He was met at the station by Kopeikin, the company’s representative in Turkey.
Kopeikin had arrived in Istanbul with sixty-five thousand other Russian refugees in nineteen twenty-four, and had been, by turns, card-sharper, part owner of a brothel, and army clothing contractor before he had secured—the Managing Director alone knew how—the lucrative agency he now held. Graham liked him. He was a plump, exuberant man with large projecting ears, irrepressible high spirits, and a vast fund of low cunning.
He wrung Graham’s hand enthusiastically. “Have you had a bad trip? I am so sorry. It is good to see you back again. How did you get on with Fethi?”
“Very well, I think. I imagined something much worse from your description of him.”
“My dear fellow, you underrate your charm of manner. He is known to be difficult. But he is important. Now everything will go smoothly. But we will talk business over a drink. I have engaged a room for you—a room with a bath, at the Adler-Palace, as before. For to-night I have arranged a farewell dinner. The expense is mine.”
“It’s very good of you.”
“A great pleasure, my dear fellow. Afterwards we will amuse ourselves a little. There is a box that is very popular at the moment—Le Jockey Cabaret. You will like it, I think. It is very nicely arranged, and the people who go there are quite nice. No riff-raff. Is this your luggage?”
Graham’s heart sank. He had expected to have dinner with Kopeikin, but he had been promising himself that about ten o’clock he would have a hot bath and go to bed with a Tauchnitz detective story. The last thing he wanted to do was to “amuse” himself at Le Jockey Cabaret, or any other night place. He said, as they followed the porter out to Kopeikin’s car: “I think that perhaps I ought to get to bed early to-night, Kopeikin. I’ve got four nights in a train in front of me.”
“My dear fellow, it will do you good to be late. Besides, your train does not go until eleven to-morrow morning, and I have reserved a sleeper for you. You can sleep all the way to Paris if you feel tired.”
Over dinner at the Pera Palace Hotel, Kopeikin gave war news. For him, the Soviets were still “the July assassins” of Nicholas the Second, and Graham heard much of Finnish victories and Russian defeats. The Germans had
sunk more British ships and lost more submarines. The Dutch, the Danes, the Swedes and the Norwegians were looking to their defences. The world awaited a bloody Spring. They went on to talk about the earthquake. It was half-past ten when Kopeikin announced that it was time for them to leave for Le Jockey Cabaret.
It was in the Beyoglu quarter; just off the Grande Rue de Pera, and in a street of buildings obviously designed by a French architect of the middle nineteen twenties. Kopeikin took his arm affectionately as they went in.
“It is a very nice place, this,” he said. “Serge, the proprietor, is a friend of mine, so they will not cheat us. I will introduce you to him.”
For the man he was, Graham’s knowledge of the night life of cities was surprisingly extensive. For some reason, the nature of which he could never discover, his foreign hosts always seemed to consider that the only form of entertainment acceptable to an English engineer was that to be found in the rather less reputable
Nachtlokalen
. He had been in such places in Buenos Aires and in Madrid, in Valparaiso and in Bucharest, in Rome and in Mexico; and he could not remember one that was very much different from any of the others. He could remember the business acquaintances with whom he had sat far into the early morning hours drinking outrageously expensive drinks; but the places themselves had merged in his mind’s eye into one prototypical picture of a smoke-filled basement room with a platform for the band at one end, a small space for dancing surrounded by tables, and a bar with stools, where the drinks were alleged to be cheaper, to one side.
He did not expect Le Jockey Cabaret to be any different. It was not.
The mural decorations seemed to have caught the spirit of the street outside. They consisted of a series of immense vorticisms involving sky-scrapers at camera angles, coloured saxophone players, green all-seeing eyes, telephones, Easter Island masks, and ash-blond hermaphrodites with long cigarette holders. The place was crowded and very noisy. Serge was a sharp-featured Russian with bristly grey hair and the air of one whose feelings were constantly on the point of getting the better of his judgment. To Graham, looking at his eyes, it seemed unlikely that they ever did: but he greeted them graciously enough, and showed them to a table beside the dance floor. Kopeikin ordered a bottle of brandy.
The band brought an American dance tune, which they had been playing with painful zeal, to an abrupt end and began, with more success, to play a rumba.
“It is very gay here,” said Kopeikin. “Would you like to dance? There are plenty of girls. Say which you fancy and I will speak to Serge.”
“Oh, don’t bother. I really don’t think I ought to stay long.”
“You must stop thinking about your journey. Drink some more brandy and you will feel better.” He got to his feet. “I shall dance now and find a nice girl for you.”
Graham felt guilty. He should, he knew, be displaying more enthusiasm. Kopeikin was, after all, being extraordinarily kind. It could be no pleasure for him to try to entertain a train-weary Englishman who would have preferred to be in bed. He drank some more brandy
determinedly. More people were arriving. He saw Serge greet them warmly and then, when their backs were turned, issue a furtive instruction to the waiter who was to serve them: a drab little reminder that Le Jockey Cabaret was in business neither for his own pleasure nor for theirs. He turned his head to watch Kopeikin dancing.
The girl was thin and dark and had large teeth. Her red satin evening dress drooped on her as if it had been made for a bigger woman. She smiled a great deal. Kopeikin held her slightly away from him and talked all the time they were dancing. To Graham, he seemed, despite the grossness of his body, to be the only man on the floor who was completely self-possessed. He was the ex-brothel-proprietor dealing with something he understood perfectly. When the music stopped he brought the girl over to their table.
“This is Maria,” he said. “She is an Arab. You would not think it to look at her, would you?”
“No, you wouldn’t.”
“She speaks a little French.”
“Enchanté, Mademoiselle.”
“Monsieur.”
Her voice was unexpectedly harsh, but her smile was pleasant. She was obviously good natured.
“Poor child!” Kopeikin’s tone was that of a governess who hoped that her charge would not disgrace her before visitors. “She has only just recovered from a sore throat. But she is a very nice girl and has good manners.
Assieds-toi
, Maria.”
She sat down beside Graham.
“Je prends du champagne,”
she said.
“Oui, oui, mon enfant. Plus tard,”
said Kopeikin
vaguely. “She gets extra commission if we order champagne,” he remarked to Graham, and poured out some brandy for her.
She took it without comment, raised it to her lips, and said,
“Skål!”
“She thinks you are a Swede,” said Kopeikin.
“Why?”
“She likes Swedes, so I said you were a Swede.” He chuckled. “You cannot say that the Turkish agent does nothing for the company.”
She had been listening to them with an uncomprehending smile. Now, the music began again and, turning to Graham, she asked him if he would like to dance.
She danced well; well enough for him to feel that he, too, was dancing well. He felt less depressed and asked her to dance again. The second time she pressed her thin body hard against him. He saw a grubby shoulder strap begin to work its way out from under the red satin and smelt the heat of her body behind the scent she used. He found that he was getting tired of her.
She began to talk. Did he know Istanbul well? Had he been there before? Did he know Paris? And London? He was lucky. She had never been to those places. She hoped to go to them. And to Stockholm, too. Had he many friends in Istanbul? She asked because there was a gentleman who had come in just after him and his friend who seemed to know him. This gentleman kept looking at him.
Graham had been wondering how soon he could get away. He realised suddenly that she was waiting for him to say something. His mind had caught her last remark.
“Who keeps looking at me?”
“We cannot see him now. The gentleman is sitting at the bar.”
“No doubt he’s looking at you.” There seemed nothing else to say.
But she was evidently serious. “It is in you that he is interested, Monsieur. It is the one with the handkerchief in his hand.”
They had reached a point on the floor from which he could see the bar. The man was sitting on a stool with a glass of vermouth in front of him.
He was a short, thin man with a stupid face: very bony with large nostrils, prominent cheekbones, and full lips pressed together as if he had sore gums or were trying to keep his temper. He was intensely pale and his small, deep-set eyes and thinning, curly hair seemed in consequence darker than they were. The hair was plastered in streaks across his skull. He wore a crumpled brown suit with lumpy padded shoulders, a soft shirt with an almost invisible collar, and a new grey tie. As Graham watched him he wiped his upper lip with the handkerchief as if the heat of the place were making him sweat.
“He doesn’t seem to be looking at me now,” Graham said. “Anyway, I don’t know him, I’m afraid.”
“I did not think so, Monsieur.” She pressed his arm to her side with her elbow. “But I wished to be sure. I do not know him either, but I know the type. You are a stranger here, Monsieur, and you perhaps have money in your pocket. Istanbul is not like Stockholm. When such types look at you more than once, it is advisable to be careful. You are strong, but a knife in the back is the
same for a strong man as for a small one.”
Her solemnity was ludicrous. He laughed; but he looked again at the man by the bar. He was sipping at his vermouth; an inoffensive creature. The girl was probably trying, rather clumsily, to demonstrate that her own intentions were good.
He said: “I don’t think that I need worry.”
She relaxed the pressure on his arm. “Perhaps not, Monsieur.” She seemed suddenly to lose interest in the subject. The band stopped and they returned to the table.
“She dances very nicely, doesn’t she?” said Kopeikin.
“Very.”
She smiled at them, sat down and finished her drink as if she were thirsty. Then she sat back. “We are three,” she said and counted round with one finger to make sure they understood; “would you like me to bring a friend of mine to have a drink with us? She is very sympathetic. She is my greatest friend.”
“Later, perhaps,” said Kopeikin. He poured her out another drink.
At that moment, the band played a resounding “chord-on” and most of the lights went out. A spotlight quivered on the floor in front of the platform.
“The attractions,” said Maria. “It is very good.”
Serge stepped into the spotlight and pattered off a long announcement in Turkish which ended in a flourish of the hand towards a door beside the platform. Two dark young men in pale blue dinner jackets promptly dashed out on to the floor and proceeded to do an energetic tap dance. They were soon breathless and their hair became dishevelled, but the applause, when they had finished, was
lukewarm. Then they put on false beards and, pretending to be old men, did some tumbling. The audience was only slightly more enthusiastic. They retired, rather angrily Graham thought, dripping with perspiration. They were followed by a handsome coloured woman with long thin legs who proved to be a contortionist. Her contortions were ingeniously obscene and evoked gusts of laughter. In response to shouts, she followed her contortions with a snake dance. This was not so successful, as the snake, produced from a gilt wicker crate as cautiously as if it had been a fully grown anaconda, proved to be a small and rather senile python with a tendency to fall asleep in its mistress’s hands. It was finally bundled back into its crate while she did some more contortions. When she had gone, the proprietor stepped once more into the spotlight and made an announcement that was greeted with clapping.
The girl put her lips to Graham’s ear. “It is Josette and her partner, José. They are dancers from Paris. This is their last night here. They have had a great success.”
The spotlight became pink and swept to the entrance door. There was a roll of drums. Then, as the band struck up the Blue Danube waltz, the dancers glided on to the floor.
For the weary Graham, their dance was as much a part of the cellar convention as the bar and the platform for the band: it was something to justify the prices of the drinks: a demonstration of the fact that, by applying the laws of classical mechanics, one small, unhealthy looking man with a broad sash round his waist could handle an
eight stone woman as if she were a child. Josette and her partner were remarkable only in that, although they carried out the standard “specialty” routine rather less efficiently than usual, they managed to do so with considerably more effect.
She was a slim woman with beautiful arms and shoulders and a mass of gleaming fair hair. Her heavily lidded eyes, almost closed as she danced, and the rather full lips, fixed in a theatrical half-smile, contradicted in a curious way the swift neatness of her movements. Graham saw that she was not a dancer but a woman who had been trained to dance and who did so with a sort of indolent sensuality, conscious of her young-looking body, her long legs, and the muscles below the smooth surfaces of her thighs and stomach. If her performance did not succeed as a dance, as an
attraction
at Le Jockey Cabaret it succeeded perfectly and in spite of her partner.
He was a dark, preoccupied man with tight, disagreeable lips, a smooth sallow face, and an irritating way of sticking his tongue hard in his cheek as he prepared to exert himself. He moved badly and was clumsy, his fingers shifting uncertainly as he grasped her for the lifts as if he were uncertain of the point of balance. He was constantly steadying himself.