Yelena Moskovich - The Natashas

Then, she turned around and began to walk away. “Rosa!” César tried to call out, but the name did not leave his mouth. It curled on his tongue like a leaf-worm. Now, as she was leaving, she was frightening him. “ROSA!” he tried again, but nothing sounded. Just when he felt his heart would burst, a voice came close to César and fogged his ear like a whisper.

“I’ll email you,” Rosa said.

The marble twilight of the sky faded into a blue-grey of early evening. Lights in the windows. Voices in the buildings. This street was inhabited. The city was alive.

From far off, in the horizon, a black dot continued to breathe. It breathed with the breath of the people in the city of Paris, and the people of other cities too. It breathed with the breath of a girl far away, stepping into a car one leg at a time. And the breath of the actor on the TV screen. And the breath of the singer in the spotlight. And the breath of those who breathe and breathe and still can’t remember who they are.

Béatrice is flat-chested, ten years old, blonde as the sand. The seawater drools on to the shore. The sky is erased, ragged with clouds. They’ve rented a house, her father and the good friend he’s kept from childhood, Marcel. Marcel has brought his family.

Marcel’s daughter, Sabine, has her hair in two thick chestnut braids. She likes to go scavenging and give names. “Glinglink” she says and points at a cap from a beer bottle poking out of the sand. After that, every time anyone sees a bottle cap, they must pronounce it “glinglink”. Emmanuelle plays in the sand joyfully with her mother. Béatrice is told to play with the girl who insists that the world must be named, though she would rather bury her toes in the sand one by one.

The girl takes her hand and they run off together. When they’ve reached the top of the beach, she lets go and runs far ahead. Béatrice calls out her name so she’ll wait for her. The girl abruptly stops her sprint, turns around and runs straight back to Béatrice. The girl grabs her wrist and looks her straight into the eyes.

“I didn’t give you permission to say my name.”

Béatrice tries to excuse herself, but it’s already too late, as the girl’s hand is pinching her jaw open. The girl shoves two fingers in Béatrice’s mouth and pushes into her jaw hinge so she can’t bite her. The girl’s fingers go deep, and Béatrice gags immediately and twists in every way she can.

“Next time you say it without permission, you’ll have to throw up your lunch.”

The girl pulls her fingers out and lets go. Béatrice wipes off her mouth. She turns to look back at the shore where her mother is playing with her sister. She sees Marcel open a new beer bottle and hand it to her father. As the father takes it, he catches the figure of his daughter in the distance looking at him. He lifts the bottle high and shouts, “Haaaving fuuuunn, aaaannngggeeelll…?”

Béatrice nods, not sure if she is nodding to her father or to the girl’s newly set rule. The girl takes Béatrice’s hand into hers.

“Come on, angel ,” she says.

Béatrice is now careful not to call the girl Sabine. The girl leads her through the dunes, away from their parents. She tells her which rocks to pick up. She tells her snail shells are where people hide their diamonds. She tells her to hurry up. Béatrice feels her white shoulders burning up and tells the girl that they are starting to sting. The girl replies that everyone’s made of fire and whenever we get angry, pieces of ourselves spark off. That’s what stars are, she explains, crumbs of our anger.

The girl has Béatrice examine the rocks they’ve collected because she left her glasses with her mom so they wouldn’t fall off and break. After they’ve collected enough rocks, the girl finds a dry tree over the hump of a dune and sits down in its shade. Béatrice stands idle until the girl tells her to come and sit down. Béatrice sits, facing the girl.

The girl speaks in a factual tone, and Béatrice is afraid to contradict her. Together, they crouch and place the rocks in a circle formation between them, piling them as high as the middle of their thighs. “This is a portal,” the girl explains. “Now we can see the future.”

The girl bends her body over the rock circle, until the tip of her nose is directly facing the sand. “Hold my feet so I don’t fall in,” she tells Béatrice. Béatrice comes around behind the girl, crouches back down and takes hold of the girl’s ankles.

“What do you… see…?” Béatrice asks timidly.

“Ha! I see YOUR future!” the girl responds.

Béatrice flinches. She regrets asking the question. She wants nothing to do with her future. Béatrice suddenly has the sharp sensation that knowing any part of your future is knowing how you will die. Her bottom lip coils under. Please, please don’t tell me how I die.

“WELL, YOU WANNA KNOW WHAT I SEE?” the girl yells into the sand, as if her voice has to carry far, now that she is inside Béatrice’s future, years away. Béatrice tries to push the sound out, the sound that will tell the girl to close the portal. She pushes from her toes up, but her throat is dry.

“HELLO, CAN YOU HEAR ME?” the girl shouts again into the sand.

Béatrice tries again. She must tell the girl to get out of her future. She pushes, but only the sound of a leaf shaking comes from her mouth.

“OH, YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT I’M SEEING! READY TO KNOW YOUR FUTURE?”

Béatrice grips the girl’s ankles as if to signal her to stop. Please, please, please. But already a different voice is on its way. An inhale deepens her eyes and rises to the surface, like a metal gate lifting from a bull’s cage. The voice comes. It is not a child’s voice. It’s a woman’s voice. Béatrice’s voice, twenty-some years later.

“Tell me,” the voice speaks from Béatrice’s mouth.

Béatrice’s hands go limp and let go of the girl’s ankles. The girl falls into the future, blood from her nose stains the sand, now, then.

On the shore, near their parents, the ocean water coils and rolls forward. For years to come, the waves wash the girl’s scream away.

Béatrice stood wearing the long, black-lace dress, her hand on the green curtain, opening an eye-hole into the boutique. She peered out towards the shopkeeper who had just welcomed a woman named Polina .

The woman in question had her back to Béatrice. Her beige trench coat hung to her calves. Her brown hair curled over her shoulders. Her hands were leisurely resting in her coat pockets. Behind her, through the window on to the street, rows of bodies walked in both directions. Their mouths were moving, but made no perceptible sound. The only noise in the shop was the static coming from the radio. Then, the singer’s voice emerged. “ Vida, ” the woman sang again. This time like a question. The strum of the guitar rose just then and seemed to calm the singer’s question. Béatrice pulled the curtain a little wider and two wooden rings clacked into each other. The shopkeeper turned her head. The tips of her black hair scraped the paper of the open notebook on the desk. The woman in question took her hands out of her pockets and turned towards Béatrice as well. Their eyes met.

“Now, then,” Polina said, “let’s see the dress.”

The singer’s voice from the radio was fading away and only the guitar played her footsteps, leaving the song. Then the white walls were once again filled with the sound of dry hands rubbing together.

Béatrice stood in the boutique light, right in front of the open curtain. The skin of the black lizard dress was tightly wrapped around her body, stark against her blonde chignon and her mauve lips.