Yelena Moskovich - The Natashas

The song finished and the applause went off like a room full of mouse traps. Sabine took her folded hands off the dark blue leather purse on her lap and raised them up. They parted and stretched open in front of her face. Then, her palms snapped together. Between each clap her eyes remained locked on to Béatrice’s face.

Béatrice had noticed the woman as soon as she appeared amidst the rows of other people, most of whom were sitting, but not in wheelchairs.

You , Sabine’s eyes seemed to say. Me, yes , Béatrice knew. But she was no longer the flat-chested little girl in the dunes. She had a straight back and buoyant, ample breasts that everyone could agree were very, very nice to look at. Béatrice pinched a smile and matched the woman’s glare.

You… Sabine’s eyes repeated, over and over again, like waves coming on to the shore. As everyone clapped and shifted in their seats, the two women held each other’s gaze. Sabine was not trying to intimidate Béatrice. Or establish a hierarchy. All of that was left behind in the dunes. There, the roles played out ceaselessly, beyond the two women the girls had become. Go ahead, Béatrice dared.

Do-bee do-bee doo… the tune sounded like the beginning of Frank Sinatra’s “Strangers in the Night”.

Beneath the table, Jean-Luc rolled the stem of a white rose in his palm. With the other hand, he squeezed Emmanuelle’s shoulder.

Prestadas cosas nos poseen. “Borrowed things possess us,” the woman says as if to herself as she brushes the girl’s hair. The girl’s eyes are still scanning the crack in the wall. Now she is watching Béatrice on stage, one hand holding the microphone, the other smoothing over her blonde chignon.

Sabine’s chin began to drop and her eyes rolled down to her lap. She pressed them closed for a moment, and when they opened again, they were glossy and wounded. Her mouth softened and her lips parted, as her cheekbones began to rise and form a word without sound.

“Na-ta-sha, ” she mouthed at Béatrice.

Emmanuelle couldn’t place the woman’s face, but something of her looked familiar. She wanted to get a better look, but knew it was rude to stare at people in wheelchairs, so she turned back to face the stage. The lights were already dimming on her sister’s face for the interval. When Emmanuelle turned back towards the woman in the wheelchair, she was already being wheeled away by a slim man with a bruised face, her carer maybe. She watched them, hoping the woman would turn around to get one more glimpse of her sister. But it was the man who turned around, putting his face straight in a ray of spotlight. His bloated nose and puffed eyes almost made Emmanuelle jump.

Sabine reached back, found César’s arm and pulled on his wrist. César leaned in.

“We are done with our walk now. Take me home.”

“Um—okay, sure. You’re the boss,” César replied.

As César prepared to manoeuvre the wheelchair around, he thought he heard Sabine say something back, but her voice was eaten up by the noise in the bar. He assumed she had said something upright and stiff like “Yes, I’m the boss” or “Let’s go,” but all Sabine had really said was “Thank you.”

Jean-Luc turned back to see what Emmanuelle was looking at.

“What a guy, huh. It’s as if he’s wheeling that lady around ’til he breaks down and they switch places…” he said.

Emmanuelle did not laugh. Jean-Luc kissed her cheek.

“What’s the matter, kitten…”

“Meow, meow,” Emmanuelle said in return.

“Does that man scare you?”

“Meow, meow…”

“Oh, don’t be frightened, I won’t let him eat you up.”

“Meow, meow,” Emmanuelle murmured and nudged her head into Jean-Luc’s shoulder. Her father looked over, and gave Emmanuelle a hearty wink. He liked seeing Emmanuelle in Jean-Luc’s arms, like a piece of melting cheese. So different from his other daughter, who always seemed to harden at the touch of others.

Emmanuelle did not see her father’s wink because in that instant, the warmth of Jean-Luc’s body made her eyes close. And when her eyes closed, there came the image of the woollen man. And when they opened, there was her father, waving his hand at her. Emmanuelle meant to tell her father to stop waving because he was scaring her just then, but instead she accidentally said again, “Meow, meow.”

Béatrice’s eyes followed the woman in the wheelchair as the slim man pushed her through the crowd.

(The little blonde girl stood with her hands clasped at her chest, her toes clutching the sand. She watched the girl with two tight chestnut braids falling through the years.)

César wheeled Sabine out the door.

Beneath the applause, Béatrice made her way towards the back door. She walked carefully away from the light, holding the side of her dress. No matter how she moved her feet, they seemed to walk to the same rhythm: Na-ta-sha.

At the edge of the stage, Béatrice took three steps down to the backroom door. Na-ta-sha. In the fading claps, her hand reached for the door. She pushed it open. Béatrice took one step inside, then another, then another. Na-ta-sha.

The door shut behind her. The corridor was illuminated by a series of coin-sized lights on the ceiling. Their feeble light, like a breath in winter, hovered over Béatrice’s head, but did not help her see. She reached out against the corridor wall and walked slowly, feeling for the main light switch. She remembered it being on the right side, at the level of her hip, a couple of steps from the door, but now she couldn’t seem to find it. Her fingertips grazed over and over the wall.

Her hand stopped. Beyond the sound of her fingers on the wall was another sound, thick and dull like rubber. Extending her neck forward, she listened to the fog of voices on the other side of the door. Their sound seem to be waning, as if they were being carried off somewhere. The noise persisted, thick and dull, like everyone in the bar holding their breath. Béatrice waited, expecting to hear a mouth fall open and a gust of wind to surge out. She waited, but no one gasped for air on the other side.

The hand which was not touching the wall came up to her ear. The fingers touched around her earlobe, then pressed on the skin behind the ear. That’s where it was, Béatrice realised. The sound, like rubber. It was not coming from the outside, but from inside her own head.

Béatrice took a breath and plugged her nose, hoping her ears would pop, but the air bounced back from her cheeks and out of her mouth. Her ears were still full of something. She brought both hands up to her ears and started to rub them. When she put her hands down, they were warm with a sort of static and she felt something opening in her. The breath began to crackle inside her face. Through the crackle, a woman’s voice was emerging. Inside her face, the woman was singing:

“ Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto

Me dio dos luceros que cuando los abro

Perfecto distingo lo negro del blanco

Y en el alto cielo su fondo estrellado

Y en las multitudes el hombre que yo amo. ”

The woman’s voice sounded like a memory, yet it was no longer coming from inside Béatrice’s head. She turned around, but the darkness on one side was identical to the darkness on the other. There was no one there, no one singing.