Yelena Moskovich - The Natashas

He took in the lace outlines of the Haussmann buildings and street-level shops with names written in that wartime font. He passed by the steam of bakeries, lingering on the scent of rising dough crisping at the surface. He glanced at the candle-white mannequins in the store windows, the women wearing draping chemises and tailored leather, the men, posed like strolling villains, but all with no facial features so that their heads were oversized eyes without pupils. César observed small dogs on leashes pedalling their short legs to keep up with their owners. He saw children walking hand in hand with their parents, telling them about their days with saturated voices unable to find the right volume.

César began to enjoy the walk. He wasn’t thinking of anything any more. Just walking. Just looking. Just listening. It wasn’t until he was a third of the way home that he noticed a certain figure within his view. A woman. A woman directly in front of him. How long had he been walking behind the same woman? Maybe all the way from the opera house. How his route home had managed to align so perfectly with someone else’s, he had no idea, but the woman did not seem to have noticed him.

He listened to the click of her heels and watched the wavering hem of her thin, mauve coat, and the swing of her heavy, dark hair upon her back. His legs felt strange. He no longer knew if he had always walked like this, or if he was copying her walk. He tried to adjust his tempo, change the weight of his step, but he couldn’t find his own rhythm. No use in over-thinking it, César told himself, and gave in to the unfamiliar footsteps he was taking.

But as César walked on, he realised what was bothering him. He was no longer coincidentally walking the same path as someone else. As he looked around, he realised that he had trailed off his path home. He was following her. And what’s more, he was trying to get her to notice. His shoes were stamping against the ground. They felt like bare knuckles rapping on a wooden door. But still the woman seemed oblivious to him.

What if I were not César … What if I were Pablo Ruiz the car thief? César thought. Then he realised this women had no purse. And the way her coat fluttered, its pockets had to be weightless. The woman’s posture was very straight, but the simplicity of the mauve coat left César to assume she was not wealthy. Nothing to steal, Pablo…

Well then… what if I were Juan-Miguel the hothead. The thought immediately bounced in. Juan-Miguel don giv a shit bout money…

The woman took a turn off the main street into a smaller street, still looking directly in front of her. César followed. The street was lined with out-of-business shops and apartments that seemed to have been abandoned in a hurry.

This narrow street led into another, shorter one. At the end of it, the woman turned left abruptly and continued up a street filled with parked cars, squeezed in bumper to bumper. From the look of it, the street seemed to come to a dead end, yet as they came closer, an alleyway appeared on the right. The woman went up into it. César followed behind.

The alleyway opened on to a paved road hemmed in by rows of silent buildings arching up a slight hill. César glanced up the hill, above the buildings and saw a moonless evening sky. When did it get so dark? he wondered. A street lamp diffused a netting of light which caught the silver wheel rims of the parked cars and the waxy leaves of the potted plants slumped over empty balconies.

They walked on. Above them, the sky was grainy and woollen. The woman’s heavy hair rose and fainted with each step. César was so close to her that he could feel the warmth from her body. He suddenly didn’t want to be following this woman any more. Above all, he didn’t want to be this close to her. He tried to pull away, but the energy of Juan-Miguel the hothead held him in place.

I… don’t want to get any closer. César the gecko said to

Juan-Miguel.

This upset Juan-Miguel. He pushed on the soles of César’s feet, which made César step even closer to the woman.

A few strands of her hair brushed lightly against the tip of César’s nose. It was such a gentle, minute feeling, it made César want to close his eyes like a baby lulled to sleep. Then leaning too far, the tip of César’s shoe wedged into the woman’s heel. César pulled his hips back and his other foot down to keep himself from falling. The woman had stopped. She was turning around towards César.

There was her shoulder.

There was her ear.

There was her cheek.

There was her eye.

They were studying the French Revolution in middle school when Béatrice’s breasts began to grow. At the time most of the boys her age didn’t bother her. They were more befuddled by the metamorphosis which had turned the body of a schoolmate into that of the woman who visited their bed at night and their shower in the morning and hid beneath their mattress during the day.

There was one exception. A tall boy with a square face started whispering “sex-bomb Béa” at her in the hallways. He was always accompanied by two other boys with constipated smirks. This went on for weeks until the day came when, instead of walking past them with her eyes averted, she stopped and asked, “What do you want?”

The tall, square-faced boy parted his lips and emitted a husky sound to let her know he was ready to speak. He turned his fingers over one another inside his pocket, and pulled out a 100-franc note like a piece of wet clothing from a tub. It had the head of Eugène Delacroix printed on it. His eyes on the wrinkled paper darted forward in acute concentration, as if in the midst of painting the nipple of the bare-breasted woman holding the French flag in Liberty Leading the People .

Right there, in the middle of the hallway, with the note in hand and his boys at his side, the tall, square-faced boy began to sing the anthem of his country. “ ALLEZ ENFANTS DE LA PATRIE… ” By the second phrase, the other boys were proudly singing together: “LE JOUR DE GLOIRE EST ARRIVÉ!” A kid in the distance hooted and a couple more joined in the song. Soon the others were clapping and cheering—for no reason other than it felt nice to be included.

As the French anthem boomed down the hallway, the tall boy thrust the note into Béatrice’s face, so close that she could smell the staleness of the paper. She swatted it away, but the boy quickly snapped it back into her face, this time pressing it to her nose. She raised both hands up in defence, but they were immediately grabbed by the other boys, who were no longer shy teenagers, but empowered patriots.

They twisted her arms behind her back as the tall boy covered her mouth with Eugène Delacroix’s face. He pushed the note until it flattened her lips, and crumbled into the crevice between her teeth. Her saliva took in the fermented taste of the paper. She tried to breathe out, but found herself choking. Her eyes opened frantically. There were other hands on her now.

One hand pinched her nipple, then let go. Another squeezed her breast until she thought it would bruise. A third jumped from one breast to the other in a grappling frenzy.

It did not take long for the hallway to fill with a flood of voices chanting the anthem. Certain kids stretched out their arms in dramatic angles to each other while singing, others snuck up behind a friend and chopped at the back of their neck, joyfully proclaiming “Guillotine!” at which their friend would roll their head to the side and let their tongue fall out of their mouth. A sort of festival built around the hyperventilating Béatrice. Just below her gaze, the hands kept grabbing and kneading at her breasts. The more they did it the further away she drifted from what was happening to her. She felt very light just then, thinner than the paper note stuffed into her mouth.