Yelena Moskovich - The Natashas

And so the patient cell phone was to him like a sacred statue of Maria Magdalena, purified by her devotion. Looking at his cell phone now, César suddenly remembered his mother mentioning to him how Maria Magdalena was cleansed of her seven demons by Jesus. His mother’s tone had hinted that César too might be in need of demon-cleansing.

César saw each telemarketing call as an acting exercise. There were infinite nuances with which one could present the same script. Yet he was not interested in caricatures, false accents, vocal pretences. His technique was rather to stay wholly himself, and pull out from his own depths, like a white hair from a bowl of milk, the traits needed for his character.

At first he made calls as the characters from the tele-novellas of his childhood. He was tempted to choose the female characters, as he felt he did those better. But in order to sound more natural on the phone, he decided to work on the male ones. How would Enrique, the disinherited deviant son, offer a discount rate for his customer’s next purchase? How would Federico, the pharmaceutical company mongrel, insist on a few moments of their time? Then, little by little, César got to developing his own characters. Pablo Ruiz, the car thief. Juan-Miguel Santos, the hothead. Andres Sepúlveda, the Chilean melancholic. And so on.

That afternoon he had been Juan-Miguel the hothead, which was the most tiring as he had to let his blood boil while remaining calm and vocally personable. Of the 130 calls he had made, about one-third picked up the phone. And of that third, about one-third let him get past the first sentence before hanging up. And of that third, about one-third gave him a chance at a second sentence. And of that third, about one-third actually spoke to him.

Juan-Miguel the hothead did not do well with these percentages. But what stewed Juan-Miguel’s anger the most was a woman’s silence. César discovered this character trait the day he discovered the character himself. On one of his calls, a woman picked up the phone without answering. He heard a baby screaming in the background and another child, a boy of five or six, closer in range, repeating, “ El bebé está llorando … The baby’s crying…” The woman held the receiver in her hand, breathing gradually, as the small boy’s voice paced in the background. César rephrased his introduction and gave ample time for the woman to either speak or hang up. But the only sound César heard was the small boy’s voice, bebé llorando.

As César took a breath, he prepared a soft, empathetic tone towards this seemingly exhausted mother. However, when he exhaled to speak, César realised the back of his teeth were tightly locked. And then he said, “ puta ”.

It was the first time César had uttered this word, and in the way his brothers would have said it. When he heard himself on the phone, he could barely recognise his own voice. It had to be somebody else. It had to be a new character rising. He called him Juan-Miguel. And he was a hothead. So it was understandable that the days when Juan-Miguel took the wheel were particularly draining. Especially when a woman answered the phone, but did not respond sufficiently to Juan-Miguel’s demands.

On this day, César had spent all afternoon as Juan-Miguel, so when his shift ended, he hung up the last call physically exhausted. He packed up his stuff in silence and walked his usual route up to the Opéra metro. In autumn, the sun starts setting just as everyone decides to take the metro all at once. They drain out of the boutiques and apartment buildings and into the entryways of the metro like rainwater into a sewer. César found himself a small clearing against the wall of the bank on the corner and let the people weave around him. He needed to stand for a bit.

As he leaned his back against the wheat-stone exterior of the bank, he looked up at the opera house in front of him. Against the setting sun, the building looked like a hero emerging from a low cloud of human destruction. The sight exalted César: a single man against a lost civilisation. The hero survives. The hero rises to the surface like an ancient continent breaking through the skin of the ocean. Glorious. Alone. There was something romantic to César about this sort of solitude, a product of external destruction and internal survival.

Standing to the side, the full perspective of the opera house leaned into his gaze. At the top left corner of the building, he saw the seven-foot gilt bronze statue of a woman. Melody was her name. Her right hand reached out and her palm opened hesitantly to the bare sky, as if to tell someone out there to stop, or maybe even to cover her face. Her gesture, like her presence, seemed to go unnoticed by the daily crowds of people fumbling around beneath. If she is asking for mercy, César contemplated, she should take her hand away from her eyes.

Two androgynous figures sat at her side, each looking their own way. In her hand, César knew that the woman should be holding a lyre. But from where he was standing, it looked like she was holding an infant under her arm, a brutish, biblical fistful.

César traced his eyes back to that plump golden hand against the spread of sky. He found his attention sliding down her muscular forearm, over the curve of her shoulder, around her broad breasts, down her metal belly and sweeping up to those fingers holding the golden infant like a runt pig to the slaughterhouse. No, it’s a lyre , César reminded himself.

A crown of spikes encircled the statue’s forehead. Two sharp-tipped wings broke out of her back. The bruising skyline gave her a sombre glow. The breath in César’s chest kept stretching and stretching as he looked over the bronze woman’s body. His eyes went to the infant. Then to the plump golden palm. Then back to the infant. Who was now a lyre. Who was now a pig. Who was now music. Her bronze fingertips were playing the wind.

Standing there, staring at the statue, César felt a doubting darkness begin to spread within him like an ink droplet in a glass of water. A list of things he didn’t like about himself came to mind. His flat wide nostrils. His slit-thin eyes. The brackets his brows made when he was thinking. Once the surface was picked, the darkness reached beneath. There was something wrong with him, something strange, uncomfortable, under-developed, Der’s sumting about you dat make me wanna vomit , came his brother Raul’s voice.

I’m an actor, César took hold of himself. I’m an uncomfortable, ugly guy, but that’s okay, cause I’m an actor. There’s a casting agent somewhere out there looking at my photo right now and saying, this guy’s perfect!

César was almost smiling now. He could always count on this kind of pep talk. Nothing mattered if he could just remind himself that he was an actor. Already he felt much better. And with his lifting spirits, his eyes rose too. But no sooner had they reached the skyline than they settled on the plump bronze hand of Melody.

The sight of her metallic palm touched him with a coldness. He couldn’t look away. It went deeper than before. Oily words reached into every crevice of his body, echoing between bone and muscle, between joint and nerve, between organ and organ.

You’re not worth a thing.

In an attempt to get away from these feelings, César began to walk home. He took his familiar route, which was long but pleasant, consisting of a couple of shortcuts seamed together with the classic boulevards where one could indulge in the beauty of the city. César walked without paying much attention to the road, letting his eyes wander about him and airing out his head.