Yelena Moskovich - The Natashas

And so, for a while, Emmanuelle became a little insomniac. Her mother tried lavender extract on her pillow. She rearranged the furniture. She put thicker curtains over the window. Her father stayed by her side night after night. Still, Emmanelle’s eyes sunk deeper and darker from the lack of sleep.

She refused to talk about her dream to anyone except her sister. And Béatrice knew just what to do to keep safe from such men. She let Emmanuelle climb into her bed and pull her in close.

“Bee…” Emmanuelle whispered.

“Yeah?” Béatrice replied.

“Where were you, Bee? Why did you let the man take me away…”

Béatrice paused. She inhaled, then on the exhale began to sing softly. She pulled her sister into her side and tightened the covers over them both.

“ Do-bee-do-bee doo… ” Béatrice hummed.

Like a potion, the tune made Emmanuelle’s eyes heavy and her breath slow.

“Don’t let him take me away this time…” Emmanuelle mumbled as she drifted off to sleep.

“ Do-bee-do-bee doo… ” Béatrice assured her.

Night after night, Béatrice sang to her sister and put her to sleep. Over time the dream left Emmanuelle and she regained her confidence in sleeping alone.

The sisters kept their secret. But once in a while, the nightmare came back to Emmanuelle, and when it did, she went back to Béatrice just as she had done in her childhood.

“Bee…”

Although Emmanuelle was now twenty-eight, she came into her sister’s room that night and spoke with the same voice as the terrified and sleepless eight-year-old girl.

Béatrice pulled open the bedcovers and Emmanuelle climbed in. She curved her body inward and placed her face against Béatrice’s bare shoulder.

“Sing me something, Bee,” Emmanuelle mumbled into her sister’s warm skin.

As Béatrice began to hum, Emmanuelle closed her eyes and wrapped her arm around her sister’s waist. It wasn’t long before both sisters were asleep.

In their sleep, in this quiet room at the top of the house, Polina watched these two women over the bed. Telo, Nomer, Chiffre, Youpka…

In the northwest suburb of Paris, Neuilly-sur-Seine, the morning is quiet. César is walking through the empty, white streets, following the building numbers with his eyes. Just don’t over-think it , he is telling himself as he walks up to the flat, grey building. He checks the plaque near the door for the Studio floor then buzzes in. “ Second floor .” The doorphone spits out.

Upstairs, the tripod is set up, the assistant has made sufficient copies of the script, and the two technicians in loose, black jeans are closing the shutters on one of the overhead lights.

A woman with long, brown hair in a loose, silver silk blouse tucked into her high-waisted jeans is standing in the open door. As she takes a step back, her heels make a click sound on the floor. She gives César a half-hearted smile with her thin, raspberry-painted lips, then turns her head back to the man swirling the coffee in his small espresso papercup and itching his greying sideburn.

“Marcel’s kid’s here,” she says.

The director looks up. He glances at César’s face, then takes a moment to review his body. He smiles, revealing two front teeth bent slightly into each other, as if he’d been punched in the face in his childhood.

“Well, well, looks like we got a little shit on our hands… Bravo, Marcel,” he says and nodded as if Marcel were in the room.

“The lights are ready,” a man says from the back.

“Did you mark the tape?” the assistant calls back, her voice with a tone of perpetual disappointment.

“Yep. Ready to roll,” the man replies.

“Do you want a coffee or something,” the assistant asks César.

“No thanks.”

“Okay then, let’s get you in here.”

César sat down on the cold metal chair in front of the bare table representing the “interrogation room” for the audition scene purposes. The other actor, playing the detective, had his strong, wide back to César, facing the wall, quickly going over some vocal exercises. “ Dee dee dee. Da Da Da. AH AH AH. ” The assistant came up behind César and pulled his arms down to the back of the chair. César immediately pulled away, and turned around, startled. The assistant held up the pair of handcuffs in her hand, sighed, and said in an annoyed tone, “It’s part of the scene…”

César flushed with embarrassment and let the assistant handcuff him to the metal chair. The woman rolled her eyes and twisted César’s arms down and around until his hands touched each other. She clicked the metal rings around his wrists and on to the bars of the chair. When the rings snapped shut, the cuffs hit the bar they were attached to, sending a buzz up the chair. He instinctively jerked and the cuffs cut into his wristbone. César’s elbow twitched in pain. He could feel the assistant growing irritated with him. His neck bent down apologetically.

“Alrighty, César, you ready?” the director shouted.

“…Yep,” César replied quickly.

“Gérard…?” the director said to the actor playing the detective as he was finishing his mouth exercises.

“BA BA BA ZA ZA ZA…” the actor inhaled deeply and his shoulders rose. Then he exhaled and his shoulders lowered and opened. “Brrrrrrrr rrrrrrr rrrrrrrr” he did his last tongue rolls.

“ Prêt ,” the actor pronounced in a solid, clear voice.

The director rubbed his hands together then claps twice.

The man behind the camera shouted, “ Rolling ” and the assistant clacked the scene-marker in front of César’s face.

Just as César’s nerves begin to rise, he feels a warm pressure on his back press gently in. Te quiero, César.

The actor playing the detective turns around. He is holding a beige file in his hand. He takes a step towards César. César’s shoulders are hunched forward, his hands locked to the back of the metal chair. Bitch. Honda. Hormiga.

“We all have big ideas,” the actor says in an even, controlled tone.

He leans down towards César’s lowered head. “Wouldn’t you agree, Mr Rodriguez?”

César can feel the metal rings of the cuffs pinching his wrists again. He tries to move his shoulder blades to adjust the position, but no matter which way he twists, they press into his bone.

“Now, now, Mr Rodriguez. No need to dumb yourself down. You’re a smart man…”

Bitch. Honda. Hormiga. Bitch. Honda. Hormiga. César is trying to focus despite the pain coursing up his forearms.

“As a smart man, I know you’ve had a big idea at least once in your life. And what did you do when you had this big idea, well, you wrote that idea down. You wrote it down because you were sure it was an extraordinary, even brilliant idea. But, sometimes — and this happens to the best of us — when we go back and read our brilliant ideas later, we see that some of those ideas are in fact a little stupid . This can be very humiliating. What is one to do in these cases, Mr Rodriguez?”

César blinks again to diffuse the pain.

“Well. We take that idea and we crumble it up and we throw it away, don’t we? We have to get rid of this stupid idea to make way for a brilliant one. This is called having superior awareness and self-discipline. I highly commend anyone who can throw away a stupid idea.”

César’s eyes are starting to water. Relax, César. Your line’s coming up. Come on, you can handle a little pain… !