The Other Lives of Natascha

By Haziran Günel

When does a seed become a tree? Is there an exact moment? Didn’t your life on this earth begin as soon as you fell into your mother’s womb? As you know, you lived inside there for months, and during that, you didn’t breathe at all. You lived in an aquarium filled with some liquid. That liquid is what you are made of. Your eyes were shut, your nose was useless, you were able to say a word as much as a fish does, and were hearing your mother’s gas more than your father’s talks. You were moving in absolute darkness. That’s something you can’t achieve even if you close your eyes and cover them with your hands. One day you got out of there and vomited all that precious liquid out. Your life didn’t start as you emerged from that darkness; it ended, and you started another one. The life you mentioned didn’t start with a breath, it started with puke. Your life didn’t start with a movement. It started with a dream; a dream that has always been there, even before you were born. The question is: When did we stop following that dream?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Haziran Günel
• Release date: Sep 3, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463135990

Book preview

the other lives of natascha

haziran

Published by haziran

distributed by Smashwords

Copyright 2019 haziran

THE OTHER LIVES OF NATASCHA

for her...

Natascha reads her book, swinging on her hammock. It’s been six years since she found the book outside the entrance door; the only door she has. For the last five years, she’s been trying to finish it. And to this day, the sender remains anonymous. The book has no page numbers. Whenever she takes it in her hands, she has to start all over again. When it comes to reading, she suffers from short-term memory loss.

Over the pages of the book, she checks her legs crossed at her ankles. The color of her tan doesn’t satisfy her. Scratching the mosquito bite on her right butt cheek, she puts her feet on the dark grey concrete floor and leaves a huge mark of sweat on the red fabric. She is not satisfied with her new hammock, the red sparrow, either. After a short afternoon nap left her an unbearable pain in her neck and light-purple diagonal marks on her back, she took down the old one. She had made it using thick ropes when she was living on an island. She never regretted carrying the heavy motherfucker during her long journeys. She names her own creations and regrets nothing.

As her tongue dries like a starfish left under the sun, Natascha springs to her feet –and beats her own world record– craving for a drink. She throws the old book on her bed.

One day I’ll finish it. she says out loud, as she did a million times before. Stretching her body up to reach the invisible fruits of an invisible tree, she gazes at the most valuable beam of the high wooden roof; hosting a pigeon and her baby. A week ago, while the mother was away, her curiosity pushed her up a seventeen rungs high wooden ladder. There were two eggs in the nest. The day after, one of them crashed on the floor.

It was a tragedy, but was it a murder? The trial was a travesty of justice for many. The Counsel for the Prosecution claimed the Baby Pigeon (Nr.1 suspect of the crime) broke its shell before the victim and pushed its egg out of the nest. The Defense declared that the defendant had only followed its instincts from the very first moment, and the degree of the force it had used was reasonable and necessary to protect its safety. Under the circumstances, they demanded the application of self-defense.

Natural Law states that the survival of a bird depends on its siblings –if only those siblings were deceased. The case was dismissed on the first day of the trial since there was no witness for the prosecution. The Baby Pigeon was cleared of the blame. No doubt its instincts will keep it alive longer than the others.

Natascha believes she will never forget the moment she found the featherless little body; lying between two broken pieces of eggshell. But she will, as she does with everything else. Instead of flushing it down the toilet, as she did with Pinky, her last goldfish, she buried the deceased in her backyard. She marked the grave with a dark yellow crab shell; a treasure she had found in one of her morning dives. She always felt closer to the one who gets kicked out of its nest than the one who shits inside its bowl.

It’s a pity Pinky never had a funeral like that Natascha thinks while taking careful steps near the glass coffee table which is responsible for two purple marks on her left knee. Many times she wondered how she failed to avoid the strikes of its rusty iron legs –motionless but still effective– in this huge warehouse; one-hundred-twenty-seven steps in length and eighty-four in width.

Flirting with the fridge from a safe distance, she makes slight movements to gain time and screw up her courage. Illuminated by the bright sunshine, her path is paved with enormous yellow diamonds, each frying like a hot pan. She swaggers along the path to get in the mood, and as she gets in the mood, her jumping soles hurt less. The long silhouettes of her legs dance around her every time she takes a step. Her ankles twist and turn in joy, and she falls in love with her legs once again. Who wouldn’t? It took less than a day for her to make a man beg behind that walk when she was somewhere in the East.

Under normal circumstances, the shortest path between her cotton cradle and the freezing gates of heaven would take sixty-nine steps. Leaving seventy-seven warm footmarks behind her feet, she rests her cheek on her cool cavalier’s chest. On an ordinary day, ten steps can change your life. Her expectations are higher today.

Unable to resist the loving touch of a beautiful woman, the servant opens itself to his master of his own accord. Grateful for the offer, Natascha holds his metal hand and leans over to see which surprises await her inside. For a fraction of a second, a cool breeze licks her face, neck, and bosom. A breeze carries many; sweet scents, nasty pollens, but no shame.

Lost in delight, Natascha tries to decide whether she should pour down her throat. The shelves are full of beverages; bottles of beer, colorful cans of soft drinks, sparkling water, and three pitchers, each filled with; fresh grapefruit juice, plain lassi, and mineral water. She grabs the neck of a beer bottle with her right hand, places the edge of the cap against the steel kitchen counter, and slams down the bottle with her left. Her hostile attitude frightens the cap, causing it to jump off, roll on the floor and hide under the fridge. Filling her mouth with the bubbling beer, Natascha wonders how many of them are hiding in the bottle cap heaven. She wipes away the foam sucking on her Cupid’s bow with the back of her hand. Her lips burst into flames with hot sweat gushing out of her skin. To control the blaze, she chugs the remaining beer, licks her lips drawing two imaginary ellipses with her tongue, and abandons the empty bottle.

Natascha doesn’t have a clock inside the warehouse, and yet, has a sense of time. Witnessing the movements of shadows, she can guess the time better than a pendulum clock, but without showing off with a cuckoo popping out of her chest. She doesn’t count time in numbers either. For her: it is time to swim, time to eat, or time to take a nap. She checks on her empty wrist; it is time to have a bath.

The bathtub is in the farthest corner of the warehouse; eight steps away from both neighboring walls, with no windows around but a skylight above. Many people think that one should have a skylight above her bed to see the bright stars at night. She is not one of them. After all, she had slept and dreamt under different stars on her journeys. Furthermore, she laid claim to a few. She has a tendency to touch herself while spending her precious time in her messy bed thrown on the floor. Sleep? She can do it anywhere. She knows how and when to control the flame burning in her chest…

A rusty pipe rises from the ground and ends with a rusty showerhead looking over the rusty bathtub. Every iron fixture in the place is rusty. Natascha likes it that way. Shiny metal objects reflect her image in the worst possible way. On the other hand, the bronze color of the rust warms her body and her soul.

The old pipe shivers and roars as the tap turns on. Roar turns into a rumble; rumble into a whistle. The showerhead throws up a blurry fluid in disgust. After the undesired liquid vanishes in the depths of the sewer in shame, an old cork stopper gets in the way and plugs the drain. Rumor has it that a dominant hand –a left one– witnessed these historic events…

Suffering from temporary deafness caused by the thundering sound of water, Natascha takes off her bikini top and jean shorts, and places them on the high stool guarding the bathtub. No underwear can block the gates of her inner body. She grabs her faux leather pouch, the Sissy Sally, resting in the shadow of the Long John, takes out a rice rolling paper, and garnishes it with herbs left from the earlier day. Singing an unheard song, she rolls the joint on her inner thigh, and lights it up wasting two matchsticks. Her eyes follow the smoke breaking free through the narrow gap between her lips.

After the third breath of heaven, she turns the tap off and slips into the bathtub. A few degrees away from freezing, the water makes her teeth chatter and her nipples harder. To confuse her senses, she expands her rib cage to its limits.

Ah… My sweet darling… Where were we?

Like a puppet abandoned by its puppeteer, her arms hang from the long sides of the tub. Water dripping from her fingers or ashes falling on the floor doesn’t bother her.

That’s why I live in a warehouse… to be careless…

Drops fall free one after another, escaping from the monstrous showerhead; a giant snake with its drooling mouth wide open, ready to swallow its prey served cold in a bowl. Natascha kills the joint and slips her head below the water before the snake kills her.

Her eyes open in six heartbeats. A bubble escapes from her nose in eleventh. After the nineteenth, the showerhead stops dripping and the surface of the water becomes smooth. The wooden framework of the roof covers her sight: two enormous trusses, eleven beams in between them, and one giant skylight. The diamond projection of the skylight should be on her left now, shining on the brick