The Black Russian

by Vladimir Alexandrov

  Frederick also had the consolation that for the Turks and other natives of Constantinople, his race was of no concern. The Ottoman Empire had stretched from North Africa to Europe to the Near East and into Asia; it was racially heterogeneous and parsed the world very differently than white America did. A Turk who met Frederick would want to know first if he was a Muslim or not and after learning that he was a Christian would not care at all that he was married to a white Christian woman. In fact, black Africans had regularly risen to high positions at the Turkish sultan’s court. The Ottoman language, which was replaced by modern Turkish only in 1928, did not even have a special word for “Negro” in the American sense; it used “Arap,” or “Arab,” for anyone who was dark-skinned. (The African-American writer James Baldwin would discover that this tradition was still alive in Istanbul as late as the 1960s.) History had uprooted Frederick from Russia very painfully, but the place of exile that it had chosen for him was unique in the world at the time. He had been given a remarkable second chance.

  In comparison with the vibrant world of popular Western entertainment that Frederick had known in Moscow and even in Odessa, Constantinople was a backwater. When he arrived, there were a few elegant European-style restaurants with music in Pera, one or two places with variety acts onstage, and quite a few bars and other drinking establishments that catered mostly to Levantines and to the growing numbers of foreigners, especially military officers. Down the hill near the Galata port, the narrow, foul-smelling streets, which turned to mud whenever it rained, were filled with beer joints and cheap bordellos patronized by sailors and enlisted men; drugs, especially cocaine, were also readily available. Some of these places were so vile that they were put off-limits by the military authorities. The city’s traditionally-minded Turkish men shunned Western entertainment and did not drink alcohol or consort with women outside their families; they frequented the ubiquitous coffeehouses instead. Traditional Turkish women did not participate in public entertainments at all and wore veils when they ventured out of the home; they also did not go out into the street after seven o’clock at night. What Constantinople lacked were precisely the kinds of places that Frederick had owned in Moscow—elegant, sophisticated whirls of Western music, entertainment, dancing, drink, and enticing cuisine.

  To find the money he needed to start something like this, Frederick turned to partners and moneylenders. Constantinople was a major crossroads for trade between Asia and Europe and teemed with merchants of different nationalities; Greeks and Armenians were especially prominent. Many had profited from the war, and several offered Frederick short-term loans at usurious rates—more than 100 percent interest for six months. Frederick had no choice; he had landed in Constantinople shortly before the beginning of the summer season and could not afford to miss it. Without enough money to buy or rent a suitable building, he decided to open an outdoor entertainment garden, on the lines of his Aquarium, although on a humbler scale. Summers began earlier and lasted longer in Constantinople than in Moscow, so if all went well this venture would go on into the fall; after that he would see.

  Frederick was also used to working with partners. By May 15, less than a month after he arrived, he had settled on two—Arthur Reyser Jr. and Bertha Proctor. Little is known about Reyser except that he was Swiss, and that he and Proctor, who was English, shared a half interest in the new venture; the other half was Frederick’s. Each half represented a sizable investment—3,000 Turkish pounds (abbreviated “Ltqs”), which would be approximately $50,000 in today’s money. Reyser would be a passive partner, not involved in running the business on a daily basis.

  Bertha Proctor was something else entirely. A barkeep by profession who specialized in men in uniform, she had made a fortune during the war running a renowned watering hole in Salonika in Greece that was called simply “Bertha’s Bar.” When the war ended and the British army left Greece for Constantinople, she followed it. Although not exactly a madam, she was remembered very warmly by her many clients as much for her friendly and beautiful bar girls—some of them with colorful nicknames like “Frying Pan,” “Square Arse,” “Mother’s Ruin,” and “Fornicating Fannie”—as for her good liquor.

  Bertha’s experience and connections were excellent complements to Frederick’s. In her youth she had been a chorus girl and spent years performing in cabarets on the Continent, so she knew the world of popular entertainment intimately. By the time Frederick met her, she was a fleshy, buxom woman of a certain age, with peroxided, lemon-yellow hair piled high on her head, who liked to sit on a stool behind her bar, placidly knitting, while observing the scene and directing her girls. Her innocuous appearance was deceptive, however. In addition to being a shrewd businesswoman and diviner of men’s hearts, she was “a top limey spy,” as Lieutenant Robert Dunn, who worked in American naval intelligence in Constantinople, put it. Her job was to eavesdrop on foreigners’ conversations and to report anything of interest to British Intelligence. This was an especially productive pastime during the Allied occupation of Constantinople, when the city became “the political whispering gallery of the world,” in Dunn’s words, and a hotbed of intrigue, rumors, and espionage. Despite her many years abroad, Bertha preserved her thick Lancashire accent: “Look I’ve coom to ask if it’s by your orders that these bloody detectives… they’ve found nawt, lad… it’s damn disgoosting.” With Frederick’s Delta drawl, their conversations must have been an earful.

  Bertha’s popularity with British officers—her prices and women were out of reach for the rank and file—would prove a boon for Frederick, both at the start of his career in Constantinople and later. The two decided to give their venture a name that covered both sides of the Atlantic and called it the “Anglo-American Garden Villa”; it was also known as the “Stella Club.” The hybrid name reflected the symbiotic relationship between the two parts of the enterprise: Bertha would preside over her bar while Frederick handled everything else—booking variety acts, hiring employees for the kitchen and restaurant, and dealing with contractors and wholesalers of provisions.

  “Bertha and Thomas,” as the partners became known, found a large parcel of land on the northern edge of Pera in an area known as Chichli. It was across the street from the last stop of the Number 10 tramway line, which made it readily accessible by public transportation from the center. But the location was also risky, because in 1919 it hardly looked like part of the city. Only half of it was built up, mostly with shabby-looking two-and three-story houses of brick and weather-beaten wood, while the rest consisted of large fruit and vegetable gardens and empty lots that merged into the countryside a short distance away. However, the parcel was relatively cheap to rent and had a scattering of old shade trees as well as a nice view of the Bosporus (the area is now completely built up with apartment buildings that block all street-level views). There was also a roomy house in a corner of the property, which is where Frederick and his family probably moved after leaving the Pera Palace.

  By the end of June, the empty lot had been transformed into a mini Aquarium: several simple wooden structures were built; there were pavilions and kiosks, neat gravel paths, and strings of electric lights that made the entire place glow at night. Staff people were hired and purveyors of food and drink lined up. An open-air dance floor occupied a central spot, with a stage behind it and tables for customers facing it. The “Stella Club” was on the second floor of one of the buildings. Advertisements had been appearing in local French-and English-language newspapers for several weeks and on Tuesday, June 24, 1919, the Anglo-American Garden Villa opened.

  A new era in Constantinople’s nightlife had begun. The establishment offered first-class dinners and suppers in a garden restaurant, an American bar, private rooms, a Gypsy band, and variety acts. For herself, Bertha added that she had “the honour to invite all her British friends to be present”; later she extended a more spirited invitation: “Friends of the Salonica Army, Fall In. We are waiting for you.” Frederick also exploited his past celebrity
to underscore the attentive personal service and sophisticated cuisine that patrons could expect from him: “Teas, Dinners and Suppers under the special superintendence of the well-known Moscow Maitre d’hôtel Thomas.” He would become famous in Constantinople for his signature warmth and the big smiles with which he greeted his customers.

  The partners’ gamble paid off. The opening weeks of the Anglo-American Villa were very promising, even though expenses were high and the profits were thin. The changeable summer weather was also worrisome. A journalist who admired the place noted sympathetically that “the night winds are decidedly incommodating nowadays for outdoor theatrical performances. At Chichli they blow the stage curtain about and even the curtain doors of the bathing boxes, giving the public a glimpse of [the performers] Mme Milton and Mme Babajane in their preparations.” But as the weather improved, the number of customers increased; they were drawn by the unique combination of Russo-French cuisine, pretty Russian waitresses, dancing to the Codolban Brothers Gypsy band, and a cascade of lively variety acts onstage.

  Frederick made even bigger entertainment history that summer. On August 31, the Anglo-American Villa announced what would become a key to his future success and renown in the city: “For the first time in Constantinople a Jazz-Band executed by Mr. F. Miller and Mr. Tom, the latest sensation all over Europe.” Freddy Miller was an Englishman who did parodies of musical acts and sang humorous songs—his most popular was the stuttering hit “K-K-K-Katie”; “Mr. Tom,” a black American, was an “eccentric” dancer with an amusing routine. They were not professional jazz musicians, but their comedy act included some jazz interludes. Their performance was a hit and, with Frederick, they get credit for introducing this quintessentially black American music to Turkey just as it was beginning to conquer London, Paris, Shanghai, Buenos Aires, and everywhere in between. As he had in Moscow, Frederick continued to follow new trends in entertainment closely, and he would import more real jazz to Constantinople in the years ahead. However, even with his nose for innovation, he could not have foreseen how this jaunty music would contribute to the revolutionary transformation of Turkish society that was just beginning.

  By the end of the summer, the Anglo-American Villa was pronounced a resounding success by the Orient News, the authoritative newspaper of the “Army of the Black Sea,” as the British occupiers of Constantinople styled themselves.

  Far the best evening entertainment in town is to be found at the Villa Anglo-Americain, Chichli. Mme. Bertha and M. Thomas have succeeded in engaging the finest talent for their stage and attracting the most elegant monde to their tables…. There is no doubt that the Chichli Villa will continue to give the best vaudeville in Constantinople. That fine hunting ground for artistes, Bucharest, is to be searched by M. Thomas for new talent for the winter season.

  But Frederick’s new plan to book acts in Bucharest, the capital of Romania, ran into a serious obstacle. To travel, he would need a passport, and to get one he had to apply to the American consulate general. This would be far more complicated and risky than appealing to Jenkins for help in Odessa had been.

  Frederick took the plunge on October 24. It was a Friday, the Muslim day of worship, when the city’s usual noise and bustle abated somewhat as the faithful prepared to attend services in their mosques. When Frederick got to the consulate general, which was in the middle of Pera and around the corner from the embassy, he met with Charles E. Allen, the vice-consul.

  Allen was a twenty-eight-year-old from Kentucky who had worked at a variety of jobs in the United States—high school teacher, principal, railway clerk—before joining the Foreign Service four years earlier. His first postings had been to Nantes, a small city in western France, and Adrianople, a provincial city in western Turkey—neither a very glamorous beginning to a diplomatic career. As Allen’s actions would show, he was not well disposed toward the black man in front of him, who arrived trailing stories of riches and fame in Moscow, and with a white wife and a clutch of mixed-race sons in tow.

  Frederick had to give responses to questions that Allen then typed onto two forms—a standard “Passport Application” and a much trickier “Affidavit to Explain Protracted Foreign Residence and to Overcome Presumption of Expatriation.” The conversation between them was fundamentally dishonest. Frederick did not bother to be very accurate and made a series of big and small mistakes and doubtful statements about his past, including inventing a sister in Nashville who could supposedly vouch for him. But he was much more careful about his future intentions and said that he wanted the passport to go to Russia and France, where he intended to “settle my property interests en route to the U.S. to put my children in school.” This was an obvious smoke screen and it is unlikely that Allen believed him. Frederick had no financial interests in France, although he might have fantasized about moving there because Paris was becoming known for its hospitality toward black Americans. And he could not possibly have wanted to return to Russia while the Bolsheviks were in power and a civil war was raging. Frederick (and Allen) also knew perfectly well that he and his family would be unable to lead normal lives in much of the United States, where Jim Crow was riding triumphant together with a reborn Ku Klux Klan, and where his marriage to Elvira would be widely seen as not only reprehensible but illegal. (Constantinople’s English-and French-language newspapers regularly ran lurid articles about American racial policies and lynchings.)

  Frederick’s biggest problem during his interview with Allen was clearly his decades-long residence abroad, which raised the suspicion that he had expatriated himself. There was little that Frederick could say to mitigate this, but he tried—he claimed that he had intended to return to the United States in 1905, but had gotten only as far as the Philippines. Whether or not Frederick took such a trip is uncertain, although he did mention it to other Americans later and provided some plausible-sounding details. In any event, it would hardly have satisfied Allen’s or the State Department’s misgivings.

  For his part, Allen responded to Frederick with negligence, or worse, and did not fill out several important sections on the forms. These omissions would have been enough to invalidate the application in the eyes of the State Department, had it been sent. But Allen did not even bother to forward it to Washington; he let the documents languish at the consulate general for the next fourteen months. The most likely conclusion is that he had decided to sabotage the application by setting it aside.

  Dealing with Allen was just the first of the problems that began to crowd around Frederick that fall. Money was next, and this too would do nothing to improve his standing at the consulate general. Despite the Garden’s popularity during the summer season, its income was still insufficient to cover all of the operating costs—food, drink, fuel, housing, and everything else were very expensive in Constantinople—or the loans that Frederick had taken out. When the weather deteriorated in the fall, the Garden’s attendance dropped and its financial problems worsened. At first, merchants tried to get what they were owed from Frederick himself. But when he put them off or evaded them, they (believing he was an American citizen) began to bring their complaints to the American consulate general. They did so not only because the city was under Allied occupation, but also because of the so-called Capitulations that gave the United States extraterritoriality in Turkey. This meant that American diplomats had the right to try their nationals in their own courts and according to their own laws rather than in Turkish courts.

  The first complaint arrived at the consulate general at the end of November. A Greek subject, George Matakias, reported that Frederick had bought a piano from him for the Anglo-American Villa; when he could not pay for it, he changed the sale to a rental, and still failed to pay what was due. Because the complaint had been addressed to Rear Admiral Mark L. Bristol, who was the highest-ranking military and civilian American in Turkey (he commanded the American squadron of warships sent to Turkey after the war and was also the American high commissioner in the country), the matter landed on the de
sk of the consul general himself, Gabriel Bie Ravndal. His dealings with Frederick would prove to be somewhat more humane than Allen’s, perhaps because of his very different background (he had been born in Norway and grew up in South Dakota, where he published a newspaper and served a term in the state house of representatives before becoming a career diplomat in 1898). Ravndal decided to speak with Frederick in person and got him to agree to return the piano and settle his debt.

  However, the other cases that followed did not go as smoothly. In early December, an Italian shopkeeper, Ermano Mendelino, wrote to Ravndal that Frederick owed him 252 Ltqs (around $5,000 today) for wine and groceries and had failed to pay the bill after asking for and receiving an extension. In a direct reference to the Capitulations, Mendelino also accused Frederick of behaving this way because he believed that the Ottoman courts could not touch an American citizen. Ravndal again called Frederick in and tried to mediate between him and Mendelino, but over a year later the Italian had still not been paid. Next came a Bulgarian named Bochkarov who claimed he was owed 34.28 Ltqs for milk that he delivered to the Villa and to Frederick’s home. A baker wrote that Frederick owed him 47.93 Ltqs for daily bread deliveries. Another man complained that he had not received the 55 Ltqs he had been promised. A prominent French firm in the city—Huisman, suppliers of furnishings of various kinds—which started doing business with Frederick several days before the Villa opened and delivered goods to him worth 964.95 Ltqs (over $20,000 in today’s money), presented its bill to the consulate general. Frederick paid part of this debt, but not until nine months later and only after Ravndal had interceded once again. There were many other such cases to come.