Bitter Remedy: An Alec Blume Case

by Conor Fitzgerald

  Alina slipped her arms around Nadia’s neck. ‘Oh, please, yes.’

  Nadia detached herself gently. ‘I don’t know how it works yet, but I am pretty sure that if they see we are close, they will separate us. Like in the factories? The bosses don’t want solidarity. So maybe sometimes we are going to have to pretend not to be together, not to care. I might be wrong, but be prepared to do that.’

  ‘What about Italy? Will we go to Italy together?’

  Nadia put her arm around Alina’s thin waist. ‘I don’t think that is up to us any more. From here on, for quite a long time, other people will be making the decisions.’

  ‘But they could send us to Italy?’

  ‘Of course they could. And someday we’ll be free to do what we want.’

  ‘What about the Vidal Sassoon Academy?’

  ‘I am sure it exists, Alina. And maybe you’ll be working in it someday soon. But between now and then, be prepared for some things you won’t like.’

  Alina turned her face into Nadia’s shoulder. ‘Just make sure you stay as near me as possible.’

  Nadia stroked Alina’s long straight hair, red in the sun, purple down here where the walls were painted green and the light came from a porthole looking out over a blue sea.

  They spent the rest of the journey up on deck. Nadia thought it might be good idea, or at least morally rewarding, to hide from Olga and make the fat bitch worry, but Olga never came looking for them. She did not need to. She had their passports.

  Nadia had had a vague idea of Istanbul being located on the southern rim of the Black Sea, and was confused as the ferry entered the Bosporus Straits, and they sat watching land glide by, with people out and about walking with their children, climbing up to round towers as if this were perfectly normal. Nor had she been expecting to see quite so many ships. At one point, they were sailing so close to the land that she considered jumping and swimming what seemed like a few metres, where she could join the picnickers and dog walkers. They rounded a point and suddenly the water stretched far and wide, and there was no question of jumping. The shrubby land and excursionists had gone and now it was all coastal city, to the left and right and straight ahead.

  Alina, who had been lying with her head on Nadia’s lap, apparently asleep, sensed the movement and excited hubbub of ship passengers nearing the end of their journey, opened her eyes, and sat up. She pointed leftwards across the water at the jumble of white and grey apartment blocks and dark green trees. ‘Is that Istanbul?’

  Nadia was not entirely sure, but said it was.

  Alina was interested now, she stood up and looked westwards towards Europe. ‘Also on the other side?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘I didn’t know Istanbul was so big.’

  Neither did Nadia. The buildings looked prosperous from here, the sun was bright, and the water sparkled. As the Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge came into sight, hope and happiness rushed into her lungs, pushing out the dread she had felt in the cabin below deck.

  They passed under the bridge, and another one came into sight. It was as they passed below, Alina looking solemnly and reverentially up at it, that the anxiety returned with redoubled force. Nadia had never been so far from home. She was in a boat sailing down a sea in the middle of a vast city. It seemed impossible that she should ever return. She went over and embraced Alina, who had fallen silent in the presence of the bridges, and tried to play the adult soothing a child. But when Alina returned the embrace, Nadia found herself burying her face into her friend’s shoulder and seeking as much comfort as she was giving.

  Olga had disembarked with the other six girls and was waiting for them. Nadia felt so much like a recalcitrant student on a day trip that she had to fight the urge to apologize. They breezed through customs and were divided into two taxis. Five of the girls were bundled into one, and Olga leaned over and gave the driver instructions. The taxi drove off and was immediately lost amidst the chaos of other taxis and vehicles of every description, from sleek German saloons to Russian trucks that smelled of home-heating oil. Then Alina, Nadia, and another girl, a wisp of a thing who seemed to be below the school-leaving age, squeezed into the back of a second taxi, sick with anticipation, longing, and dread. Olga sat in front, and, amazingly, started talking Turkish to the driver. She turned round and beamed at them.

  ‘You all look a bit tired from the journey, but I am sure I look much worse!’ She laughed, and said something to the taxi driver, perhaps a translation of her remark. The driver merely grunted.

  Fatigue and sensory overload from the sights and smells of Istanbul, now twinkling as the evening drew in, and, more than anything else, the constant unremitting noise of the place caused Nadia to become detached from and almost indifferent to all the many things that happened next.

  A man with fingers that smelled like rotten potatoes forced open her mouth at one point and stared down her throat, then fingered her teeth. An old man with a wet moustache weighed her breasts in his hands, his whole demeanour more medical than lustful, though he was clearly saying something disgusting in Turkish, a language she already hated, to his table companions. All the time Olga stood there, nodding her approval, chatting in Turkish, and, right in front of them, counting out euro banknotes.

  When they had walked into the bar, Olga had sat the girls down at a table, mysteriously empty in such a crowded, small place, and ordered them sweetened drinks. She did not ask them what they wanted. The barman arrived in a filthy apron and set down warm cans of cola and hot cups of apple tea. Nadia didn’t like the tea, but she was thirsty, and the wait was long, and eventually she had drunk it all. The girls were called up one by one, and they went and stood by a table with five men.

  When Nadia, the second of the group to be called, was standing there, she felt so overwhelmingly tired that it occurred to her the tea might have been drugged. Some sort of docility drug. Or maybe not. For some reason, a thought that should have been inconsequential had lodged itself foremost in her mind: it seemed impossible she had travelled all this way to such a strange place to end up in such a small bar. It was smaller than the bar beneath her apartment in Onesti. For some reason, this one thought dominated, prevailing even over fear and disgust.

  It was hard even to say who the boss at the table was. They all looked like weak men, but that could not be the case. The one man who had impressed her so far had been the barman who brought them the tea, the glasses small beside his huge hands. When he had arrived at their table, she saw he was young, and strong, and she wondered if she could ask him simply to throw Olga and the men at the table out. Maybe if she could speak the language, she would have said something. But half an hour later, two policemen with ‘Polis’ in huge letters written in white on red across their shoulders came in, and the men at the table did not even change the tone, speed, or loudness of their incomprehensible chatter. Nadia looked up and considered, just considered, running over to them. She caught the barman looking right at her, and she knew he was reading her thoughts as clearly as if they were written on the wall behind.

  At a some point, Nadia realized that the young girl was gone. Alina was still there. She had not seen her walk off or be taken away. Olga showed no sign of having noticed anything. Nadia would later learn that the girl, a scrawny little thing in a polyester yellow skirt, had been transferred to a man who wanted no more than a housemaid for his wife. Sitting there in the bar, the fate of the girl had been decided, and she was whisked off to another part of the black market to learn that abuse and exploitation of young women was not always sexual.

  The district in which Nadia found herself was called Aksaray, where one could get by for days without speaking any Turkish. Russian or Romanian were the languages of the pimps and nightclub owners and many of the women. Turkish was useful for some clients, but even more spoke English. She soon learned to identify the actual English and Americans from the Germans, French, Italians, and Spanish who used English. If she couldn’t understand a word of what they were sa
ying, English was their first language.

  Willingness to accept what was happening was not enough. The gang that ran the girls had to teach them a lesson anyhow, and the preferred tactic was sudden, inexplicable violence. Alina stopped speaking that night and did not start again for six months until the randomized beatings finally became rarer, and the violence was concentrated on the newcomers. For the first few days, she had tried to demonstrate to their pimp, Tamer, that she was willing, though her eyes said otherwise, but that was not the point. It was not even beside the point: it was, in fact, almost as bad as direct rebellion. One of the most important lessons Tamer and his crew had to teach them was that they were not allowed to be willing or unwilling, because both were simply two aspects of freedom.

  At the end of that six-month period, Alina and Nadia were still together, in that they were in the same place, but contact was limited to a few passing glances, and Alina by now showed no sign of wanting to know her or anyone. The owners were Russian and two of the bouncers were Romanian, but by now they all knew not to look for help from anyone. On the contrary, the bouncers were especially to be avoided, because they could listen in to conversations and report back. Although she hated the language and the people and the food, Nadia began to learn Turkish. English she found a shapeless language, basically a set of informal phrases run together, one after the other, without any criterion. It was spoken by tourists in short trousers who had sneaked away from their wives or groups of businessmen who liked to behave as if they were fun-loving and boisterous when drinking together, but turned vicious and demanding when alone. She knew the English she heard was spoken mostly by non-native speakers, but that simply confirmed her feeling that it was a simplified language for the stupid and dishonest.

  And then there were the Arabs. Though they were no worse behaved, Nadia’s whole spirit continued to rebel against them. She had been brought up to despise them, along with Negros and Gypsies, and now look at her.

  In the clubs and bars, they were all referred to as ‘Natasha’, regardless of their real names. Nadia, a variant of Natasha, had a name that her keepers found easy to remember, but she responded quicker to Natasha. She preferred it, because Natasha wasn’t her.

  Once an Arab client, overhearing the pimp call her Nadia, told her in faltering English that her name in Arabic meant wet and tender. It was the one time she refused to service a man, for which she received a beating. Three days later, one of her molars simply cracked in half and fell out, leaving a gaping hole that filled with puss. Her face swelled up so much it squeezed her eyes shut. She was surprised to be taken to the dentist, who referred her to a doctor, who prescribed antibiotics. For three weeks she did not have to do anything, and though she knew this was just their investing in an asset that gave good returns, she could not help but feel grateful.

  Eventually, she and Alina were separated. There was no wrenching scene of parting. One day, Alina was led up to a man in a leather jacket, which must have made him unbearably hot. It was certainly making him smelly and bad tempered. His name was Fyodor. He pulled her onto his knee and continued his conversation, which had something to do with car imports from Italy. Then, instead of going with her into the windowless room at the back, he led her out of the club and into a compact Mercedes A class. He drove up and down several slip roads and ramps to traverse the large highway that ran through the district before crossing the Golden Horn and heading north. Alina understood that Fyodor, who was very young – only a few years older than her – was her new pimp.

  Fyodor, when not wearing his leather jacket, seemed to have a great sense of humour, and appeared to listen to what the girls said, even if he did not listen very hard or for very long being more interested in his over-sized phone. But he liked to try to make them laugh, which he did by telling jokes in a mixture of Russian, Turkish, Romanian, and English, sometimes with a few Italian curse words thrown in. The punchline tended to get lost in translation, but you could always tell when he had reached it because he would peel back his thick lips to reveal gold-tipped teeth and slap the table in helpless mirth. One day, Alina thought she might even have understood the punchline, which had to do with Stalin advising Putin to paint the Kremlin blue.

  Fyodor personally administered fewer beatings but he allowed the customers to be rough with the girls, so things were not much better. One day the barman put an icy beaker of vodka on a steel tray and seeing as Alina was standing there doing nothing, told her to carry it over to Fyodor. She did as she was told, and Fyodor ordered her to sit down.

  He stroked his phone and then her, and started a joke about the Pope. By now she knew it in three different languages, and still didn’t get it. Suddenly, turning serious, he told her in English and Turkish that if she played her cards right, she could soon buy her freedom, and he might even invest something in her to help her on her way. He set out the terms, and estimated that in 18 months, she would have paid off what he had paid to get her, plus the rent and board. He nodded encouragingly and Alina took a chance and asked about Nadia.

  He listened, then told her he had no plans to ‘hire’ any more girls for his club, and for all he knew Nadia had been sold on. Then he reverted to Russian and she lost track of what he was saying, and she simply nodded.

  ‘You didn’t understand me, I can see.’ He traced a line on the frosted glass with his index finger. ‘Some persons are very bad, rau, kötülük, порочный, cattiva gente, you know?’

  She nodded.

  Fyodor pointed an accusing finger at his own chest. ‘Me, no. Not so bad. They kill, you know. Arabs, Italians, Turks. Killers.’

  Offering her freedom, then warning her of the dangers. She was getting wise to the tricks already, but the dangers were no less real for all that. She had heard certain names whispered: the names of people in whose employ no woman wanted to end. There were sadists and killers out there, more interested in pain than gain. People who used large banknotes to snort coke, put gold flakes in their cocktails, and would pay good money for a beautiful young face just for the pleasure of taking a box cutter to it. You were never so bad but there was somewhere worse. She hoped Nadia was OK.

  Chapter 8

  Only tall men can stride, thought Blume, watching the short, balding figure with the waxy skin approach him. The man had hurled open the door with force and violence, like a jealous lover, but then been quite fastidious about closing it. Halfway across the room, he paused to mop his forehead. Lying in his bed, Blume began to wonder if this might not be some sort of creepy doctor, because it certainly could not be Silvana’s fiancé.

  The man came over to Blume’s bedside. ‘Ehhi! Saluti. I’m Niki. Niki Solito.’ He turned round to Silvana, still lingering at the doorway, and ordered her out. ‘Wait for me at the car. I’ll just say hello to the commissioner here.’

  Silvana bent her head down meekly. ‘Don’t be too long, Niki.’

  When she had gone, Niki offered Blume his hand.

  ‘So you’re Silvana’s fiancé?’ he asked, reluctantly taking the proffered hand, which was warm and damp.

  ‘Absolutely.’ Niki affected not to notice Blume’s incredulous tone. Instead, he reached into the pocket of his tight-fitting trousers and produced a small clear bottle of Amuchina disinfectant gel, which he rubbed into his hands, filling the air between them with an insulting lemony scent.

  ‘Only because you are sick,’ he explained. He put the bottle away, stood back, and grinned at him, showing teeth small and white as a child’s. ‘Alec Blume, Alec, Alec, Alec!’ as if he and Blume were old pals meeting after too long an absence.

  ‘Niki, Niki, Niki, Niki,’ replied Blume. ‘How do you spell that?’

  ‘With a K.’

  ‘With a K,’ said Blume, manoeuvring himself to the side of the bed and sitting up. ‘And your surname?’ Automatically, he cast around for his notebook, which wasn’t there.

  ‘Solito.’

  Blume had never owned a shirt as white as Niki’s. The buttons gleamed like
pearls, the massive collar shone in the dim room as if it had its own source of light. Perhaps the whiteness was exaggerated by the contrast with the triangle of sunbed-treated skin, visible down as far as the third unfastened button, where the edge of a blue and red tattoo peeked out. Niki slid his hand in and massaged his breastbone. He caught Blume’s eye.

  ‘I have a condition, but I keep myself fit.’ He slipped his satchel off his shoulder. ‘Very fit,’ he added. ‘In fact, I have come to consider my curse, which is diabetes, the real version not the one fat people get, as a blessing in disguise. Without it, I would not have taken such great care of my body!’

  ‘Well, Niki-with-a-K, Niki with a condition, what are you doing in my room?’ Blume found himself standing on the floor. Without quite realizing it, he had decided to get dressed. The first thing he pulled out of his suitcase, however, was a blister pack of Lyrica lozenges. He muscles were tensed, his eye kept wandering over to the corner of the room and seeing movements where there were none. To be on the safe side, he took three.

  ‘Drugs?’ said Niki, amiably enough.

  Blume ignored him and started getting dressed.

  Niki now tugged at the tail of his white shirt that billowed like a clean sail, executed an elegant pas de valse, put his hands on his hips and stared at Blume, his face flushed with defiance and anticipation, as if he had just been challenged on one of his strong points. ‘What do you think I weigh?’

  Blume peered upwards with the air of a professor disturbed from his studies, then lowered his eyes again, and did not answer.

  ‘No, seriously. How much?’

  Blume glanced at him again. Maybe 70 kilos, he reckoned, about 1.68 metres tall. Blue eyes, thinning fair hair – in his mind he was describing a suspect. ‘I haven’t a clue,’ he said.

  ‘Sixty-seven!’ declared Niki. ‘I am aiming for 62. That’s my ideal weight. Yours?’ He stroked his eyebrows and lifted up the side of his lip with a finger to examine an eye-tooth. Blume folded his arms like a passer-by determined not to pay for a piece of street theatre he has been watching. Seeing as he was getting no response, Niki said, ‘OK, so you couldn’t guess my weight. Here’s an even harder one: how old do you think I am?’