Yelena Moskovich - The Natashas

She fell silent. Her silence had a strong taste to it. Bitter and grainy, like the shell of a walnut.

“César the actor,” Sabine said in a level tone. “Come and sit next to me, please.”

César did as he was told.

First he squatted, but did not find this position comfortable. He contemplated sitting on the ground, but then he would be too low, at the level of her wheels. Then he looked in front of him—of course—he took a seat on the metal barrier.

Sabine turned her head and looked directly at César. She had smooth, well-kept skin which held a childhood freshness, and light freckles across her nose—that nose that still seemed to belong to a little girl. Yet there was something very frightening about her, in the way she looked at him.

“So then. What happened to your nose?” Sabine asked. “Did you get in a fight?”

César gave her question some thought. “Um. Sort of,” he replied.

Sabine looked at him for another long moment, then turned her head back towards the water and fell into her own thoughts. Then, keeping her eyes on the water, she spoke again: “Did you win?”

César’s eyes perked up. Depends. Depends on Marcel , he wanted to say.

“…Don’t know yet,” César replied with a half-smile.

Béatrice’s father drove. Her mother was in the front. Her sister sat in the back, with Jean-Luc at her side, chivalrously taking the middle seat. He pressed into Emmanuelle when the car took a left, and into Béatrice when the car took a right.

In the car, Béatrice could smell something unmistakable. She knew exactly what it was: long-stemmed Stargazer lilies, split-open fuchsia stars rimmed with white, each petal freckled; in the bouquet were probably a couple of eucalyptus stems, and one or two lemon leaves.

When Béatrice was young she begged her mom for a cat. Her mother smiled and said to little Béatrice that she would get her a cat, but Stargazer lilies (one of her favourites) are highly toxic to cats, and she could not live without Stargazer lilies whereas she could live without a cat. Each time she brought them home her mother would bring the bouquet to Béatrice’s face, saying, “Oh, just smell them, Béatrice, don’t they smell sweet and heavenly?” In a matter of minutes, Béatrice would always have a migraine. She hoped heaven did not smell like this.

Over the years, she had tried again and again to express to her mother that she did not enjoy this scent. But every attempt to communicate this left her mother with the impression that Stargazer lilies were Béatrice’s favourite flower.

The mother looked back at her from the front car seat.

“Oops, how’d you guess! I put them on my lap with a scarf over, so you wouldn’t see it until after the concert. Oh well. Surprise… !”

She pulled the bouquet out from beneath the scarf and pushed it into Béatrice’s face. Béatrice could already feel the particles gather in her throat. Her stomach swayed with a light nausea and her gut flinched.

“Sweet and heavenly,” the father said and made a right turn.

As the car pivoted, Jean-Luc was pressed into Béatrice’s shoulder.

“…Just like you,” Jean-Luc whispered.

César could not endure Sabine’s silence just as he couldn’t quite handle her small talk. Luckily, God bless this machine, the phone rang. Sabine unzipped the small purse on her lap and took out the phone.

“Allo. Ich bin in Paris…. Nein… Leite es an Christophe weiter…. Ya… Tuesday, not Wednesday. Surtout pas, je vous avais expliqué. Ok, tak mi zavolej… Oui… Oui… Okay, goodbye.”

“Something important?” César asked.

“Work.”

Sabine explained that she worked for the Volkswagen Group in Dresden as an engineer of some sort. (César almost blurted out, I knew a guy from Dresden once , but he stopped himself in time.) She mentioned computer modelling software and anticipating component behaviour and monitoring associated engineering issues with the final product, but all César could picture were those test cars with the dummies strapped inside that they crash into walls.

“Interesting stuff,” César said.

Sabine continued to explain that the Volkswagen Group had partnered up with the Czech Republic’s largest car manufacturer, Skoda Auto. That’s why she took regular trips to Mlada Bleslav in the north of Prague to visit the giant Skoda manufacturing plant.

“The year of the big partnership was 1991, to be exact. I was barely twelve at the time, living in France. I didn’t know a thing about the East and the West. The world map consisted of Paris, Bordeaux where my grandparents lived, the Aquitaine region where we spent our summers, Arcachon, Sanguinet Andernosles-Bains, Dune du Pyla. But in 1991, as I’m sure you’re aware, the Soviet Union fell, and thousands of newly made businessmen carried off the crumbs in a hurry. Some built empires. Some were greedy and took a piece too big and got crushed underneath.”

Across the canal, a couple laughed together. Then their voices subsided.

“Only a year later, my mom moved me to Stuttgart and I got a taste of the changing world.”

Sabine’s mother, Marcel’s ex-wife, met and married a German man from Stuttgart and moved there with Sabine when she was thirteen. Her mother’s new husband brought with him a son from his previous marriage, Karl. Karl was seventeen, with a greasy blond shag of hair and a patch of fine hairs on his upper lip, but otherwise no facial hair. His cheeks darted out of his gaunt face, and his lips were heart-shaped. He was tall and bony. It did not help that he wore baggy black jeans which he fastened to his skinny body with a flat, black leather belt slung tightly in the loops. Over his lean torso, he wore the usual white undershirt, and a short-sleeve, faded black button-up shirt (he buttoned every button, up to his protruding Adam’s apple).

Most of the time, Karl just wanted to be left alone. So he was not thrilled to have two more people in his space to pester him. And if there was one thing Sabine was a natural in, it was pestering.

She asked Karl if he knew that Stuttgart, which was also known as Benztown, was where the automobile and the motorcycle were invented, by a certain Karl Benz. She wanted to know if Karl had been named after the inventor.

“No,” Karl replied.

She continued then to inform Karl that the automobile and motorcycle were later industrialised by Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach (in 1887, to be exact) at the Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft (to be exact), and that she preferred the name Gottlieb or Wilhelm to Karl because to her “Karl sounds like someone who lacks ambition”.

Karl scratched his chin, then left the room.

At first Karl spent most of his time in his room, on his computer. But after starting a new high school in Stuttgart, a beat-up car began turning up with four guys in it. It would honk on arrival and Karl would tuck his faded black shirt into his jeans and head out the door.

Karl’s father and Sabine’s mother, who were both worried about Karl’s transition to the new family and the new school, were somewhat relieved to see he had found a group of friends. The only problem was that Karl still kept to himself, and never talked about his social life to them. As soon as he got in that car, though, the boys slapped each other’s shoulders in such brotherhood that you could see Karl’s eyes shine like two sun-lit rivers.

“So… What do you do… with your friends, you watch movies, or you stay inside and play your games…?” Sabine’s mother asked delicately.