The Natashas

by Yelena Moskovich

  For months, they continued to chat over Skype, César enchanted with the way Stefan’s cheeks flushed with red patches when he got stuck on a sentence he couldn’t finish, the way his hand opened and closed as he spoke, then pulled back over his hair. Those were the most deeply joyful months of César’s life.

  6

  “Blut ist dicker als Wasser,” Stefan would say slowly then wait for César to laugh. César laughed with him, even though he did not understand the reference. Stefan repeated the phrase, in English, “Blood is thicker than water.” He was, of course, referring to his research, not to any particular familial loyalty.

  “Biological ties are no better or worse than conditioning when all is said and done. It’s just two different kinds of elastic, if you think about it. Biology is a much thicker elastic, I mean pulling even a centimetre of leeway is a life’s work!”

  Stefan pulled gently on his own earlobe. “Evolution,” he said and chuckled.

  César smiled hesitantly, lowering his gaze. When he looked back up again, he saw Stefan watching him intently.

  “La sangre llama,” César said.

  Stefan raised an eyebrow.

  “In Spanish we have that expression too. But we say la sangre llama.”

  “And what does it mean?” Stefan asked flirtatiously.

  “Blood’s calling.” César replied.

  That’s when both of them agreed to meet for the first time in real life.

  7

  They decided on Stuttgart as a halfway meeting point between both of them. They rented a room in a hotel near the train station.

  When they spotted each other in the Arrivals Hall, they both looked away shyly, then walked towards each other solemnly, like a bride and groom. Face to face, they had forgotten all customs. Stefan extended his hand as César lunged in for a kiss. Stefan’s knuckle jabbed into César’s gut and César pecked him on the cheek.

  Outside the building, Stefan pointed up to the inscription: daß diese Furcht zu irren schon der Irrtum selbst ist. G.W.F.H. He explained it was Hegel. “… That this fear of making a mistake is a mistake itself.” César looked into Stefan’s eyes then, and thought I am ready for love.

  8

  They checked into their hotel, César giddy with the idea that the clerk could never imagine what they would do together in their room.

  In the room, with the door closed, Stefan opened the sliding closet door and put his bag there. César put his near the small garbage bin beneath the desk. The two men approached each other nervously. Stefan blushed and smiled. César looked down then back up then couldn’t help but smile as well. The two leaned in and their lips met.

  9

  The kiss was gentle, yet made César feel all the more anxious. He sped up his lips and hardened his tongue, looking for something he couldn’t name. He felt Stefan’s mouth, his tongue, his teeth, no matter what he touched, it all felt like dull matter. Stefan, feeling César’s racing heart through his mouth, wrapped his arms around César and pulled him into his chest. When their bodies met, César expected Stefan to rip his shirt off or thrust his pants down, but instead Stefan just held him there, tightly, warmly. César’s breath was shallow. He could feel the panic rising into his head. What is Stefan doing? Why is he holding me in this void?

  “Hit me,” César blurted out.

  Stefan let go of César and ran his hand through his hair. “What?”

  “Smack me around,” César replied.

  Stefan just stood blankly in front of César, his arms hanging limp. At that moment César realised that even with Stefan right in front of him, he was unbearably lonely. And his loneliness was quite ordinary. It had nothing to do with Hollywood heroes, but was as vulgar as a panting porn actor’s.

  César squeezed his fist and punched Stefan square on his beautiful jaw.

  10

  Stefan grabbed his face and folded over on to the floor. He looked up at César through his fingers with wild, disgusted eyes.

  “WHAT is wrong with you!” Stefan demanded.

  César stumbled back, stuttering “… ll … lll … llaa …”

  “WHAT WHAT WHAT?” Stefan spoke with a hard voice.

  All César could think was that he should have been one of his tough characters with Stefan from the start, instead of being himself. His anger could have been handsome, masculine, romantic. Instead it was just crippled and perverse, an excuse for the absence of love.

  Stefan was back on his feet, his shoulders wide and his neck muscular and straight. He took a step towards César.

  “ll … lll … llaa …” César continued to stutter.

  “WHAT IS IT?” Stefan repeated.

  “La sangre llama,” César said, then flinched at his own voice.

  On the train back to Paris, in the small, steel bathroom, César leaned his hot forehead against the metal and cried.

  11

  At Gare de l’Est, César clenched his jaw and pushed these fragments away, back into the shadows of his mind. He looked at the clock again and it now appeared that the long arrow was winning. Then he heard the gush of steam and the screech of metal wheels on iron. The train had come in. The doors slid open. Passengers started to step off and fill up the platform.

  He watched the people exit. He looked carefully at every female who descended, from pre-teens (who knows how young she was?) to mid-thirties (who knows how old those photos were?). He observed young girls with backpacks, women with briefcases, ladies with neck scarves, teens in tight jeans, older women in flat shoes and stockings, younger ones in platform shoes, girls who wore no make-up, others with glossy lips and clumped eyelashes. César had begun to forget what he was looking for in the first place.

  He called back the image of the photos on Marcel’s shelves. Thick chestnut hair. Childish nose, freckles. A slight smirk beneath those expressionless lips. No one seemed to fit this composite.

  12

  A nerve pinched in his foot. He looked down. There was a head of chestnut hair. A woman looked intently up at him. Her hair was pulled back tightly and clipped with a simple clasp.

  At first glance, you could mistake her for a girl. The childlike nose with the freckles. But there were tiny folds at the corners of her eyes, just behind her small oval glasses. This was a woman, maybe thirty years old.

  “You’re César the actor, I presume.”

  Her hands were folded over a small blue leather purse on her knees. She was in a wheelchair. “I’m Sabine.”

  The woman raised one hand from her small blue leather purse and extended it towards César. “But I prefer you don’t call me by this name.”

  César hunched down and shook her hand lightly, then released it. His arm felt dazed. He tried to get a hold of himself, but the sight of the wheelchair made him uneasy. His lips tightened instinctively, afraid of what may come out.

  “… What … should I … call you …?” César asked hesitantly.

  Sabine’s lips became firm. “Not Sabine,” she said.

  13

  “Sorry to keep you waiting,” Sabine continued frankly.

  César winced a quick smile to let her know it was okay. In any case, she was basically on time, a few minutes here or there. He waited for her to say something else, but she didn’t. César looked down at his shoe. It had a small black smear where the wheelchair had run into it. He looked back up at Sabine. Her lips were flat and her eyes were alert. They caught each other’s glance by accident, and Sabine spoke: “When I was in Victoria, in Australia, four and a half years ago, during the summer, all the trains had to be slowed down to 90 kph instead of 160kph, as the heat — which was particularly extreme that summer — expands the tracks and threatens derailment of trains travelling at the normal regulatory speed.”

  “Oh,” César replied.

  “Stuttgart is 622.4 kilometres from Paris.”

  “Oh …”

  “I assume it’s not optimal for you to spend your Friday evening picking up a woman in a wheelchair.”

>   “Oh. Uh—No, no, it’s great! I mean not great but it’s … nice—very nice.”

  “Anyway, I’ll talk to Marcel and tell him you showed up. That way you can get what you need, is that correct?”

  “That’s what I thought, but—” César blurted out.

  Sabine frowned.

  “I mean … I dunno,” César said meekly.

  He was trying so hard not to stare at her two dead legs positioned neatly next to each other, he began to sweat again.

  “Uh, your father—Marcel—told me to …” César spoke hesitantly.

  “Yes?” Sabine looked up.

  “Well, he told me to …” César didn’t want to say it.

  “Yes, Marcel told you to …?” Sabine inquired.

  “Um.”

  César moved his lips around as if he had to sneeze. He was trying to buy time. Maybe she’d say it for him. Sabine waited patiently as César squirmed.

  “Yes, I’m listening. Marcel told you to …?”

  “To …uh … well … he … told me … to take you … for a walk.” César’s eyes dropped down to Sabine’s folded legs.

  “Marcel told you to take me for a walk?”

  César looked instantly away, unable to face Sabine’s eyes.

  “Yeah …”

  César waited for Sabine to respond but she remained nailed-still. His eyes skimmed the floor and found a stepped-on cigarette butt encrusted in a crack. He shuffled his hands in his pockets and followed the crack with his eyes. What would this woman do? Would she scream at him? No, she didn’t seem like the type. Would she scold him for his choice of words? More probable. Would she huff at his ignorance and run off? (Surely not run, she was in a wheelchair.) César blushed privately at this thought.

  Sabine spoke up in a strong, definite tone. “Come on then.

  Take me for a walk.”

  14

  César manoeuvred the wheelchair around the crowded train station towards the exit. It was not as easy as he assumed it would be. The route to the main entrance became a series of starts and stops, spotted with points of panic as he avoided oncomers, trying to get the chair back under control so Sabine’s lifeless knees would not knock a child’s teeth out.

  Sabine did not flinch once. She sat upright and poised, her torso like a plastic mannequin fixed to the chair. When César finally managed to get out of the train station, she spoke. “Let’s go down to the canal.”

  César did not have much choice. He said “Okay” and sighed as he pushed the wheelchair over the brick-lined road.

  15

  People are a lot heavier sitting down, even if they have wheels attached. César struggled forward, but every couple of minutes had to jolt out of the way of a stranger who saw César clearly, but happened to miss Sabine, just below.

  As they approached the canal, he started up the flat cement road which ran alongside the cafés. But Sabine asked to be closer to the water, so he was obliged to cross the street and join the cobblestone passageway. The wheelchair grumbled over the stones.

  Along the edge of the canal, young people sat with bottles of wine or cans of beer at their feet; an open bag of chips, half indented like a couch cushion. Some had a proletarian-style picnic: bread, cheese, meat. In these groups, the guys wore loose long-sleeve shirts in earth-tone colours. Their fingers rolled cigarettes and their eyes gazed in intervals, at their friends and at these wondrous people called strangers.

  Other groups were young people who were newly initiated into the job market, which was deflated except for the ever-booming sectors dealing with consumer appetites: advertising, marketing, business. They wore high-quality fabrics, cut and sewed together to both integrate and rebel against the fashion status quo. They pecked at green olives in plastic containers, slices of chorizo or salami, and broke up pieces of bread from baguettes; a container of oily grated carrots was open but untouched. A guy shuffled chips from a tube of Pringles and crunched them mechanically, unaffected by their taste. Then, of course, there was the discreetly luxurious group with their apéro-hour picnic, coal-black bottles of Freixenet Spanish Cava, organic cider, parmesan crackers, grain and seed crackers, rice crackers, hummus, eggplant dip, and multiple containers of strawberries (Oh, look at that, you also brought strawberries!). These were Scandinavians who had at some point “lived in London”, Anglophones who were at some point “from New York”, musicians just arrived from Germany or Japan and other artists from more exotic countries: Russia, Turkey, Iran.

  A mixed group of Spanish and Italians spoke and ate and drank and listened to each other very loudly. They brought tupperwares of tapas and tall cans of cheap beer.

  These groups of young people glanced casually at César and Sabine as they passed. Some remarked with hushed words. Some pointed at them with their chins. Others just looked away. César couldn’t tell if it was his swollen nose or Sabine’s dead legs that drew the attention.

  César gripped each handle of the wheelchair and pushed her forward. He was grateful he couldn’t see Sabine’s face and that she couldn’t see his. An agitation rumbled within him. Why did this woman have to make him parade with her like this, in front of all these people, all these young people, so well-adapted and unbothered by themselves?

  Relájese, César, relax he heard a gritty man’s voice say to him in his head.

  Diz is juss a test. Diz is onlee a test, mi amor.

  16

  “Closer,” Sabine said.

  They had found a free spot near the canal’s edge. César pulled the wheelchair up to the barrier.

  “Closer.”

  César wasn’t sure if he could get any closer, but he rolled the chair forward a couple of inches until the front of the wheels dubbed against the barrier, and Sabine’s dead legs swayed a couple of times from the impact.

  Sabine sat very still. Since he could not see her face, he had no idea what sort of experience she was having in front of the water. Was she bored? Annoyed with him? Most importantly, was she reconsidering what she would report back to Marcel?

  “Napoleon ordered the creation of this artificial waterway,” Sabine began, “to provide the people of Paris with fresh water, which of course was a polite way to cut down on diseases such as dysentery and cholera amongst his swelling population. The year was 1802, to be exact. Not long after the first leopard was exhibited in America. Boston, to be exact. February 2nd, to be exact. Admission was 25 cents.”

  César bracketed his eyebrows. “Oh.”

  “It obviously took a considerable amount of time to build the canal. But once it was in place, it was used as a transportation route, and so factories and warehouses were constructed along the quais. But, of course, times change, the world turns, the earth rotates—once every twenty-four hours from the point of view of the sun to be exact, and of course once every twenty-three hours, 56 minutes and 4 seconds from the point of view of the stars. One can look at it this way: a sticky-faced child makes a wish, and by the time the wish is in orbit, there’s another sticky-faced child making a wish. And so on. Until the sky is full of unsatisfied orbiting wishing, like swarms of buzzing mosquitoes. Skinny, flimsy, dry-mouthed mosquitoes. They land on our skin and with their shaky lips they try to suck some life out, but of course they are too weak and it only gives the surface a slight tickling sensation and they can’t reach the source. However, there are swarms of these wobblylipped wishes, and one day the next sticky-faced child turns to his mother and says, Mama, the world is spinning too fast, I think I’m gunna be sick, and of course before his Mama has time, he’s already vomiting on her shoes.”

  César was at a loss. He did not even have a non-verbal sound to give as a response. He nodded in silence.

  “What I am leading to, of course, is that by the mid-twentieth century, boat traffic was not as popular as it once was, so this canal was almost turned into a highway for efficiency’s sake. It was a debate. In 1960—60—60—in 1960—.”

  “Very nice,” César cut her off. He didn’t mean to, bu
t her speech was making him anxious again.

  She fell silent. Her silence had a strong taste to it. Bitter and grainy, like the shell of a walnut.

  “César the actor,” Sabine said in a level tone. “Come and sit next to me, please.”

  César did as he was told.

  First he squatted, but did not find this position comfortable. He contemplated sitting on the ground, but then he would be too low, at the level of her wheels. Then he looked in front of him—of course—he took a seat on the metal barrier.

  Sabine turned her head and looked directly at César. She had smooth, well-kept skin which held a childhood freshness, and light freckles across her nose—that nose that still seemed to belong to a little girl. Yet there was something very frightening about her, in the way she looked at him.

  “So then. What happened to your nose?” Sabine asked. “Did you get in a fight?”

  César gave her question some thought. “Um. Sort of,” he replied.

  Sabine looked at him for another long moment, then turned her head back towards the water and fell into her own thoughts. Then, keeping her eyes on the water, she spoke again: “Did you win?”

  César’s eyes perked up. Depends. Depends on Marcel, he wanted to say.

  “… Don’t know yet,” César replied with a half-smile.

  XXIII

  Sweet & heavenly

  1

  Béatrice’s father drove. Her mother was in the front. Her sister sat in the back, with Jean-Luc at her side, chivalrously taking the middle seat. He pressed into Emmanuelle when the car took a left, and into Béatrice when the car took a right.

  In the car, Béatrice could smell something unmistakable. She knew exactly what it was: long-stemmed Stargazer lilies, split-open fuchsia stars rimmed with white, each petal freckled; in the bouquet were probably a couple of eucalyptus stems, and one or two lemon leaves.

  When Béatrice was young she begged her mom for a cat. Her mother smiled and said to little Béatrice that she would get her a cat, but Stargazer lilies (one of her favourites) are highly toxic to cats, and she could not live without Stargazer lilies whereas she could live without a cat. Each time she brought them home her mother would bring the bouquet to Béatrice’s face, saying, “Oh, just smell them, Béatrice, don’t they smell sweet and heavenly?” In a matter of minutes, Béatrice would always have a migraine. She hoped heaven did not smell like this.