David Bezmozgis - Natasha and Other Stories

I heard all of these things through my mother, but I also heard other things from Natasha. I now knew more about my uncle’s life than I ever had, and certainly more than anyone else in my family. I knew, for instance, that he now spent as many nights on the living room couch as he did in the bedroom. I knew that Zina was racking up long-distance bills to Moscow, calling Natasha’s father, a drunk who had effectively abandoned them years ago. She called in the mornings as soon as my uncle left for work and made various and emphatic promises. Natasha had seen her father only infrequently as a child, and was perfectly content to go the rest of her life without seeing him again. She could say the same thing about her mother. Essentially, since the age of eight, she had been on her own. Going to school, coming home, cooking her own dinners, running around with friends. Zina, when not at work, was chasing after Natasha’s father or bringing random men into the apartment. As much as possible, Natasha avoided her.

When Natasha was twelve a friend of hers told her about a man who paid ten dollars for some pictures of her. The girl had gone and taken a shower in the man’s bathroom and he had not only paid her but also bought her dinner. He had promised her the same again if she could bring a friend. Ten dollars each for taking a shower. Natasha remembered thinking that the man had to be an idiot. She went, took her shower, and collected her ten dollars. There wasn’t much to it and it wasn’t as boring as hanging out at her friend’s apartment. And ten dollars was ten dollars. Zina hardly gave her anything, and so it was good to have some of her own money.

After that man was another who took pictures of her and some friends in the forest. He had them climb birch trees and lie down in a meadow. He asked some of the girls to hold hands and kiss each other. Another man took some photos of her in her school uniform. None of these men touched her, but she wouldn’t have cared if they had. They were nice and she felt sorry for them.

All of this led eventually to a Soviet director who had gone from working at the Moscow studios to making pornographic movies for Western businessmen. The man had a dacha on the outskirts of the city and would send a car around to pick up Natasha and her friends. Some of these friends were girls, some boys. They would spend the day at the dacha eating, drinking, having a good time. At some point the director would shoot some movies of them. Aside from teenagers there were also older women. On the first day, Natasha watched the women have sex. She understood that doing it or not doing it was not a serious consideration. In the end, everyone did it. If not in movies, then somewhere else, and it made absolutely no difference one way or the other. The only thing about having sex at the dacha was that it was much more pleasant. The house was beautiful and there was a large lawn and a forest. There was also a banya and a Jacuzzi. The filming itself didn’t even take very long. The rest of the time they just relaxed. She was never asked to do anything she didn’t want to, and she never saw anyone else do something that she wouldn’t have done herself. Even though she and her friends knew they wouldn’t be at the dacha if it weren’t for the movies, the sex never felt as though it were the focus. The director and the other men became their friends. They treated them very well. And if they wanted to sleep with the girls, the girls could see no reason why not. At the end of the day everyone got twenty-five dollars.

Natasha didn’t have any of the pictures or movies, which was disappointing since I wanted to see them. But it wasn’t like she was a model. She didn’t keep an album of pictures to show to prospective photographers. She was the album. They looked at her and preferred not to know about her past. And without having pictures around there was no risk of Zina finding out what Natasha was doing. Not that she thought Zina would care, instead it was that Natasha suspected Zina would want the money. In any case, when Zina did finally find out it was only because she heard something from another girl’s mother. And much as Natasha expected, Zina told her that if she was going to be a whore she could at least help out with the rent. Natasha never felt like a whore. She didn’t do it for the money, but she also wasn’t so stupid as to turn it down. If anyone was a whore, it was Zina. And she came cheap. She sold herself to Natasha’s father for nothing, and the men she brought to the apartment treated her like filth. They paid her with curses and bruises.

I carried all this information around like a prize. It was my connection to a larger darker world. At Rufus’s parties it allowed me to feel superior to the other stoner acolytes comparing Nietzsche to Bob Marley. I took Natasha to these parties and she stood quietly listening to our incoherent and impassioned conversations. Later she would surprise me with just how much she had understood. By midsummer, if called upon, Natasha could answer basic questions and had learned enough to know when to tell someone to fuck off. The other stoners liked more than anything to hear Natasha say fuck off in her crisp Moscow accent. In crude canine fashion, they accepted Natasha as one of their own. Natasha was cool.

We coasted this way into August when Zina appeared in our backyard one evening during dinner. The way she looked, it was clear that something horrible was about to happen. My mother opened the sliding door and Zina burst into our kitchen and inaccurately described what Natasha and I had been doing. Then screams, sobbing, and hysterics. I watched as my father wrenched Natasha from her mother, her teeth leaving a bloody wound on Zina’s hand. Zina let fly a torrent of invective, most of which I couldn’t understand. But I understood enough to know that what was happening in the kitchen was nothing compared with what was to come. Zina threatened to call the police, to place an ad in the Russian newspaper, to personally knock on all of our neighbors’ doors. Natasha thrashed in my father’s grip and freed herself enough to lunge unsuccessfully for a bread knife. She shrieked that her mother was a liar. I sat in my chair, nauseated, contemplating lies and escape.

After my father bandaged Zina’s hand she waited outside while my mother talked with Natasha and me. With Zina outside my mother fumbled for the proper way to pose the question. It was hard to believe that what Zina was saying was true, but why would she make something like this up. Natasha said that it was because her mother hated her and never wanted her to be happy. She was jealous that Natasha was happy with us and wanted to ruin it, just as she had dragged Natasha from Moscow even though she hadn’t wanted to go. Zina hated her and wanted to ruin her life, that was all. When my mother turned to me I denied everything. Unless Zina produced pictures or video I wasn’t admitting a thing. I was terrified but I wasn’t a moron.

When it became obvious that we had reached an impasse, my mother called my uncle. He came to our house in a state of anxiety that was remarkable even for him. He sat down between my mother and Zina on the living room couch. I was beside my father, who was in his armchair, and Natasha stood rigidly with her back against the door. My uncle confessed that he didn’t know what was happening. Everything had been fine. What situation doesn’t have problems, but on the whole he was content. The only explanation he could propose was that all of this might have had to do with a fight between Zina and Natasha over a phone bill. There had been a very expensive bill to Russia, almost six hundred dollars, which Zina had said were calls to her mother. He could understand that while getting used to a new life Zina would want to talk to her mother. Also, her mother was alone in Moscow and missed her. It was only natural that there would be calls. That there were so many was unfortunately a financial and not a personal problem. If it was within his means, he would be happy if Zina talked to her mother as much as she liked. But as it was, he had suggested that she try to be more careful about the amount of time she spent on the phone. They talked about it and she said she understood. It was then that Natasha accused Zina of lying to him and said she wanted her mother to tell him the truth about who she had been calling. This started a fight. But at no point did he hear anything about me and Natasha. He was certain it wasn’t true and was just something between a mother and daughter. Everyone was still getting used to things and it would be a mistake to make too much of it. In a day or so everyone would calm down and it would be forgotten.