I swallow hard. Just to give a visible reaction beyond the overwhelming bitter, freezing hatred I feel for this man.
‘How does this work?’ My voice doesn’t quite sound like mine.
‘I’ll be back in two months. You bring the three girls. They need to be no older than twenty-five. No older. You will send me their names and photos in two weeks and I’ll arrange their passports. If they already have passports that’s even better. You say nothing to them except that Nelly is really happy in her job working at a very nice hotel in Tel Aviv.’
‘What if I can’t recruit three girls?’
‘Then little Nelly stays put. The brothel owner might sell her down the chain, to the cheaper houses. Either in Israel or over to northern Africa. Or,’ he shrugs, ‘he might kill her and dump her worthless ass in the Med. This is your one chance to get your sister back. Take it.’
‘I’ll do it. I’ll do what you ask.’ A shivery moan escapes my lips.
Vadim is happy. Message delivered, relative terrified, action promised.
He grins. ‘Now you, schoolteacher, you’re much nicer than Nelly. You could turn the money quite well.’ He smacks lips at me. ‘What is that old Van Halen song – hot for teacher?’ He sings it in his bad broken English, off key. He pulls the tape out and considerately reloads the bootleg educational DVD and then he is gone. His expensive heels click on the worn tile down the hallway.
I go to the window and watch him walk past the boys playing their impromptu football game. The ball bounds toward him and he stops it with one Armani shoe. Gracefully. He aims a polite, perfect kick not to the closest child but back to the biggest, tallest player on the field. (Of course he would kick it to the biggest. He is that kind of showy asshole.) He walks to an Audi and consults a map and gets into the car and drives off.
A map. He had more places to go along the backwater roads, more people to see, perhaps more families to blackmail.
What will you do for your sister?
I move as if in a dream. I lock my desk. I gather up my lesson plans notebook and my lunchbox and my purse. I walk down the street, ten minutes to home.
At home, Aunt and Uncle cook dinner and watch television, a Romanian soap opera called Only Friends they say they don’t care about but to which they are clearly addicted. I dutifully kiss the tops of their heads – Uncle’s freckled, bald pate and Aunt’s slightly greasy gray mop – and make a cup of black tea. I take it to my room, the one I’d shared with Nelly, and I shut the door.
I sit on the edge of the bed and drink the strong tea and I stare at a water spot above Nelly’s bed. My sister always said the spot was shaped like France and I told her, no, it’s a lion’s head. I lay down on the bed and, well, Nelly, was right, it sort of is like France. And a lion’s head.
And I close my eyes and I think.
I think the problem through, with the care and patience of someone building a house of cards. When I see weakness, I tear the tower down with a flick of my mind and I start again.
The puddle of tea in my cup grows cold. I get up and I walk down to the hallway to the apartment at the end. I knock once and the door opens after a minute. It takes Ivan, with his one leg, a bit longer to get around, and he looks sleepy, as though he has dozed. I can hear an argument on his TV, he’s watching Only Friends, too, the silly old soldier.
He smiles at me. We are only friends, too, but we are old friends. He invites me inside, asks if I would like tea, and I say no thank you.
‘What brings you here?’
‘Teach me, Ivan.’
‘Ha, what can I teach the teacher?’ the old soldier says.
I look at him.
He sees the unspeakable seriousness in my eyes and his smile fades.
‘Teach me how to fight. Teach me how to kill.’
64
Harp , Moldova
I follow Natalia from the market. Natalia is a petite girl and whenever I turned I could see the prominent heavy swell of her stomach. Pregnant. Natalia lumbers like pregnancy does not agree with her. She has no glow.
As Natalia reaches the edge of the market, I touch her elbow and the young woman turns. Recognizes me. And tries to smile, like smiling is a flexing of the face that she’s forgotten.
‘Do I know you?’ Natalia says.
‘You recruited my sister to be a prostitute for Vadim.’ I see no point here in wasting time. She looks like she might explode with baby at any moment.
Every word detonates against the fortress of Natalia’s smile. The woman’s lips waver for barely a moment and the smile stays firm as brick. ‘I have to go,’ Natalia whispers.
I close a hand around Natalia’s arm. I push the woman into a narrow alley between shuttered stores where For Rent signs hang in their windows like permanent fixtures. Broken glass from a beer bottle cracks under our shoes. I smell piss in the alley. Natalia tries to pull away but I am so much stronger. I ease Natalia up against the brick wall, where a graffiti artist has written unkind words about a rival football team.
‘Where did they take her?’ I ask.
‘I don’t know. Let me go.’
‘Tell me, or I’ll break your arm.’
‘But I’m pregnant.’ Natalia pales.
‘Irrelevant. A broken arm won’t hurt your baby. How does it work when Vadim gets the girls from here?’
Natalia doesn’t answer and so I yank the girl’s arm across my knee, begin to exert pressure on both sides. ‘Let me assure you, I mean business.’
‘But you’re a teacher.’ Now she remembers me.
‘Yes, and I’ll beat your ass with a ruler if you don’t tell me what I want to know.’
Natalia’s eyes widen. ‘He’ll kill Nelly if he knows you talked to me. Let me go, and walk away.’
My hands find the girl’s ring finger and twist it savagely. Natalia cries out.
‘You need to start taking this conversation seriously. How. Does. It. Work?’
Natalia gasps with pain. ‘Okay. Vadim takes them to Bucharest. They are taken to a safe house there. They are then taken to Istanbul by car. There’s another safe house. They stay there a while.’
‘Why?’
‘To… please don’t make me say it.’
‘Since you condemned my sister to it, you can say it.’
‘Break them in.’
‘Define.’
‘They give them heroin. They… assault them. For days, until they’re easier to manage.’
I made myself count to ten before I spoke. ‘And then what?’
‘They’re – sold. To houses. Some in Turkey. To Israel, Albania, Italy. The prettiest ones go to Dubai.’
‘Do you know where Nelly is?’
‘There’s nothing you can do for Nelly, except cooperate with them. They hold all the power.’
‘If I can do nothing, then there’s no harm in telling me.’
And then I see Natalia is not quite human any more. Natalia is not just flesh and blood but she is fear. She is ruled, shaped, made by fear. She is afraid of everything. This is what Vadim’s forge has made.
Good.
‘She… she is in Tel Aviv. I saw her there. I was there, too. Lucky Strike Parlor. Above a pizzeria. There are eight girls there. Most from Moldova or Romania.’
