Yelena Moskovich - Virtuoso

Jana got out at Ledru-Rollin métro stop, as did the two women, who walked up the stairs in front of her, then turned onto Rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine and walked off into the noise and lights. Jana turned the other direction, away from the circulation around Place de la Bastille that was always alive, people drinking on the steps of the opera house, then walking down the steps and turning discretely into the graffitied wall to roll their joints.

She walked down the street, then veered left, looked up and saw that she was on the correct street: Rue de Prague . Here, there was no one. The road felt detached, reluctant to be walked on. The trees shadowed the pavement and the apartments leaned back, out of the light.

She walked gradually, spotting the street numbers, 2, 4, 6… Then she saw it, a couple of doors ahead. A discrete-looking exterior, black-painted façade, two large windows also painted in black, and a wooden door as dark as the rest. Above the door, there was a blue glowing infinity-like symbol. As she came closer, she saw it was the electric-bulb glass body of an angel, lit up with blue as if with the hottest part of a flame.

Das Herz luegt nicht. The heart does not lie.

She felt around, but the door had no handle. She put her ear to the wood. No sound came from the bar, no sense of movement, nothing except for the neon blue angel above her head. L’Ange Bleu. The Blue Angel bar.

She drew her hand out warily and gave the black wood a push. It did not budge. She pushed harder, her forearms tensing, but it was like pushing against a wall.

Lož má krátke nohy. A lie has short legs.

Mieux vaut tenir que courir. Better to hold on than to run.

She pushed again. Then again.

There flames a desolation, blazing…

…Yet, Lord, Thy messengers are praising.

9PM.

Jana slammed the door with both palms.

Come on, what did you expect? She could hear Zorka saying somewhere. You let your cunt get duped like that, Janka? She thrust her palms into the door. Is that it, Miss K—? She heard Mr Doubek’s voice chime in. Do you have a gullible cunt, Miss K—? There was something behind the door. A rasping thing. An echo. Zorka’s laughter. Not only. And Mr Doubek. Chuckling. Yes, they were inside, laughing together. There was saliva in the corners of their mouths. Their laugh was stretching towards each other, becoming one mouth, and the whites of their eyes began rolling around and around, circling the globe— Is that it, Janka? Is that it, Miss K—?

Jana rammed her shoulder against the door and the wood stunted her flesh.

The groan, however, did not come from her, but from the gutter.

It smelled warm, a spoiled dampness. Jana turned around and saw, at the kerb on the sewer grid, a pile of stained and faded blankets, inside of which there was someone, breathing. She ran her eyes over the creases and dips within the blankets trying to find the head or the feet but saw instead a set of charred fingertips sliding out from beneath the sodden covers, towards her.

There was another groan, then the full hand was present, smudged and bloated, flaking at the fingertips. It lifted and turned and curled in, and then did it again.

“ Donnez moi une pièce, madame ,” the voice said. Give me some change…

It was neither a man’s nor a woman’s voice, with an accent that seemed dug up like a long-buried vestige.

“ J’en ai pas… désolée .” I don’t have any… Jana said without thinking.

“ Madame… S’il vous plait ,” the voice said again, more demanding, more unearthed.

Jana instinctively pressed her purse into her hip and shook her head.

“ S’il vous plait, Madame! ” the voice groaned so fully, that the blanket shifted and twisted.

S’il vous plait…! Cil ooomm shay… The begging voice was stretching in sound. Il roumm shii pay… Liiroum shdii! Lak rimi shhhffff… Lak’ rimi Shifdi! Lakrim eesi finti!

Until the phrase found its home and, all at once, Jana remembered something.

Lacrimi şi Sfinţi was the first collection by Emil Cioran, the Romanian philosopher, that Jana had read. She had almost taken up Romanian for him, despite his blatant anti-Semitism, which he later retracted becoming an à la mode nihilist in France. His lines like metaphysical threats or ancestral grudges, she kept them as company, as companionship, as a sense of self-justice – she recited them out loud the way Zorka flung her middle finger up towards the daylight.

Tears and Saints.

Just as she was coming back from her memory, a weight vaulted her from behind. Her body was on the ground. Her eyes closed and inside of them, all black water.

Jana had been jumped and pinned down by the kids. There were four of them.

“Baba,” one of the kids said to the lump. Jana turned her head and saw it was a boyish-girl, dark stringy hair, a big purple and red striped sweatshirt with Mickey Mouse patch at the centre ballooning over her thin torso. She was sitting on Jana’s legs. Jana squirmed at the sight, trying to get the girl off, but she couldn’t budge her in the slightest.

Jana flipped her head to the side. A flower-clip, hanging off another child’s cropped hair. The grip that was holding down Jana’s arm had scraped knuckles and on its meagre wrist, a clunky white and pink plastic Hello Kitty watch, sliding down against her hand, too big for the child. Jana tried to pull her arm out from beneath the girl’s hold, but her shoulder muscle rolled back and stuck – it was like her whole body was beneath a layer of cement.

“Baba,” a third child with greasy, curling hair said over to the lump.

This child’s huge blue and white striped overalls bunched over her short body. At the chest pocket, Bugs Bunny was giving a thumb’s up and smiling with his two front teeth pushed out. The girl looked down at Jana with a teething concentration. From her dirt-streaked neck hung a necklace she had most likely strung up herself from a leftover cable and a clear plastic key chain with “TOYOTA” written in red. The girl itched her collarbone with her free hand. At the top, Jana saw a temporary Spiderman tattoo, blue and red, already partly worn off.

“Baba…?” said the last child.

Jana’s eyes darted to the voice. She looked the oldest or maybe it was the way her Spice Girls T-shirt hugged her chest. Across the shirt, all five Spice Girls were jutting their colourful outfits one way or another, the girl’s prepubescent breasts pushed out against their heads. A candy ring stuck out on her index finger, lint and hairs covered the partly licked cherry-red candy diamond.

“Babička, can we?” she asked.

“Can we??” the others repeated.

The lump shifted with a deeper groan.

And so, together, the children worked like a harmonious team as they held Jana’s shoulders and wrists and thighs and waist and rolled her over onto her stomach with impersonal ease, unaffected by her squirming and twisting. The belt of her coat was untied, her blouse pulled out, her trousers unhooked and unzipped. The Toyota necklace girl clasped her Spiderman-hand over Jana’s mouth, as Jana muttered and spit and tried to bite her flesh. Two of the other children helped push Jana’s face against the cement, until her teeth dug into her cheeks.

Spice Girls Tee pulled out a worn beach towel from beneath the layers of blankets on Baba’s sewer grid, a whirl of purple and magenta, ragged with threads and small holes at the corners. Across the towel was Aladdin on his magic carpet, holding Princess Jasmine to him at her waist, and in big teal letters it said A Whole New World . The girl took the corner of the towel and shoved it into Jana’s mouth, until the tattered fabric stuffed against her tonsil, and absorbed her scream.