When I look back I can never logically see why I did not choose to stay and become one of Constantinople’s institutions. The severity of Atatürk’s first years hardly touched her. He said she was a Western harlot. He turned his back on her, refusing to let her be associated with his regime. He let her mosques fade with poverty or become museums for tourists, he refused to allow her educated men permission to work there, so they were forced to move to Ankara. But he did not actively trouble the city which brought all Turkey’s wealth to her. He never disdained the gold which continued to flow through his ‘Istanbul’. In spite of him, Constantinople remained the centre of the world. Atatürk raised his flag over the collection of mud huts that was Ankara, his new capital, imposing on his people all the puritanical severity he rejected for himself while he drank and whored his way to early death and so imitated, with ironic completeness, the hypocritical Sultans he had swept aside. Constantinople scarcely noticed and she did not much care; she was used to despots and their high pomposities; she had existed under them for at least three thousand years. I began to tell myself it might be sensible to live closer to Russia. It would be much easier to return home when the time came. I saw myself as the successful, triumphant prodigal of Odessa, stepping off a ship, greeted by a brass band and a cheering crowd, and bringing home Esmé, my childhood sweetheart, my bride.
She came in alone, and at first I had become so accustomed to discounting the inventions of my wishful eye I almost ignored her. Tonight she wore faded blue velvet, at least two sizes too large, and had bundled her hair beneath a peacock aigrette. All her cosmetics and tawdry wardrobe could not disguise her. Barely able to contain myself, I felt my head begin to beat sickeningly as my glass went down on the counter with a crack. My heart was painful against my ribs, but I held myself in rein, watching her out of the corner of my eye. Uncertainly, clutching a little sequinned evening bag to her chest, she picked her delicate way between the customers. I was trembling violently as I rose slowly to my feet; then step by wary step I moved towards her, as a dying man might approach an oasis he fears must be a mirage. I was now directly in front of her. She stopped. I bowed. My mouth was bone dry, but I mustered all my charm and appeared, I am sure, outwardly calm, even a little distant. ‘Would you care for a drink, young lady?’ I said to her in English.
She frowned, puzzled: ‘I am a Catholic.’ She spoke halting French with an accent I could not place. She thought she was answering my question. This brought a gentle smile to my lips, whereupon she smiled back. It was Esmé’s same, flashing parting of the mouth and widening of the eyes; her whole face coming alive at once. She realised she had misunderstood me and said something in Turkish. I shrugged and made a pantomime of apologetic obtuseness. I knew such unbelievable joy. I had not been mistaken. This was Esmé’s twin. She laughed. It was Esmé’s unselfconscious laughter, full and musical. ‘You call yourself Helena, do you not?’
‘Helena, yes, m’sieu.’ She nodded rapidly as if I had displayed unusual perceptiveness and she wished to encourage me.
I took her gently by the arm and led her to the quietest corner of the café. ‘You will have absinthe? Or lemonade, perhaps?’
She understood my French and chose lemonade, proving to me that she was by no means a hardened whore, but a wholesome schoolgirl who had, by some dreadful mischance, become mixed up in this life. There was still time to save her.
Disdainfully ignoring the Syrian’s leering, conspiratorial wink, I ordered the drinks. ‘Do you recognise me?’ I asked her.
She frowned, then quickly put an embarrassed hand to her mouth. ‘Oh! The man on the tram!’
‘I alarmed you and I’m sorry. But you are the image of my dead sister. You can imagine my own shock. You seemed a ghost.’
I had not frightened her. She relaxed again, her curiosity, if nothing else, encouraging her to stay. She put her little head to one side, just as Esmé did, and said sympathetically, ‘You are Russian, m’sieu? Your sister was. . .?’She could not find the word. ’Bolsheviks?’
‘Just so.’
‘I am sorry for you.’ She spoke softly, yet in that same vibrant voice Esmé had always used when moved to emotion. Even her tiny, nervous gesture of concern was the same.
‘You understand why I searched for you? Do they really call you Helena?’
She hesitated, as if she wanted to give me her real name. Then caution returned. She inclined her head. ‘Helena.’
‘You’re Greek?’
She shrugged, attempting to resume a mask which was still unfamiliar to her. ‘We’re all something, m’sieu.’
I felt enormous tenderness for her. She was Esmé, my darling rose. I wanted to reach out there and then to scrape the coloured powder from her cheeks, revealing the lovely skin beneath. I wanted to touch her in kindness as I touched Esmé, whose love I took for granted, whose confidence I never doubted. Esmé worshipped me. They tore her from her destiny as they tried to tear me from mine. They perverted her soul. They made her commonplace: a child of revolution with a twisted grimace where once there had been a natural smile.
‘Your parents are still alive?’
‘Of course.’ She waved an arm outwards, towards the door. A copper snake flashed, green enamel eyes glittered. ‘Over there.’
‘What nationality?’
I think the question began to make her nervous. Sighing, she spread her awkward hands, covered in penny rings, on the table. ‘Roumanian,’ she said. Within the mask her blue eyes were candid. ‘They came before the War.’
‘Would you keep me company tonight?’
She lifted fingers to her inexpert coiffure. ‘It’s what I’m here for, m’sieu.’
I shook my head, then decided not to explain. I was terrified, still, that I would startle her, send her running to where I should never find her again. So I contented myself with, ‘So you’ve no special friend?’
There was a hint of assumed world-weariness, the suggestion of a play-acted sigh which reminded me of Leda’s similar responses. ‘Not yet, m’sieu.’
I ignored her pose and touched her hand for a moment. ‘My name is Maxim. I wish to protect you. Can I call you Esmé rather than Helena?’
She was puzzled by this, and not unamused. ‘If you like.’ Her expression was transformed to one of genuine sympathy. ‘But do not be sad, M’sieu Maxim. We are here for pleasure, no?’ She fell silent, peacefully content to drink and watch the other couples dance. She had the poise of Esmé, the same unstudied movements of head and shoulders, an identical air of self-contained amusement at the world’s antics. I wanted her in a wholesome dress, hair properly brushed and rearranged, but I was still too cautious to suggest anything of the sort, frightened she would take to her heels if I moved too hastily. At that age girls can be singularly whimsical. She seemed perfectly glad to be in my company, yet at any moment might resolve to leave with someone else or decide she hated the shape of my nose. She had not been a whore for long or she would by now be taking a merely professional interest in men.
‘What did you do before you started coming to La Rotonde?’ I asked her casually.
‘At -’ She pursed her lips. She was trying to be discreet. ‘I worked.’
‘And your parents?’
‘Father’s a carpenter. Mother used to go to the big houses.’ She pointed up towards Pera’s well-to-do suburb. ‘Now she can’t. So I come here.’
All this confirmed my growing knowledge that I had been selected by Fate to rescue her. She could not have had many men before the American sailor, if any. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I might be able to offer you a job. I’m considering employing a companion. It isn’t a trick. Ask anyone here. Any of the girls. Even the Syrian will vouch for my honesty. If you, for instance, were interested, I would see your parents and ensure everything was properly arranged.’
She did not completely understand. She nodded vaguely. From her bag she lifted a packet of bad-quality cigarettes, inexpertly fitting one into a cheap wooden holder stained to mock
ebony. I stretched out a hand with a lighted match, glad she was evidently unused to smoking. I continued to be careful not to introduce the slightest note of criticism or morality. Young girls carry a weight of guilt as it is. Anyone who reminds them of it is likely to be regarded with hatred. I proceeded delicately. I joked with her. Laughter always takes women’s minds from their inhibitions and in that respect is both better and cheaper than champagne. She grew steadily more at ease and tried to translate a joke from Turkish into French and failed prettily, but caused us both to double up with laughter. I suggested she might enjoy a certain cabaret in the Petite Rue and enthusiastically she got up to come with me. The theatre was a long, low building, full of smoke, sweat and naphtha lamps, where gross, chuckling Turkish merchants watched the cavortings of third-rate French music-hall entertainers pretending to be belly-dancers and dandies. But she loved the comic dances and clung helplessly to my arm in a spontaneous frenzy of laughter at the antics of a pair of moth-eaten trained seals. Esmé and I were at the circus in Kiev. It was Spring. Captain Loukianoff had given us a little money; my mother had made us a packet of bread and sausage. It was the first time we had been out alone together in an evening. The great white tent was garnished with coloured lamps. Limelight blazed on the rich-smelling ring where bounding tigers disturbed the sawdust and half-dressed nymphs performed a golden ballet in the shadows overhead. Esmé wept for the melancholy elephant and was afraid the clown had really been hurt after his friend hit him with a bucket. When we left, the air bore the scent of fresh, damp grass and May blossoms. This circus was huge. It covered the entire bottom of the Babi gorge where later I should fly. I was looking for Zoyea, my gypsy girl, and hardly hearing Esmé’s excited voice. I was a fool not to acknowledge her love. I should have protected her better. She was too good. She wanted to be a nurse and help the soldiers to live again. The soldiers recovered and made her a whore.
We walked for a little in a nearby graveyard and she seemed thoroughly at peace, willing to act on any suggestion I made. I took her to Tokatlian’s, entering through the side-door. I did not want to be seen from the restaurant. There I arranged with Olmejer for my usual room while Esmé waited in the narrow, dimly-lit lobby. She was still laughing in recollection of the comedians and tried to restrain herself as she mounted the stairs. I told her to be natural. At this she snorted through her nose. I laughed, too. She was making me so happy. I opened the door of the room and showed her everything that was there. She gasped. Evidently, she had never seen such luxury. ‘First,’ I said, ‘we’ll walk a little more. The fresh air will be good for us.’ I took her away from the rowdy dazzle of the Grande Rue, towards the embassies and the little squares, the smaller, quieter cafés.
The worst of the bustle fell behind us. We were in a little park, almost a zone of silence, some monument to a dead pasha, and could clearly see the million tiny lights of Stamboul from where we stood. At length I paused and drew her into the shadow of a gnarled, sweet-scented cypress. ‘Are you hungry, Esmé?’
She looked directly up into my eyes. She seemed startled, as if all at once she realised how profound my feelings were, how significant to both our destinies this encounter was. Gravely, she composed her little face. Her expression was candid and serious.
‘Oui.’
* * * *
SEVEN
TO CONSECRATE MY resurrected ideal, the birth of my Muse whole, as it were, from the head of Poseidon, I required a parental blessing. Next day found myself and my girl descending to Galata’s wretched slums, that world of crippled dogs and myriad degenerate humanity, to visit her mother and father.
Esmé’s name had been Elizaveta Bolascu. After some political trouble, her parents moved to Constantinople in 1909 from Husch near the Bessarabian border. He had been a master carpenter until, Esmé said, ill luck had lost him his trade. Their one-room apartment was at the top, as she proudly told me, of seventy-five unstable stairs. He was, I realised at once, a drunkard, in appearance indistinguishable from the miserable Armenians and Sephardim who infested most of the building. Every vein on his face was broken and inflamed. The smell of cheap alcohol was, however, a blessing, since it disguised the general stink of the place. Esmé’s mother, half mad and apparently without will, wore a black shawl around her head like any peasant woman; her skin was as yellow as her husband’s was red. She said she would make us tea, but Esmé stopped her. ‘My mother is sickly.’
M. Bolascu spoke only his native language and some Turkish. His wife knew a smattering of Russian, but I could barely understand the dialect, and some French. Esmé was thirteen. As they laboured through their miniature vocabularies I wondered where Captain Loukianoff had been in 1907. Had Madame Bolascu ever heard the name? She said it was possibly familiar, but I suspect she thought I was searching for a distant relative’s next of kin. (Esmé was two when they moved from Husch. It was perfectly possible therefore that the girls were half-sisters. To this day I am convinced of it. Loukianoff’s wife had deserted him after only a year of marriage, after Esmé was born. Why should he not have sought consolation, later, in the arms of a Roumanian carpenter’s robust wife?) Madame Bolascu asked if he was a policeman. She spoke in a hesitant, reedy voice, anxious to please. No, I said, he was a Russian officer. A gentleman. Her eyes became blank, as if someone had switched them off. I wondered if this were an indication of guilt. These two had reached the very bottom, although it was evident they had once been respectable. The Turkish capital could have that effect. Something in the air rotted the honest Christian soul. They had been slowly starving to death but now, thanks to Esmé, they were gorged on the cans and preserves she had bought with her body. Strangely, both mother and father were swarthy. I knew Esmé could hardly be the drunken Roumanian’s daughter. Loukianoff had doubtless passed through Husch on his travels to and from Ukraine. I could not remember exactly when he had come to settle in Kiev, but it was after 1907. ‘Loukianoff,’ I whispered to the crone (she was not more than fifty in actuality). Her husband moaned like a sheep and complained it had grown cold. She went to rearrange the sacking at the window, pinning the fabric on rusty nails stuck into bare wood. Esmé lit a candle. Bolascu coughed and brushed at his grimy forehead. He did not want us there.
‘Très bon. Très bon,’ insisted the mother. Even her French had plainly seen better days. She patted her lovely daughter’s head. She tried to grin, but her few yellow teeth plainly hurt her mouth. Neither she nor Esmé was entirely certain why I was there. I tried to explain again. The child reminded me of my murdered sister. I wanted to provide for Esmé’s wellbeing and theirs. Husband and wife nodded at last and became thoughtful. We had reached the bargaining stage.
In the end I paid two English sovereigns for her. Having fairly purchased their blessing, I was now, in their eyes, the sole owner of their child. Her mother assured me she was a good girl, a virgin, a pious Catholic. She kissed her daughter farewell. The father snarled over his money. She said she would come to see them soon. We went back down the swaying stairs to where a nervous cabman waited, feeding his horse from a nosebag. I ordered him to return us to the little sidestreet behind Tokatlian’s. There I had already taken one of Olmejer’s private apartments, rented on a monthly basis. This suite was a red cavern with low, curved ceilings and deep carpets all of the same colour. It was their best. It must be a secret, I told Olmejer, to everyone. I had paid him in advance. The rest of our day was spent with the couturiers who came to dress her in decent clothes, befitting her age. I had her thoroughly washed. Her hair was brushed and tied back with ribbon. At length she resembled an ordinary thirteen-year-old girl again. I left her with her dresses and her mirrors and returned for a while to the Pera Palas. There were no messages for me. I began to believe myself forgotten by Mrs Cornelius. I hoped to see Major Nye in the bar, but he, too, was gone. I was sure the Baroness, on the other hand, would continue patiently to wait a while longer.
A week went by. I ignored Leda’s increasingly imploring notes. Then I let it b
e known I had been ordered to Scutari. I did not want my idyll interrupted. I was at last in love. It was a rapture of nostalgia, of dreams come true. We visited cinemas, fairgrounds and theatres. We did everything I had always intended to do with Esmé. And now Esmé did not hold back, primly examining the cost or warning me not to lose my head, as she had in Kiev. I was able to enjoy everything to the full and never think once of the future. Love-making was sweet and delicate, unlike anything I had known before, almost in the nature of a happy, childish game, though not without passion. Esmé was greedy for life, reaching for it urgently as one does when one has believed it permanently lost. She was in fact more eager for sexual pleasure than I. I was frequently content merely to lie with her cradled in my arms while I told her little stories, made jokes, fed her with sweets. My whole world had a rosy warmth; I knew the joy of a father reunited with his daughter, brother with sister, husband with wife. She accepted my romantic tenderness as prettily as she accepted all my gifts. I asked for nothing; merely that she be herself, the object of my affection, my little perfect goddess, rescued from vice as I had not been able to rescue her geminus. I remembered to write a few hasty notes to Mrs Cornelius. I told her I was in contact with people who could help us. I informed the Baroness von Ruckstühl I had encountered unexpected difficulties. The official who promised to arrange her visa was now being unhelpful; moreover, relatives of mine had arrived in Constantinople and required some of my time. Day after ecstatic day I put off meeting both women. While I lived in heaven, whole armies were routed, new countries were established, others were completely destroyed or rechristened with unlikely names. The empires of old Europe fell to bits like rotten wood. Esmé proved an excellent linguist. She rapidly expanded her French and soon learned Russian, as well as a little Italian. With her help I was able to speak slightly better Turkish. The skill for languages was one we shared and increased my belief that we actually were twin souls.
The Laughter of Carthage - [Between The Wars 02] Page 68