“I can’t?”
“No.”
He was tempted to ask her what she meant by that but he knew what she meant.
“It’s, there, ” she said, “this terrible war. It will come for you.”
After a moment he nodded-he didn’t like it, but she wasn’t wrong.
“So,” she said.
They were silent for a time, the wind rattling the windows, the sea in the distance. “When France fell,” he said, “that day, that day I was Parisian, more than I’d ever been. We all were. Exiles or born in the 5th Arrondissement it didn’t matter. Everyone said merde — it was bad luck, bad weather, we would just have to learn to live with it. But we would all stay the same, so we told each other, because, if we changed, then the fascists would win. Maybe I knew better, in my heart, but I wanted to believe that that was enough: hold fast to life as it should be, the daily ritual, work, love, and then it will be.”
“That is sweet, Ilya. Charming, almost.”
He laughed. “Such a hard soul, my love.”
“Oh? Well, please to remember who we are and where we’ve been. First you say you’ll pretend to do what they want, then you do what they want, then you’re one of them. Oldest story in the world: if you don’t stand up to evil it eats you first and kills you later, but not soon enough.”
“Yes, I know.”
“So now, tomorrow, next day, you’ll find a way to fight.”
“Is that what you want?”
“No, never. I fear for you.”
He stood up and walked to the window. Tamara yawned, covered her mouth with her hand. “We weren’t meant to live long lives, Ilya.”
“I guess not.”
“I don’t care so much. And, as for you, you will die inside if you try to hide from it.”
“It?”
She gave him a look. “You’re the writer, go find a name.” She was silent for a time, he came back to her and sat on the end of the bed, she turned on her side and rested her head on her arm. “Do you know what matters, these days?”
He spread his hands.
“You did love me, Ilya. I wasn’t wrong about that, was I?”
“With all my heart.”
She smiled and closed her eyes. “Women like to hear those things. Always, I think. It always makes them happy, God only knows why.”
SYSTEME Z
REPUBLIC OF TURKEY MINISTRY OF THE INTERIOR BUREAU OF STATE SECURITY
Special Investigation Service
DATE: 2 December, 1940
TO: Major H. Y. Iskandar
FROM: M. Ayaz-Unit IX
Subject: I. A. Serebin
At 10:35 on 30 November, Subject left Hotel Beyoglu and proceeded by taxi to the Beyazit district, exiting in front of the Hotel Phellos and proceeding on foot to 34 Akdeniz street, taking the stairway to the second floor where he entered the office of the Helikon Trading Company. He remained at that office until 11:25. Subject returned to the Hotel Phellos where he took a Number Six tram to the Beyoglu district and checked out of the Hotel Beyoglu. Subject proceeded by taxi to Sirkeci station, purchasing a first-class ticket to Izmir on the Taurus Express, Istanbul-Damascus. Subject boarded at 13:08, sharing a compartment with two unrelated travelers. Subject got off the train at Alsancak station, Izmir, at 23:40 and took a taxi to the Club Xalaphia, a brothel, in Hesmet street off Cumhuriyet square.
Subject remained at Club Xalaphia until 01:55, when he checked into Room 405 in the Palas Hotel. Six other clients were on the premises during the time that Subject was there:
R. Bey and H. Felim-Cotton brokers, from Alexandria
Name Unknown-Reputedly a trader in pearls, from Beirut
Z. Karaglu-Mayor of Izmir
Y. Karaglu-His nephew, director of Municipal Tax Authority
W. Aynsworth-British subject resident in Izmir
At 00:42, a taxi entered the courtyard of the club, but no passenger was observed. The taxi left at 01:38, without passengers. The driver, known only as Hasim, is to be interrogated by Unit IX personnel from the Izmir station. The proprietor of Club Xalaphia, Mme. Yvette Loesch, states that Subject visited the room used by S. Marcopian, where he remained for thirty minutes.
Respectfully submitted,
M. Ayaz
K. Hamid
Unit IX
The ceilings in the Club Xalaphia were lost in darkness, so high that the lamplight never reached them. The walls, a color like terra cotta, were covered in frescoes, painted a century ago, he guessed, when the city was still Smyrna. The dreamer’s classical Greece: broken columns, waterfalls, distant mountains, shepherdesses weaving garlands. The madam liked him-he felt himself subtly adopted, lost soul in the whorehouse. “I am French,” she explained, speaking the language, “and German, but born in Smyrna.” Then, for a moment, melancholy. “This was a grand restaurant, owned by an Armenian family, but then, the massacre in 1915. They disappeared.”
So, now, it was what it was. In the still air, heavy perfume and sweat, soap, jasmine, tobacco, garlic, disinfectant. “You are welcome here,” she told him. “And, whatever you can think up, of course…”
Serebin knew that.
She rested a hand on his arm. “Don’t worry so,” she said. “She’ll come back.”
The girls liked him too. Lithe and merry, veiled and barefoot, they teased him from a cloud of musky scent, wobbling about in gauze balloon pants. The harem. With a trio of musicians, in costume, sitting cross-legged behind a lattice screen. Two Eastern string instruments and a sort of Turkish clarinet with a bulbous end, like the horn played by a snake charmer in a cartoon.
A strange way to go to war. He’d returned to his hotel after three, tired and sad, certain that morning sun would burn off the midnight heroism but it didn’t. So he stood at the window. In the light that covered the sea, the white gulls wheeled and climbed. You can talk to Bastien, he’d thought. Talk is cheap. See what he has to say. Thus, later that morning, Helikon Trading, a young Lebanese in a dark suit, a phone call in another room, an address in Izmir.
“Sophia,” the girl said, pointing to herself. “Sophia.” She sat on his lap. Soft. Across the room, seated in a grandiose leather chair, a man wearing a tarboosh gave him a knowing smile and a raised eyebrow. You won’t be sorry! Perhaps a Syrian, Serebin thought, Kemal had outlawed the hat for Turkish men.
“He will find you there, or along the way,” the Lebanese had told him. Excellent French, conservative tie. And what did Helikon Trading trade? That wasn’t evident, and Serebin didn’t ask. No trumpets, no drums, an office on Akdeniz street. But it had never been dramatic, this moment. Never. In 1915, age seventeen, a newly commissioned sublieutenant in the Russian artillery, his father had simply shrugged and said, “We always go.” Next, the revolution, his regimental commander requisitioned a passenger train and took the regiment to Kiev. Then, inevitably, civil war, and he joined the Red Army, setting off drunk with two friends from the Odessa railway station. He was twenty years old, what else? 1922, the war with Poland, ordered to serve as a war correspondent by the office of the commissar. And, finally, Spain. A spring afternoon in 1936, the editor of Izvestia taking him to a valuta — foreign currency-restaurant in Moscow. “Have whatever you want,” he’d said. Then, “Ilya Aleksandrovich, I have
