The car rattled over the country road, past the wooden pillar that represented the border, and they were in Estonia. Lavrenti’s hand lay on Zara’s thigh, and suddenly she had a powerful urge to curl up in his arms and go to sleep. Her debt was so great that she had lost the ability to count it.
The night before, Lavrenti had promised that once Pasha got his casino business going, Zara could work at the casino and earn many times more than what she did now. She could pay it all off.
1992
It was an accident, really.
She had made a few good videos in Tallinn. Or at least good enough that Lavrenti played them for himself when Pasha was out. Lavrenti said that Zara had eyes just like Verochka’s, just as blue. Pasha suspected that he was sweet on Zara and teased him about it. Lavrenti blushed. Pasha nearly died laughing.
A few of the videos were so good that Pasha showed them to his boss. The boss got excited about Zara. He wanted to meet her.
The boss was wearing two enormous signet rings and Kouros cologne. He apparently hadn’t washed his genitals for several days, because there were white clumps in his pubic hair.
The heels of Zara’s shoes were wrapped in gold and tied with a gold bow on the back. Their sharp pointed tips pinched her toes. Silver butterflies peeked out of her stockings at the ankles.
The boss put on the video and told her to do what was on the screen.
“I suppose you know you’re a slut?”
“I know.”
“Say it.”
“I’m a slut and I’ll never change. I’ve always been a slut and I always will be.”
“And where is this slut’s home?”
“Vladivostok.”
“What?”
“Vladivostok.”
“You said it wrong. This is your home. Here with your master and your master’s cock. A slut has no other home, and she never will. Say it.”
“Because I am a slut, my home is here, with my master’s cock.”
“Good. You almost got it right. Now say the whole thing.”
“I’ll never have any other home.”
“Why is this slut still dressed?”
She heard a snap. Maybe it came from outside. Or inside. The boss didn’t notice anything. A little snap, like the sound of a mouse’s back breaking, or a fish bone. It sounded a bit like the gristly crunch of a pig’s ear between your teeth. She started to undress. Her plucked, goose-bumped thighs shivered. Her German panties dropped to the floor; their delicate elastic lace fell in a heap like an empty balloon.
It was easy. She didn’t even have time to think about it. She didn’t have time to think about anything. The belt was just around his neck all of a sudden, and she was pulling on it with all her strength.
It was the easiest fuck ever.
She wasn’t sure if he was dead, so she picked up a pillow and held it over his face for ten minutes. She watched the familiar heavy ticking of time on the gold face of the clock. They had clocks like that in Vladikki. They must be made in Leningrad. The man didn’t move once. Not bad for a beginner. Very well done. Maybe she had a natural talent. The idea made her laugh. Ten minutes was enough time to think of all kinds of things-she had been slow at learning to read, and she had never been able to keep up during morning calisthenics, never had the posture that the teacher demanded, her Pioneer salute was never as snappy as the others’, and her school uniform was always bedraggled for some reason, even though she was constantly straightening it. She had never been good at anything right from the start, except for now. She looked at her own body reflected in the dark window, her own torso on top of the fat man, pressing the pillow, squashed with sleep, over the man’s face. She had been made to look at her own body so much that it was strange to her. Maybe a strange body worked better than your own body in some situations. Maybe that’s why it had gone so well. Or maybe it was just that she had become one of them, the kind of person that this man was.
She went to the bathroom and washed her hands. She put on her bra and underwear and stockings, tugged her dress back on, checked that the photo was still hidden in her bra and made sure the sedatives were still there, and went to the door to listen. She could hear the boss’s men playing cards, the video still running, nothing to suggest that they had noticed anything. They would see and hear everything before long-the boss had microphones and cameras. But they didn’t have permission to look when he had women with him.
She drank another glass of champagne from a Czech crystal glass and realized as she looked at the crystal flowers -they looked like cornflowers-that there had been glasses all around her all this time, tons of them-she could have swiped one of them quite a few days ago and slit her throat. She could have left much earlier, if she had really wanted to. Had she wanted to stay? Had she actually wanted to whore and sniff poppers? Had Pasha just directed her to the profession that suited her? Had she just been imagining that she wanted to leave, that everything was awful? Had she really liked it? Did she have a whore’s heart, a whore’s nature? Maybe it was a mistake to struggle against her whore’s fate-but it was no use thinking about it now.
She took a few packs of cigarettes and some matches and searched the boss’s pockets, but she didn’t find any money and there wasn’t time to make a more thorough search.
The apartment was on the top floor. She went down the shaky fire escape to the roof and from there to the other stairway to avoid the men with crew cuts who guarded the door. A smell of pee and a dark stairway downward. She stumbled on the chipped stone steps, thudded onto the landing and through the door, which was covered with artificial leather, its stuffing softening the sound. She could hear a child laughing inside and saying, “Babushka, Babushka.” When she reached the bottom she ran into a cat and a row of beat-up mailboxes. The outer door creaked and screeched. There was a well-waxed black car in front of it, shiny even in the darkness. A man sat inside it smoking, his leather coat shone dimly through the glass, and Russian disco music pounded. She didn’t look at the car as she went by, as if that could keep him from noticing her. But maybe it did, because the man just kept bobbing his head, absorbed in the music.
She stopped when she got to the end of the block. She felt clear. She was in tolerable condition if you didn’t count her ripped dress, the runs in her stockings, or the fact that she had no shoes. A woman racing down the street with no shoes might stick in a person’s mind, and she didn’t want to attract any attention. But she had to run. She couldn’t dawdle. A few broken yellow streetlights, a few people on their way home. The darkness hid their faces. The area was completely strange to her-maybe she had been here to see a customer, maybe not. The concrete looked the same everywhere. She ended up next to a main road. There was a bridge going over it. A bus went booming by with its accordion section shimmying, but even its headlights were so dim that no one would have taken note of her-and even if they had noticed, would anyone be interested, before Pasha had even started to ask questions, before fear and money made people remember things that they really didn’t remember? But you could always find somebody who would remember right. There’s no darkness so dark that someone can’t see in it.
The bus was followed by a Moskvitch sedan with one headlight out; then a Zhiguli clattered by, nothing but noise.
A bus stop emerged from the darkness so quickly that she didn’t have time to go around it or change directions, so she careened straight through the crowd waiting there, through the young mothers with their short skirts and white stockings, their delicate aroma a mixture of innocence and abortion, the girls’ red fingernails clawing at the darkness, at the future, in that familiar way. The flock scattered in bewilderment when she rushed
