The Natashas

by Yelena Moskovich

  The chatter continued. A number of things were funny. A number of things were not. God was thanked every couple of minutes. Then an ex was brought up. Throughout, as if continuously lining the scene with glue so it wouldn’t break, were the Indian rose sellers. They made their way through the people holding wide bouquets of red and white roses. Person by person, a rose was offered.

  (These rose sellers are unaffected by the phrase “No, thank you.” They find each person’s eyes, tilt forward their bouquet and, like a monk, chant their limitless belief in each individual’s need for a rose, just one, white or red, with or without the plastic, two euros … He’ll wait, he’ll wait a lifetime for the realisation to come: the rose and how you needed it.)

  2

  The domed roof of the church across the street seemed to watch over the bar with an ancient grin. Inside, down the cold corridor, there was an open space with glimmers of violet and emerald and gold on the floor from the stained-glass window. Above, in the balcony overlooking the podium, the pipes of the grand organ sat like wolves’ teeth. On the other side of the bar, next door, an optician’s store stood dim.

  A train track ran underneath the church and the bar and the optician’s store. A train passed every four to six minutes, from the train station, Gare de l’Est. The metal rails buzzed after one passed. Their hum was absorbed by the lacquered wooden floorboards of the church, and the floor tiles of the optician’s and the dull, dark rubber flooring of the bar. Every four to six minutes, the hum rose.

  3

  On the terrace, a long-stemmed white rose was being pulled out of a bouquet. Jean-Luc placed a two-euro coin into the rose seller’s palm.

  “Merci,” said the Indian rose seller, as if revealing the truth.

  4

  Inside the bar, the elevated stage was lit from various angles, leaving the wires taped to the floor in the dark. From the rear of the stage, three steps led down to the back door. Like the wall, like the stairs, like the floor, it was painted all black.

  The drummer and the double bass player were nodding to the rhythm they were playing. The pianist ran his fingers effortlessly over the keys and closed his eyes and bent his head forward.

  5

  Inside the bar, from the front table, Jean-Luc watched Béatrice. As she ended a verse, his lips mumbled in echo, “Do-bee do-bee doo.” Emmanuelle wedged her hand into his. He turned to her and she smiled at him nervously. He knew his cue. He put his arm around her. Emmanuelle settled into his hold and returned to watching her sister. But something kept distracting her. A woman in a wheelchair was outright staring at her sister, and Béatrice seemed to be staring right back.

  6

  The song finished and the applause went off like a room full of mouse traps. Sabine took her folded hands off the dark blue leather purse on her lap and raised them up. They parted and stretched open in front of her face. Then, her palms snapped together. Between each clap her eyes remained locked on to Béatrice’s face.

  7

  Béatrice had noticed the woman as soon as she appeared amidst the rows of other people, most of whom were sitting, but not in wheelchairs.

  You, Sabine’s eyes seemed to say. Me, yes, Béatrice knew. But she was no longer the flat-chested little girl in the dunes. She had a straight back and buoyant, ample breasts that everyone could agree were very, very nice to look at. Béatrice pinched a smile and matched the woman’s glare.

  8

  You … Sabine’s eyes repeated, over and over again, like waves coming on to the shore. As everyone clapped and shifted in their seats, the two women held each other’s gaze. Sabine was not trying to intimidate Béatrice. Or establish a hierarchy. All of that was left behind in the dunes. There, the roles played out ceaselessly, beyond the two women the girls had become. Go ahead, Béatrice dared.

  9

  Do-bee do-bee doo … the tune sounded like the beginning of Frank Sinatra’s “Strangers in the Night”.

  10

  Beneath the table, Jean-Luc rolled the stem of a white rose in his palm. With the other hand, he squeezed Emmanuelle’s shoulder.

  11

  Prestadas cosas nos poseen. “Borrowed things possess us,” the woman says as if to herself as she brushes the girl’s hair. The girl’s eyes are still scanning the crack in the wall. Now she is watching Béatrice on stage, one hand holding the microphone, the other smoothing over her blonde chignon.

  12

  Sabine’s chin began to drop and her eyes rolled down to her lap. She pressed them closed for a moment, and when they opened again, they were glossy and wounded. Her mouth softened and her lips parted, as her cheekbones began to rise and form a word without sound.

  “Na-ta-sha,” she mouthed at Béatrice.

  13

  Emmanuelle couldn’t place the woman’s face, but something of her looked familiar. She wanted to get a better look, but knew it was rude to stare at people in wheelchairs, so she turned back to face the stage. The lights were already dimming on her sister’s face for the interval. When Emmanuelle turned back towards the woman in the wheelchair, she was already being wheeled away by a slim man with a bruised face, her carer maybe. She watched them, hoping the woman would turn around to get one more glimpse of her sister. But it was the man who turned around, putting his face straight in a ray of spotlight. His bloated nose and puffed eyes almost made Emmanuelle jump.

  14

  Sabine reached back, found César’s arm and pulled on his wrist. César leaned in.

  “We are done with our walk now. Take me home.”

  “Um—okay, sure. You’re the boss,” César replied.

  As César prepared to manoeuvre the wheelchair around, he thought he heard Sabine say something back, but her voice was eaten up by the noise in the bar. He assumed she had said something upright and stiff like “Yes, I’m the boss” or “Let’s go,” but all Sabine had really said was “Thank you.”

  15

  Jean-Luc turned back to see what Emmanuelle was looking at.

  “What a guy, huh. It’s as if he’s wheeling that lady around ’til he breaks down and they switch places …” he said.

  Emmanuelle did not laugh. Jean-Luc kissed her cheek.

  “What’s the matter, kitten …”

  “Meow, meow,” Emmanuelle said in return.

  “Does that man scare you?”

  “Meow, meow …”

  “Oh, don’t be frightened, I won’t let him eat you up.”

  “Meow, meow,” Emmanuelle murmured and nudged her head into Jean-Luc’s shoulder. Her father looked over, and gave Emmanuelle a hearty wink. He liked seeing Emmanuelle in Jean-Luc’s arms, like a piece of melting cheese. So different from his other daughter, who always seemed to harden at the touch of others.

  Emmanuelle did not see her father’s wink because in that instant, the warmth of Jean-Luc’s body made her eyes close. And when her eyes closed, there came the image of the woollen man. And when they opened, there was her father, waving his hand at her. Emmanuelle meant to tell her father to stop waving because he was scaring her just then, but instead she accidentally said again, “Meow, meow.”

  16

  Béatrice’s eyes followed the woman in the wheelchair as the slim man pushed her through the crowd.

  (The little blonde girl stood with her hands clasped at her chest, her toes clutching the sand. She watched the girl with two tight chestnut braids falling through the years.)

  César wheeled Sabine out the door.

  17

  Beneath the applause, Béatrice made her way towards the back door. She walked carefully away from the light, holding the side of her dress. No matter how she moved her feet, they seemed to walk to the same rhythm: Na-ta-sha.

  At the edge of the stage, Béatrice took three steps down to the backroom door. Na-ta-sha. In the fading claps, her hand reached for the door. She pushed it open. Béatrice took one step inside, then another, then another. Na-ta-sha.

  18

  The door shut behind her. The c
orridor was illuminated by a series of coin-sized lights on the ceiling. Their feeble light, like a breath in winter, hovered over Béatrice’s head, but did not help her see. She reached out against the corridor wall and walked slowly, feeling for the main light switch. She remembered it being on the right side, at the level of her hip, a couple of steps from the door, but now she couldn’t seem to find it. Her fingertips grazed over and over the wall.

  Her hand stopped. Beyond the sound of her fingers on the wall was another sound, thick and dull like rubber. Extending her neck forward, she listened to the fog of voices on the other side of the door. Their sound seem to be waning, as if they were being carried off somewhere. The noise persisted, thick and dull, like everyone in the bar holding their breath. Béatrice waited, expecting to hear a mouth fall open and a gust of wind to surge out. She waited, but no one gasped for air on the other side.

  The hand which was not touching the wall came up to her ear. The fingers touched around her earlobe, then pressed on the skin behind the ear. That’s where it was, Béatrice realised. The sound, like rubber. It was not coming from the outside, but from inside her own head.

  Béatrice took a breath and plugged her nose, hoping her ears would pop, but the air bounced back from her cheeks and out of her mouth. Her ears were still full of something. She brought both hands up to her ears and started to rub them. When she put her hands down, they were warm with a sort of static and she felt something opening in her. The breath began to crackle inside her face. Through the crackle, a woman’s voice was emerging. Inside her face, the woman was singing:

  “Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto

  Me dio dos luceros que cuando los abro

  Perfecto distingo lo negro del blanco

  Y en el alto cielo su fondo estrellado

  Y en las multitudes el hombre que yo amo.”

  19

  The woman’s voice sounded like a memory, yet it was no longer coming from inside Béatrice’s head. She turned around, but the darkness on one side was identical to the darkness on the other. There was no one there, no one singing.

  As she turned back, her head started to feel oddly light. Like a stack of empty envelopes. The song was fading, then it was gone. She reached out to find the light switch, but her fingers did not make contact with the dry wall. They made contact with a warm body, clothed in wool.

  “Hello, Miss Playboy,” he whispered into the cleared tunnel of her ear.

  20

  Béatrice’s eyes opened wide. The man put a hand over her mouth and the other flat against her back, pushing her completely into him.

  She thought her arms must be flailing, like a cartoon tongue in the midst of a scream; she thought her voice was ripping from her vocal chords.

  But, in fact, she was holding her breath.

  “Sh’relax princess, breedrou yer nose.”

  21

  “Datsagood princess,” the man whispered. “I’m gunna take my hand off, but you gotta stay cool and zipped.”

  Béatrice nodded. The man took his hand off. In the distance, through the wall, she could still hear voices coming from the bar. A laugh, it sounded like her sister’s. A string of a voice, something like “yes exactly”. Another called out to someone by name. The musicians who accompanied her on stage, where were they now? Chain-smoking on the terrace, already thinking about the next gig.

  For a second, she hoped that her family might want to check up on her and go looking in the corridor. But after all the years of pushing them away, telling them to leave her alone, they were trained to keep their distance.

  She found the man’s eyes in the darkness, two pinheads framed by black wool. “Shh …” the man said into the wool.

  His hands were off her now. She could run out the door, into the crowd, laugh like her sister, say “yes, exactly” and call out to someone by name.

  Béatrice did none of those things. She stood very still, facing the woollen man, nailed by his pinhead eyes.

  22

  For a while, neither the man nor Béatrice spoke. Time was passing. No one had come to get her. But surely someone would notice her absence. She was due on stage.

  “I have to go,” Béatrice said quietly, “I’m the singer, I have to go.”

  The man did not respond.

  “I have to finishing singing here.”

  The man remained silent. His eyes moved over her body, then came back up to her face. Béatrice took a step towards the door. The man mirrored her and blocked her step. She tried again, but the man blocked her again. She couldn’t see where his body ended and the emptiness began.

  In the darkness, she felt the man’s hand rising towards her. She was sure that he was reaching for her neck. This was it. However they name endings, this was it.

  Her neck was glowing with expectation. The skin was preparing to be pressed in, to be crumbled. In her throat, the vocal cords pulled taut like elevator ropes.

  Béatrice closed her eyes and her eyes stayed open.

  23

  He touched her. But not on her neck. The woollen man’s hands were on her breasts. He squeezed them, one, then the other, one, then the other. Every time his fingers closed in and his palm sucked up her nipple, her stomach flinched. His grip on them grew firmer. He was no longer squeezing, but grabbing her breasts from her. Béatrice gagged. She felt he might pull them off. Her nipples twisted in pain. Her mouth was wide open in terror, but no sound came out.

  “Wer playin it cool princess,” he said as he continued.

  Béatrice nodded.

  “You wanna say sumtin?”

  Béatrice nodded.

  “Okay, bébé, tell me wad you wanna say, butkeep dat voice smood an’ low.”

  Béatrice nodded.

  “Smood an’ low …” the man repeated.

  Béatrice began. She slid the phrase across to the man card by card.

  “If … you … want … my … body you should … just … take … it.”

  The man suddenly took both hands off her breasts. He took a step back so that his pelvis was no longer pressed against her. The tip of his fingers touched the skin of her left temple. He pushed his fingers back over her hair like a brush stroke, and leaned his face in closer to hers. She felt his breath on her cheek.

  “Stoopid princessa …” the man whispered. “I don giva shit bout yer body.” He leaned in and the wool touched her cheek. “I wan sumting I can take wit me an keep forever.”

  “… You can keep Miss Playboy forever,” Béatrice replied.

  XXVI

  No one

  1

  “Girls, sometimes I worry about you like you’re my biological daughters. But none of you are my biological daughters. That’s life for you.

  “What I mean to say is, despite the fact that some of you are a real sore sight to look at, I think you are all doing your best to be decent.”

  The lanky Natasha stands up. “I’ve been trying really, really hard not to blabber so much ’bout not feeling good.”

  “Because …” the Head Natasha says.

  “Coz … um … no one really likes to hear it.”

  The Head Natasha’s eyes light up.

  2

  “And what do people like to hear?”

  “Um. About how special they are.”

  “For example …”

  “Like …You’re a fingerprint, baby!”

  “The only one … !”

  “… A-a a rabbit’s foot floating in space! … as Einstein would say.”

  “There is no one like you.”

  “You’re one of a kind … darling.”

  “Oh! That’s nice … ‘darling’ … say it again!”

  “Darling …”

  “Go on, girls.”

  “Um.”

  “Uh.”

  “… in the whole world—”

  “Darling …”

  “… in all of time—”

  “DARLING”

  “… and all the TV channels—”

&
nbsp; “There is NO ONE!”

  “Like YOU.”

  The girls pause to think about this.

  “… Oh yeah, that does feel pretty good,” all the Natashas say together.

  XXVII

  Kitty-kat

  1

  In the backstage hallway, Béatrice heard piano keys. The percussion was steady. The double bass weaved in. The musicians must have already started without her.

  She turned quickly towards the door and grabbed for the handle. The door swung open and she stood squinting into the light. Soon spots and shadows appeared. Then the spots and shadows became people. She looked at the stage. There they were, the musicians, in their places with their backs to her, facing the crowd.

  There was the drummer’s head keeping his pace.

  There was the pianist’s wrist hovering near the keys.

  There was the bass player tapping one foot.

  Then the fourth figure—a curious sight.

  There she was. The blonde singer, her back, stiff, upright, covered with black lace to her hairline. The hair was twisted and pinned neatly upon her head. Blonde as the sand.

  2

  Béatrice watched the blonde singer tilt her head towards the microphone. The singer’s hand floated upwards from her side and got lost in front of her body. It held the stand. Her back muscles moved like a slow serpent as she took a breath. Then, just as easy as that, as easy as childhood, as easy as a man’s gaze, as easy as a rolling shadow, the woman began to sing.

  3

  The blonde singer was singing in Béatrice’s voice. As the light changed configurations, Béatrice saw a glimpse of the public, just patches of faces, bearded chins, shiny cheeks, and various fragmented grins, floating in the otherwise fuzzy darkness of the bar. The blonde singer let go of the microphone, her hand descended through the open air towards her hip. The white skin of her fingers was glowing. As were the brushed strands on top of her head. As were the borders of her neck. It was then that this black dress appeared not at all decorative, but necessary. A metal lantern for her light.