The Natashas by Yelena Moskovich comes out today! It’s a debut novel about a Paris jazz singer and a Mexican actor who are drawn into a labyrinth of visions and warnings, haunted by a group of young women who all share the same name: Natasha. It’s a trippy, multi-layered story, and you’re going to love it. We asked the author how she’s celebrating.
I’d like to think that the copies, slotted on the shelves or stacked in the back room, are brooding for me, just a little. Not every page. Most of the text can Moskowho? me. But I mean, amongst those do-da whistlers, I hope there is at least one sentence in there that is releasing a ripened sigh, thinking, I remember her fingertips tapping like rain on my window…
There is a certain pleasure to being longed for by the inanimate. You should see the face on my wooden desk-chair when I get home after a long day. Where’ve you’ve been. I’ve missed your ass. I know, Baby, I know.
Part of the craving can be numeric. I wonder how page 13 will feel on the publication day, March 13th, which also happens to be the number written in sharpie on the pale-teal door to my apartment. It was written long before I moved in, when a Finnish friend lived there. She moved out when she was 6 months pregnant and could no longer climb the 7 flights of stairs (no elevator, but Art Deco stained-glass windows as if Tamara de Lempicka was tonguing the stairwell). Since then, my landlord bought the small part of the hallway and installed another door, horse-brown, no number. They both open in inward, encumbering each other like an unrehearsed Can-Can.
On my 7th floor balcony, however, I am divine. It’s just me and the sky and the tops of trees that line the Seine and clock-tower of the Gare de Lyon train station and the neon red light beaming from some hotel in the streets below, reflecting all the way onto me, standing on my balcony in the dark as if my name could be, more or less, Clarisse, and the flashing color is at home on my cheek.
I’ve celebrated the UK release of The Natashas two years ago, and the French translation last year, so I imagine when the U.S. edition comes out, all three will rejoice by singing, You’re once, twice, three times a Natasha… Since I can’t guarantee harmony, I’ll join in by curling my toes and feeling the joy tunnel inward, as if my name could be Rodrigo, and my spine, suave.
I’ll arrive in New York—mathematical coincidence—13 days after the publication, on March 26th, to celebrate in person. Then, I may take a moment to walk the streets with a hard mouth and wide shoulders and floppy steps, as if my name could be Tom. Tommy. Or just Bunny.
Also to mention, I’m 33—one of those ages that is the same backwards and forwards; I mean, when I look in the mirror I see myself as 33. Unlike when I was 30, and looked in the mirror, and saw a three-year-old. I don’t mean to be palindromatic, but I’m grateful for the balance.
And speaking of balance—days have memory too. Will March 13th remember that the Russian Czar Alexander II was assassinated on this day in the streets of St. Petersburg? Will he be reading my book somewhere in the mix of things? Of course I’d like to know what he thinks, but I don’t need his thumbs-up to feel validated.
Really, it’s as you want, Czar Sashénka, I only ask one thing, Your Highness: if you don’t like it, don’t be a hog, pass it on to another soul—with or without a body.
Yelena Mokovich was born in 1984 in 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 Masters 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.