The Black Russian
Page 21
All of this was annoying and humiliating for Frederick, especially in light of the financial security he had achieved in Moscow. It also put him in a false position; although he was quite willing to bend laws when it suited him, he was not the kind of man who would try to swindle tradesmen. But even worse than facing angry creditors who caused scenes at the Villa was enduring the sanctimonious lectures of the diplomats at the consulate. When dealing with them, Frederick found himself transformed from a businessman who commanded dozens of employees into a supplicant trying to placate unfriendly superiors. Shortly before Christmas of 1919, Ravndal admonished him “to arrange all these matters amicably in the very near future…. I should like to avoid the annoyance and expenses of court proceedings in these matters but I cannot refuse to take cognizance of suits if such are filed.” Frederick’s financial problems were becoming an embarrassment to American interests in Constantinople.
His problems were not restricted to the Villa during the difficult fall of 1919. In November he tried to find Olga, his oldest daughter, who had been separated from the family during their evacuation from Odessa in April. Contrary to the hopeful suggestion of the British consul, she had not turned up in Constantinople on any of the other refugee ships from South Russia. Frederick made additional inquiries through the British embassy in Constantinople, and to add weight to his request he deposited thirty pounds sterling with the embassy to cover Olga’s passage, should she be found. This was a substantial sum (worth around $4,000 today), and it would not have been easy for him to raise when he could not pay the milk and bread bills for his three sons. The British in Odessa made an effort to find Olga, but without success. It would be several more years before Frederick would learn anything about her fate.
With the onset of Constantinople’s cold, wet, and frequently snowy winter, Frederick’s business problems got even worse and the prospect of financial ruin began to loom before him. The Anglo-American Villa’s optimistically named “Winter Salon” became unusable after the fall season, and the only solution, despite the heavy new expenses this would entail, was to find a heated space. On January 20, 1920, he announced the opening of “The Royal Dancing Club” at 40 rue de Brousse in Pera, a central location in comparison with Chichli, and the site of a previous establishment called the “Jockey Club,” a name he also kept. To attract new clients and keep his old ones happy, Frederick tried several innovations. The place was organized as an actual club that people had to join—an arrangement that may have been necessitated by the gambling, specifically baccarat, which went on in an upstairs room. Frederick also stressed ballroom dancing and provided free lessons in the fox-trot, shimmy, and tango by American and Italian “professors.” Together with jazz, “dancings”—as such events and the places that fostered them came to be known in Constantinople—would become one of the main reasons for his later success. And like jazz, European-style dancing would also become culturally and politically loaded in Turkey in the 1920s because of the way it broke down the barriers that separated men and women in Ottoman society. Mustafa Kemal would personally encourage this during his aggressive campaign to secularize the country starting in 1923.
Frederick was fortunate that Bertha was still willing to continue their partnership that winter, despite the unpleasant discussions they were beginning to have about unpaid bills. Her bar remained an essential draw for military clients and helped to keep the entire enterprise afloat. A young American who visited one night with a friend, an English major, captured the seductive atmosphere of cosmopolitan wantonness that it fostered.
Bertha’s Bar looked like the lithographs of “Uniforms of all Nations.” A monocled French Colonial commandant sat at a corner table. Two handsome girls were with him. Two young men in Italian blue-grey sat along the bar. At another table was a group of mid-Europeans who wore their caps, with the flat, square crown and a tassel, with gravity. A sprinkling of British subalterns, a couple of French sous-officiers de marine, in their rather shabby and inelegant blue, and several young women, completed the picture.
Bertha leaned ponderously forward and put a mammoth confidential elbow on the bar near the Major….
He sipped meditatively.
“Where’s Aphro, Bertha,” he inquired presently.
Bertha looked at him with a speculative eye.
“She’s not here any more,” she responded negligently.
The Major did not pursue the subject.
“Melek?” he inquired.
“Her mother is sick in Skutari,” said Bertha with precision.
“Nectar?”—the Major turned to his companion—“a lovely Armenian kid,” he said.
“Nectar is here,” said Bertha.
“Where,” asked the Major.
“She’ll be here soon,” Bertha answered….
Bertha put down her knitting and became confidential again.
“You’ll fancy the new little Greek,” she said.
“You don’t say,” said the Major. “Quite new?”
“Yes—from the Dodecanese. She just came up from Smyrna today.”
“From Smyrna? M-m-m—that’s not good,” said the Major. “Pretty big port, Smyrna.”
Bertha leaned back and scratched her neck with a knitting needle. She turned her head sidewise.
“Doris,” she called….
A slender wisp of a girl appeared in the doorway. She was dressed in a white frock, cut square across the breast and suspended over either shoulder by a little silken strap so that no trace of their marble beauty was shrouded. Neck, shoulders, and head merged with an elegance and justness that seemed artificial, it was so perfect. The head was small, the features regular and exquisitely moulded. Gold hair drawn loosely back and up from the nape of the neck revealed little ears. Eyes were large and blue, the mouth was rosy. Doris’ expression was mild and ravishingly child-like.
“Baccalum [We’ll see], Doris,” said Bertha, and took her by the hand to present her to the Major and his friend.
The Royal Dancing Club let Frederick limp through the winter. However, when spring came and he began to plan to reopen Villa Stella, Bertha and Reyser decided that its prospects were too dim and announced they were quitting. This was a serious blow for Frederick. He did not have the money to proceed alone, and the Villa had accumulated debts totaling 4,500 Ltqs, the equivalent of $75,000 today.
This case also landed in the consulate general. Allen and the others were becoming increasingly exasperated by Frederick’s financial problems, but they were still constrained in their dealings with him by their belief that he was an American and thus entitled to their assistance. They suggested that he submit to binding arbitration. The process was complex but when he emerged from it his hopes had been rekindled. He not only was free of his former partners but had found a new Russian partner with money, a certain Karp Chernov, who had faith in Stella’s long-term prospects. The debts had not disappeared, but as Frederick explained in a handwritten letter to Ravndal, he was doing everything in his power to pay them off in installments.
Constantinople le 10 of July 1920
Villa et Jardin
Anglo-Americain
Chichli No. 312
To His Honorable the Americain Counsul.
Sir
In answer to your letter of July the 7., I beg to explain, we, Thomas and Tschernoff, gave our word, that we would pay not only the person mentioned, but all our Dettes 4500. (turkish Pounds), in June. We have done our best, the month was cold and rainy, but we managed to cut it down from 4500. to 3000. t. P. The Firm in question has received from 1000 Pounds Dette 700-and Sir, the rest 300. Pounds, will bee settled in 15. days time. Hoping Sir, you will believe, that this explanation and figures are true,
I remain yours
respectfully
Frederick Bruce Thomas.
Frederick was so pressed financially that several days after writing he sent Elvira to the consulate general to speak with Ravndal personally. She was an attractive woman with a sweet disposit
ion and, in the end, her efforts paid off. Ravndal agreed to intercede with the biggest and most insistent creditor and won Frederick some more time.
That spring, two dramatic historical events occurred that seemed to secure Frederick’s future no matter where it would play out, in Turkey or Russia. The first was the Allies’ decision to consolidate their occupation of Constantinople. On March 16, 1920, the British landed additional troops and established what was effectively martial law. The Allies assumed direct control over all aspects of social, economic, and judicial life in the city, and seized hundreds of private and public buildings to house military and civilian personnel. They also tried to suppress both of Turkey’s political wings by arresting scores of prominent representatives of the old Ottoman regime, as well as numerous leaders of the new Turkish Nationalist Movement that had formed around Mustafa Kemal in opposition to both the sultanate and the Allied occupation.
The overall British aim was to force the Turks to ratify the very harsh Treaty of Sèvres, which formally abolished the Ottoman Empire and apportioned much of its territory to the Allies and their protégés. These included the Greeks, who had already invaded Smyrna on the Aegean coast, thus initiating a three-year war with the Turkish Nationalists; the Armenians, who were victims of Ottoman genocide during and shortly after the Great War and now claimed their own state; and the Kurds, who were also clamoring for independence. For the Turks this “second occupation” was a devastating blow to sovereignty and national pride (and a powerful stimulus to throw off the Allied yoke). But for a foreigner like Frederick it was a boon because it moved Constantinople a big step closer toward becoming an internationalized city, one where Western interests—and entertainments—could thrive.
The other development that spring was, if anything, even more promising because it affected the future of Frederick’s adopted homeland. On April 4, 1920, the leaders of the White Army in the South of Russia elected General Baron Pyotr Wrangel as their commander in chief to replace General Anton Denikin, who had lost their confidence and retired. A more able and charismatic leader than his predecessor, Wrangel reorganized and enlarged his forces and created an effective Black Sea fleet. The invasion of Ukrainian territory by Poland that spring helped him defeat the Bolsheviks in several engagements and double the territory that the Whites controlled in the south of Russia. The achievement was quickly heralded in Constantinople’s newspapers. For a time, it began to look as if the setbacks suffered by the Whites during the past year could be reversed and the Bolshevik regime might fall or be defeated. Were this to happen, Frederick and other exiles could return home and reclaim their former lives and property.
But the influx of Allied troops was not the only change in the city’s population in the spring of 1920, and the arrival of other newcomers presented Frederick with an unexpected threat as well as an opportunity. Despite the apparent successes of the Whites in the civil war, waves of evacuees from southern Russia kept crossing the Black Sea, and as a result Constantinople was becoming increasingly Russified. Among the new arrivals were many popular performers, some with experience running their own shows and theaters, and all needing to make a living. Russian restaurants and nightspots began to pop up all over Pera. Many tried to play up the “broad Russian nature” that foreigners found highly seductive—unbridled revelry and passion, although now tinged with a delicious sadness over a lost, glorious past. Frederick discovered that he suddenly had competition.
The biggest threat was a new garden, Strelna, that two famous singers, Yury Morfessi and Nastya Polyakova, decided to open just two short blocks away from Stella, in a strategic location chosen to siphon off Frederick’s clients. Their initiative paid off, leading Morfessi to boast that as “‘Stella’ dimmed,” Strelna’s affairs “blossomed” and went “blissfully well.” The drop in attendance at Stella could have been its end, especially because of all the other financial difficulties that were still hanging over Frederick. Only a bit of skullduggery on the part of one of his performers saved him: she denounced Morfessi to the Interallied Police for staying open after a mandatory curfew, and Strelna was shut down.
In addition to competition, however, the new waves of Russian refugees also brought a valuable resource with them—a substitute for the bar girls Frederick had lost when he and Bertha parted ways. Among the refugees were numerous members of the Russian nobility. Many of the women who belonged to this class had never had to work for a living and had neither professions nor salable skills. At the same time, quite a few of the younger ones were very attractive, had well-developed social graces, and often knew foreign languages, in particular French. The majority were also destitute and willing to take any work they could find. Restaurant owners like Frederick quickly realized their worth. Pretty and graceful young women, in particular blue-eyed blondes who were “princesses,” “countesses,” or “duchesses,” could be a very effective draw for any establishment trying to attract more customers. This was especially true if most of the clients were men who were used to only waiters—male waiters having been the norm in conservative Ottoman society—and it was even more true if the women whom Turkish men usually saw were olive-complexioned, sloe-eyed, dark-haired, and swathed in fabric from head to toe. Thus it happened that the French term “dame serveuse” came to denote a young Russian noblewoman who occupied a tantalizing place in Constantinople’s collective male imagination—whether that of a Muslim Turk, a Levantine, an Allied officer, a fellow Russian refugee, or a tourist taking in the city’s exotic sights. The thrill a customer would get from being served by a titled woman and the resulting tips were sufficient reason for many of these ladies to exaggerate their birthright, often quite shamelessly: never did any city in Russia have as many women of blue and even royal blood as Constantinople in the early 1920s. It was also inevitable that the ambiguous status of these young women—underpaid and frequently obligated to dine or dance with any male clients who took a fancy to them—made it easy for many to slip into the demimonde.
The style of dress that these Slavic sirens adopted varied from restaurant to restaurant. In one place they would flaunt their Russian boldness: “white Caucasian jackets, high black boots, thin scarves around their hair and heavy makeup.” In another, they cultivated a softer, decadent seductiveness, as the singer Vertinsky, who had also arrived in 1920, promised at his nightclub “La Rose Noire”: “The serving ladies will whisper to the clients the poems of Baudelaire between the courses. They are to be exquisite, select, delicate and to wear each a black rose in their golden hair.” Some wore dainty aprons that made them look like soubrettes in light comedy, an impression that they augmented with their shyness and apologetic manner.
The reactions to them in Constantinople were predictable. A group of thirty-two widows of Turkish noblemen and high officials sent a petition to the city governor demanding the immediate expulsion of “these agents of vice and debauchery who are more dangerous and destructive than syphilis and alcohol.” The British ambassador, Sir Horace Rumbold, explained wryly in a letter to Admiral de Robeck, the British high commissioner, that the “little Princess Olga Micheladze” plans to marry “one Sanford, a nice quiet fellow in the Inter-Allied Police…. He has money.” A tourist visiting from Duluth, Minnesota, gushed that the owner of a restaurant “is an escaped Russian grand duke, and all the waitresses are Russian princesses of the royal family.” The latter “were pretty and flirted terrifically. I asked one if she spoke any English and the answer, with a quaint accent, was, ‘Sure, I know lots American boys.’” A cartoon in the local British newspaper showed a Turk asking a Russian woman: “Parlez-vous français, mademoiselle?” She replies, “No, but I know how to say ‘love’ in every language.”
At the opposite end of the emotional spectrum, more than one visiting foreigner was moved by the sight of an exiled Russian officer rising at his restaurant table with an expression of somber respect on his face to kiss the hand of the waitress approaching him because they had known each other under very differe
nt circumstances in their previous lives. Princess Lucien Murat, a French tourist in Constantinople, had a series of similar heart-wrenching encounters with a number of people she had known in prerevolutionary Petrograd—“Baron S,” whom she found working as a street bootblack; “Colonel X,” who now manned a cloakroom in a restaurant; and then, at Frederick’s bar, her old friend “Princess B,” whom she had last seen at a ball in Petrograd “in a silvery dress, with her marvelous emeralds in a diadem on her lovely forehead.” “The Princess tells me her lamentable tale, her escape from the Bolsheviks, her flight in a crowded cattle-car.” Meanwhile, her “Boss” hovers around—“an ebony black, who, in the old days, kept the most fashionable restaurant in Moscow where, many a time, the Princess dined and danced to the music of the tziganes.” Princess Lucien’s reaction to seeing her old friend in Frederick’s employ is revealing in that it provides a glimpse of a dame serveuse from a point of view other than that of an admiring or lascivious male.
Also revealing, but for reasons of Turkish national pride and what this foreshadowed about the future of the Allied enclave in Constantinople, is the reaction of a sharp-eyed young Turkish patriot during a visit to Stella one warm summer evening. Mufty-Zade K. Zia Bey knew the United States well, having lived there for a decade. Together with his wife and a friend, he decided to sample Pera’s nightlife and went to the “café chantant” that was the “best” in the city. When they arrived, Stella was crowded and Zia Bey, who was very proud of his conservative, traditional Turkish values, was immediately put off by its libertine atmosphere, although he was impressed by Frederick’s manner.
Every one seems to be intoxicated and the weird music of a regular jazz band composed of genuine American negroes fires the blood of the rollicking crowd to demonstrations unknown even to the Bowery in its most flourishing days before the Volstead Act. Much bejewelled and rouged “noble” waitresses sit, drink and smoke at the tables of their own clients. The proprietor of the place, an American coloured man who was established in Russia before the Bolshevik revolution… is watching the crowd in a rather aloof manner. Frankly he seems to me more human than his clients; at least he is sober and acts with consideration and politeness, which is not the case with most of the people who are here.