The Natashas

by Yelena Moskovich

  When Béatrice caught sight of the singer’s hand, she thought she saw a cigarette there, burning idly between the woman’s fingers. But when she looked again, it was only slow-rising dust in the spotlight.

  4

  Jean-Luc got up from his chair, keeping his arm close to his side and the white rose against his thigh. He came up to the stage and extended the white rose towards the blonde singer. He looked up and smiled a set of straight, white teeth. The singer looked into his eyes, and her heart melted like hot candle wax. Jean-Luc stood smiling. Natasha was so happy just then she wanted to say, “I told you so!” But to whom? Who would believe such stories.

  As she smiled back at Jean-Luc her cheeks began to hollow. Her skin smelled slightly sour. She reached up to run her fingers over her immaculate chignon, but what she found there was stumps of hair, coarse and chopped. Tears began to accumulate in her eyes. They rolled down her cheeks like rain upon a car door.

  Not in front of everyone, please, don’t take it away from me in front of everyone.

  5

  Lame body, she’ll have to live with, a chorus of women announce.

  6

  Lame body, she’ll have to live with, Béatrice said quietly to herself in the darkness from behind the stage. She watched the blonde singer grow hollow from the inside.

  7

  Emmanuelle’s eyes darted sharply up to the blonde singer on stage. She looked immediately over to her father.

  “Aw, honey, don’t be jealous …” her father said warmly. “Jean-Luc is just trying to be nice …”

  Emmanuelle opened her eyes wide at her father, but could not find the words she wanted to say. She felt Jean-Luc’s hand on her shoulder and turned around just as he was taking his seat beside her. “Hey, Kitty-kat,” he said to Emmanuelle.

  Emmanuelle shifted away from Jean-Luc.

  “What’s the matter …” Jean-Luc said, putting his arm around her.

  Emmanuelle flung his arm off her shoulder and darted her eyes to the blonde singer on stage. The father leaned in and said heartily, “You see, son, women are jealous creatures—if you’re gunna give one of them a rose, you might as well buy all of them a rose!” The father turned and winked at Emmanuelle.

  Emmanuelle tried to shake her head, but only managed a slight rocking motion.

  “Is that why you’re mad at me, Kitty-kat?” Jean-Luc tried to put his arm back around her.

  Emmanuelle flung it off again and pointed with her face at the stage.

  “Okay, okay, mean kitty! If you want, I’ll get a rose as well …”

  Emmanuelle looked at her mother, who right away put her finger to her lips and said, “Shhh … your sister’s singing …”

  Emmanuelle wanted desperately to say something, anything, but her whole body suddenly felt empty of words. She pressed her teeth together and looked deeply into Jean-Luc’s eyes.

  “Don’t be sad … I’m going to get you a rose right now.” Jean-Luc turned his head around. “I think the rose guy’s still there …” He turned back to Emmanuelle. “Which one do you want, Kitty-kat … white or red? … Well, hurry up, fussy kitty. He’s about to leave. A white one?”

  Emmanuelle tried shaking her head again, but now it was rocking up and down.

  Before she could do anything else with her head, Jean-Luc was up and making his way to the departing rose seller.

  8

  Emmanuelle looked back at her sister on stage. She saw a blonde singer, with paper-thin eyes, almost as if drawn on. Her blonde hair seemed to be slipping away from her scalp strand by strand, like cut thread. This thing before her was not her sister, nor any woman. She looked around her at the audience. No one was startled in the least. Then, when her eyes drew back to the stage, she spotted a figure in the corner by the backstage door. She wanted to call out, “Bee!” but when she opened her mouth, she couldn’t make a sound.

  9

  Béatrice walked effortlessly through the crowd, sliding like water between the spaces of the people. All eyes were on the blonde singer on stage. Only Emmanuelle’s head turned, following her real sister’s trace through the crowd and out the door.

  XXVIII

  Gracias a la vida

  1

  As César pulled up by Marcel’s apartment, Sabine grabbed the wheels and made the chair stop. “That’s fine. You can go.”

  “You don’t want me to take you up?”

  “No.” Sabine reached for the wheels of her chair.

  “I just thought I could take you up and say hi to Marcel.”

  Sabine turned back to face him. “That’s not necessary.”

  “But … It could be nice. To say hi.”

  Sabine looked at him without a word.

  “Don’t you think …?” he added.

  Her eyes moved away, dismissing him. César bent his knees and knelt down at the side of the chair. He gripped the metal bar.

  “The thing is, Marcel’s not just my agent, you see he’s my … buddy, and I think it’d be …very … nice to say hi.”

  “Nice things … aren’t necessary.”

  César suddenly looked very childish. His eyebrows bent perplexed and his eyes shone.

  “Listen, César the actor, I will tell my father, Marcel the agent, that you were very, very nice, if that is what you want …”

  César’s eyebrows straightened out.

  “Really?” he said quietly.

  2

  Sabine took her hands off her lap and dipped them over the arm rests, down to the wheels. The bones were slim and cordially aligned. César was drawn to their dignity. These hands were the hands in old movies, those which inspired replicas in painted wood and plastic and especially marble. These hands should be caressing fox fur or extending an ornate glass towards the light. But instead they were reaching for the dirty rubber tyres of a wheelchair.

  Watching her use those dignified hands to jerk at the wheels made César very uncomfortable.

  3

  Don’t you recognise yourself … the phrase echoed in César’s head.

  4

  When César was ten, his brothers held him down on a chair in front of the TV screen where a woman had her knees up and her thighs spread. Her pubic hair was completely shaved like a little girl with a slight rash, but when the camera panned up to her chest, she had a pair of full breasts. They bounced as if trying to memorise enthusiasm. Then the camera cut to a close-up of her eyes, closed, lined with mascara, eyelids shimmering with baby blue. Her eyes opened and looked straight at the camera. How old are you, sweetheart? Sweet sixteen. Sour sixty. Satellite six-hundred. Is that a good age for you?

  That’s enough of her eyes, the camera panned down to her mouth. The lips were glossy and rounded. They could have belonged to an infant, one who’s worn herself out with all her crying and is now just keeping tempo with a whimper.

  Just as the camera was leaving her face, her lips pulled down into a lusty frown, and her own hand, with long red nails on her fingers, slid up her stomach and grabbed on to her own breast. She squeezed, and twisted her body. As she was rolling over to her side, she pulled her butt into the camera. Then the angle switched to profile, she was on her spread elbows and knees, like a foot-stool, and her long hair hanging over her face like a willow tree. She began grinding her body into the emptiness around her.

  5

  Sometimes Natasha looks very sexy on fotos.

  Sometimes she looks like a sad fairytale.

  And sometimes she just looks like an ultrasound.

  6

  Ten-year-old César tensed in his chair as he felt his brothers push in closer behind him. He kept his eyes on the screen, and began to hold his breath. The chair creaked and Raul’s hand grabbed the back of César’s neck like a claw. His nose was pushed up to the screen, into the girl, whimpering and grinding.

  “No te reconoces?” Raul whispered into César’s ear. “Don’t you recognise yourself?”

  “César EL ACTOR!” Alonzo proclaimed.

 
7

  Sabine jerked the wheels again. As César watched her the memory of the woman in the video from his childhood blurred into Sabine’s movements. His eyes felt like the camera, panning up the side of the wheelchair, to her arms, to her lap, where, to his surprise, he now saw a large erect penis that she was holding with one of her stern hands. This hand stroked the penis at a regular pace at first, then accelerated, faster and faster. César wanted to shut his eyes, to look away, but instead, like the camera lens, his eyelids opened wider and zoomed in closer to the fingers gripping down on to the bulging penis. Sabine’s hand yanked and yanked at the penis, as César’s eyes tried desperately to look away. Come on, come on, cripple … a man’s voice gritted in his head in the same tone as the porn from his childhood. His eyes slid up and down the penis with her hands. Come on cripple, get me off! He saw something inside that penis start to twitch as if it would ejaculate straight into his eyes. Just as the hand gave that penis one final stroke, César shut his eyes and screamed.

  “TE MATO, PUTA!”

  8

  When César opened his eyes again, Sabine had rolled herself up to the door. She turned back to face César.

  There was her brow.

  There was her jaw.

  There was her mouth.

  9

  Sabine’s face was flat and serene. “So … you want to kill me, César the actor?”

  César bit on the inside of his lip.

  “That’s what you would like to do, isn’t it …” Sabine continued in a gentle voice. “That’s why you want to help me upstairs … You want to show off a bit, isn’t that right … you want to kill me in front of Marcel, you want to impress your agent …”

  César felt a wind blow across his cheek. He was nodding.

  10

  “Tell me, César the actor, how would you kill me …?”

  César stuffed his hands into his pockets and pulled his shoulders in until he felt covered up.

  “Idunno,” he mumbled.

  “Come on, César, come on, tell me …”

  “… Idunno. I dunno. like. choke you. maybe.”

  “I see … And how would you choke me?”

  “Idunno … with your own hands.”

  “Oh. Interesting. And how would you do that?”

  “Well … um … on the floor …”

  “Mhm …”

  “I could … maybe … on top of you. And you could be … under me. And I would hold your wrists against your chest, I guess. Like really tight. And, um … because your legs are … you wouldn’t be able to kick or … struggle … you know. You’d just jerk back and forth, like underneath me, but I’d be sitting on your stomach, and I’d be holding your arms down …”

  “And where would Marcel be …”

  “Marcel could be like, just sitting. At his desk. Like comfortable. Watching.”

  “I see.” Sabine paused for a moment. “César, I have a personal question for you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I hope you don’t find it too rude …”

  “No, go ahead …”

  “Well, I was just wondering: Would you rape me before or after you killed me?”

  11

  “… I dunno …” his voice cracked.

  “Oh, come on now, César.”

  César lowered his eyes.

  “Would you rape me before … or after … you choked me to death with my own hands?”

  César continued to look at his shoes.

  “Let me help you, César the actor. Let’s think about this together, okay? Would you like to put your penis inside of me when I am still jerking around, or would you prefer that your penis enter a more limp, softer body?”

  César felt his whole stomach tighten. He pulled one hand out of his pocket and wiped his nose, then stuffed that hand back into his pocket.

  “You could, for example, flip me over, and spread my butt cheeks, and put the tip of your penis right up against my anus. It would be squeezed tightly shut, as I would be very frightened. But you could, of course, push your penis in, little by little. That space would be especially tight, so you’d really have to force your way inside. That could be quite nice, no? Pushing your hard penis deeper and deeper into my anus, as my butt cheeks squeeze together around the base because I am so frightened. Also, because you are ripping the tissue around my anus and this is hurting me, in addition to being frightened. But, for you, it must feel really nice, to push your penis into that warm, tight space … It would, wouldn’t it … It would feel really, really nice …”

  César sniffed again. A drop hit his shoe.

  “Stopit,” he mumbled.

  “You’re an actor, aren’t you, César, hm? Isn’t that so? Well ACT, then, ACT, César, ACT!”

  César couldn’t speak. He couldn’t look up. He couldn’t even pull his hands out of his pockets to wipe the blood dripping from his nose. Then, beneath the tapping of the droplets of blood on his shoe, he heard a creaking sound. He lifted his head and saw Sabine with her back to him, shifting her position in the wheelchair. She was suddenly no longer concerned with him. Her arms were straightening out, as her hands gripped the arm rests. In one elegant gesture, both arms swiftly pushed Sabine up to her feet. She typed in the building’s entry code and stepped neatly over the metal door frame. The door thumped shut behind her and the empty wheelchair rolled back on to César’s feet.

  12

  César stood alone in the street. His pants felt tight. He took both hands out of his pockets and looked down. His penis was hard. Suddenly embarrassed, he darted his head around to see if there was anyone else in the street as he tried to adjust himself. No one, good. But as he looked back down, he saw that it had grown even bigger. It was bulging painfully against his zipper. He immediately hunched over himself, trying to hide it, to soften it, but could feel his erection continue to get harder and fatter. In his hunched position, he tugged at his pants, left, right, out, down, trying desperately to calm this thing down. But the more he twisted, the more it seemed to grow. Now he was afraid to look down. He could feel this hard-on ballooning out of him. His neck was straining. His cheeks were burning. César closed his eyes, begging to be relieved from it all. In his darkness, his arms and legs tangled, and he tripped and fell on to his knees. When his full weight hit the cement, César let out such a deep, pitting cry, that it echoed backwards through all his lived years and pinched his mother’s womb.

  13

  When César opened his eyes, a dark silhouette of a man stood before him. The man extended his black-leather-gloved hand towards César and César took it and stood up in one simple motion. The dark silhouette leaned in and kissed César on the lips.

  The man then slid his woollen cheek against César’s and whispered into his boyish ear, “Bravo, mi amor.”

  XXIX

  The Louvre

  1

  “Excuse me …”

  “Yes?”

  The Head Natasha stops her lesson and looks down at the crouching girl.

  “Um … I was just wondering …”

  “Yes …”

  “… where does our pain go?”

  She takes her arms off her knees, and sits up. Her kneecaps look like two putrid papayas.

  2

  “Well, that is a good question. You see, whatever hurts on your body is like a mass of cold water rising and breaking against a bunch of rocks, and you just have to remember that there’s someone up there with a paintbrush and easel, trying very hard to paint every droplet of that crash on to a canvas, so you can’t be moving around too much. If you stay still, he can finish the painting, and then it can be hung up in the Louvre.

  “Loov-rah,” the Natashas repeat.

  “And that’s where it goes, girls. It becomes a PAINting.”

  3

  I said, trees take my scream. I said, soil, take my scream. I said water, take my scream, a chorus of women chant.

  4

  One Natasha yawns. “My soul hurts …”

&n
bsp; 5

  “Louv-rah.”

  XXX

  Louv-rah

  1

  Béatrice walked down the streets unnoticed. She strolled down the canal, past the lingering picnickers, past the bars, past the closed shops.

  She walked south, all the way down to Place de la Bastille, where the prison was stormed and the French Revolution took fire.

  She turned west and walked away from the former prison, which now was a glimmering roundabout, enclosed by banks, various cinemas, sushi shops, candy stores, restaurant chains, gelato counters, bars, and the Bastille Opera House where Chagall painted so colourfully those biblical moments of anguish, intimacy, and surprise upon the ceiling.

  She walked for a while on Rue de Rivoli, where some couples sat on the kerb arguing and others stood against the door kissing, and flocks of men regrouped around women, and people asked each other for cigarettes with slight slurs, smelling of sugar and rum.

  She walked past the shop where she had found her dress. The windows were empty now and the door had a sign: PROPERTY FOR SALE.

  2

  Béatrice walked until there was no one else on the streets. Cars drove by. She felt each one approaching from behind, its headlights touching her heels. With each car, she thought, this is the one. This is the one which will pull up at my side. This is the car with the car door that will open for me. Inside will be the man who will extend his arm towards me. That arm will be for me, only me. That arm will grab my body and pull me in. This will be the car which will take me east, out of Paris, out of France—to that highway with the low metal barrier, behind which is the sparse forest with the wet soil, and the bent speed-limit sign, and the empty liquor bottles, and the chewed-up panties, and the broken nails …

  (Hey, I know that highway … Go one way and you’re in Dresden … Go the other way and you’re in Prague …)