The Natashas

  Yelena Moskovich was born in 1984 in the Ukraine (former USSR) and emigrated to the US with her family in 1991. After graduating with a degree in playwriting from Emerson College, Boston, she moved to Paris to study at the Lecoq School of Physical Theatre, and later for a Master’s degree in Art, Philosophy and Aesthetics from Université Paris 8. Her plays have been produced in the US, Vancouver, Paris, and Stockholm. She lives in Paris. The Natashas is her first novel.

  THE

  NATASHAS

  YELENA MOSKOVICH

  A complete catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library on request

  The right of Yelena Valer’evna Moskovich to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  Copyright © 2016 Yelena Valer’evna Moskovich

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, dead or alive, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  First published in 2016 by Serpent’s Tail,

  an imprint of Profile Books Ltd

  3 Holford Yard

  Bevin Way

  London WC1X 9HD

  www.serpentstail.com

  eISBN 978 1 78283 163 1

  Designed and typeset by Crow Books

  Ecce deus fortior mi, qui veniens dominabitur mihi.

  Behold a God more powerful than I, who comes to rule over me.

  Dante Alighieri, A New Life

  “I had to laugh like hell.”

  Kurt Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus

  I

  Natasha is her name

  1

  In the box-shaped room, there are no windows, there is no furniture. On the floor, blankets are spread one next to another like beach towels. Some are neatly arranged into rectangles. Others stay bunched like spat-out gum. One girl is sitting on her blanket in a T-shirt and underwear with her arms crossed over her knees. Natasha is her name. She is fifteen.

  Another girl is standing against the wall and smoking. She exhales then blows the smoke into the wall as if there were an open window. The smoke crashes like watercolour, then floats back into her face. It seeps into her chopped blonde hair and settles down into her scalp. A fog hovers near her eyes. She is smoking and squinting. Natasha is her name. What a coincidence. She’s older than the other girl though. Almost twenty. Maybe.

  Next to her, two girls are chit-chatting. This and that. The shorter one has a flat face. Her age, hard to say—either too young or too old. Some girls just turn out like that—in the evening glow she’s your angel, but in a bathroom glare, you’d ask her where her daughter went. Their names? What do you know: Natasha and Natasha.

  The one who is sitting in her underwear has tenantless eyes. A redhead walks past and flicks her shoulder. “Perk up,” she says.

  The redhead’s hair is dry as twine, but she’s got big lips and a milk-drop nose. This is very pleasing, especially for people who want to look at a woman and see a girl. How old are you, sweetheart? “Oh you know, candy-wrappers, hair-bows, goo-goo-gaga.” Is that a good age for you? What’s your name, sweetheart? The girl’s eyes dart up. “Natasha,” she says as if reading an ingredient off a pill box. Is that a good name for you?

  The sitting Natasha does not perk up as suggested by the redhead. The redhead Natasha says, “Flowers that don’t go for the sun get trampled on,” and pushes past the sitting Natasha. She hasn’t gone three steps forward when a lanky girl pops up in her path.

  “I’m a sunflower.” Her hair is greasy. Her neck is long.

  “Move it, sunflower,” the redhead spits and just as quickly as she’d popped up, the sunflower bends back against the wall.

  The sunflower is twenty-six years old. At first she insisted that she was from Moldova, but we all know girls that tall don’t grow in Moldova. That was back when the against-the-wall-Natasha had long blonde hair instead of that cropped mess and kept talking about the white rose. Same old story: the foggy town, the stranger with manners, the bus stop, white teeth, white car … and the white rose. He picked her out of all the other girls at her school, made her feel like she was the only one. That was years ago. Now she sticks to her wall and smokes and keeps quiet. She doesn’t try to bring up the white rose any more. Well, with her cut-up hair and ashen face, no use in making a fuss. Good thing too, ’cause there’s nothing worse than a Natasha who makes a fuss.

  2

  By the way, Sunflower isn’t actually Sunflower’s name. It’s Natasha. Life’s a one-key piano sometimes …

  3

  On the other side of the room, a girl is blowing on her hand, one nail at a time. She’s got baby-blue eye-shadow layered on her eyelids like dust on antique furniture. She blows across her fingertips. She blinks. Baby-blue dust flies from her eyes.

  4

  Another Natasha pats her blanket looking for her journal. So many ways to feel ugly … I should make a list!

  She takes the plastic pen into her mouth and bites down.

  “Find a bump on your skin,” she mumbles.

  Carefully pick it open, she scribbles.

  “Now let all the voices in,” she concludes.

  She looks up from her journal and chews on her pen as if she’s teething. A flash crosses her eyes. She takes the pen out of her mouth and pulls the open journal closer to her face.

  Listen, listen, listen … she notes secretly.

  She lifts her gaze and circles it around her, keeping the journal close to her chin. Her pen moves across the paper while her head nods at her surroundings.

  She writes in a succession of strokes, as if sketching a landscape: You’re not worth a thing.

  5

  The other girl blows on her nails in rhythm to the moving pen. Mercedes Red is the glossy colour on each fingernail. We all know why it’s the only nail-polish she uses. It’s the colour of the car, that one day, when the door opened and she felt that in the whole world there was no one, no one, no one else like her. The man at the wheel had such a straight smile. She did not have a TV, but was sure he was on it, smiling just like that. She wanted to be on this TV too. He could kiss her on the cheek. He could kiss her on the hand. All his kisses would make her lips and nails flush to match his car. When she told her mother of the stranger and his proposition, her mother lifted her hand high and shook it. Head in the clouds, this one! No way a man like that would let you step inside such a beautiful vehicle!

  The day she left with him, she asked if he could roll the top down as they drove through the town. He smiled in geometric perfection and said, Anything for you. Her small zip-up bag was in the back seat. Together, they drove through her childhood streets as everyone she had grown up with hurried out of their houses and pointed and giggled and tugged at each other’s clothes. If anyone owned a camera in this stupid town, someone would be taking my picture now! she thought to herself and smiled and waved with her fingertips and ran her fingers through her hair like a movie star.

  When she drove past her own house, her mother stepped out with her younger sister and brothers. They all stared with open mouths. The wheels of the car rolled delicately over the layer of gravel on the dirt road. She caught her mother’s eye. With the most refined hand gesture she could think of, she flipped a piece of hair over her shoulder.

  She had never, in her whole life, seen such glowing pride in her mother’s face. She was so touched that she forgot all about her plan to yell out, Told you so … !

  Mercedes Red is her colour now. Perhaps it always wa
s. What is her name?

  Listen, listen … Listen to this girl’s breath falling out of her mouth and on to those glossy-tipped fingers.

  6

  “Stare at a hair on your thigh,” she mumbles.

  “Try to get out through your eye,” she scribbles.

  Her teeth dig into the pen until the plastic starts to dent.

  7

  In this box-shaped windowless room, all the girls are named Natasha.

  II

  Béatrice

  1

  Béatrice’s room was separate from the rest of the house. It protruded from the roof, giving the troubling perspective to the birds that Béatrice was trapped in an over-sized aviary.

  At the age of twenty-nine, Béatrice still lived with her family, just outside Paris, on the southeast border of the city. Her sister Emmanuelle, who was one year younger, lived there too. Emmanuelle had a steady boyfriend and was just finishing her residency as a nurse. Béatrice had no boyfriend and sang jazz in small bars. Both sisters lived in their separate ways, waiting for life to break off and become their own.

  Their father owned his own business selling oriental rugs and carpeting to a clientele with a taste for luxury and the Far East. He had two boutiques in Paris, one in Saint-Germain and one in Montmartre. Her mother was a home decorator by vocation, but had become a stay-at-home mom to raise the girls. She transferred her home decorating skills into the stylised upbringing of her daughters, where great care was taken in arranging them to fit the house. After her girls had grown up, she had become so accustomed to this kind of work that she continued her upkeep of the house as if raising a third and favourite child.

  2

  Both mother and father had taken notice of Béatrice’s voice at a young age when she still shared a room with her sister, and went around the house with her brushed angel-hair, singing Céline Dion, and to their surprise, reaching every note. In middle school, Béatrice discovered Mariah Carey and spent her free time mastering the octave changes and the frequencies of lushness. When Béatrice sang at home, her mother led her around the rooms as if spreading a scent. Her father, however, had an idea. He sat his angel down beside him as he listened to his favourite radio station, Smooth Jazz.

  “Listen … listen …” her father said secretly. Béatrice listened.

  “You think you can sing like that …”

  “Like what?” Béatrice asked.

  “Like the woman on the radio,” he said, referring to Lena Horne singing “Stormy weather”.

  “Dunno.” Béatrice shrugged.

  “Give it a try, angel …”

  Her father paused, trying to contain his excitement.

  Béatrice looked up at him. “Okay …” she said cautiously.

  Béatrice slowly opened her mouth. The sound began to rise. Her father’s eyes lit up.

  3

  At first, Béatrice tried simply to imitate the classics, Nina Simone, Billie Holiday, Etta James, Peggy Lee … But then, little by little, she found her own swing, texture, and emotional charge.

  When it was time for her to go to high school, her father enrolled Béatrice in a private music college. Her mother’s contribution was to rearrange the storage space in the attic into a bedroom for Béatrice, so that she could sing undisturbed.

  4

  From that storage space down to the second floor of the house was a steep and narrow stairway of unvarnished wood. It was clear that it would need to be painted. Her mother chose the colour, a pale, milky green – it worked well with the egg-white and feather-grey palette of the hallway. It was important to her that colours did not fight.

  Her father wedged open the tops of the paint tins, one for himself and one for Béatrice, and together they spent a Sunday morning painting the stairs. Béatrice started with short, stubby strokes as if painting an elephant’s toenails. Her father swept his brush generously, and every now and then dabbed Béatrice’s elbow with the paint, at which Béatrice frowned, then smiled, then frowned.

  Béatrice concentrated so much on the way her brush spread the paint upon the wood that her dad would lean in slowly, and blow on her nose.

  “If you stay this quiet, I won’t know the difference between you and the stairs and I’ll paint over you both.”

  When the stairway was coated twice, her father insisted that three’s the charm, or as far as paint goes, you could never be too sure, so they sat down together on Monday night as well and gave it a last coat.

  In the end, the stairs seemed to have more paint than they could hold. They were glossy with it, a milky apple green.

  “You’ve made the paint too thick!” her mother exclaimed, tensing her lips and looking back at her husband. He looked away. Into his silence, Béatrice spoke, saying that it was fine, that she did not mind the glossy stairs, in fact she liked them better that way.

  With a flicker of pride, her father lifted his hand and placed it on Béatrice’s shoulder. She turned her head and looked at him. He looked right back at her and saw then a landscape of dunes.

  5

  The wind pushed on the trees. Inside the house, Béatrice began to climb the stairs. Her mother put down the laundry basket and walked into the corridor. She saw her daughter rising, one step at a time. As her eyes swept down her daughter’s back, she thought she saw Béatrice veering. She imagined her daughter’s body flopping down each step like a fish. Her mouth opened and all the air in the house rushed in.

  Béatrice heard her gasp and turned her head. She had not known she was being watched. In that pivot her foot stuttered. Béatrice’s arms flew upward and grabbed hopelessly at emptiness. Her legs folded and she galloped down the stairs on her tailbone.

  6

  When Béatrice came back from the hospital the doctor said she was a lucky girl, no serious damage. She had only broken her hymen.

  Emmanuelle hugged her sister very carefully and even lay in bed with her, stringing together lulling questions. Béatrice explained that it wasn’t so bad and that all it meant was that she was no longer a virgin. Her sister was at the age where, to understand unlived concepts, vocabulary develops in binary pairs. Emmanuelle slid herself closer to her sister and asked in a gentle voice: “So now you’re a whore …?”

  That night, their father came home with sandpaper. His wife explained to him in emphatic repetition about the stairs that almost broke their daughter’s neck. He looked at the waxy steps. They were indeed as sleek as the scream that must have come out of his little angel when she fell down them.

  “Don’t you realise,” his wife repeated, “you almost made her a cripple for life!”

  Her father pressed his lips together until his eyes became styrofoam. He spoke softly. “… Her neck is fine …”

  His wife rolled her eyes and left the room. All alone, he released his lips, and his eyes began to water.

  As Béatrice drifted into sleep, he pressed the grainy paper into the slippery surface and rasped diligently at each step. Béatrice dreamt that she was placing stones one by one in a circle on hot sand. Emmanuelle dreamt that Béatrice died and that the whole family had to watch TV together on the couch and hold her dead body across their laps.

  7

  When Béatrice reached puberty, her father made two changes: he stopped calling her his angel and started asking about the boys in her class. As Béatrice’s face and body sculpted into a form of enticement, she acquired a new name in the house. Miss Monroe. No one can remember if it was her mother or her father who had started it. The name caught on with variations, Miss Marilyn, Miss M … Emmanuelle was the only one to continue to call her sister “Bee”.

  One day, however, a variation came out of her sister’s mouth. Miss Playboy. She swore that she heard it from some boys at school. Béatrice pulled Emmanuelle towards her and demanded, “WHO is Miss Playboy … !”

  Emmanuelle bit her lip sheepishly. “You are, Bee …”

  Béatrice’s hand stiffened to hit her sister across the face, but before she could swing it
up, Emmanuelle was already pressed against her, hugging her tightly and murmuring a faint meow.

  8

  That was fourteen years ago. Now, Béatrice was twenty-nine.

  It was morning. A white September sky. The branches outside Béatrice’s window were already almost completely bare. In the place of leaves was a perched bird. Béatrice’s eyes opened. She slid her hand beneath the covers and down to her stomach. She moved her hand beneath her pyjama top, until it reached her breast, which sat amply atop her ribcage. She let her fingers climb slowly up her breast like feet through a swamp, then drew her fingertip over the tip of her translucent nipple. These were the breasts that made men press their teeth together when looking at her.

  She pulled her hand out from under the cover and touched her temple. Her fingers were shaking, sending quivers into her scalp. She took a deep breath. As it went down, part of it caught like wool on a nail. She inhaled once more but her breath kept snagging.

  She inhaled deeply through her nose and looked at the dark, flaking wood of the branches outside her window. Her eyes met the perched bird still sitting on its branch. Its head was tucked into its chest and crooked downward, its stiff, marble eye on her. A wind came and swayed the branch. The branch swayed and shook the bird. The bird clamped itself tighter to the branch, but did not change its expression. There was something flaking in Béatrice’s throat. It sent a tickle through her and her face contorted, unable to cough nor sneeze.

  9

  Emmanuelle was still asleep in her room when Béatrice came down the pale-green and now well-worn sanded stairway. She shut the bathroom door quietly and turned the water on for a bath. As the tub filled, she peeled her top off and let it drop to the floor. She touched her bare stomach. Then, she took off her underwear. The water gushed from the faucet and made the sound of hair being frantically brushed. The scratch in her throat began to spread.

  Béatrice found her face in the small mirror above the sink. She aligned her eyes with those in the reflection. With both sets of eyes locked into one another, she closed the gap between her face and the face which was hers in the mirror. The two women touched at the nose. She opened her mouth and sang a mindless Do-bee do-bee do … into the mirror.