The Natashas Page 4

  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 …

  15

  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.

  V

  Miss Monroe

  1

  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.

  Her skin turned so pale that even the square-faced boy became concerned. Still chewing at her breast with his free hand, he gave Béatrice a bit of worldly advice.

  “Breathe through your nose, Miss Playboy …” he said.

  Finally a teacher came into the hallway, her face curdled with anger at the noise. As she looked around, her expression quickly changed. A proud smile began to grow on her face at the sight of all those young boys an
d girls so passionately singing their country’s anthem.

  2

  That was the day her father asked her about the boys in her class when she got home from school. He stood observing his daughter’s curious silence.

  “…You okay, honey?” he asked gently.

  Béatrice looked at her father but let her eyes glaze over.

  “Do-bee do-bee doo …” she sang lightly.

  Her father lifted his hand towards his daughter’s face, extending his forefinger. He traced an evaporating line around her chin.

  “Miss Monroe,” he whispered and smiled.

  3

  After high school, Béatrice surprised everyone by failing all of her entrance exams into the top music conservatories. Her sister Emmanuelle was shocked as well, but somehow had the feeling all along that Béatrice was bound for this disappointment, and even more so, that this was only the beginning. Emmanuelle sensed this not because she wished her sister harm, but because she seemed to be the only one in the family to see that her beautiful sister was dying in a way, dying faster than the eye could see. This is perhaps what made Béatrice such a feast for the fantasies of others.

  Béatrice cried in her father’s arms as he assured her that failing these exams was not the end of the world. “No,” Béatrice replied, “it’s the beginning of a world I don’t want to live in!”

  “Miss Monroe,” her father said gently, “it’s up to you … you can live in whatever world you want …”

  This phrase kept coming back to Béatrice. It told her again and again that she was lost. She wished her father could have assured her that no matter what her failures, she would go on living in the same world as everyone else, in the same world where all those jazz women sing in turns, where people win Nobel Prizes, and flowers grow symmetrically in gardens.

  But her father did not assure her of this. He gave her a set of words that reminded her that she did not live in the same world where brilliant things happened, because she lacked brilliance. She lived in another world, the world she deserved, because she was without the capacity of courage or ingenuity required to want brilliance.

  One day soon after her results had come through, her father found his Marilyn Monroe crouched in the corner of her room, her chignon undone, meshes of blonde hair swinging into her gasping cheeks as her hands grabbed at her own face. He ran to her side and began stroking her back, repeating in a low, loving voice, “Breathe through your nose, honey, breathe through your nose …”

  4

  For a time, she decided not to decide. She stayed in her room, fogged with an expansive feeling of meaninglessness. She did not speak. She did not sing. She opened her mouth to breathe but exerted no energy beyond that.

  Her father came home with a pair of over-sized, cushioned headphones. He placed them on his daughter’s ears, then plugged the cord into the computer. He pulled up Nina Simone, slowly adjusting the sound like running the right temperature for a bath. When the volume was right, he left the selection on repeat. Béatrice lay detached, with each headphone like a child’s hand cupped over her ears. Days passed like this. Maybe years. Many women sang to her of many pains and many joys.

  And eventually, music came back to Béatrice.

  5

  Music came back to Béatrice as armour, as a revolt. She sang. In her room, down the stairs, in the shower, in the kitchen, in the garden. Her father watched her graze on music throughout the house, then cork herself in her room for hours at a time, perfecting, tuning, waxing a shine on to those notes. His listless teenager evaporated like a magic trick and through the smoke a woman emerged with her blonde hair brushed up into a neat chignon, revealing two cold ears. This woman sang like the child he once knew, but no longer in a borrowed voice.

  With her father’s persistent encouragement, she got in touch with bars and restaurants needing a jazz singer, and she started to sing in the evenings, small concerts for couples sipping wine or twirling linguine around their forks. These turned into steady jazz gigs, and then a regular booking at a bigger bar near the Gare de l’Est. Here, the trains rummaged beneath the floor of the bar and made the furniture hum along with Béatrice as she sang.

  6

  It was for this very gig that Béatrice needed a dress. She walked out of the central metro on to the boulevard. She passed several stores, but her resolve to find a dress was already losing its momentum. The streets were filled with Saturday morning shoppers. A woman with a stroller stopped abruptly and yelled “Constance!” A little feather-haired girl ahead turned around and wobbled back to her mother.

  A man in a business suit leaned against a wall and smoked a cigarette with his flat cell phone pressed into his ear like a shell.

  “Pierre.” “Monsieur Levalois.”

  Then he pulled it away, shaking his head with a grimace.

  A girl in tight, bleached jeans shouted a name into the crowd. Her nails were painted a marble blue. “Baptiste!”

  Julie. Fred. Anne-So.

  A stiff plastic bag was being adjusted in someone’s hand.

  “Pardon. Pardon. Pardon.”

  Anaïs. Ludovic.

  “Madame, Madame.”

  “Juju.” Sophie “Toi!”

  Sofia, Sofia.

  “Ya?”

  Yvette. Pavla …

  “Ya?”

  Viktoria.

  Olena.

  Salomeya!

  “Ya? Da?”

  “Hello, hello.”

  “Who is this?”

  7

  Béatrice pulled the glass door of a small shop closed behind her. The music in the boutique buzzed gently as if it were being played from between the walls. The sound went in and out of focus like a wavering radio station. A guitar strum. A voice dipped in, a woman. Maybe a flower behind her ear. Maybe her hips clocked from side to side.

  The static pushed apart the chords of the guitar and swallowed the voice of the female singer. For a moment there was only white noise, which matched the walls. Then the voice emerged and the chords from the guitar in the background seemed to caress the singer’s hair, until her voice calmed down and disappeared back into the static.

  The white wall was lined with two rows of white shelves on each side. The shelves were empty. In the oblong space in the middle of the boutique was a rack of clothes. At the back of the shop a doorway was covered by a heavy green curtain hung on wooden rings across a metal bar.

  In front of the curtain was a small counter with the cash register. The shopkeeper sat on a stool, looking through an open notebook, adding up numbers. Her hair was dark and heavy, parted in the middle. She did not seem to mind the broken music, perhaps she even kept the radio deliberately between stations.

  Béatrice felt that the woman was sure she wouldn’t buy anything, so she was obliged to reach towards the rack and start flipping through the clothes to defend herself. The woman looked up. “Bonjour” she said with a rolled “r”. Her tan skin had an ashen tone. Her lips were full and dry.

  The woman’s cheekbones sloped in a way that made Béatrice think that she had lost her watch or that she couldn’t have children. But the pupils of her eyes were strong and rimmed with gold.

  “Can I help you?” the woman asked. Her accent made the French words sound like they were travelling on a wooden cart.

  “I’m looking for a dress,” Béatrice answered. She didn’t want any help, but the woman’s glare made her feel that she had to ask for it.

  “All the clothes on the rack are on sale,” the woman said.

  Béatrice looked around her. The clothes on the rack were the only items in the store, so she continued to page through them. All the garments looked tired, slumped from the hanger’s pinch or prod. A pale red cotton dress, then a polyester chemise with a tie at the collar. A pair of dark jeans. The same cotton dress in a broccoli green, then cleaning-liquid blue. Who were these clothes for?

  “If you want to try something on …” The shopkeeper did not bother to finish her sentence.

/>   Between another pair of light blue jeans and a wide-neck cream shirt was a long garment of sturdy black lace. Béatrice pulled a corner out. It was a thin deflated arm. She continued to pull. A long dress emerged. It hung to the floor, and rose up to the neck, with full-length sleeves limp at each side. Béatrice pulled out the dress and held it in front of her. It could have been the shed skin of a long, black reptile.

  “Very nice,” the woman said. “Like a movie star. You want to try it on?”

  Béatrice realised her head was nodding, maybe to the music, maybe to the woman’s question. The woman got up from her seat sleepily and walked over to Béatrice, then led her to the green curtain and pulled it open.

  “Through here.”

  Béatrice stepped into a dim, damp space which felt like a stone’s stomach. The woman clicked on a lamp clamped to a full-length mirror leaning against a stack of boxes. A chair lay on its back on top of another stack. A fold-out table held what appeared to be a sewing machine, covered by a thin, red woollen shawl with blooming white roses printed on it. Next to the machine was a plastic container full of various buttons and a couple of spools of thread.

  “Don’t mind the stock. Going out of business …”

  The woman lingered at the shawl, tracing her finger over a white rose petal. Then she looked over at Béatrice and pointed to the mirror.

  “You can look at yourself there,” she said.

  The woman left through the doorway and pulled the curtain closed behind her. The lamp gave streaks of glare on to the mirror. In the reflection, Béatrice saw a figure holding a black lace dress, but the woman was in a fogged room, separated by translucent slices of light like onion skin. She took her shoes off first.

  8

  Béatrice stood in front of the mirror with the skin of the black lizard on her. She looked beautiful and dramatic with her collarbone against the lace. The muscles in her stomach clenched, pulling her up taller. This tautness reminded her of a very specific feeling, yet she could not place it. Perhaps it was a romantic feeling, she thought. Like sharing a secret with someone.