She did not realize that an hour had passed, until Anastasia called. The American answered and handed the phone to Lara. “What is going on?” she asked Lara in Armenian. “Are you okay, dear?”
Anastasia was anxious to take Lara and leave. She had been sitting in the hotel lobby the whole time, and had to turn down a couple of solicitors, not to mention the unpleasant argument that she had with the concierge, who told her she could not sit in the main lobby and had to go to the lobby bar, and even at the bar they would not let her sit at one of the sofas nor at a table, but made her take the corner barstool.
“Anastasia, I’m fine,” said Lara. “But he is talking to me in English and I don’t understand what he wants.”
Anastasia was happy that there was no stress in her voice. “Give the phone back to him,” she said. She had had several American and British clients in the past few years and knew enough English to get by.
“I love this girl,” said the American on the phone. “I want her to spend the night with me.”
Anastasia was on full alert. Could she turn this into something much bigger with Viktor? Could she negotiate away half, not just a third, of her debt?
“All night with her very expensive,” she said slowly. “How much you pay?”
The maximum that Anastasia herself had ever charged for a whole night was $750. But she was prepared to sell Lara for more than double that amount.
“Name your price,” said the American.
“Two thousand,” said Anastasia without hesitation. “Cash. Now.”
“Okay,” said the American. “Come up and collect.”
He had already counted the money when Anastasia knocked on the door. Twenty one-hundred dollar bills. He did not seem to be bothered by the fact that he had already paid two-hundred dollars.
“Two thousand,” he said, handing her the wad of cash. “But do not bother us until noon tomorrow. Now, please leave.”
“Fine, I leave,” said Anastasia in hesitant, broken English, “but I talk to her first.”
“Make it quick,” said the American, and disappeared into the bathroom.
“Lara, aziz jan, vonts es? Lara, dear, how are you?” asked Anastasia. “Is everything okay?” Anastasia’s Armenian accent, especially when she used colloquial phrases, amused Lara.
“Ha, normal. Yes, all is normal.” Lara’s voice and tone were bland but matter-of-fact and in control.
It was almost scary, but also comforting for Anastasia. It did not seem that she needed to worry about the young girl tonight. “He wants you to stay here all night,” said Anastasia. “I agreed. It is a lot of money. Are you okay with that?”
“Stay here all night?” asked Lara.
“Yes. Just stay with him, hold him and go to sleep. He’ll probably do it one more time in the morning. That’s all. I’ll come pick you up around noon.
“Okay,” said Lara. She had the same unfamiliar feeling of empowerment that she had felt at the beginning of the evening.
Anastasia decided against disclosing to Viktor the full price that she got for Lara, which was extremely risky. She had never lied to the Ayvazians about money before, but this was a special case. Aside from wanting to keep a part of the money for her and Lara, she did not want this experience to cause exaggerated expectations. That prospect scared her the most. She knew she would always have to live up to this performance, but what if this was just a fluke, the result of a stupid infatuation on the part of the American? She told Viktor she got $1,200 for Lara for one night, and gave him the money. That was still a very good price for an all-nighter. She kept $500 for herself, and gave Lara $300 in addition to the $200 that she had received from the American, but told her she would keep Lara’s share with her, because for sure someone would go through her purse in the coming days. They could never explain that type of money. This was a fortune for all involved.
Anastasia thus got her first taste of running a girl rather than working herself. She found it incredible and highly addictive. She imagined having twenty or thirty girls who would work for her, like Ano, the famous pimp in Dubai, was rumored to have. The income could be thousands and thousands every day. By the pure coincidence of a lucky first trick, Anastasia had stumbled into the world of pimps and managers. But it was not that simple. She would first have to buy the girls from the traffickers or other bosses. If Lara could turn two thousand dollars in one night, what would her contract be worth? Even if she averaged just a thousand a night—that’s over three hundred grand a year, even allowing for off days—what would her contract be worth? If she had the money, would she pay fifty thousand for the contract and hope to more than quadruple it within the year? Anastasia thought, yes, she certainly would.
Already over two months had passed since Lara was brought to Moscow. All paperwork was complete—passport, marriage certificate, and visa. It was time to organize the move to Dubai, but Lara was already performing very well in Moscow. With Anastasia’s help, she was averaging close to a thousand dollars a day. Viktor was taking everything they declared in those days, and paying Lara a $300 a month salary. He sometimes had suspicions that Anastasia was not giving him all the earnings, but was happy with the overall take and decided not to dig deeper for the time being. Besides, in spite of Lara’s success in Moscow, the plan to take her to Dubai was still very much in effect and Anastasia would no longer be able to interfere in her business. She had been instrumental in bringing Lara around, but her usefulness would diminish over time. But there still were a few more details to sort out before Lara could leave. Inoculations and a routine medical checkup were at the top of the list, and Viktor was not rushing. It was the end of August, and Dubai would be smoldering in fifty degrees centigrade heat. The most lucrative client base of expatriates would not arrive for at least another month. So he took his time and enjoyed the money while they waited.
Meanwhile, Viktor had arranged for Lara to start sending some of her money to her mother. They had to keep the mother content, and they had not allowed Lara to talk to her again. They were still not sure how she would behave on the phone. The first phone conversation and the regular money flow would have to be enough to keep the mother at bay. “Never send more than Viktor gives you,” warned Anastasia. “They will find out and ask where you got the money from! You cannot be too careful with them.”
Anastasia had been insisting that they take Lara for a medical checkup. Viktor did not seem to be concerned about that and had dismissed the requests as a waste of time. They had taken her to see their regular doctor, Dr. Melikov, who took care of all their girls in Moscow, around ten days after they brought her to Moscow. He had done a quick routine exam, and dismissed her. That was good enough for Viktor until there was a real complaint, and Lara had none. But Anastasia kept insisting.
“Take her to Melikov for a full checkup,” she kept saying almost every time she saw Viktor. “What do you have to lose? He only did a superficial examination last time. Let him do a thorough checkup and run some tests. She’s been with too many men already. And she really should be on the pill; he should at least prescribe that!”
Viktor finally agreed. One of the bodyguards drove her to Melikov’s office. He deliberately did not tell Anastasia, who was with a client at the time and would not have been able to go with her anyway. Lara had seen Melikov over two months earlier and knew the routine, even though being examined by a male gynecologist had shocked her at first. This time, after the same routine exams, Melikov drew some blood and asked Lara for a urine sample. Then he left her. She waited in the examination room for what seemed a long time. When he returned, he was smiling gently.
“We need to run some more tests just to make sure all is okay.” He said with a grin. “We’ll have to move you to a different room. Keep the hospital gown on; don’t worry about your clothes. The nurse will bring them to you soon.”
“Is there a problem?” asked Lara.
“No problem at all. Just another check.”
“Where do we have to g
o?” Lara was not comfortable leaving the examination room in the hospital gown.
“Just a few doors down the hall, on this same floor. The nurse will accompany you. You can walk or go in the wheelchair if you want.”
Lara was not comfortable walking in the hallway in the gown, so she opted for the wheelchair.
“Don’t let her suspect a thing,” Viktor had told Melikov when he called to tell him that Lara was two-and-a-half months pregnant. “Put her under and abort.”
“Right now?”
“Right now. Do you have a problem with that?”
“No, no problem,” said Melikov. “But she will find out when she wakes up, and she will have some pain.”
“I don’t care what she finds out once it’s all over,” said Viktor. “I just don’t want her to freak out now. When will she be able to return to work?”
“Normally two weeks, otherwise you run the risk of infections.”
“Can’t you do anything to shorten that to a few days?”
“I’m not sure about a few days. But if she has any bleeding I’ll stuff her with a special sponge. That way she can start in five to six days. But she needs to come see me regularly. It is risky.”
“Five days,” said Viktor. “Do what you have to do to get her back to work in five days.”
“I’ll try,” said Melikov hesitantly, “as long as there are no complications during the procedure.”
“Good. Make sure there aren’t any complications.”
Settled in another examination bed in the new room, Lara was beginning to get a bit restless as one nurse placed her feet in the stirrups, and another approached her with a hypodermic needle. Before she could ask a lot of questions, the nurse told her that she had to administer some intravenous antibiotic medicine, because they had detected a slight infection. They did not want to take the time to set up an IV. They would give her a shot of morphine directly.
“You’re very lucky we caught it now,” she said. “This could get pretty nasty if not treated early.”
The nurse moved fast, found her vein, and shot the injection. Lara stared at the brown liquid in the syringe as it was emptied into her vein, and then the lights went out.
She woke up gradually. First, she could detect a faint light in the room, but no sound and no feeling in her body. Then slowly the light became brighter, and she felt nauseated. The large, rectangular light fixture on the ceiling was blinding her and she had to shut her eyes. Then came a pain, in stages, just like the light; it started in her abdomen as a sharp pinch and quickly grew sharper and stronger. A headache spread from the center of her brain to her forehead and she felt a strong buzzing sound in her ears. When she tried to sit up, the abdominal pain forced her right back to a horizontal position. She then let out a scream, which surprised her more than anyone else.
A few hours later they released her. They assured her that all was well, and she’d feel perfectly normal in a few days. The nurses were much less attentive now, almost rude. They insisted that she leave. As she was wheeled out to the lobby of the clinic, she saw Anastasia waiting. That was when she burst out crying.
Viktor had called Anastasia and asked her to take Lara to her place for the night. He had also told her about the abortion, and that Anastasia had to explain to her what had happened. He hung up before Anastasia could get one word in.
They took a taxi back to Anastasia’s place. Anastasia just held her. They did not speak in the car. Lara was clearly in pain, but her ice-cold mask of a face had returned, the face that Anastasia had encountered when she first met her.
“I could have dreamt of anything,” said Lara later, wrapped in a blanket and sitting in Anastasia’s old sofa, legs uncomfortably folded under her. “Anything. My village, my mother, my father, my sisters and brothers. I could even have dreamt of that horrible first night with Ayvazian. I could have dreamt of our sheep and the Saralandj forest. But I didn’t; instead, I dreamt of blood. I saw blood in that room. It was terrible, and very strange. It was blood in a small bucket. But not totally liquid. It looked lumpy, as if it was clotted.
Anastasia did not have the heart to tell her that what she had seen was not a dream; that in a semi-awake moment she had actually seen the physical result of her abortion. But she had been too groggy to realize, and had probably gone right back to sleep. In some Moscow clinics they kept the bloody evidence in the room and even showed it to the patient, to make them understand what their actions entailed. But in this case they had not done that. The evidence had been removed by the time Lara came about.
Later that night Anastasia told Lara what had actually happened in Melikov’s clinic. This was another opportunity for some long-overdue lessons to be delivered. Anastasia explained that she now had to take a pill every day.
Lara listened with the same ice-cold expression, and after a long silence asked, “Why didn’t they tell me that I was pregnant?”
“Viktor’s orders,” answered Anastasia.
“It was Viktor who told them to abort?”
“Who else?”
“And they lied to me, just like that. They said I had an infection. They took me in, put me under, and lied to me.”
“Look, Lara, I won’t say that what they did was right, but frankly, what else would you have done if you had known the truth? Could you have a child now?”
“That’s not the point,” said Lara, and withdrew back into her silence.
Anastasia decided to remain quiet for a while. Lara seemed to be sorting things out in her mind.
After another very long silence, Lara asked, “How can you work with people who abuse you so much?”
It seemed to Anastasia that Lara might finally be ready to open up to her. At least she sensed her need to talk, which she regarded as another milestone.
“Lara, listen, there is always something worse in life. True, these people have beaten me, raped me, and have been exploiting me financially for years. But they also liberated me from a worse fate.”
“Liberated you? From what?” Lara looked unconvinced and very angry.
“Yes, liberated me. If they had not taken me out of Turkey I would have been dead by now. As I said there is always something worse. Let me tell you a story. When I was nineteen, my uncle took me to Turkey. ‘There is a great job as a salesgirl in a large department store,’ he said. We went by boat. When we arrived, he took me to a place called Aksaray. It was a very busy place; there were a lot of Russians. We met a Turk in a coffee shop. He was a skinny man with a thick mustache. I didn’t like him from the start. He had beady little eyes and looked at me as if I was a new toy. My uncle said that he was the owner of the store where I was going to work. Right there, in the open, while they were drinking Turkish coffee and smoking cigarettes, they negotiated and my uncle sold me. They were talking Turkish so I did not know what was going on. But I saw my uncle take money from the Turk. He counted the money, and then he stood up and told me to go with the man. ‘He’ll show you where you are going to live and start you on your new job,’ he said. This was my own uncle, Lara, do you understand?”
Lara was listening with the same stone cold expression, but her eyes were wet again.
“Anyway,” continued Anastasia, “I was very scared but my uncle had already left, so I got in the man’s car and he took me to a small dirty apartment and started talking Turkish to me. I did not understand a word. Then he said a few words in English, but in those days my English was not any good either. He just walked over to me and started ripping my clothes off. I had no idea what was going on. He smelled terrible. I started fighting him and he beat me so hard I thought I was going to die right there. Then he raped me. I still did not know what was going to happen or what was expected of me. I kept fighting him and demanding in Russian to see my uncle. Then others walked into the room. Two other men. One of them spoke a little Russian. There was only a dirty mattress on the bed, nothing to cover myself with. He asked me to get dressed, and I quickly put my ripped clothes back on. They took me t
o another apartment in the same building. There were four other women there, and two men. The Russian-speaking Turk told us that we had to work as prostitutes. He said they had bought each one of us for a lot of money, and that we had to work to repay what we ‘owed’ them. They had paid someone else money for us, but now we owed them! I was so mad, and I remember I was on the verge of screaming at them when one of the girls beat me to it and started to yell and complain. I could not tell where she was from, because her Russian was very broken. Then the Russian-speaking Turk said, ‘Now we will show everyone what happens to the girls who don’t cooperate.’ And they held the girl, in front of all of us, ripped her clothes off and beat her so hard that I can still hear the sound of the blows falling all over her body; she was almost unconscious at that point, and her mouth and nose were bleeding. We could see huge red bruises on her buttocks and sides, and they were still slapping and kicking her. Then they raped her repeatedly and sodomized her with a rubber stick. They were forcing us to watch all this, laughing the whole time. I can still hear their laughter. At this point she was unconscious and face down on the bed, barely breathing. We were all petrified, I most of all, because if that girl had not started her ranting when she did, I would have been the one lying there on the bed. No one stirred. Then one of the Turks approached the girl and urinated in her hair. ‘This is just half of what will happen to any of you if you do not cooperate,’ said the Russian-speaking Turk. The others laughed. ‘If this is not enough to make you fall in line, we will slowly kill you.’ They looked at us as if we were cattle or dogs. ‘Clean that bitch up,’ the Russian-speaker said, and they left, leaving just one guy to guard us. That is how I started in this business, Lara. So now tell me again, how bad was Ayvazian?”
A Place Far Away Page 7
