Chapter Two

Goulash Lolitas Snare Their First Husbands

ZSA ZSA

Arriving back home in Budapest, Zsa Zsa met a cold reception. In a pet shop on the Kärtnerstrasse in Vienna, Willi had purchased a cute little Scottie for her. She became enchanted with the dog at once, naming it Mishka.

When the Scottie encountered Vilmos, the dog barked every time Zsa Zsa’s father entered the room. He ordered his daughter “to get rid of that mutt.”

At that point in her life, Zsa Zsa loved her Scottie more than Vilmos. Determined noto give up her beloved pet, she plotted to leave her childhood home as soon as possible.

In the meantime, tragedy struck. Jolie’s father, Josef Tilleman, became ill and was taken to the Payor Sanatorium, seven miles from Budapest, the site of extensive medical facilities. He was diagnosed as having “a bad stomach” and died within four days.

His widow, Francesca, the matriarch of the Gabor family, handled it bravely, but Jolie took to bed in her grief. She had been devoted to her father.

Bed-ridden, Jolie could no longer supervise the social life of her daughters. Each of them was pursuing a man. Romance was in the air, but not for Jolie, who almost daily grew increasingly disappointed by her life with Vilmos.

He spent more and more time away from their villa and sometimes was gone for three or four nights in a row. Both Jolie and her daughters just assumed Vilmos had a mistress, as most officers in the Hungarian army maintained one.

Jolie seemed relieved. “The sex maniac no longer comes to my bed to satisfy his lusts,” she told her daughters.

Francesca recovered from her husband’s death much more quickly than Jolie. After Josef’s burial, his widow wore black and mourned him for less than two months.

In Budapest, Francesca was famed as a society hostess, entertaining foreign diplomats and generals. To one of her parties, she invited His Excellency, Burhan Belge, Press Director for the Foreign Ministry of Turkey.

He had just returned from a Turkish State visit to Berlin, where Adolf Hitler himself had arrived at the railway station to welcome him to the German capital. Belge was a personal friend of both Hitler and Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister.

Years later, Jolie claimed, “at the time, Zsa Zsa and I met Burhan, we didn’t think Hitler was so bad. In fact, I was impressed that Belge was a friend of the Nazi leader. That was years before we became aware that Hitler’s plan involved killing millions of us Jews.”

At her grandmother’s villa, Zsa Zsa was introduced to Belge.

Because of her emotional involvements with Willi, she had not thought of another man until her return to Budapest from Vienna. At the Gabor villa, because of Vilmos’ increasingly tyrannical rule, she found conditions intolerable. At night, she dreamed of a possible suitor who would marry her and take her away with him.

She had attended her grandmother’s party, hoping to meet the man of her dreams. Finding no one who met those qualifications, she focused on the Turkish minister. She’d heard that in Turkey, men often married women only half their age.

As she remembered him, Belge was “dour and sinister looking, and probably on the shady side of thirty. He appeared bored and world weary, but I caught his eye.”

“We conversed in German,” she recalled. “I was very aware that he was a Turk. Those warriors from the East had enslaved my country for a century and a half. I asked him about the Turkish dictator, Kemal Atatürk, and was it true that he had ordered Turkish women to abandon wearing the veil?”

“You are far too pretty to concern yourself with politics,” he had told her. “If you and I were in Turkey, I would give your father three pounds of coffee, the standard purchase price, and establish you as the number one concubine in my harem. But first, I would measure the circumference of your head.”

“Why would you do such a thing?” she asked.

“It was an ancient tradition with old Turkish pashas,” he said. “The circumference of a young girl’s head had to be no larger than her waist.”

“Tonight I will go home and take my own measurements to see if I qualify,” she had promised.

He studied her more carefully. “You’re only fifteen yours old,” he had said. “In some quarters even that is too old, but times are changing, and I’d better wait a little while longer until you’ve become more of a woman. Actually, I’ve changed my mind. A woman of your charm and beauty should not be a mere concubine, competing with other girls in my harem for my attention. I will return to Budapest at some point in the near future and marry you. I will take you back to Ankara as my wife.”

In the months ahead, time hung heavy over Zsa Zsa’s head. She had nothing to do, no career prospects. The boys she dated were pompous and silly, not at all to her liking. She was tired of school boys. She wanted to become either the wife or mistress of a man with great power. Obviously, that meant someone older.

One morning, she woke up and impulsively telephoned the Turkish Embassy, having read in the newspapers that Belge was due for a return visit to Budapest. It was now 1937.

She was told that His Excellency was in Vienna, and that he’d be in Budapest in less than ten days. She left a message to have him call her. “Tell him I measured my head and my waist, and my waist leaves me with an inch to spare. He’ll understand.”

Belge arrived in Budapest from Vienna in just two days, not ten, and on his first day back, he was seen window shopping along the Corso with Zsa Zsa.

That night, he invited her for dinner and dancing at the Ritz. Before heading out the door, she attired herself in an elegant, black, low-cut gown made for her in Vienna. Jolie rose from her bed and helped her with her hair and makeup, with each maneuver trying to make Zsa Zsa look older. At the conclusion of all their hard labor, Zsa Zsa gave her own verdict. “I look at least nineteen years old.” Jolie agreed.

At the Ritz, she danced with Belge across the marble floor, attracting the attention of virtually every man in the room. “Burhan was a very serious man, not at all frivolous, but I supplied the gaiety.”

At table, she showed him a series of provocative photographs taken by a well-known theatrical photographer in Budapest. One depicted her with her blouse partly open, revealing ample breasts. Another showed her with her head thrown back, dropping overripe cherries into her succulent mouth. The photographer had told her, “This will suggest to your man your willingness to perform fellatio on him.”

As she recalled, “I could tell that Burhan was aroused while looking at those pictures. I decided to strike fast like the cobra.”

“Excellency, will you marry me?” she asked.

“Did I hear that correctly?” he asked, almost choking on his drink.

“You promised to marry me when I grew up a bit,” she said. “Look me over. Don’t I look like I’ve matured?”

“Indeed you do,” he said. “But I need some time to think it over. You will have my decision before I depart from Budapest.”

“There is one condition,” she said. “I must keep my Scottie dog. I’m very attached to him.”

A look of extreme disapproval crossed his face before he softened his features. “If you wish.”

That night on her doorstep, he kissed her long and passionately.

His call came in at five o’clock that very morning. A servant awakened her. When she picked up the receiver, he said, “Am I speaking to Mrs. Burhan Belge?”

“You are, indeed,” she said as a feeling of joy overwhelmed her. “I am very happy, so many thanks to you. I will work very hard to make you a good wife. I will plan our wedding at once…in Budapest.”

“The choice is yours,” he said.

The time came when Zsa Zsa had to arrange for Belge’s appearance at the Gabor villa for afternoon tea. Although polite to the ambassador, both Jolie and Vilmoshad negative reactions.

Jolie at once became involved with preparing a trousseau. As for Vilmos he almost had a stroke. “The daughter of a Hussar marrying a prominent member of the enemy?That’s the equivalent of a rabbi’s daughter announcing to her father that she is going to marry Hermann Göring! Don’t tell me that within a year, I will have a little Turkish soldier marching through my house. It’s God’s revenge on me for killing so many Turks.”

As part of Jolie’s private appraisal of Belge, she said he was “so sad, so melancholy, so boringly serious…and a Turk. He was very disagreeable…and a Turk. He was ugly…and a Turk. But he was a very important man in Europe, although an infidel…and a Turk!”

The wedding at Grandmother Francesca’s house was small and modest. Jolie cried. Zsa Zsa later said, “Eva and Magda were furious at me, so jealous, because I had snared a husband before they did. Not only that, but in the future, I’d be traveling on a diplomatic passport. Right after the wedding, I informed both Magda and Eva that in the future, they were to address me as ‘Your Excellency.’”

As a parting gift, Zsa Zsa’s grandmother, Francesca, presented her with a blood red ruby and diamond necklace. “You’ll be the toast of Ankara, my dear, when you wear this adornment with a stunning gown.” Vilmos gave her a ten-karat diamond, suggesting “My dear, dear daughter, in your future, you must not accept any diamond with lesser karats than this.”

As ZsaZsaheaded for Turkey with her new husband, Jolie gave her some parting advice. “If it doesn’t work out, you can always divorce him. When I get Eva and Magda married, I, too, will seek a divorce from Vilmos. You’re still very young. By the time you’re twenty-one, another shining knight might appear on a white horse.”

As filtered through her interpretation of what Jolie had told her, men were to be used as long as they were useful, then discarded when boredom set in.

She would follow that advice for the rest of her life.

***

EVA

“Zsa Zsa isn’t the only Gabor sister who could attract a man,” Eva said to Jolie. “Everybody I met told me I was prettier than Zsa Zsa. Naturally, the opposite sex paid attention to me. I think if I had really tried, I could have had almost any man in Budapest I wanted.”

Years later, Eva would recall her first love. She couldn’t remember his full name, identifying him only as “Pista.” She was fourteen and a half, and he was a mature lad of sixteen.

In winter, Budapest had an artificial lake for ice skating. One wintry afternoon, Eva spotted a young boy of such grace on the ice that she was enthralled. Even though she was freezing and longed for a warming fire, she could not tear herself away from looking at Pista., whose name she did not know at the time.

The romance was slow to develop. She followed him around for months, but he didn’t seem interested. “I worshipped him, I adored him. He was my dream man. I longed for him to take me in his arms and kiss me. Even when ice skating gave way to summer grass hockey, I was standing on the field day after day watching him.”

She was still his adoring fan by the time the bleakness of winter returned to Hungary once again. “At long last, Pista came to notice me. He’d always been pleasant. But one day, he asked me to meet him in secret near this cave in a park. Once I got there, he grabbed me and kissed me.I was in heaven. His lips tasted like cherries. His body was so firm and masculine.”

“At twilight, he often scaled the walls to our villa to hold me and kiss me. We also discovered ‘Lovers’ Lane’ near the artificial lake. It was a castle from the 13thcentury that was in ruins. Young couples came there to make love. One afternoon, Pista discovered that I was a woman all over. He made love to me with his hands. He also put my hand inside his trousers. I learned that cold afternoon that boys are made different from girls.”

Pista faithfully attended her first involvement with acting on a stage. In a Christmas pageant, she played an angel singing a carol. “I was the only off-key angel in Heaven,” as she remembered. “I was once a fairy with gossamer wings in another play.Once, Pista and I starred in a play together. All I recall was a king and queen who sat on a makeshift throne. I played a page boy in green tights, and Pista was a courtier.”

Their romance ended that spring because of the involvement of Eva’s best girlfriend, a fellow student named Kitty. Eva didn’t recall her last name. “The three of us played hide-and-seek. When I was ‘it,’ I had to find Pista and Kitty. Regrettably, I found them.”

She discovered Kitty in Pista’sarms.Hewas kissing her passionately, his hand inside her blouse.

“They didn’t see me,” Eva said. “I ran away. Pista became the first of a long line of men who would break my heart. I decided then and there I would not place myself in such a position again.”

“From that day forth, I would become a femme fatale, with a long cigarette holder. I would break hearts across the globe. No one would ever know that it was Pista who turned me into such a cold-hearted love goddess who enticed men to fall in love with her but who treated them with great cruelty.”

***

MAGDA

Magda, the oldest daughter of Vilmos and Jolie, would not be left out of the romance or marriage sweepstakes. She was soon to marry the 35-year-old so-called “Count of Warsaw,” a union that would elevate her to the rank of “Countess of Warsaw.”

At Madame Sublia’s School in Lausanne, Magda had made a friend in Sylvia Barnes, an attractive and charming Londoner who was studying abroad.

At the end of the school term, Sylvia invited Magda to join her family in London for six months. Vilmos was skeptical, but Jolie thought it would be a good idea. “To move in international society, a young woman must know proper English,” Jolie told Magda. “A few months in London, combined with what you already know of languages, will make you fluent in English. Taken with your knowledge of French and German, your opportunities for finding a rich husband will be multiplied.”

During three weeks of exploring London with Sylvia, Magda fell in love with the city and its people. She would visit London frequently in the future, with each of her husbands-to-be.

One night, Hugh Barnes, Sylvia’s father, announced that a friend of his, Count Jan de Bychowsky, would be their guest for dinner. “He has the title of Count of Warsaw. Jan is also unmarried, in case either of you, Magda or Sylvia, want to become the Countess of Warsaw.”

Magda would later write to Jolie in Budapest. “It took only two weeks, but I’ve fallen in love with the Count of Warsaw. He is a divine creature, so strong, so masculine, so handsome, so intelligent. He literally swept me off my feet. Can you imagine your Magda one day presiding as the Countess of Warsaw? Oh, I forgot to mention. He is the sole owner of the Bychowsky family castle outside Warsaw.”

The count was the scion of one of the oldest and most prestigious families in all of Poland, his pedigree stretching back to the days of the Vikings.

Over the next few weeks, Magda’s letters took a more serious turn. “Poor Jan is increasingly worried that Hitler has designs on Poland. But Mr. Barnes feels that Hitler will never invade Poland, because Britain has a mutual defense treaty. If Hitler invades Poland, England, because of its treaties and prior agreements, would be forced to declare war on Nazi Germany.”

In her final letter before leaving London, Magda wrote to Jolie. “I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve invited Jan to return to Budapest with me. You don’t need to arrange a spare room for us. He can share my bedroom.”

Vilmos didn’t approve of his older daughter’s sleeping arrangement, but since he had at least one mistress, he wasn’t in a position to protest.

Jolie remembered going to the railway station to meet Magda and her Polish count. “He wasn’t quite as handsome as Magda had suggested, but he was attractive—at least he was an aristocrat. I assumed at the time he was rich with vast holdings in Poland. In a taxi back to our villa, Count Bychowsky and Magda told me that they planned to be married in a civil ceremony at the Budapest City Hall. I was worried that she might already be pregnant, so I endorsed that idea. Vilmos also thought it would be the most discreet thing to do.”

[In some news accounts, Magda was incorrectly reported to have married the similarly named Sgt. Jan Bychowski, who was a young Polish poet who died in England on May 22, 1944, at the age of twenty-two]

Jolie did not believe in lavish wedding receptions, thinking money could be better spent on life’s necessities. After a brief ceremony in front of a civil judge, she invited about twenty family friends and relatives back to their villa for a reception.

For their wedding present, Vilmos treated them to a week’s residency at Budapest’s Hotel Gellert, an art nouveau, mosaic adorned historic monument,paying their dining tab as well. During their time there, Magda showed Jan the wonders of Budapest by day and by night.

The Gellertwas a grand, 733-room palace constructed in 1918 on the Buda side of the Danube, with a restaurant that featured a gypsy orchestra that churned out dance music and nostalgic, sometimes tear-jerking schmaltz.

Before her departure with her husband for her new home in Warsaw, Magda assured Jolie that her count was “a vonderful lover, although I have no basis of comparison. But if all men are built like Jan, I extend my congratulations to every other woman on the planet.”

Jolie hastened to warn Magda that all men were not built like her new husband. “When you and Jan stayed with us, and I passed by your bedroom door one night, I thought the Turks had invaded Hungary again. You really must not scream in ecstasy when he makes love to you. It is very unladylike.”

When Jolie learned, to her disappointment, that the Bychowsky castle had been stripped of most of its art and furnishings, she sent her daughter and new son-in-law, as a wedding present, two truckloads of antique reproductions. “I’ve learned that the count has a prestigious title but no money. The family fortune and its treasures had disappeared at the end of World War I.”

At Budapest’s railway station, Jolie kissed Magda goodbye and promised to visit Warsaw within the year. “I had so desperately wanted her to marry a man with money,” Jolie said. “At least she married a title—The Countess of Warsaw.”

Before her departure, Magda urged Jolie to write to Zsa Zsa in Ankara. “Tell her for me that she is not the only one who is to be addressed in the future as Her Excellency,” Magda said. “That leaves only poor Eva with no title and no husband.”

“Have no fear for her,” Jolie said. “She grows more beautiful by the day. I’m sure she’ll find some dashing beau, hopefully one with both a title and riches. We cannot all be paupers.”

Magda found Jolie’s parting words insulting, but forgave her when the castle furnishings arrived from Budapest.

***

ZSA ZSA

As the Venice-Simplon Express roared eastward, Zsa Zsa cuddled her beloved Scottie, Mishka, in her arms, as if it would protect her. She didn’t love her husband and was still in love with Willi Schmidt-Kentner, her long-ago composer. She dreaded her upcoming honeymoon night.

Burhan seemed engrossed in the newspapers, especially about the bombing of Barcelona by the armies of Spain’s fascist dictator, Francisco Franco. Her husband told her he feared that this might be but a prelude to World War II, but the threat did not concern her.

Mishka did not approve of Zsa Zsa’s new master. Every time Belge came near her, he barked ferociously at him.

Finally, the honeymoon night was at hand. Burhan went to the smoking car for a final cigar and glass of French brandy. He was a rich man with expensive European tastes.

Back in their sleeping compartment, Zsa Zsa put on a beige négligée and prepared for bed with Mishka sharing a pillow with her. When Burhan returned, he saw her with the dog. Instead of getting into her bed, he kissed her on the forehead. “Good night, my dear.” Then he retired to an adjoining compartment, which he had booked just for his luggage and his documents. That is where he spent the night.

Weeks later, she learned that her husband, a devout Muslim, would not sleep where a dog had rested, regarding such an animal as unclean.

When the Venice-Simplon Express arrived in Istanbul, Burhan escorted Zsa Zsa, still clutching Mishka, off the train. There, they were greeted by Burhan’s sister, Lehman Burhan Kadri, and her distinguished husband, Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu, designated at the time as the Turkish ambassador to the strategically important neighboring nation of Albania.

Unlike many Turkish women, Lehman had a creamy white complexion, blue eyes, and blondish hair.

Yakup, her new brother-in-law, seemed the very opposite of Belge. With an imposing physique, he had a keen sense of humor and was outspoken and uninhibited. She later admitted to being attracted to “his sexy black mustache.”

In the car carrying them to the Belge family’s villa, the Belge siblings sat together in the vehicle’s front seat, with Zsa Zsa and Yakup seated together in the back. “Welcome, welcome to Istanbul,” he told her. “Burhan is one lucky man!”

According to Zsa Zsa’s later retelling of her days in Turkey, “His shining black eyes—previously stolen from some impish devil,” in her estimation—“virtually undressed me in the car. He even leaned over for a better look at my décolletage.”

This was the first man she’d met on Turkish soil, and she was shocked that he did not conceal his attraction for her. Fortunately, they were not being observed by her bridegroom. “Yakup was practically all over me, even putting his big hand on my leg, I felt he wanted to rape me right there in the limousine and was having trouble restraining himself. I would soon learn that when a Turkish man wanted a woman, he did not keep his intentions a secret, even if that woman was his sister-in-law. I think we were in love by the time we arrived at the home of my in-laws.”

It took Zsa Zsa a week before she deciphered that Yakup was one of the most influential men in Turkey, a famous novelist, journalist, and diplomat. He was the favorite writer of Atatürk[ the revered dictator and modernizer of Turkey]. Yakup’s novel Yaban (Stranger, originally published in 1932), had depicted the bitter experiences of a Turkish intellectual after losing his arm in the Battle of Gallipoli. Critics compared both its theme and its influence to Erich Maria Remarque’s Im Westen nichts Neues (All Quiet on the Western Front) originally published in 1929.

A decade older than Belge, Yakup, too, had descended from an old and prominent Ottoman family, the Kara Osmans of Manisa (a city near Izmir, on Turkey’s Aegean coast), who had been collectively referenced in the poems of Lord Byron.

The Belge family’s ancestral home in Istanbul, as she later related, was “an ivory-white mansion overlooking the Bosphorus. It loomed out at you like something in a fairytale.”

At the entrance, a male servant bowed low before Zsa Zsa, removing her Viennese high heels and replacing them with intricately embroidered gold slippers. She and Belge were directed into a large parlor to meet her mother-in-law.

“Maria Ouspenskaya could have played Madame Belge in the movies,” Zsa Zsa recalled. “She was a very tiny woman who sat on a silk sofa wrapped in a scarlet red Mohammedan säl, with a breast of rubies. She was almost enveloped in brocaded cushions in tones of cocoa brown and emerald green.She smoked a Turkish cigarette through a ten-inch tobacco-colored holder. Her long nails were painted blood red, and she had Bette Davis eyes set off by a thick black kohl. She was like the queen of some Pharoah who occupied the throne in ancient Egypt. I found her terrifying.”

“Welcome to our modest home,” she said to Zsa Zsa in Turkish, in phrases which had to be translated.

Seemingly from out of nowhere, her father-in-law appeared. He bowed and kissed both hands, welcoming her in French. “Our home is your home,” he said.

As he talked to her, she decided that he would be the ideal stand-in for Adolphe Menjou in the movies. Both his manner and dress were impeccable. His mustache suggested a stage villain from the Victorian age. He could be both dashing and, alternately, wickedly sarcastic.

On the one hand, he seemed to be greeting her like an empress. In glaring and immediate contrast, he turned to his son and said, “I’ve just gotten off the phone with Atatürk. He wants you to call him at once. He seemed very distressed that you have taken a foreign woman as your bride.”

Zsa Zsa was horrified to hear that. As she well knew, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was not only her husband’s boss, but the dictator of Turkey. From the moment of her arrival at Istanbul’s railway station, she’d seen his photographic portrait everywhere. Reared in the military traditions of the Ottoman Empire, and acknowledged as the Patriarch of modern (i.e., secular) Turkey, he had led the movement for Turkish independence. As the nation’s president, he had embarked on a then-radical program of political, economic, and social reforms, outlawing the Ottoman fashion of the fez (round-flat-topped headgear for men), and ordering Turkish women to remove their veils. He also officially ended the centuries-old Ottoman tradition of bigamy, outlawing, at least officially, the possibility of multiple wives for men.

Leaving her new in-laws alone downstairs to chatter in Turkish, Zsa Zsa was directed upstairs by Lehman, who wanted to show her the bridal suite. She was told that the bedroom she would occupy was once the master suite of a harem that had, a generation ago, featured twenty beautiful young women and seven comely teenaged boys who had each been castrated and subsequently prized for their rectal skills.

The smell of incense assailed her nostrils as Zsa Zsa was ushered into the suite, which was lavishly decorated in regal tones of scarlet and gold.

“A large four-poster bed dominated the room, big enough for five couples,” Zsa Zsa said. On each side of the bed was an ivory table laden with Turkish sweetmeats, including a platter of stuffed dates.

Lehman told her that these sweets were laboriously concocted by holy men according to an ancient tradition that insisted that their consumption would stimulate fertility in both a bride and her groom.

“I certainly didn’t intend to feast on these sweetmeats,” Zsa Zsa said. “There were enough there to rot a girl’s teeth and make her gain thirty pounds.”

The pillow cases were embroidered with blue pearls, which Lehman said would ward off the evil eye and ensure a happy marriage.

Zsa Zsa stayed alone in the suite for four hours until two servant girls came in to assist her in her bath and to help her get dressed. One of the young girls even washed Zsa Zsa’s hair in rosewater to bring out its tones of reddish gold. That same girl turned out to be a supreme hairdresser.

After ablutions and massages equivalent to what she might have expected in a spa, Zsa Zsa made up her own face and donned a white satin gown that Jolie had ordered designed for her in Vienna. For the finishing touch, she adorned herself with the diamonds and rubies given to her by the Gabor family.

Despite her spectacular entrance, Zsa Zsa was later ignored at dinner, not understanding a word being said at table. “I felt I was Burhan’s trinket, an amusement, not a wife.” After dinner, the men retired to the library for cigars and brandy. Lehman told Zsa Zsa she should retire to the bridal suite and make herself ready for Belge. “He doesn’t like to be kept waiting. His last two wives learned that rather painfully.”

“That was the first time I learned that he’d been married before,” Zsa Zsa said. “Before I climbed those long stairs, I tried to retrieve Mishka, but Lehman told me he’d been assigned to sleep in the kitchen, on direct orders from Belge.”

For two hours, Zsa Zsa waited in the bridal bed, becoming almost intoxicated from all that incense. Candles had been placed around the bed. “Those servant girls had doused me with enough perfume to stock a boutique,” she said. “I was given a beautiful robe of delicate red silk to wear for my deflowering.”

She later wrote in a memoir that it had been with resignation that she had climbed those stairs. “I realized that the honeymoon had begun.”

When Belge finally opened the door and entered the suite, she recalled “the lusty gleam in his Oriental eye.”

At this point in her memoirs, the curtain is drawn. For years, based on her contradictory statements, Zsa Zsa seemed to deliberately confuse the picture as to which man took her virginity.

One afternoon at the Plaza Hotel in New York City, her friend, the chanteuse, Greta Keller, challenged Zsa Zsa to tell the truth.

“Was it Willi Schmidt-Kentner, whom I introduced you to, or was it your husband, Burhan Belge?” Greta asked. “Or perhaps it was Atatürk? If I remember correctly, in a second memoir, you wrote that as Madame Burhan Belge, you remained a virgin? The marriage, according to you, was never consummated.”

“I can explain that,” ZsaZsatold Greta. “Burhan never penetrated me. He told me that since the age of six, a eunuch hired as his guardian had masturbated him sometimes three times daily until he was fourteen years old. After that, he could never ejaculate inside a woman. To achieve orgasm, he had to masturbate himself. Throughout our marriage, we indulged in what the Americans call ‘heavy petting,’ and he frequently went down on me. But in his bed, I remained as pure as the Virgin Mary…well, perhaps not that pure.”

[In spite of Zsa Zsa’s claim, Belge eventually fathered a child during the course of his fourth marriage, a son who evolved into the well-known Turkish intellectual, Murat Belge.]

***

The next morning, her father-in-law took her for a walk in a park. Along the way, he noticed and commented on every pretty girl. “I miss the old days. I used to have four wives until it was outlawed.” Another lovely young girl passed by. “Zsa Zsa, wouldn’t you like me to divorce my wife and marry that beautiful girl instead? A new mother-in-law for you.”

Over lunch in the park, he warned Zsa Zsa that she was to remain faithful to her husband,even if she found out he had mistresses on the side. “That was the rule of the harem. A woman could only talk to her husband, one of the other wives, or a eunuch.”

“I couldn’t endure living in a harem, not even if I were the favorite,” she told him. “Of course, I would be the favorite because I would have poisoned all the other girls.”

“There is only one time that you can cheat on your husband and commit adultery,” he said.

“What would be the occasion for that?” she asked.

“If Atatürk should summon you to his palace bed, you must go and serve him as his maiden,” he said. “It is the unwritten law in Turkey. Every Turk would surrender his wife to Atatürk. It is their patriotic duty.”

“I will keep that in mind if I ever meet this Atatürk,” she said, with a gleam in her eye.

***

EVA

The arrival of 23-year-old Paul Yankovich, an army lieutenant into the life of Eva was literally a knight appearing in shining armor on a white horse. He was every Hungarian girl’s dream of a dashing Hussar on horseback. “And that uniform of his…it was dazzling,” Eva said.

[In her memoirs, Orchids and Salami, Eva used the pseudonym “Ferenc” to identify this man—her first lover.]

She was only seventeen when he came riding into her life “like a war-horse operetta,” as she described it. Vilmos had more or less adopted Paul as his military side. In some ways, he had become the son that Jolie had never delivered to him.

To the ghost writer of her memoirs, Eva gave a detailed description of Yankovich, her Hussar lover, but fearing that he might still be alive, she removed most of the details from her final version.

Eva found “Paul’s eyes bluer than Lake Balaton was in its pristine condition. He had raven-black hair, gorgeous skin, and it would take a Michelangelo to capture the contours of his well-developed body. You could see your face reflected in his shiny black Hessian boots. He wore tight black trousers with gold stripes down his studly legs. His broad chest was covered with medals,and what would a uniform be without epaulets on those broad shoulders? His tunic must have been made by the most expensive tailor in Budapest.”

“His head rested under a bearskin helmet known within the ranks of the Hussars at the time as a busby. He also wore a sabretache,an ornate pouch hanging from his leather belt, and a pelisse, a short-waisted overjacket slung casually over one shoulder. Did I mention spurs, a jaunty cap with visor, a riding crop, black leather gloves, and marabou frills?”

“Right then and there, I decided it was father’s aide who was the one. After all, Magda had been deflowered by her count,and Zsa Zsa by her ambassador (or so I assumed at the time). Little Eva was next, and she’d met the man upon whom she was going to bestow her favors.”

[While living with Merv Griffin during the twilight of her life, Eva would confess that of all her many lovers, Paul was the most dashing, the most romantic, and the most adventurous. “Vilmos told me that any Hussar who is not dead by the age of thirty is a blackguard. By tradition, Hussars are swashbucklers like Errol Flynn in the movies. They are reckless and hard drinking, given to cursing and chasing women. Invariably, they are moustachioed.”]

Although Vilmos seemed to dote on Paul, he warned Eva not to get involved with him. “He’s charming all right,” her father told her. “All the girls he meets succumb to his wit, grace, looks, and presence, but he’s a notorious playboy. He’s rumored to have fathered at least eight illegitimate children and even impregnated an officer’s wife who, presumably, had passed the child-bearing age.”

When Eva was first introduced to Paul after a parade, he leaned down to gaze into her eyes, using his riding crop to tickle her nose. “When he flashed those pearly white teeth at me, they outdazzledthe sun. That day, I felt I’d captured the brass ring on the carousel. I knew he was attracted to me—just me—andI plotted to make him forget those other women he had known. They were mere trifles. I was the real thing.”

That very night when Paul dined at the Gabor villa, Eva’s plan to capture him was made far easier when Vilmos announced that he would be joining them for a vacation at the family’s summer cottage beside Lake Balaton.

“My romantic dream was coming true faster than I thought it would,” Eva said. “I couldn’t wait to see his naked body. I just hoped he would wear the skimpiest and most revealing bathing attire.”

On their first afternoon at the Gabor’s summer cottage, Eva spent most of the morning trying to find the most seductive bathing suit to wear. Paul had invited her for a swim and a picnic lunch along the lake. At eleven o’clock that morning, he appeared before her in a bathrobe and invited her for a late morning stroll. Along with a small bag, he carried the picnic basket.

The sun was high in the sky as they strolled along, taking in the beauty of the lake. “He had two subjects of conversation—my beauty and his military career,” she said. “I found both topics fascinating.”

Paul steered Eva toward a secluded spot set back from the lake. Under the shade of a tree, he spread out a blanket. She sat on the blanket, looking up at him as he dropped his robe.

She would later recall, “I have never seen such a beautiful male animal. Only his vital parts were covered. The rest of his olive-skinned body was on display, and it radiated power—long, lean, and muscular. As he moved, his legs, arms, and trunk were filled with a manly grace, almost ballet choreography. I took in every fiber of his bronze body. He could have posed for a statue of a Greek god. His luscious ruby-red lips were made for lovemaking.”

“‘Be still,’ I cautioned my rapidly beating heart. “I know I sound like the romance writer of some bodice-ripper cheap paperback, but I’m recalling what I felt at the time. Schoolgirl or not, I wanted this man to take me, and, as was said at the time, make a woman of me. I also was aware that he had to be the aggressor. I knew he’d come to me the first chance we had to be alone. As for that afternoon, my only reward—and it was wonderful—was a deep, passionate kiss that aroused the fires within me.”

The opportunity for Paul and Eva to be alone came about the very next afternoon. Vilmos announced that he and Jolie were driving to the nearest train station to meet another house guest he’d invited down for a two-week vacation. He would be occupying the second guest room.

When Jolie and Vilmos had been gone for fifteen minutes, Paul wasted no time. Eva was in her bedroom when she looked up at her open doorway. A completely nude Paul appeared in its frame.

During the years to come, she would dine out with friends, including MervGriffin, telling him and others that “I lost it that afternoon in our summer cottage.”

“I know that the first time can be traumatic to both men and women on occasion. But not with me. I wanted Paul to devour me, and he did so with great skill. That iron searing my insides reached the source of my needs, fulfilling them beyond my wildest dreams. He was the man I wanted and dreamed about. After that afternoon spent in his arms, it would be a downhill ride from then on, more valleys with an occasional peak. But no one ever measured up to my original seducer, no one, although a few came close.”

After her deflowering that afternoon, complications arose when Vilmos and Jolie returned from the depot with their latest house guest. Count Joska Váler was one of Vilmos’ fellow officers. He had just turned forty and was elegantly attired in full dress uniform. His speech, manner, and grace showed his breeding.

“The count was handsome in a traditional sort of way,” Eva said, “but he didn’t possess the show-stopping allure of my original seducer. He spent most of the early evening raving about what an enchanting beauty I was.”

She later admitted that she had been flattered by the count’s attention and did not feel in any way that “I was betraying the passion I felt for Paul.”

On the second night, when Váler invited her for an evening stroll along the lake, Paul did not conceal his jealousy. He was furious. “The count hardly disguises his lust for you,” he said. “It’s characterized by flaring nostrils and asthmatic breathing.”

Vilmos tried to be a mediator between Váler and Paul, but to no avail. The tension between the two men grew worse. They finally were reduced to the mutual exchange of biting insults.

The boiling point came one evening when Paul’s rage exploded at the dinner table. Eva wrote that “He flung a magnum of sour cream into Count Joska’s obliging face.”

The count, an officer in the Hungarian Army, could not tolerate such insults from an enlisted man. He challenged Paul to a duel three days hence.

For the next three days, Eva admitted to being frantic, waiting for the sun to rise above a nearby park on the third day. Her two suitors would face each other in a duel with swords.

“All I could think about was what part of Paul that the count might lacerate,” Eva said. “Perhaps his ear.Or perhaps Paul would cut off the sharp edge of the count’s patrician nose.”

“I had visions of six inches of steel protruding from the nether side of Paul, and I could hear him gasping, ‘Eva! Eva! as he died on the field of honor that chilly morning.”

She also said she “had no desire to see the count skewered like so much shishkebab for his gallantry.”

Before she retired to bed the night before the duel, she had visited each man in his bedroom and wished him luck. She also claimed that she was not terrified that either one would kill the other. “Perhaps a nick here or there, or a scar on the face. Dueling wasn’t to the death the way it used to be. The joust was merely to cut off a piece of the opponent’s face—a small slice, hardly enough for a cocktail canapé.”

Eva could not bear to attend the duel. An hour later, word reached her that Paul “won me fair and square by cutting one cubic centimeter of the count’s thin blue blood. A wound on the count’s cheek left him with a scar for life, which he later claimed made him even more popular with the ladies.”

Upon his return to Budapest, and having won Eva in a duel, Paul began to bestow lavish presents on her. During their evenings together, he proposed marriage to her and even told her that they would have six children. “I am fertile, very fertile, as my record shows.”

Baskets of flowers arrived almost daily. She could not understand how he could afford such costly gifts on the meager pay of a Hussar. Weeks later, she learned that Vilmos was picking up the tab for all those gifts.

The affair came crashing to an end when Paul presented her with an expensive diamond ring. “The diamond was so very big and so very beautiful,” she said.

Soon after, Vilmos learned that Paul had purchased the engagement ring at a well-known rival to the jewelry outlet operated by the Gabors. “He had the nerve to send me the bill from our competitor,” Vilmos shouted at Eva, exploding in rage. “This is the final insult. You are forbidden to ever see this bastard again!”

“That was the end of my summer romance,” Eva said. “For one entire week, I nursed a broken heart. But I soon got over it. One night at a party, I met the man of my dreams. If such a thing was possible, he was even more beautiful than Paul. It was love at first sight. I had to have him.”

***

[“When I lived in California in the years to come, Paul wrote me every season, including Christmas,” Eva said in an interview. “He got married and had an array of children. In 1972, he sent me a family portrait of his wife and kids, none of whom had inherited his youthful beauty. It was obvious that the brood inherited the ugly genes of their mother. As for my darling Paul, time had taken a toll. That wife of his must have kept him on a diet of dumplings, pancakes, and goulash. He weighed 250 pounds…at least. The raven black hair had become a bald head. The luscious red lips that had explored every inch of my body were still intact, but they led to a triple chin. Alas, my dashing Hussar lived on only in my memories.”]

***

MAGDA

Six months after Magda wed Count Jan Bychowsky, Jolie flew to Warsaw, the only time in her life she ever set foot on Polish soil.

Flying in a battered airplane, Jolie, attired in mink and diamonds, arrived there near the grisly dawn of World War II. “Before getting on the plane, I checked myself in a mirror. I looked like Greta Garbo.”

At Warsaw’s Airport, all the Bychowsky family had turned out to greet her—grandparents, brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews, distant cousins.

To her chagrin, as Jolie stepped off the plane onto its ramp, she was hit with hurricane-gust winds blasting across the great Polish plains. Her large hat and veil were blown to Siberia, she later claimed, as the winds lacerated her carefully coiffed hairdo. “After a few seconds, I looked like Elsa Lanchester in that 1933 movie, The Bride of Frankenstein.”

Her Excellency, the Countess of Warsaw, Magda herself, rushed to greet her windswept mother. Magda immediately chastised her, accusing her of looking like a bagwoman from the back streets of Budapest. She begged her mother to make emergency repairs.

“How could I?” Jolie later lamented. “I was on the tarmac only twelve feet from this bunch of Poles, most of whom looked rather unkempt themselves.”

Arriving at the seedy, fast-decaying Bychowsky castle, whose heyday appeared to have peaked during the 14th Century, she asked the whereabouts of the Count of Warsaw. She was told that he’d gone hunting. As she surveyed the castle’s interior, she decided that the only impressive elements were the furnishings she’d trucked in from Budapest.

“As I tried to restore my looks in the antiquated bathroom, I realized the rusty plumbing had been installed when dinosaurs roamed the earth. To add to my embarrassment, when I had to use the toilet and flushed it, its waters overflowed. When I went to take a bath, I saw, to my horror, that the tub had so much grime it looked like it had been used by the entire Polish army.”

In the parlor, Jolie met with Magda for a long-delayed reunion. “Even though she was as poor as a pauper, she ruled the castle like she was Catherine the Great. The trouble was, she had only two servants left—a maid and a cook. Obviously, one poor old maid could not be the housekeeper for an entire castle, so everything lay under a mountain of dust.”

“Once, Jan and his father had a staff of twenty-eight,” Magda told her. “They even had three gardeners. Now the grounds are overgrown.”

“I could see that,” Jolie said. “But before Jan gets back, I want to know how the marriage is going.”

“Jan has two skills—one as king of the boudoir, the other as a military figure, great on a horse or piloting an airplane. Other than that, he is a horror at protecting his business interests. He is penniless. We haven’t paid the grocery bill or our meager staff in weeks. But we still have our titles: The Count and Countess of Warsaw.”

“I don’t give this marriage much chance,” Jolie said bluntly. “Do you realize that Europe is awash with impoverished aristocrats? If war comes, kingdoms and aristocratic titles will mean nothing. A title without the money to back it up is meaningless. At least Zsa Zsa married a man of means, even if he is an infidel.”

Even though Jan eventually made an appearance in military regalia, replete with boots and medals, she never really got to know her Polish son-in-law. She remembered him as a tall and austere man “devoted to hunting in the forests surrounding his castle. He spent most nights drinking with his men in his Polish Cavalry Regiment until the early hours of morning.”

Over dinner, all he could talk about was his fear that an invasion of Poland by the forces of Nazi Germany was imminent. He did not seem to view Russia as a menace looming from the East.

Jan assured Jolie that he had great faith in the fighting spirit of Polish forces. “We will meet Hitler at the frontier and destroy his war machine,” he boasted.

She angered him when she asked, “What are you prepared to do? Ride up on your horse and confront a German tank?”

The next morning, Jolie got up early and made her way to breakfast in the castle’s kitchen while Jan and Magda were still asleep. At around midnight the night before, when she had passed by their bedroom, she had heard her daughter’s screams of ecstasy, so loud that she was able to confirm that the count was at least good at something.

As she drank coffee which had “obviously been made with grounds left over from some army camp in World War I,” the grocery boy arrived. He informed Jolie that he could not deliver the weekend groceries until Magda settled previous, still-unpaid bills. The tally came to about $600 in U.S. dollars. She retrieved her purse and paid the bill.

She also learned that neither the cook nor the maid had been paid for the past two months. She also settled their wage claims. “I felt like some Jewish banker,” she later said.

Finding the conditions intolerable, Jolie cut short her visit.

On the day of her departure, the entire clan turned out to bid her adieu at the airport. “Even though it was daylight, I wore my nighttime diamonds and had never looked better,” Jolie said. “I was hoping to erase the Bride of Frankenstein image I’d made on my arrival.”

Jan kissed her hand and Magda embraced her. Jolie thanked each member of the clan, all of whom had collectively bestowed an enormous cluster of pink carnations upon her. “Actually, I was never a pink carnation woman. Orchids were my passion.”

From the top of the ramp, before boarding the airplane, Jolie turned and waved to her in-laws. Except for Magda, she would never see any of them again, including her son-in-law.

The very airport at which she’d embarked would soon be bombed out of existence.

***

ZSA ZSA

Ankara was still a work in progress when Zsa Zsa first arrived. Instead of the more obvious metropolis of Istanbul, Atatürk had defined this remote city on the high plains of Anatolia as his capital. “It was electrified by its mixture of exoticism and modernity,” Zsa Zsa said.

Her new home was along the new capital’s prestigious Embassy Row. As an ancient city, Ankara traced its lineage back to the Bronze Age. Over the centuries, it had seen a parade of conquerors—the Hittites, the Phrygians, the Lydians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, and so many others.

She quickly learned that the city was known for its long-haired Angora goat, from whose lustrous fleece mohair is produced. “Its meat was so strong that even my Scottie, Mishka, turned up his nose.” Ankara was also known for its Angora cats. Zsa Zsa preferred the city’s pears, honey, and muscat grapes, and she soon identified her favorite Turkish dish as a regional version of tender chicken breasts beaten until they had the consistency of whipped cream.

She became accustomed to the eerie wail of the muezzines, whose call to prayer (“Allah, illah, Allah!) resounded regularly from the towers of the minarets. The sights, sounds, and smells of the endless bazaars lining the narrow, cobble-covered streets lured her into an exotic Eastern world. One time, she screamed in horror at the sight of a barrel of goat eyeballs. Her teenage houseboy, Ali, assured her, “In Ankara, this is a delicacy, Your Excellency!”

On the dawn of World War II, Ankara, functioning as a diplomatic bridge between the Soviet Union and the Western powers, had evolved into a centerpiece of intrigue and conspiracies. “Everyone seemed to be a spy for some country,” she said. “Burhan warned me never to repeat anything I heard in our household, and he also warned me that our telephone was tapped.”

A powerful man in Turkey, Belge was the leader of the staunchly nationalist movement known as “The Young Turks.” Zsa Zsa defined them as “political zealots and hotheads.”

These young men—sometimes thirty, forty, even fifty in all—met at Belge’s villa on Embassy Row, a site which evolved more or less into their clubhouse and headquarters.

A rumor was circulating at the time about Atatürk’s failing health, and that Belge might be his heir apparent. When Zsa Zsa heard this, she confronted her husband. “Does that mean I’ll sit on the throne of Turkey as its queen? If so, I’d better learn Turkish and quick.”

“Don’t be a silly Hungarian goose,” he told her. “Turkey has no queen. If I’m elected president, you’d become the First Lady of Turkey.”

“Don’t you be the silly one,” she said. “As president, you could declare yourself king…or perhaps emperor. That way I could become the queen. You never thought of that, did you?” Then she stormed out of the room.

At that point in his career, Belge was a strong supporter of Hitler and the Nazi party. As Turkey’s unofficial minister of propaganda, he often spoke on the phone with Josef Goebbels, Hitler’s chief propagandist. Once, Zsa Zsa overheard her husband talking to Hermann Göring about the Nazi Luftwaffe.

As Jews, the Gabors, including all three sisters, were anti-Nazi. Belge warned his wife as she visited the various embassies, to suppress her opinions. At times, she did, although she could also be indiscreet.

Her first invitation was to the German Embassy, where her host was Franz von Papen, Hitler’s ambassador to Turkey.

She devoured the fat goose he served, and told him, “It was so delicious and juicy, it could only have come from Hungary. You Germans buy up all the good food in Turkey and export it to your country, leaving us with leftovers.”

Belge flushed with embarrassment, and Von Papen greeted her “with a sinister silence and the kind of smile a Nazi soldier gave a victim about to enter the gas chamber,” according to Zsa Zsa.

The following week, she was the guest of the Russian ambassador, Lev Mikhailovich Karakhan, whom she remembered as a “giant of a man with a huge, oblong spade beard. He was married to a Russian ballerina.”

In the Soviet Embassy, she feasted on pearls of Beluga caviar. “Here we are enjoying this succulent delight while millions of Russian peasants don’t even have bread,” she told him.

In spite of her impudence, Karakhan chose her as his bridge partner. During future bridge events, he chose her again, even though she’d lost every game for him. When asked why he continued to select her, he said, “I enjoy staring down into her delicious décolletage.”

Soon after that, another ambassador would also stare at Zsa Zsa.

Belge had purchased a white Arabian mare for Zsa Zsa. She’d named it Fatushka, and had stabled her horse at the Ankara Riding Club, north of the city. Every day, she showed up wearing jodhpurs and carrying a riding crop.

One afternoon, as she prepared to go riding, she became aware of someone staring at her from behind. Her fellow rider was the British ambassador to Turkey, Sir Percy Loraine, 12th Baronet.

He later recalled, “I first saw Zsa Zsa on her horse, a perfect little figure in a riding habit with golden hair under a black velvet cap. I was afraid for her to turn around and face me, because I just knew I would be disappointed. When she turned around to look at me, I faced the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, and I was from London, which was awash with beautiful women. She literally bowled me over with her perfectly formed features. She was like a dreamy mask floating on a pink cloud.”

She also took in Sir Percy’s features, later describing his face as being “aflame with desire. He looked very dashing in his British khaki uniform. His blonde hair was graying, as he appeared to be a man in his early fifties. I was certain he was a hit with the ladies. A tall man with striking blue eyes, he had the compelling charm of an English aristocrat when they are at their very best and not snobbish.”

He introduced himself to her and invited her to go riding with him, but only after telling her that he’d met Belge at a reception on Embassy Row three nights before. Later, when they stopped for a rest, she became aware of what an important diplomat he was, having served as the British ambassador to such cities as Teheran, Cairo, Athens, Beijing, Paris, and Madrid. Within months, he would become Britain’s ambassador to Mussolini’s Rome shortly before the explosive debut of World War II.

At the end of their ride, he invited her back to the British Embassy for tea with his wife, Lady Loraine. Over tea, both of them told her how disappointed they were to have been assigned to Ankara. Sir Percy referred to the “pathetic bleakness of Ankara,” and Lady Loraine defined it as “the most Godforsaken hole I have ever been in.” They referred to Ankara’s Embassy Row, on which Belge and Zsa Zsa lived, as “a concentration camp for diplomats.”

During the remainder of her stay in the Turkish capital, Zsa Zsa went horseback riding with Sir Percy every day. She quickly became aware of his physical attraction to her, and she flirted outrageously with him whenever Lady Loraine or Belge weren’t around.

“I think Sir Percy fell madly in love with me,” she would later tell her friends. “One afternoon, we got caught in a sandstorm blowing in from the desert. We sought shelter in a little cabin used for storing tools. We didn’t go all the way—after all, Sir Percy was a gentleman and I was a lady—but he did smother me in kisses and became familiar with my breasts. We escaped from prying eyes whenever we could, and we had some rather torrid sessions, although he never invaded the prime target.”

Sir Percy was not alone in his focus on Zsa Zsa. Yakup, her brother-in-law, continued to pursue her whenever they were alone. On occasion, he would grab her and kiss her passionately, feeling her ample breasts. “Burhan is just letting a beauty like you go to waste,” he told her. “He is not man enough for you.”

“I became familiar with Yakup’s lusty tongue,” she said. “He whispered in my ear all the naughty things he wanted to do to me. I suspected most of his sexual promises came from reading Arabian Nights.”

Some of Zsa Zsa’s most ardent admirers in Ankara remained anonymous. Sometimes, after her daily horseback ride, she visited a shop run by six Circassian brothers, the eldest of whom was named Numad. In looks, she compared the brothers’ dark eyes and long, slender faces to figures that might have been sketched by Modigliani.

She would visit the shop mainly as a distraction, having a Turkish coffee every afternoon and looking over the exquisite copperware and other handcrafts.

One afternoon, Numad showed her the most exquisite pearl she’d ever seen. He claimed that the Ambassador to Afghanistan would like to present her with the gem with his compliments.

“What does he want in return?” she asked.

“For you to be nice to him.”

She turned from the pearl and stormed out of the shop. But instead of boycotting it, she returned a few days later, apologizing for the pearl incident. Then, despite the strong reaction his words had precipitated a few days before, Numad then presented her with a stunning gold bracelet studded with emeralds and rubies. This time, he said it was from an unknown admirer who wanted nothing in return, “perhaps a chance to visit the shop while you’re wearing it, so he can enjoy it on your beautiful wrist.”

Once again, she feigned more anger than she actually felt, feeling secretly flattered by the offer. Later, she said, “I was such a silly fool, and I regretted my foolish decision. I learned a valuable lesson for the rest of my life. In my future, I would no longer turn down jewelry from any source, anonymous or otherwise.”

In time, she’d deliver a famous utterance: “I have never hated a man enough to give his diamonds back.”

Whereas Zsa Zsa might have rejected some jewelry, she accepted any invitation from any embassy that was offered to Belge and her. One afternoon, Lady Loraine telephoned. Belge was away on another of his mysterious trips to Berlin. On the phone, Lady Loraine invited her to a dinner she was staging for Colonel Charles de Gaulle of France, a friend of Sir Percy. “I need a lady guest to sit next to him, and you would be perfect—not just for your beauty, but because you’re fluent in French and can keep him amused.”

“I never heard of De Gaulle, but I imagine him to look like Gary Cooper being chased through the desert by Marlene Dietrich in the film Morocco,” she said. She’d later recall, “I don’t think General Eisenhower spent as much time preparing for the D-Day landings than I did making myself ready to meet this dashing French soldier. I was attired in diamonds, rubies, and red satin, my hair rinsed with a solution that turned it into a honey blonde.”

As it turned out, De Gaulle didn’t look like Gary Cooper at all. Nearing fifty years old when she met him, he was tall, hook-nosed, and austere. “I found him immensely patriotic, loving all things French. But he also had an eye for a beautiful woman of any nationality, even Hungarian. He towered over me. As we stood drinking a cocktail, he looked down frequently into my amply displayed bosom.”

“Often, he was addressed in German, and I was surprised that he was fluent in that tongue as well. He told me that he’d been imprisoned by the Germans during the First World War, and that he had made five unsuccessful attempts to escape. ‘I was eager to get back into the war,’ he told me.”

“I was so frustrated for being locked away in solitary confinement, away from the action on the front,” he said. “I compared it to being cuckolded. No newspaper, no tobacco, what a shameful fortune. I was almost embarrassed to return to France when I was let out of prison.”

He also told her, “Some misguided people refer to me as a writer instead of as a soldier. My latest book, Vers l’Armée de Métier (Towards a Professional Army), sold only 700 copies in France, but 7000 copies in Germany. I heard that it was read by Hitler.”

After the banquet, De Gaulle escorted Zsa Zsa back to her villa on Embassy Row. She invited him in for a nightcap of French brandy, and he accepted.

Over drinks, he told her that he might be a lowly colonel at present, but “one day I, not Adolf Hitler, will preside over a Free France.”

“I had little desire to seduce him, and I don’t know if he would have agreed had I tried, but I felt I was in the presence of a future world leader,” she said. “Shortly before midnight, I stood on my tiptoes and kissed him passionately, which seemed to shock him. But his tongue responded. I guess that’s called French kissing. Had I known that in the future, he would become one of the most important men in the world, I would have pursued him more aggressively. But at the time, I was still a technical virgin. I had not lost my cherry, as the Americans say. What a stupid expression to call the deflowering of a virgin.”

“In the 1960s, I heard on the news that Jacqueline Kennedy had mesmerized De Gaulle, then the president of the French Republic, when she accompanied one of my lovers, John F. Kennedy, to Paris. What the First Lady might not have known was that I had enchanted De Gaulle and also had seduced JFK long before she ever met them.”

***

Zsa Zsa’s brother-in-law, Yakup, was soon to leave his post as the Turkish ambassador to Albania, with the understanding that he’d be reassigned to Prague.

He invited Belge and Zsa Zsa to fly with him to Tirana, where he was to gather up his possessions and bid an adieu to King Zog, who had ruled Albania since it had been molded into a kingdom in 1928.

Before arriving, Yakup tried to explain some of Albania’s complicated political history to Zsa Zsa, with the understanding that she was about to be fêted at the highest levels of the Albanian government. After foreign occupation by the Serbs and the Italians in the aftermath of World War I, Albania had become an independent country. Zog had the powers of a dictator, although he faced constant interference from Italy. And although Zog resisted, Mussolini more or less wanted to bring Albania into Italy’s expanding empire.

During their second night in Tirana, King Zog threw a lavish dinner in his palace, inviting Yakup, Zsa Zsa, and Belge as his guests of honor.

At the reception, the king had little to say to Belge, finding him “a sour and dour Turk.” Instead, he devoted all of his time and attention to Zsa Zsa. Attired in diamonds and white satin, with plunging décolletage, she was clearly the most beautiful woman at the gala.

Zog was enchanted with her beauty, wit, and charm.

“We are still a bit primitive as a country, he told her. “Violence is not unknown. In 1923, I was shot and wounded in Parliament. Because of dangerous conditions, I’ve had to create a police state—no civil liberties, no free press. Of course, I’ve had my opponents. Often they are visited by the state police and never heard from again.”

Instead of being appalled, Zsa Zsa, raised in an imperial family, found herself attracted to a king who had such power over his people.

As the evening progressed, he escorted her to a private room whose access and whose interior resembled a bank vault. In it, he displayed to her his treasure trove of gold coins and precious stones. He invited her to select a gem of her choice, and she rather greedily chose a large diamond ring.

She knew that Belge would interpret her acceptance of itas a personal insult, but for such a large stone, she was willing to risk her husband’s displeasure.

At dinner, ZsaZsa sat next to the king. He told her, “I share much in common with Atatürk. I, too, have abolished Islamic law, preferring a civil code based on Switzerland.”

Zoglooked over at Belge at the far end of the table with a disapproving eye. “An odd marriage,” he said. “I understand you are a Jew married to a Muslim? Much of Europe, not to mention the Muslim world, is prejudiced against Jews,” the king said. “Thatis not the case with Albania. Since 1938, I have opened the borders of my country to Jewish refugees fleeing from the Nazis inGermany.”

That night over brandy, he told her that even though he was born an aristocrat, he had been more or less ignored by the other monarchs of Europe, including the King of England. “They are not impressed with my pedigree.”

When she commented that he was heavily guarded, he told her it was necessary because he had survived fifty-five assassination attempts, “one of them in Viennawhen I attended a performance of the opera.”

“I noticed that your wife is not here tonight,” Zsa Zsa said. She had been told that Zoghad only recently married Countess Géraldine Apponyi di Nagyappony, a woman who was half-Hungarian, half-American. “I was looking forward to conversing with her in Hungarian.”

“She is pregnant with my first child,” he said. “She’s experiencing some difficulties.”

During the entire week Zsa Zsa spent in the Albanian capital, King Zog wooed her and made repeated passes at her. Ever flirtatious, she, nonetheless, managed to hold him off. “I should have met you before I married Burhan,” she said. “My mother, Jolie Gabor, told my sisters and myself that we should marry kings, or at least princes.”

“I can always divorce the countess,” he told her, “and marry you, which is my desire. But I must await the birth of my son and heir.”

[HRH Crown Prince Leka Zogu would be born in April of 1939.]

King Zog spent so much time with Zsa Zsa, including afternoon and evening buggy rides in public parks, that all of Tirana was buzzing with speculation about his new infatuation.

The local press was controlled and could not print the rumors, but an Austrian journalist filed a report. In Vienna, it ran under the headline KING ZOG MEETS HIS CINDERELLA.

On her final night in Tirana, Zsa Zsa was practically raped when she made a farewell visit to the palace, despite Belge’s objections. His Majesty received her in his private suite. Later, she refused to comment on what happened between them, only to say, “I came away with my virginity intact but only narrowly, perhaps an inch or so.” The comment was so enigmatic it gave way to all sorts of interpretations.

She later wrote Jolie in Budapest: “I turned down a chance to become the Queen of Albania.”

[It was with a sense of horror that Zsa Zsa read that two days after the birth of King Zog’s son and heir, Crown Prince Leka Zugo, on April 7, 1939, Mussolini’s armies invaded Albania. King Zog, along with his wife and infant son, abandoned Tirana, fleeing for their lives. When Italian soldiers stormed Tirana Palace, they found a pile of linen stained with afterbirth in the Queen’s suite. A wire was sent to Mussolini: “THE CUB HAS ESCAPED.” In Rome, Mussolini declared Albania a protectorate under King Victor Emmanuel III.

When the Communists eventually took control after the war, the short-lived Kingdom of Albania dissolved, fading into history. The country became a full member of NATO in 2009.]

***

Back in Ankara, having flown there from Tirana, Belge staged a farewell dinner for Yakup and his wife, Lehman, before they left for their next diplomatic assignment in Prague.

In Ankara at that time, the choice of venues for late-night dancing and dining was very limited, confined mainly to the Ankara Palas Hotel and, around the corner, Karpiç’s Restaurant. Founded by Ivan Karpiç, a Russian immigrant, this dining room (which featured a dance orchestra) stood near Ulus Square.

Writer Barry Rubin compared its interior to that of a “Kansas City railroad station lunch room.” Its walls were adorned with portraits of Atatürk at various stages of his career. Sometimes, Atatürk himself held meetings of his cabinet ministers here.

The restaurant catered to embassy personnel from both the Allied and Axis powers. Sitting next to each other, along with a coven of spies from various countries, were tables filled with British, American, Russian, French, Italian, or German personnel.

Greeting the Belge party was bald, round-headed Karpiç himself. Always attired in an immaculately tailored white suit, he had a thick Russian accent.

“I sat at table with my boring husband, listening to his uptight sister, and fending off feels from under the table from my brother-in-law,” Zsa Zsa recalled. “I felt marooned in this lonely outpost surrounded by an endless sea of sand. Within minutes, life was about to change.”

Suddenly, there was a great deal of commotion at the entrance. Karpiç himself rushed out to greet the new arrivals. A dozen uniformed policemen, each of them heavily armed, entered the restaurant, followed by six beautiful women gowned in the latest haute couture from Paris fashion houses. They were followed by four Turkish men in tuxedos. Finally, Atatürk himself arrived at the entrance, as the entire group of diners rose in respect.

He paused briefly to survey the scene before him. He took out a gold case and removed a cigarette. A security guard rushed to light it for him.

As Karpiç led the progression of Atatürk’s entourage, he passed the Belge party. His eyes seemed to lock on Zsa Zsa’s. She agreed with the assessment of King Edward VIII during his visit to Istanbul. He remembered “those ice-blue eyes as the most penetrating I have ever seen.”

Atatürk’ssomber eyes gazed into Zsa Zsa’s long-lashed ones. “He looked atme as if he’d known me intimately for a millennium,” she said. “Suddenly, I knew I would be his. All I had to do was wait for the summons to his palace.”

At his banqueting table, no one sat down until the Turkish dictator was comfortably seated. Zsa Zsa had a clear view of him from her chair thirty feet away. She noticed that he kept glancing at her.

At long last, she had come face to face with this Turkish legend, who had once proclaimed himself as “King of the battlefield, King of the boudoir.”

He’d made a striking appearance at the entrance, appearing in a tuxedo with a black cloak lined in red silk.

She didn’t know what was accurate about his legend and what had been invented. He’d once boasted that, “I can outdrink, outfight, and outlove any man in Turkey.” As a womanizer, he was known to have taken the virginity of some 2,000 young Turkish girls. He’d also seduced the wives of several foreign ambassadors, including Belge’s first wife.

He was said to sleep only four hours a night and was a man of shifting, often terrifying moods. His followers called him “The Gray Wolf.”

When he tired of a woman, he adopted her as his daughter. One of these former mistresses who became his daughter was SabihaGökçen, the first female pilot in Turkey and the first female fighter pilot in the world.

Atatürk was fifty-seven years old the night he met Zsa Zsa, and although he was a heavy drinker, he seemed to keep himself in excellent condition. Unknown to both Zsa Zsa and himself, he was entering the last months of a heroic and influential life.

At table, she kept looking at her husband, then sneaking glances at Atatürk. Belge emerged unfavorably from her on-the-spot comparison. “I was completely disenchanted with my marriage,” she recalled. “Ready for some new and exciting adventure. Burhan left me alone every day and most every night. I had only the cook for company. My husband and I slept in different bedrooms.”

Karpiç approached the Belge party. “His Excellency would like you gentlemen and your ladies to join him at table.” Belge stood up and directed his sister, brother-in-law, and Zsa Zsa to Atatürk’s table. Only Zsa Zsa needed to be introduced. From her position at the far end of the table, she curtsied to him, pronouncing the Turkish honorific greeting, “Pasha Effendi.”Immediately, the other guests laughed at her. Later, Belge explained that she had said the equivalent of “Excellency, Mister.”

From across the long length of the table, he asked her if she’d ever tasted the national drink of Turkey, raki.

She told him she had not, and he ordered the waiter to bring her a glass. After swallowing a mouthful of it, she coughed. The anise-infused raki was similar to Pernod and consisted of almost pure alcohol.

Then he asked her if she’d ever had a Turkish cigarette. When she again said she had not, he removed one from his gold case and sent it to her. The thin, flat-tipped cigarette was rimmed in gold, its scarlet letters proclaiming his initials of “K.A.” After inhaling, she coughed again.

“Madame Belge will need some time before she becomes a true Turk,” Atatürk called out to Belge, who nodded in agreement.

Circling around the dictator’s table, Karpiç personally moved from guestto guest, dispensing large dollops of Beluga caviar, serving Atatürk first, then the others. At the place setting of each woman, he placed a flower. Later, he reappeared to supervise the serving of the shish-kebabs, the restaurant’s specialty.

After the first two courses, when the Hungarian orchestra began the opening bars of a waltz, Atatürk asked each of his female guests if she knew how to waltz. Each told him she did not. Finally, he asked Zsa Zsa.

“Of course,” she said. “I’m Hungarian, and born to waltz!”

In front of Belge’s jealous eyes, she was escorted to the dance floor, where the other patrons formed a circle around them. He pressed his body so close to her, she later said, “I could hardly breathe he held me so tightly. I could feel a stirring in his trousers.”

She later wrote, “I was dancing with a god.” She only wished she’d worn a low-cut gown that night.

He whispered into her ear, “All the ladies at my table know how to waltz, but they deferred, so that I could dance with you.”

Back at table, Atatürk ordered Zsa Zsa to sit on the chair next to his. Its female occupant quickly abandoned her seat and went to the far end of the table to sit in Zsa Zsa’s chair next to Belge.

The dinner lasted for three hours. Atatürk hardly ate anything, but continued to consume raki. Finally, he rose, signaling that the banquet was over. When Belge came to retrieve ZsaZsa, Atatürk announced, “I wish to drive Bayan [“Madam”] Belge home.”

The ambassador stood up to the dictator. “I prefer to drive my own wife home.”

“But I will give you any of the ladies at my table to do with as you please,” Atatürk responded.

Belge stood firmly, saying, “It is my own wife I prefer.”

“A good choice,” Atatürk said. “You are obviously a man who knows what he wants.” Then he kissed Zsa Zsa’s hand and shook that of Belge.

As he left the restaurant, the security guards preceded him, followed by his entourage.

En route back to the Belge villa, Yakup told him, “You were a very foolish man, my dear brother-in-law. In the past two years, Atatürk has had three husbands beheaded who did not immediately surrender their wives. Yakup then turned to Zsa Zsa. “You obviously have a new and not-so-secret admirer.”

Belge drove the rest of the way in silence.

***

The following afternoon, after riding her white mare, Zsa Zsa paid her afternoon visit to the Circassians’ antique shop, ordering her usual Turkish coffee. Numad appeared once again with a treasure for her, no doubt from another secret admirer.

The object was wrapped in tissue paper. He handed it to her and also gave her a magnifying glass. When she unwrapped it, she discovered an exquisite miniature Hand of Fátima. In gold, and holding a perfect diamond, it was one of the most beautiful objets d’art she’d ever seen. Weeks later, she learned that it was a precious relic removed from the fabled Topkapi Museum in Istanbul.

Numad told her that according to legend, the person who possessed this relic would have good luck forever. “Beauty with good fortune is a blessing, but beauty without good fortune is a curse.”

“Who is my new secret admirer?” she asked. “Surely not that Afghan minister again.”

“It is the gift of a very important man,” Numad said. He reached into a drawer and removed a gold key. “I will give you the address in the Old Town. You are to go there tomorrow exactly at four o’clock and use this gold key to gain admittance. It will become your key to paradise.”

Numad would tell her no more, and her curiosity was unleashed. She couldn’t wait for the following afternoon.

She’d never been into the Old Town before, and for a single girl, the prospect was intimidating. She wandered along mazelike streets that had been created 2,000 years before. Rotting, fly-covered carcasses of sheep hung from some of the store rafters. Rug merchants tried to lure her inside. Many copper merchants hawked their wares as lusty men called out obscenities in Turkish.

As she maneuvered her way along the narrow, cobble-covered streets, she searched for the address. She’d never had such an adventure before, and all the images she could conjure came from the movies—Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, The Adventures of Sinbad, the Caliph of Baghdad.Before reaching this secret hideaway of forbidden pleasures, she was pinched twice by merchants.

Finally, at the designated address, she stood in front of a huge oaken door, feeling a surge of fear as she inserted the gold key into its lock. It worked, and the door opened onto a courtyard paved with cobblestones. Six armed security guards invited her inside, the captain welcoming her, as white doves flew overhead. In the center of the courtyard was a gnarled and ancient olive tree, around which some of the city’s famous blue-and-white Angora cats snoozed.

The captain of the guardsmotioned for her to climb a marble staircase lined with gilded iron banisters. The stately looking door at the top was half open, and she pushed it slightly to enter.

With his back to her, Atatürk said in a low, husky voice, “I knew you would come.”

Without seeing his face, she sensed that the man whose back was turned to her was the ruler of all the Turks. Ever since she’d accepted the Hand of Fátima, she was aware of who had given it to her. The smoke from his hookah drifted over his head. He motioned for her to sit down amid the red and tobacco-colored cushions of the chair next to his.

She came face to face with the great demigod, “the Father of the Turks.” It was said that eighty-five percent of the country’s female population went to bed at night dreaming of being seduced by this great warrior.

He generously extended his water pipe to her, and she attempted to smoke it, coughing as she did. He also gave her a gold- and emerald-encrusted cup filled with raki. This time, she drank from it without coughing.

He clapped his hands and six dancing girls suddenly appeared, each wearing see-through veils in a rainbow of colors. At the end of their sensuous dance, the girls dropped their veils, standing nude before Zsa Zsa and Atatürk before disappearing behind a beaded curtain.

“When he dismissed the dancing girls,” Zsa Zsa later said, “Atatürk stood before me and removed his robe. He was completely nude and erect. My clothes came off next. At long last, a man took my virginity, although many others had tried. Atatürk succeeded in doing what my husband never did. He made a woman of me on that hot afternoon of long ago.”

In a memoir, she wrote, “He dazzled me with his sexual prowess and seduced me with his perversions. Atatürk was very wicked. He knew exactly how to please a young girl. He was a professional lover, a god, a king. I was thrilled to lose my virginity to him.”

All other details of that hot afternoon had to be pieced together from slithers of impressions she told to friends over the years, and from a few indiscretions she’d revealed on talk shows with the likes of Jack Parr or Johnny Carson.

She described his nude body as being a rich and sensual brown.He was her fantasy image of a shiek as popularized in American movies starring Rudolph Valentino. He had long lashes over eyes that seemingly pierced her body. His thinning hair was coal black, his nose perhaps a bit too wide, his lips perhaps too thin. But his body was in excellent shape. He was strong and gracefully proportioned. His chest tapered to a slight Vat the waist, with a perfectly flat stomach. He moved with an animal’s ease. His sex was long, sleek, and heavy. In all, it was male beauty combined with savagery. “My Hungarian beauty,” he told her. “We will begin by massaging every part of our bodies with our tongues.”

He told her that after all the epic battles in which he’d engaged, life had become a bore. As related by Atatürk’s biographer, Andrew Mango, Atatürk informed his private secretary, “I’m bored to tears. I am usually alone during the day. Everybody is at work, but my work hardly occupies an hour. Then I have the choice of sleeping, if I can, reading, or writing something. Life here is a prison, where I play billiards by myself as I wait for dinner. I face the same people, the same faces, the same talk.”

“Your boredom is over,” she reportedly told him. “I am the new girl in town. I never knew a man was capable of giving a woman such pleasure. But I fear I’ve begun with the best. After you, it will be a downhill ride for me.”

“Your husband does not satisfy you?” he asked.

“The marriage has never been consummated,” she said.

“What Burhan needs, perhaps, is this beautiful young boy from Damascus who has been imported to my palace,” Atatürk said. “He is trained in all the exotic delights. I tried him myself. While Burhan is occupied with his comely buttocks, I will have you at four o’clock every afternoon. Do you agree to that, my fair lady?”

“I will live for the striking of the hour when I can insert that gold key into that oaken door out front,” she said. “It is the key to such joy and ecstasy I never expected to experience in my lifetime.”

***

EVA

After two failed romances, Eva, in Budapest, was ready for “the third ride on the carousel.”

She’d been attending the Forsthner Girls Institute in Budapest, but had grown tired of it. More than ever, she wanted to pursue her ambition to become an actress on the stage.

For about six weeks, she became involved with a late middle-aged Pál Sztójay, a minor theater director. “The only role he wanted me to play was on the casting couch. Promises, promises, and awful sex. My dashing Hussar, Paul Yankovich, had spoiled me. When Sztójay cast a minor play with an ideal role in it for me, and gave it to some other actress, I dumped the pudgy dumpling.”

“With no lover in sight, I had only one thing to look forward to, and that was Zsa Zsa flying in from Turkey.”

From her base in Ankara, Zsa Zsa had announced that she intended to visit Budapest with her husband, Burhan, for the Hungarian regent’s politically important “Flying Day Party.”

“What is that?” Eva asked her mother.

“As Zsa Zsa explained it, Regent Horthy’s three gorgeous sons are throwing a Flying Day Party, meaning that all sorts of important people will be flying into Budapest—princes, aristocrats, diplomats. Many will wing their way here in their private planes. The gala is being staged in the gardens of the King’s Palace.”

[The Regent who ruled Hungary in the 1930s was Miklós Horthy de Nagybánya, who had once been commander-in-chief of the Austro-Hungarian Navy.

Despite her status as a (persecuted) Jew, Zsa Zsa was politically naïve at the time. She seemed unaware that Horthy in 1938 had passed the first Hungarian anti-Jewish Law, limiting the numbers of Jews in any one profession to twenty percent and reducing their role in government. The Regent had proclaimed that “I have been an anti-Semite throughout my life. I have never had any contact with Jews. I found it intolerable they dominate factories, banks, hold large fortunes, even control much of the theater and other business enterprises.”

Under pressure from Hitler, Horthy wouldeventually enact even more strident laws, reducing Jews to only five percent of Hungarian commerce, a decree that led to 250,000 Jews losing their jobs. A Third Jewish Law,passed in August of 1941, prohibited Jews from marrying non-Jews. A Jewish man who had non-marital sex with a non-Jewish woman faced three years in prison.

In time, of course, the Gabors were confronted with the enforced foreclosure of their jewelry stores.]

With her husband, Zsa Zsa arrived in Budapest as a guest of the powerful Horthy family. Eva met her at the airport, falling into her older sister’s arms.

Belge seemed stunned by Eva’s blossoming beauty. For a diplomat, he said something spontaneous and undiplomatic. “I see now that I married the wrong sister.” When she heard that, Zsa Zsa did not speak to her husband for the rest of the day.

Back at the Gabor villa, Zsa Zsa reunited with Jolie. But within the hour, tension arose. Both Eva and Jolie just assumed they would be Zsa Zsa’s guest at the Horthy gala. “I have no control over the guest list,” ZsaZsaprotested. “Neither of you is invited.”

On the following night, a spectacularly dressed Zsa Zsa entered the garden of the Regent’s Palace, facing the jealous stares of the other female guests. “I was a vision in diamonds and shocking pink,” she said. “Even Burhan said I had never looked more glamorous.”

“By eleven o’clock that evening, I had been propositioned at least eighteen times, by everybody from the French ambassador to all three of the Horthy sons. The ambassador from Italy wanted to take me away to his estate in Tuscany.”

“My most serious proposal came from Prince Fabrizio Pignatelli. When he learned that I was interested in titles, he told me the titles I would inherit if I married him: Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, 18th Duca diTerranova, 16th Principe di Noia, 16th Principe di Castelvetrano, Principe di Maida, Principe di Valle, Duca di Bellosguardo, Duca di Girifalco, Duca di Lacconia, Duca d’Orta, Marchese di Cerchiara, Marchese d’Avola, Marchese della Favara, Marchese di Caornia, Marchese di Borghetto, Barone di Casteltermini, Barone di Menfi, and Patrizio Napoletano.”

Back at the Gabor villa, frustrated and fuming, Eva was still furious that she had not been invited. She’d retired to bed early with a platter of scallions and salami, which she consumed while listening to loud American music. Her face was covered with her mother’s cold cream.

When the phone rang, Jolie picked it up to hear Zsa Zsa’s eager voice. “Oh, Nuci, I have met the most beautiful man ever created on the planet Earth. He is absolutely divine, a Norse god, a Swedish prince. He towers over me at six feet, four. He has gorgeous honey blonde hair and eyes as blue as the sky. His suit, and of this I’m certain, hides a body that would have put Apollo to shame.”

“That’s vonderful, dahlink,” Jolie said. “You know I’m planning to leave Vilmos, and I have been wanting to find a new man to replace him.”

“No, no, Nuci,” Zsa Zsa said. “This man is for Eva, not for you.”

“How disappointing,” Jolie said.

“The Horthy party is breaking up and going over to the Ritz for dancing all night. Tell Eva to make herself gorgeous. In an hour, I want her standing in the lobby of the Ritz looking positively ravishing. I’ll introduce her to body beautiful, although I really wanted him for myself, but…oh well. Since I’m such a devoted sister, and dour Burhan is my escort, I’m giving away this divine catch to my baby sister. Get her ready!”

In Eva’s bedroom, Jolie confronted a daughter reeking of onions. Within the hour, Jolie had wiped the cream from Eva’s face, made her up to look like Jean Harlow, and attired her in a long Biedermeier gown with a fetching bonnet. “She was a vision in emerald green crowned by golden blonde hair. I decorated her with some of my most precious rubies and diamonds, plus some high heels modeled after a pair worn by Mussolini’s mistress.”

Two days earlier, Jolie had purchased a Steyr, a small German car that locals called “The Bedbug.” Without a license, Eva drove it to the entrance of the Ritz, where a doorman parked it for her. Adjusting her gown and checking her makeup one final time, Eva entered the lobby, where she immediately encountered Zsa Zsa and Burhan.

Within minutes, Zsa Zsa escorted her to the Ritz Bar where Erik Valdemar Drimmer was having a drink by himself.

“Your Excellency,” Eva said, curtsying before him.

“I’m no royal,” he said, holding her hand. Jolie had heard Zsa Zsa incorrectly. She had compared Drimmer to a prince, not meaning that he was actual royalty.

“Oh, I see,” Eva said, covering her disappointment. “Prince or not, I was awed by his beauty. He told me he was awed by my beauty. Without being immodest, I could swear that we were the most beautiful couple ever to be seen together in Budapest.”

As Eva chatted “with my new love,” she learned he wasn’t a doctor, as Zsa Zsa had said, but in training to be an osteopath. “Actually, right now I’m a chiropractor to the stars at MGM. I pound the flesh of some of the biggest stars in Hollywood. Greta Garbo is my best-known client, although the name of Clark Gable is not unknown to me. My clients on occasion include Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, Jeanette MacDonald, Joan Crawford, Spencer Tracy, and Katharine Hepburn.”

As Eva soon found out, one of Drimmer’swealthy clients had flown him to Budapest and had gotten him an invitation to the Horthy party.

Eva would later write, “Resisting Erik was useless. Surrender was the only course for me.”

Years later, she admitted that she spent three days and three nights in Drimmer’sroom at the Ritz. “We didn’t need to go out. There was always room service. He had only a short time before he had to fly back to Hollywood.”

He’d been married before, and was in the process of getting a divorce in Mexico.

“Two hours after meeting him at The Ritz, he was making love to me,” Eva claimed. “It was an all-night event. He was perfect evidence that God did not create all men equal. He was more beautiful out of his clothes than in them. Fortunately, I had been broken in by my Hussar; otherwise, I could not have kept up with him. He was insatiable.”

As the glow of a rosy dawn colored the early morning sky of pre-war Budapest, Erik proposed marriage to Eva.

Over breakfast, he promised to return to her in Budapest as soon as he could.

“At the airport, I clung to him and cried and then cried some more,” Eva said years later. “Ingrid Bergman’s pain on leaving Humphrey Bogart at the airport in Casablanca had nothing on me. My only hope was that he’d write me a love letter every day.”

“As he flew away, I thought of him massaging all those nude movie stars. My future husband facing a naked Garbo. I’d heard she was a secret lesbian, so maybe my beautiful Erik would be safe. But he was also placing his manly hands on a nude Joan Crawford. I just knew that brazen hussy, who was known to have fucked every male star at MGM except Lassie, wouldn’t keep her hands to herself.”

“I looked up at the sky and prayed that my Norse god would soon descend on a chariot from Valhalla and rescue me from this dreary world.”

***

JOLIE

With all three of her daughters involved in a relationship of some sort, Jolie decided it was time to divorce Vilmos at long last. There was one major problem: She had no money.

She wanted to set up a business of her own, and a friend of hers proposed she invest $30,000 in a newly established film company based in Paris.

It took a lot of persuading, but she finally convinced Vilmos to sell one of the five houses he owned in Budapest and give her the investment money.

Within six weeks, the film studio had made no movies, but had accumulated a mountain of debts. She had to write off her venture into show business as a total failure.

“At forty, I was too old to become an actress, so I hoped to work behind the camera,” she said. “Alas, it was not meant to be.”

Jolie’s mother, Francesca Tilleman, advised her to return to the family business, which was jewelry. Once again, she approached Vilmos, threatening to leave him if he didn’t give her the seed money to open a jewelry store.

She finally persuaded him to finance her new venture. Naming her shop “Jolie,” she opened it at Kigyó Utca, the most fashionable street in Budapest.

By Christmas of 1938, she had increased her staff to fifteen sales girls, each selected because of her beauty. “Of course, they weren’t as pretty as my daughters.”

Jolie had very good marketing skills, even producing costume jewelry copied after the old court jewels of the Kingdom of Hungary. “What Bulgari is to Rome, Jolie, my shop, was to Budapest,” she said. Business was so good she opened another shop around the corner. With the profits, she bought five houses in Pest, which she rented to tenants.

As she later claimed, “My shops made me rich. It was time to divorce Vilmos, and after weeks of pleading, he finally consented.”

For moral support she sent Magda an airplane ticket, flying her in from Warsaw to be with her parents on the day they were scheduled for an appearance in divorce court.

Even before the divorce, Jolie had rented an apartment, and divided up the antiques and Oriental rugs which had adorned the villa they had occupied, taking special care to retrieve her beloved crocheted Richelieu tablecloth. She made sure she retained the finest pieces for herself, which caused her relatively small apartment to overflow with possessions.

She told Vilmos that he was now free to carry on an open relationship with his secretary, a woman named Magda, the same as their oldest daughter.

Their daughter, Magda, went with them to court, and their chauffeur, Janos, drove them there. With a minimum of paper work, the divorce was granted. Magda waited in the family car, sitting up front with Janos.

When Jolie and Vilmos emerged from the courthouse, they got into the back seat together. Finally, Vilmos told the woman who had just become his ex-wife, “I will take you home, Jolie.”

Five minutes later, as Magda reported in a letter to Zsa Zsa, she saw her parents “kissing madly like two lovebirds.”

After dropping Magda off, Vilmos told her, “Jolie and I are going to dine. After that, we may spend the night together.”

***

MAGDA

Back in Warsaw, Magda found that she and her count were growing increasingly estranged. She wanted to retain her title as the Countess of Warsaw, but Jan, for nights in a row, didn’t come home. She suspected he had other women, although he kept telling her he was preparing his regiment for the imminent invasion of Hitler’s forces from the West.

In her letters to Magda, Jolie said that she had lunch with Vilmos every day and that he came to her apartment almost every night to dine.

As the months went by, all of Jolie’s daughters learned that she frequently spent the night in Vilmos’ large apartment, where he’d moved after selling the Gabor villa.

Even after the war came, Jolie and Vilmos maintained conjugal visits. Then one day, Joliejourneyedto Györ, a small town lying between Budapest and Vienna to the west. She had arranged to open a shop there.

There, she met a young man who had never been married. His name was Paul Savosdy.

***

ZSA ZSA

Following the surrender of her virginity, Zsa Zsa became a frequent visitor to Atatürk’s secret hideaway in Ankara’s Old Town. If Belge knew about her affair,he never confronted her with it. After all, he was her husband in name only.

Nearly all their rendezvous time was conducted in private. Only once did they venture out of the city. He ordered his chauffeur to drive them to a scenic bend in the Sakarya River, thirty miles from Ankara. He wanted to look once again at the battleground where, in August of 1921, his army had fought back the invading Greeks in a great conflict called “the longest pitched battle in history.” Within two months after the Battle of Sakarya, Atatürk had proclaimed establishment of the Republic of Turkey.

Almost without realizing it, Zsa Zsa became what she later labeled “the Mata Hari of Turkey.”

After sex in the afternoon, Atatürk would quiz her about those long political meetings of the Young Turks at the Belge villa. As she later wrote, “He would question me ceaselessly about the secret meetings held in our house.”He did more than that, ordering her to spy on the young men.

“Many of the Young Turks hated Atatürk and called him a despot,” she said. “Three of the hotheads actually advocated the overthrow of Atatürk by assassination.”

She reported all of this secret information to her lover, the dictator. At one point when she noticed that a trio of plotters never turned up again at any of the meetings in her villa, she asked her husband about them.

He looked at her very sternly, perhaps not aware that she may have indirectly led to their deaths. “Each of these young men, my friends and supporters, were found beheaded. It is not known who did it. I suspect fanatical supporters of Atatürk learned they were plotting against him. We will not speak of this matter again. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Your Excellency,” she said.

In her second memoir, Zsa Zsa claimed that the secret information that she passed on to Atatürk “did not lead to the death of any of the men who had been guests in our house.” That statement, of course, was blatantly false.

In exchange for her Mata Hari style services, Zsa Zsa stated that her lover gave her “lessons in love, in passion, and in intrigue.”

Throughout the rest of her life, she continued to assert a familiar refrain: “Atatürk ruined for me every other man I would ever love, or try to love.”

***

One night, Belge appeared depressed. He had learned that a Turkish mission from Ankara was being sent to Cairo for meetings with King Farouk of Egypt. He had wanted to lead that corps, but apparently was about to be passed over in favor of his brother-in-law, Yakup.

The following afternoon, Zsa Zsa informed Atatürk of her husband’s secret desire to lead the Turkish delegation to Egypt.

Shortly thereafter, when Belge arrived back at their home, he seemed bursting to tell Zsa Zsa about a phone call he’d received from Atatürk. “I can’t tell you what he said. You tell everybody everything you know.”

After some arguments, she finally coerced him to reveal that Atatürk had asked him, instead of Yakup, to lead the diplomatic mission to Cairo.

She later confessed, “It was all I could do to refrain from telling him that I was the reason behind Atatürk’sdecision. She later wrote, “What have the great women of history—Pompadour, Du Barry, and Marie Antoinette—what have they on me?”

She was delighted when Belge informed her that she would accompany him on his diplomatic mission to Cairo. She immediately began readying a wardrobe. “I planned to create a sensation in Egypt.”

A few weeks later, their Turkish airplane set down at the Cairo International Airport, where they were welcomed by dignitaries from the Egyptian government and driven by limousine to the Turkish Embassy, where they were installed in a lavish suite.

That night she and Belge had been designated as the guests of honor at Farouk’s palace where he was presenting a lavish banquet for them. In its aftermath, comparisons to the debut of her adventure with King Zogbecame obvious.

The personnel at the Turkish embassy were dazzled by Zsa Zsa’s beauty and assigned her a makeup artist—“the best in Cairo”—plus a talented hairdresser, both of them male. In addition, she was presented with two servant girls to assist her in her bath and to dress in her a sequined, Asian-inspired, lipstick red gown that fitted her like a glove. Trimmed in black, the gown came to a tapering V right below her ample cleavage. The scarlet-colored high heels she wore were already being defined in Hollywood as “Joan Crawford fuck-me shoes.”

The embassy also provided her with an aide, Kálmán Bárdossy, to instruct her on details associated with King Farouk and Egyptian protocol. She found him delightful, a font of information about all aspects of the Egyptian regime. He was very effeminate, claiming that his boyfriend worked as a security guard at the palace—“and knows every time a cockroach crosses the floor over there.”

Her dialogues with Bárdossy evolved into a good example of Zsa Zsa’s easy going relationships, and in some cases, friendships, with homosexual men, many of whom she was to meet within the context of makeup, hairdressing, dress design, interior decoration, and as actors and support systems in the movie colony.

He told her that Farouk’s formal title was, “His Majesty, Farouk I, by the Grace of God, King of Egypt and Sudan, Sovereign of Nubia, Sovereign of Kordofan, and Sovereign of Darfur.”

He filled her in on the vital statistics associated with the king. Farouk had been born in 1920, which would make him thirty-eight years old. He was starting to put on weight as a result of his prodigious appetite—for example, he consumed 600 oysters a week.

Partly as a result of his education in Woolwich, England, she could converse with him in English.

His coronation as king occurred when he was sixteen years old. Since that time, he’d become a hedonist, obsessively pursuing glamour and diversion. “He doesn’t even know the number of palaces he has,” claimed Bárdossy. “His appetite for food is matched only by his appetite for sex. Although married, he dates many beautiful young women. He specifically prefers twelve-year-old virgins. He also owns the largest collection of pornography in the world.”

As for his politics, Bárdossy told Zsa Zsa that Farouk plannedto remain officially neutral if war was declared. “But he’s partial to Hitler because he resents the British occupation of his country.”

“What about his wife?” she asked. “I’m not so much interested in politics.”

He has only recently married,” Bárdossy said. “She is known as Queen Farida. Before that, she was a beautiful woman named Safinaz Zulficar, and she’s only a year younger than the king. Both of them have a fondness for furnishings inspired by the court of Louis XV of France. The diplomatic corps mockingly calls these garish, overgilded reproductions ‘Louis Farouk’”

At the sumptuous banquet Farouk staged for the Turkish mission, the king asked Zsa Zsa to sit next to him at the head table, relegating Belge to a seat at the far endof the dining room. During his feast, he paid special attention to her ample breasts on display.

She knew little about Egypt except for the legend of Cleopatra. Farouk amused her by telling her exploits of Egypt’s final Pharoah, the last of the Ptolemaic dynasty.

He said that one notorious night,Cleopatra had ordered ninety-six of the palace guards to make love to her. Zsa Zsa immediately demanded that Farouk explain how that was physically possible. Apparently, he delivered a rather graphic answer, in which he said that the men had been ordered “to work themselves up until they were ready to explode right before penetration. They operated on a rapid, factory-style assembly line, unquestionably fulfilling their obligations to Her Majesty.”

After the banquet, Belge retired to the library with the Egyptian ministers. Remaining behind, Farouk invited Zsa Zsa to see his coin collection, one of the rarest in the world. In his heavily guarded chamber, he also displayed some of his choice gemstones to her, especially when he heard that her family in Budapest were jewelers.

“My great dream is to purchase the pear-shaped, 94-karat ‘Star of the East' diamond” he told her. “If I can do that, perhaps I’ll present it to you in honor of your beauty.”

[In 1951, Farouk, through New York jeweler Harry Winston, would acquire the fabled diamond. Winston never got paid, and it would take years of litigation before Farouk actually came into full legal possession of the coveted gem.]

The only source for what happened that night at the palace was Bárdossy, who wrote a memoir, The Secret Life of a Demented Pharoah: Farouk of Egypt. He completed it in 1960, eight years after the overthrow of Farouk,Bárdossy submitted his tell-all manuscript to several publishers in both New York and London, each of whom turned it down.

Page after page revealed details about Farouk’s sexual adventures and palace intrigue. Bárdossy’s main source was a security guard at the palace, with whom he was having a sexual relationship.

In his book, Bárdossy devoted one entire chapter to the arrival of Belge and Zsa Zsa in Cairo. He claimed that Zsa Zsa had told him that the lecherous king had raped her after he’d shown her his gem collection.

The king had been accused of rape by other young women, so such an attack would not be out of character for him. Also, in the years to come, Zsa Zsa would also allege rape from other men, notably her second husband, Conrad Hilton, and her pursuer, Frank Sinatra.

Bárdossy maintained that Zsa Zsa never reported Farouk’s attack on her to Belge. Even if she did, there was nothing the ambassador could do, as he was the guest of a dictator (Farouk) on his home territory.

William Stadiem, the biographer of King Farouk, wrote: “As a ladies’ man, Farouk combined elements of Romeo and Buster Keaton, Don Juan and Daddy Warbucks, and Casanova and Caligula. He had a ‘divine right’ approach to the opposite sex. He saw no difference between seducing a woman and giving an order to one of his chambermaids; he expected both to jump to attention.”

Stadiem also asked the question that could have brought death to anyone inquiring when Farouk was the ruler of Egypt: “How miniature was the penis the world loved to snicker and gossip about? Was it really so little? How could the ‘sex king’ have a tiny organ?”

As far as it is known, Zsa Zsa never provided Farouk’s dimensions.

The only other mention of this alleged rape by Farouk appeared in a Paris newspaper in the 1960s when Zsa Zsa reportedly met Farouk’s sister, Princess Fawzia Fuad. Shortly after Zsa Zsa’s visit to Egypt, Fawzia had married Mohammed Reza Pahlavi (1939-1948), the Shah of Iran. Until her divorce, Farouk’s sister had reigned as Queen of Iran.

At the party, it was alleged that Zsa Zsa confronted Farouk’s sister, claiming that her brother raped her during her state visit to Cairo. This has never been proven one way or another, but by that time in her life, Zsa Zsa was audacious enough that she could have confronted her Highness with such an accusation.

There remains one nagging question in the wake of Zsa Zsa’s blitz of Cairo, where she enchanted the corps diplomatique. Did she become impregnated during her short visit?

***

Back in Ankara, Atatürk just wanted to sit and talk to Zsa Zsa about Egypt. For the first time ever, he showed no sexual interest in her. He seemed sick and tired. When she asked about his health, he at first told her that he had eaten some bad food.

He admitted he suffered from a reoccurrence of malaria, which he had contracted in Egypt in 1911 when en route to the war against the Italians in Libya.

A strange man was present with him one day at his hideaway. Atatürk finally admitted it was his physician. He was under a doctor’s care, suffering from cirrhosis of the liver, which had turned his skin a sickly jaundiced yellow. Not only that, but he had a bad heart; his kidneys were inflamed; and angina had evolved into a serious health issue.

His paunch had thickened considerably. He was also plagued with headaches, and he had frequent nosebleeds. Even so, he was still alert and searching for answers to his questions, but Zsa Zsa feared that more and more he was turning to bottles of raki for solace.

Shortly after her return to Ankara, Atatürk informed her that he was departing for Istanbul on business. He kissed her goodbye.

A few days later, on November 10, 1938, as she emerged from her riding club, she heard a large fat woman running, screaming, through the streets. In Turkish, she shouted, “El Ghazi, EL GHAZI! He’s dead!”

Zsa Zsa rushed back into the office of the riding stable where she heard the news of Atatürk’s death at the Marmora Palace in Istanbul.

Suddenly, a familiar voice was heard broadcasting from the radio. It was that of her husband, Burhan Belge, who announced to the world that Atatürk “entered immortality this morning.”

She walked away from the stables, wandering alone across a field. She was shedding tears, not just for Atatürk, but for herself. She knew that with the passing of Atatürk, her life in Turkey was over.

During the weeks ahead, she had to figure out how to extricate herself from her role as Belge’s wife.

With a war coming on, she told friends, “The lights are going out in Europe. They may not come on again for my generation.”

There was still a beacon of hope for her:

AMERICA.

Hrabia (i.e., Count) Jan de Bychowsky,

husband of Hrabina (Countess) Magda Bychowsky, prior to an aerial dogfight against the Nazis.

With delight, Magda, then a newlywed Polish countess, wrote Jolie in Budapest. “Nuci, you didn’t tell me: men have such marvelous plumbing, and can do so much with it!”

When Zsa Zsa met her new brother-in-law with the impossible name (see the two upper lines in the photo above), she claimed that he practically undressed her with his eyes on the way to the Belge family villa.

“I was atrracted to him because of his sexy mustache,” she recalled. “When a Turk wants a woman, he lets her know it.”

The photo above depicts the cover of his novel, Stranger, which literary critics define as the most important testimonial to the plight of Turkish soldiers during World War I ever written.

Longtime character actress Maria Ouspenskaya (photo above), as remembered by Zsa Zsa, could have interpreted the role of Madame Belge, her new mother-in-law.

Fresh from the spotlights of Vienna, where she’d enjoyed success as a soubrette in a major-league operetta, Zsa Zsa was not amused by this imposing figure.

Neither was Madame Belge impressed with her son’s foreign bride.

Buxom, westernized, and with the distinct impression that she was universally viewed as a sexual trinket, Zsa Zsa received some early advice from her new father-in-law, who resembled Adolphe Menjou (photo above). “It’s the patriotic duty of every Turk to surrender his wife to the Turkish dictator.”

Zsa Zsa listened carefully.

HUSSAR (def.) A macho, dick-swinging, hell-raising, horse-riding,usually-dead-before-he-was-30 sex symbol of the Great Hungarian Plain.

Years after her affair with him, Eva remembered her lover, “Ferenc” (aka Paul Yankovitch) as having looked like this.

When she arrived, disheveled, in Warsaw to meet the extended family of her oldest daughter’s new husband, Jolie said she looked like the Bride of Frankenstein.

(Photo above: Elsa Lanchester as The Bride of Frankenstein in 1953.)

Later, after her close inspection of the Bychowsky family’s crumbling castle and demolished fortune, a horrified Jolie said she felt, as well as looked like, the actress in the photo above.

Embassy wife: Zsa Zsa in the gardens of her home on Embassy Row in Ankara.

As a means of keeping her figure, Zsa Zsa went riding on her horse, Fatushka, at a stable in a posh neighborhood of Ankara, nearly every day.

When she left her well-connected husband for a safer life in America, she feared that he would order that her horse be shot.

On the eve of war, sexy dalliances were commonplace among the very upper-crust along Ankara’s Embassy Row :

Sir Percy Loraine, 12th Baronet, and British Ambassador to Turkey, found Zsa Zsa “the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.”

Zsa Zsa met Charles de Gaulle at an embassy dinner in Turkey. “He knew all things French except French kissing,” she later said. “I taught him that.”

“Jackie Kennedy went to Paris and enthralled him. But I enthralled him long before her.”

Geraldine of Albania, half Hungarian, half American, was hailed as the loveliest queen in Europe at the time of her ascension to the throne of Albania.

“The king himself told me I was more beautiful than his queen,” Zsa Zsa alleged.

On a state visit with her ambassador husband, Zsa Zsa mesmerized King Zog of Albania, who claimed he’d divorce his queen for the chance of marrying her.

“I was King Zog’s Cinderella, and he lusted after me. On those buggy rides in the park, he had roving hands.”

Albania’s Royal Family(left to right)King Zog, Crown Prince Leka Zogu, and Queen Géraldine.

In 1939, they fled into exile when Mussolini’s army invaded Albania, putting an end to their kingdom.

Kemal Atatürk was the Father of Turkey, a warrior of great stamina and power who devoured beautiful young women. He is depicted in the upper photo as a warrior and as he looked (lower photo) when Zsa Zsa enchanted him in Ankara.

The dictator and his Ambassador’s wife met frequently at his secret hideaway in Ankara’s Old City. “He taught me all the sexual secrets of the Sultans of the Ottoman Empire,” she later claimed.

He also enlisted her as an unwitting spy within this government, gathering names of younger opponents who resisted him.

One of Ankara’s most visible monuments is the Anitkabir (Atatürk’s Mausoleum). It was built in 1944 in a monumental modernist style sometimes associated with the architectural tastes of Mussolini and Hitler, with an interior clad in gold leaf and intricate mosaics.

It’s Turkey’s most visited monument to the sweeping changes in Turkish society that where catalyzed by the visionary who’s defined today as the Father of Modern Turkey.

Zsa Zsa said, “He was more than a man, more than a dictator. He was a God worshipped as deity by his people.”

Over the decades, some of the most famous men in the world would present jewelry to Zsa Zsa. But her most cherished possession was a replica of the Hand of Fátima that Atatürk had given her when she was a young woman.

He ordered his staff to remove the precious relic from Turkey’s most prestigious museum, the Topkapi.

The legacy of Mustafa Kemal is visible everywhere in Turkey. Most public monuments and the nation’s currency (the Lira) all bear an image of the great leader.

“To me, Atatürk was no mere statue, but a powerhouse of a man who had seduced 2,000 virgins before he got to me, his final virgin, even though I was a married woman at the time,” Zsa Zsa said.

After Eva divorced her first husband, Erik Drimmer, she said “he had the body of Apollo and the head of a Norse god,” and destroyed all pictures of him.

He was a chiropractor whose most favored client was Greta Garbo.

Portraits of King Farouk of Egypt in 1938 (upper photo) and (lower photo) with U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt in 1945.

Middle photo: the brief Faroukdynasty’s heraldic coat of arms.

Although the decadent Farouk was said to have “the tiniest penis in Egypt,” Zsa Zsa always maintained that he raped her when she accompanied Burhan Belge on a diplomatic mission to Cairo.

Jolie

Magda

Zsa Zsa