2

ISTANBUL

Saray may sound like Serallo or Seraglio, which is a corruption of the Italian word for “harem,” but forget the scholarly explanations; whenever I mention the “Saray”—and when a Russian says it—it means “warehouse” or “woodshed.” Saray, Russian: a big dumb soulless place; as in, “chtó za saray takoi!” (What a horrid ugly building!) I’ll say it again, the club was no Serallo, just a saray—a put-down, but a sly one, since the name attracted business (there were at least twenty Sarays or Serallos in Istanbul). I saw a lot of them on my walks through the old city, all brothels or strip bars; but I had already seen V.’s and felt no desire to go in.

V.’s was different.

In the Saray with V., surrounded by beautiful women, I was inclined to repeat Nicholas I’s lament: “How can I trust such a villain?”—referring to the Marquis de Custine, most likely after reading his letters. Most of the Saray women were Russian and it was them (or women like them) who had forced the Turkish prostitutes to go on strike protesting unfair competition from these beauties. It’s all documented, they wrote protest letters. Anyone who was in Istanbul at the time knows it’s the truth. About the Russians—have you ever heard such trickery?—Custine actually wrote: “What can I say about Russian women? The ones I have seen thus far have been repulsive … They are short and stout, with shapes cinched under the arms, above their bosoms, which spread loosely beneath their smocks! … These women couldn’t be more hideous! …” I’m with Nicholas I: “How can I trust such a villain?” Leilah was gorgeous, Natalia, sitting at my side, was gorgeous, Maria, Galia, Irina. All Russian. Or eastern European, since V. said that some were Romanian, Croatian, even Serbian, and Macedonian.

All individuals, each with a different kind of charm, different hair, a different neck, different ears: dismissed as “Natashas” by their displaced competitors, christened with this generic term out of a confused jealousy. Any Russian or Slovak was a “Natasha.” Fairly apt, though, since you could close your eyes and pick a girl that way, blind, any one of them, and you couldn’t go wrong. Well, two might have been a little heavy, Miloslava, a Czech, and another girl, Romanian. I say to them: “Don’t go away. I’ll be right back. I’m just off to catch V. while she changes.”

I went up to the rooms. In the hallway was a filthy sofa upholstered in some synthetic fabric covered with fuzzy pills—that’s where I waited for V. She had written to a performance agency in Jerson, answering their ad for a ballet on ice making a Turkish tour. She laughed when she got home to Russia, she wrote, and found the clipping still tacked onto the wallpaper in her room. The agency had mailed her an illustrated brochure, with pictures of the portable ice rinks used for their shows. Turkey is so far south it never snows, and figure skating is a novelty. They would tour for several months. By the end she would have made enough to buy three fur coats, mink or sable, the finest.

When Tiran received letters from these silly country girls, I’m sure he observed an epistolary convention that “no longer reigns” in the West, as it was described in the prologue to one collection of letters. Each time he got a letter, the Armenian would touch it to his forehead before he opened it, to show his respect and gratitude, and when he was done with his reading, he most certainly would kiss it devoutly. For the peoples of the Orient, the author of the prologue affirms, “each letter has the dignity that words have for Paul of Tarsis.” It was the Turk within the Armenian who was responsible for these acts, working the gears and levers to raise his arms, bringing the letter to his head, the gestures of respect. After which he would copy the Russian name onto one of the fraudulent contracts he sent out. Some of the women who received them, like Leilah and Natalia, had no illusions, they knew what they were getting into, what kind of setup this was.

I sank into the sofa, lying with my knees up. In this position, I saw all the women who worked at the Saray, a blonde head appearing at the top of the stairs, then breasts, hips, pelvis, coming down the hallway toward me. This kept me entertained, while I twisted and picked at the little fuzz balls. Chorus girls, I thought, professional dancers, harp strummers. It helped me to think of V. as a chorus girl.

Many of them winked as they went by, glad to see a “boyfriend” there. One of them, Eva, the Serbian, gave me a really broad wink, offering her services, a free quickie, on the window seat. I was sure I could take her there, sweat it out with her for a while, our backs to the hall, she was fast and loose enough (and that wink). None of the women seemed to be pining for rescue. Which is not to say they didn’t want out. V. herself told me about Miloslava, the Czech with the sad face. Miloslava wasn’t among the women downstairs swarming around the bar, some of whom had strong scents—like a lot of the beautiful women you meet in Russia (not that it bothers me).

Miloslava’s story takes place along the Turkey-Bulgaria frontier, in an atmosphere charged by the many conflicts there. By the Bulgarian weight-lifting team, the athletes defecting to Turkey. There was a lot of talk about one guy—small and brawny like everyone in this sport—who got into Turkey, became a citizen, and now competes for them. It was an atmosphere heavy with free-floating hostility that Miloslava got stuck in, and she was shot through with this hatred—like a pizza zapped in a microwave, or a bird fried in midair by a high-voltage radar dish. Miloslava took a chance, hoping she’d get lucky at the border station, that her story would fly: claiming to have lost the passport that was actually in Tiran’s safe. (This was a key point for V.—since Tiran had hers, too—and she kept repeating it, making sure I got it.) Miloslava was staying in a local hotel. Many Bulgarian and Russian women worked there, she discovered, because of all the truckers with long hauls. Probably a good sign, she thought: having women there might relax tensions in this border town. (It was hard for me to imagine this problem with visas and borders. I used to get in fixes like that, but not lately. Nowadays, thanks to my two passports, I can travel from Denmark to Helsinki, or from Brussels to Milan, and I never get stopped, not even once. Then again, I hadn’t tried to cross the border between Turkey and Bulgaria, or between Turkey and Iran—trouble zones, since the Kurdish dispute.) But no, when she got into the line of cars leaving Turkey, Miloslava realized that there was strict control at this checkpoint.

V. always got upset at this point (she told me the story three times): the border guards were trying to speed things up, so they didn’t wait for Miloslava to reach the station, they came up to her car—she wanted to turn and bolt, but could not reenter Turkish territory—and knocked on her window (still friendly), asking for her passport. They waited as she pretended to look in her purse, in the glove compartment, under the seat, and then—instead of letting her go, like they would have if she’d been a man (well, maybe not, the Turks are complete pigs)—they forced her out of the car and took her to the police station, where they had something in store for her. Horrible, slushaesh! (Do you hear me?) Horrible. She wasn’t the first prostitute without papers caught at that post. At midnight they changed shifts and another eight guards came in. Six before midnight and all of the second shift, it seemed. “Attempting to leave the country without proper documents.” I don’t know what the fine was in liras, some astronomical sum, with the exchange rate. She must have robbed and killed a customer, they claimed, something like that, and was on the run.

“Boobshe, dúra” (what an idiot), V. said in a low voice, like a child telling a horror story: “They took her money, her clothes, and you know …”