you. Listen, César. Hope you are ready for this. This is the type of thing that could change a lot for you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You better believe it! What I’m telling you, César, is this: you gotta be a fisherman in this industry.”

  “Okay.”

  “You gotta get up early and dip your bait in that sea of opportunities and wait.”

  “Yeah.”

  “If you’re a good fisherman, César, if you’ve got the patience, something’ll bite. Now when it bites, then you can’t be lazy-eyed with one foot asleep. You hear me over there, César?”

  “Yeah, yes I do.”

  “You gotta flex and you gotta pull, César. You gotta reel that fish in. Big or small, sardine or shark, REEL IT IN.”

  César wondered if Marcel had ever really gone fishing.

  “You ready to reel, César?”

  “Yeah—Yes, I’m ready.”

  “Good, good, cause that’s exactly what you’re gonna have to do right now. Hope your foot’s not asleep, because, César, you got a big fish on your line.”

  “… Really?”

  “I’m talking thirteen consecutive episodes on one of the most watched TV series in France. You feel that fish, César?”

  “Thirteen episodes?”

  “Feel that fish pulling on your line?”

  “Yeah—s, I guess, but—”

  “And let me tell you, thirteen episodes in this season, and the character doesn’t die in the thirteenth, so in all logic, he’s back in the next season. And maybe the next. And let me tell you something else: one of the producers just happens to be a good friend, so let’s just say he values my eye when it comes to casting. You feel that fish now, César?”

  “Yeah—Yes, I mean—”

  “Tell me you feel that fish, César.”

  “I … feel that fish.”

  “Can’t hear you, not sure where you are, but shake out that foot, César, and tell Marcel you feel that FISH on your line.”

  “I … feel that fish on my line!” César yelped into the phone, wiggling the toes of his right foot.

  “Good! Now, can you come by the office?”

  The office is what Marcel called a room in his apartment with a chair on either side of a desk.

  “Sure. Yes! Now?”

  “Now, yes, of course, now. REEL IT IN.” Then Marcel hung up.

  4

  César looked around. He didn’t know where he was. A couple of parked motorcycles, two crooked trees. Rosa. Violeta. No one. Just the stone wall of a dead end.

  From the dead end wall, a stone basin protruded, tiled with small bricks. This was the bottom of the small fountain – once. Now it was filled with half-wilted greenery, growing out from the loose pile of dirt at the bottom.

  César remembered a girl he had met when he first moved to Paris. She was in the same international acting school as him. She spoke even less French than him at the time, so they communicated in their broken English. She had deeply set eyes that held on to a shadow of sleep, and cheekbones that made him think of Yugoslavia. She was not from Yugoslavia, as it no longer existed, but she did have a heavy accent from elsewhere, Balkan maybe.

  He liked listening to her speak. She drew out her syllables like a careful ballpoint pen. She gestured throughout her speech as if continually tying and untying a scarf. One day she mentioned her grandfather. He had died. She had to leave for the funeral. He had to be buried in the Jewish tradition.

  “And what’s that like?” César had asked.

  “How I no? Zay get like a rabbi and he say like a Jewiss prayur maybe.”

  When César met her eyes, he saw there were a couple of thin red veins threading towards the pupil. He would have liked to reach out and put his hand on her shoulder.

  “Zay call us Jewess like vi no what is dis, but no one no what is Jewes. Vi put togehzer what-is-means-Jewiss like internet-blog-forum and vi pretend to be Jewes togezur.”

  She explained that her grandfather’s name was Mendel, and his mother’s name was Golda, and even if they had never celebrated a Shabbat in their lives, such names must be buried by a rabbi.

  As she continued to speak, César could feel a tightness in her words, as if what she was trying to express was balling up progressively and tangling into an inseparable knot. His hand grew heavier, unable to rise and comfort the girl.

  “When are you coming back?” he finally asked.

  The girl blinked then looked away. Her eyes drifted to the wall behind her. In a low voice, she spoke more to that open space than to César.

  “I wish all grampas and gramas go into earth already and let me live new life …”

  César wanted so deeply to say something in return that would make her previous statement a joke. He thought about nudging her lightly on the forearm and saying, “Let’s kill ’em all then!” But as he rolled his tongue on the top of his mouth, the words couldn’t find their beginning.

  “I vant be great-time actriss, César …” the girl said with such desperation, César almost bit his own tongue by accident.

  “… like on big international film … speaking French and speaking English! Here dis is … possible … Back … you know …” Her finger rose from her lap and pointed limply east, “there, not possible …”

  She lowered her finger back down to the others. “Vy I have go back and be … not possible …?”

  The girl sat still for a
moment then suddenly looked sharply at César. “I am so sad, César, so sad, becuz I sink I can be GREAT-IMPORTANT for HISTORIE!”

  She fixed her charged eyes on César, and looked to him as if she were being electrocuted. César held his breath and stared back. Finally, she let her shoulders go and looked down.

  “… Ven I go back …” her finger rose again, pointing sleepily east, “ven I zere … I like … forget all dis. I sink only: you werth nahsing, stupitt gurl. Before werth nahsing, now werth nahsing, forward go werthing nahsing, forever stupitt gurl …”

  After she left, César went online and looked up Jewish burial traditions. As he read from his computer screen, he imagined Mendel X’vich folded in his coffin. The coffin being lowered into the earth, and the rabbi pronouncing, Al mekomo yavo veshalom. “May he go to his place in peace.”

  Then, one by one, the family members would pierce the point of a shovel into the ground, lever a bit of soil and throw it into the grave. He heard precisely what the soil would sound like when it hit the wood of the coffin, like a set of pens suddenly dropped to the floor.

  Months later, he received an e-mail from her in an oddly jovial tone, not resembling the heavy voice she had left him with.

  You no, the grave-hole look like hole where big tooth pulled out. So, when I was stand at funeral, I was think this: Look at me, I stand inside big, big mouth where all time around me God pull toothes. This time he pull Grampa out. When he pull me?

  César had replied asking again when she’d be coming back to school. She never answered. She never came back to school. César convinced himself that she must be an established actress now at some national Balkan theatre, playing roles like one of Chekhov’s three sisters. The one who keeps hassling about Moscow. To Moscow! To Moscow! It was Irina’s line, if memory served César correctly. Yes, Irina. The girl’s name, though, he suddenly couldn’t recall.

  5

  César scanned the old fountain as if searching for her name there. Above the rim of the basin, there was a stone-work Egyptian head. Its eyes were hollow and its mouth was open, where a stream of water should have been.

  Oddly enough, this small, unused fountain of weeds with its Egyptian head reminded César that he was in Paris. Paris, a city organised like a war survivor who keeps tucking his vestiges into nooks that have a sense of logic only to him. In passing, if the old fountain could speak, it would comment with a beady voice: “Oh yes, and this is from when I got liberated in Cairo and had to hitchhike past those damn pyramids all the way home to your Gramma!”

  César turned away from the dead end and walked toward the other end of the street. He looked at the street sign, rue Alfred Stevens. It opened on to another street, wider and populated with footsteps and passing cars. Without looking at that street name, César turned on to it and began to run. Rue des Martyrs.

  IX

  Telo, Nomer, Chiffre, Youpka …

  1

  Polina continued to speak with an easy rhythm, her eyes surveying different parts of Béatrice’s face.

  “Telo, Nomer, Chiffre, Youpka …”

  “… A woman from Eastern Europe can be sold for 800 US dollars to, say, Amsterdam or Prague or Istanbul. Whether she’s Bulgarian or Ukrainian or Latvian, to the customers, she’s Russian. Whether she is Pavla or Olena or Salomeya, to the customers, her name is Natasha. Once the money is exchanged and her passport taken from her, it is then that she leaves her body.”

  2

  “To go missing. What a phrase. Do you realise? As if missing is a place one must get to. One day someone leaves their house, goes for a walk, and walks and walks and walks, until they get missing.”

  3

  Béatrice listened. The words floated out of Polina’s mouth and seeped into Béatrice like clouds. Polina swept her hair behind her shoulder. She continued.

  “I met an American woman who was travelling around the Ukrainian–Russian border, from Kharkiv to Belgorod, trying to trace her roots. You know the type, watercolour eyes, dusty hair cut into a bob, neat and efficient travel clothes and a pearly row of teeth inside her systematic smile. One of those left-over-vich generations. Dedicated. Even managed to learn a good basis of Russian and a couple of Ukrainian phrases. Then, at the Zheleznodorozhny train station in Belgorod she had her wallet stolen. She ran up to a man who was looking at the timetable and panted in broken Russian that someone had stolen her wallet. The man scratched his coarse chin and followed the zipper down the centre of her fleece jacket. He then pointed to the police office at the bottom of the escalator. She thanked the man excessively and hurried down the escalator. At the bottom, almost hidden from the foot circulation of the travellers was a closed door with “Politsiya” written on it. She tried the door, but it was locked. She looked at her watch (At least I still have my watch, she tried to remain positive). It was lunchtime. The police had to eat, she reasoned.

  The woman paced back and forth outside the door, only a few steps at a time. She thought of all the things in her wallet. She thought of their order and value. The small pieces of paper with new-found Russian words she had been collecting and trying to learn during her trip. The address of the American Embassy she had noted just in case. The photo of her ex-husband with his arm around their now-adult son. And, oh yes, which credit cards needed to be cancelled in what order.

  Time passed, and the torn-off paper pieces, her ex-husband’s arm around their son, the to-be-cancelled credit cards, balled together until she felt bloated with a general sense of loss. She stopped pacing. Her hands drifted, touching the wall, the doorknob, the latched zipper of her fleece jacket. She smoothed her fingers around the bone of her wrist, then came against the contour of her watch. She looked at it again. It may be time for tea now, she thought. The police here may drink their tea at this hour …

  She let her wrist go loose and time fell away. Her eyes wandered the walls. They traced the door frame, then followed across the floor line, then moved back up to a poster full of times in columns. She looked over lists of times, passing full days and starting over again, then her eyes drifted to a bulletin board next to the door of the police room. It was tacked with photocopies of faces and handwritten notes.

  “Propavshi’ye bez vesti”

  4

  “In Russian, you don’t have to go missing, it’s a single verb. The verb sits next to your name and you’re gone.

  In English you have to work for it. To go. Missing. You have to get up and walk there.”

  Polina leaned forward, closer to Béatrice.

  “But you French are, as always, the most romantic. Porté disparu. The person must be carried forth missing. In France, there are lines of people waiting, with their arms out, bent elbows, hands cupped towards themselves, each holding a disappearance.”

  5

  “Propavshi’ye bez vesti” Missing without news

  In Russia, in order to truly disappear, you must disappear physically and narratively. Since this woman had indefinite time on her hands – the time that was not stolen from her – she glanced at the faces on the board of Missing Persons, one by one.

  One looked like a school photo of a girl, maybe thirteen, her hair was wooden-brown and cut jaggedly in layers above her shoulders. The aqua blue shirt she was wearing matched her aqua blue irises, which seemed to be standing back, shy, against the wall of her white pupils. She smiled, as if embarrassed to be there, to be photographed present. (Now that she was absent, she wouldn’t have to be so embarrassed.)

  Another was of a seventeen-year-old boy, slightly younger than her own son, with a bristled head, wide eyebrows around his two metal eyes. The photocopy was in black and white and used, so it was hard to tell when it was posted. Years, it must be. Now he may be old enough to be the father of the boy in the photo. She thought about this. She pictured both the father this boy should be now and the boy at the age of his disappearance standing the way her ex-husband and her own son stood in the photo that she had kept in her wallet. The father with his arm around
his boy, holding on to each other’s vanishing.

  Then there was a man. Maybe thirty-three. He was in a living room, which looked like it was decorated for a film taking place in the 70s. This American woman looked over the patterns with her own nostalgia, then came back to the man. He had his shoulders turned away from the camera, but his neck facing the lens, as if surprised by the snapshot. He had a funny smile on his face, a mouthwatering joy. The woman almost smiled with the man instinctively. Maybe there was a birthday cake waiting in the next room for him. She read the text below. Igor … It was his wife that posted the note. Last seen … waiting for bus … on … --skaya street …Why would she choose such a happy picture of him? It made it seem like he enjoyed surprises and maybe even had a good laugh when he was so suddenly abducted.

  The woman moved on to another note. She read the Cyrillic slowly, sliding her finger across the letters to help her move the sound along in her mind. She had to use her full concentration to sound out the words and understand them. Irina … 9 years old … left grandmother’s house to buy milk … never returned … contact … Irina had a round, fresh face, as if she had come in from playing in the snow. The American woman crouched down to see eye to eye with the girl. Her finger touched the girl’s rosy cheek on the shiny photo, and it suddenly felt spongy and cool like a child’s skin in wintertime. The girl’s eyes were soft and trusting. The woman leaned in closer and looked into them.

  The sound of keys clinked against each other. A police officer was unlocking the door. But the American woman did not move, her face fixed on the photo.

  The officer wiggled the key out of the lock and turned the doorknob. He held the door open and looked at the woman. He said something to her in Russian that she did not hear or did not understand or maybe the police officer didn’t say anything at all and it was the little girl who was speaking Russian to the woman.