Yelena Moskovich - The Natashas

When Béatrice caught sight of the singer’s hand, she thought she saw a cigarette there, burning idly between the woman’s fingers. But when she looked again, it was only slow-rising dust in the spotlight.

Jean-Luc got up from his chair, keeping his arm close to his side and the white rose against his thigh. He came up to the stage and extended the white rose towards the blonde singer. He looked up and smiled a set of straight, white teeth. The singer looked into his eyes, and her heart melted like hot candle wax. Jean-Luc stood smiling. Natasha was so happy just then she wanted to say, “I told you so!” But to whom? Who would believe such stories.

As she smiled back at Jean-Luc her cheeks began to hollow. Her skin smelled slightly sour. She reached up to run her fingers over her immaculate chignon, but what she found there was stumps of hair, coarse and chopped. Tears began to accumulate in her eyes. They rolled down her cheeks like rain upon a car door.

Not in front of everyone, please, don’t take it away from me in front of everyone.

Lame body, she’ll have to live with , a chorus of women announce.

Lame body, she’ll have to live with, Béatrice said quietly to herself in the darkness from behind the stage. She watched the blonde singer grow hollow from the inside.

Emmanuelle’s eyes darted sharply up to the blonde singer on stage. She looked immediately over to her father.

“Aw, honey, don’t be jealous…” her father said warmly. “Jean-Luc is just trying to be nice…”

Emmanuelle opened her eyes wide at her father, but could not find the words she wanted to say. She felt Jean-Luc’s hand on her shoulder and turned around just as he was taking his seat beside her. “Hey, Kitty-kat,” he said to Emmanuelle.

Emmanuelle shifted away from Jean-Luc.

“What’s the matter…” Jean-Luc said, putting his arm around her.

Emmanuelle flung his arm off her shoulder and darted her eyes to the blonde singer on stage. The father leaned in and said heartily, “You see, son, women are jealous creatures—if you’re gunna give one of them a rose, you might as well buy all of them a rose!” The father turned and winked at Emmanuelle.

Emmanuelle tried to shake her head, but only managed a slight rocking motion.

“Is that why you’re mad at me, Kitty-kat?” Jean-Luc tried to put his arm back around her.

Emmanuelle flung it off again and pointed with her face at the stage.

“Okay, okay, mean kitty! If you want, I’ll get a rose as well…”

Emmanuelle looked at her mother, who right away put her finger to her lips and said, “Shhh… your sister’s singing…”

Emmanuelle wanted desperately to say something, anything, but her whole body suddenly felt empty of words. She pressed her teeth together and looked deeply into Jean-Luc’s eyes.

“Don’t be sad… I’m going to get you a rose right now.” Jean-Luc turned his head around. “I think the rose guy’s still there…” He turned back to Emmanuelle. “Which one do you want, Kitty-kat… white or red?… Well, hurry up, fussy kitty. He’s about to leave. A white one?”

Emmanuelle tried shaking her head again, but now it was rocking up and down.

Before she could do anything else with her head, Jean-Luc was up and making his way to the departing rose seller.

Emmanuelle looked back at her sister on stage. She saw a blonde singer, with paper-thin eyes, almost as if drawn on. Her blonde hair seemed to be slipping away from her scalp strand by strand, like cut thread. This thing before her was not her sister, nor any woman. She looked around her at the audience. No one was startled in the least. Then, when her eyes drew back to the stage, she spotted a figure in the corner by the backstage door. She wanted to call out, “Bee!” but when she opened her mouth, she couldn’t make a sound.

Béatrice walked effortlessly through the crowd, sliding like water between the spaces of the people. All eyes were on the blonde singer on stage. Only Emmanuelle’s head turned, following her real sister’s trace through the crowd and out the door.

As César pulled up by Marcel’s apartment, Sabine grabbed the wheels and made the chair stop. “That’s fine. You can go.”

“You don’t want me to take you up?”

“No.” Sabine reached for the wheels of her chair.

“I just thought I could take you up and say hi to Marcel.”

Sabine turned back to face him. “That’s not necessary.”

“But… It could be nice. To say hi.”

Sabine looked at him without a word.

“Don’t you think…?” he added.

Her eyes moved away, dismissing him. César bent his knees and knelt down at the side of the chair. He gripped the metal bar.

“The thing is, Marcel’s not just my agent, you see he’s my… buddy, and I think it’d be…very… nice to say hi.”

“Nice things… aren’t necessary.”

César suddenly looked very childish. His eyebrows bent perplexed and his eyes shone.

“Listen, César the actor, I will tell my father, Marcel the agent, that you were very, very nice , if that is what you want…”

César’s eyebrows straightened out.

“Really?” he said quietly.

Sabine took her hands off her lap and dipped them over the arm rests, down to the wheels. The bones were slim and cordially aligned. César was drawn to their dignity. These hands were the hands in old movies, those which inspired replicas in painted wood and plastic and especially marble. These hands should be caressing fox fur or extending an ornate glass towards the light. But instead they were reaching for the dirty rubber tyres of a wheelchair.

Watching her use those dignified hands to jerk at the wheels made César very uncomfortable.

Don’t you recognise yourself… the phrase echoed in César’s head.

When César was ten, his brothers held him down on a chair in front of the TV screen where a woman had her knees up and her thighs spread. Her pubic hair was completely shaved like a little girl with a slight rash, but when the camera panned up to her chest, she had a pair of full breasts. They bounced as if trying to memorise enthusiasm. Then the camera cut to a close-up of her eyes, closed, lined with mascara, eyelids shimmering with baby blue. Her eyes opened and looked straight at the camera. How old are you, sweetheart? Sweet sixteen. Sour sixty. Satellite six-hundred. Is that a good age for you?

That’s enough of her eyes, the camera panned down to her mouth. The lips were glossy and rounded. They could have belonged to an infant, one who’s worn herself out with all her crying and is now just keeping tempo with a whimper.

Just as the camera was leaving her face, her lips pulled down into a lusty frown, and her own hand, with long red nails on her fingers, slid up her stomach and grabbed on to her own breast. She squeezed, and twisted her body. As she was rolling over to her side, she pulled her butt into the camera. Then the angle switched to profile, she was on her spread elbows and knees, like a foot-stool, and her long hair hanging over her face like a willow tree. She began grinding her body into the emptiness around her.

Sometimes Natasha looks very sexy on fotos.

Sometimes she looks like a sad fairytale.

And sometimes she just looks like an ultrasound.

Ten-year-old César tensed in his chair as he felt his brothers push in closer behind him. He kept his eyes on the screen, and began to hold his breath. The chair creaked and Raul’s hand grabbed the back of César’s neck like a claw. His nose was pushed up to the screen, into the girl, whimpering and grinding.