Twisted (3 page)

The mere idea of going to the university for at least five years and becoming, let’s say, a doctor, and then getting a place in a local hospital with a salary of $120 per month made me nauseous.

The only people who had a halfway decent life those days (except for the greedy, corrupt politicians, other officials, gang members, or the blessed ones who were lucky in some way to be close to the trough) were the ones who didn’t look back, left behind their ideas of a cloyingly planned and secure Soviet past, and adapted to a new life full of risks and surprises. Among them were suitcase traders who knocked about in Poland and Turkey; sailors who managed to find jobs on foreign ships; men who did rock-fall reconstructions in Portugal or harvested crops in Spain; older women who usually looked after the elderly in Europe, Canada or the United States; and the younger ones, like me and my sisters, who took care of more-capable-of-action clients in the ‘entertainment’ business.

The memories of a three-litre glass jar full of evenly cut squares of pork fat, preserved in thick layers of coarse salt, with skin that was impossible to chew, will stay with me forever. This was often the only item in our fridge for months. The image of our mother’s constantly worried eyes, the shame on our father’s face each time he came back home with the same nothing as the day before, will never be erased from my head.

Even when they found a few
hryvni
to buy 500 grams of rice and some bread for that day, or the rare occasion when one of our mom’s friends who worked at the kindergarten helped by bringing some scraps that even the not-so-picky staff would not take home, the misery wouldn’t disappear – the question of what to feed to their three children tomorrow still hung densely in the air.

Eventually, our mother didn’t have a choice but to go abroad to work. Thanks to her fearless and adventurous character, and later to Natalia’s great desire to swim out of that hopeless and depressing puddle called life in post-Soviet Ukraine, my unemployed father and I could afford borsch and some fruit for dessert that evening.

In addition to finding a job and making some money to help us to avoid complete deprivation, our mom also taught us to be brave and always to look for a way out – even if you could not see one.

So yes, instead of discouraging me, my father unwillingly nudged me to the realization that no matter what, I had to leave Kherson. There was no other way for me. The only thing I had to do was to announce it to my sisters. Something was telling me that it could be a bump in the road.

Lena and Natalia had been back in Kherson for four months when I decided, finally, to take action and talk to them. It was my birthday, too, which was a part of my strategy for persuading them to take me on their next trip.

Oh yes, of course there was going to be another trip.

They’d spent half the year in Luxembourg and managed to earn an astronomical amount: about $20,000 each! But because their income was the only source of finance for our family, and my sisters were, to some extent, hooked on shopping and partying, the liquid assets evaporated pretty quickly.

They decided to go back.

Unfortunately, they had to wait another two months. According to Luxembourgish immigration law, entertainers were not allowed to work and stay in the country for more than six consecutive months. They also had to have a break between trips, out of Luxembourg, that had to be as long as the time they’d spent there. Fortunately for me, this meant that I still had time to finish my school exams.

I knew there was going to be a problem. Both sisters had always been overprotective of me. They wanted to make sure that I had the best opportunities – me becoming a hooker was obviously not one of them.

Natalia, as the eldest sister, had a persistent urge to stick up for me. Lena was driven by the guilt I mentioned earlier. I could get whatever I wanted from my kin by manipulating their feelings –
I know I am a spoilt bitch
– but this time my advantage actually played against me.

We had finished the cake, and our father had left the three of us in the kitchen for his quiet moment with the TV and the beloved ten-year-old couch.

It was a really special night – Baileys and cigars. Natalia had generously forked out to celebrate my eighteenth birthday. The sweet liquor made us pretty tipsy, and our chat more upfront and revealing. The girls went on about the memories of their trip.

‘We were scared shitless when the airplane touched down at Luxembourg International. It was night-time too...’ Natalia sipped from her glass and continued, ‘Max, our talent agent, picked us up. He was suspiciously quiet and uneasy. The five kilometre drive to the club felt like the longest trip ever. No wonder he gave us goose bumps: a few weeks later we found out that he was a total junkie.’

‘He was supposed to get us a contract at another club for the next month,’ Lena jumped in, ‘and also to renew the visas, which had to be done every month. Guess what – this fucker disappeared! We didn’t know what to do. Luckily, we managed to find another agent to sort it out. But still, it was a troubling story for us and for Max, too. After all, he was found dead in his apartment from an overdose. Apparently the guy didn’t have family, because they started looking for him only when the stink of his body reeked through the walls.’

‘That’s another story, Len. Stop interrupting me!’ Natalia exclaimed with childish excitement. She’d won back a turn to speak. ‘When Max pulled up in the middle of the narrow and murky street, right next to the lone, dowdy neon sign – “Platinum Triangle” – I thought we were in the middle of some horror movie!’

‘I promise you Jul,’ Lena broke in again. ‘The letter P was flickering on and off while sending off sparks!’

‘It was nothing like we imagined it would be. You know, we had this Las Vegas-type of place in mind.’ We burst into laughter.

They entered the dark and smoky place, which had a long passage with a bar that stretched along the right and sank into a big square lounge with low couches, red curtains and a small stage in the corner. An old, awfully tall lady with a gloomy face behind the counter looked at them and solemnly nodded at Max, who was pulling their luggage in and missed the ‘mafia move’.

The place looked weird. It had about twenty dressed-up, heavily painted girls: a few of them moved lazily on the stage; the tipsy one at the bar was persistently soft-soaping the only customer, who had a terrorised look on his face; and the rest were sitting on the row of stools all the way along the left side of the corridor, which looked really funny opposite the elevated bar.

When my sisters stepped inside, all the girls (even the drunk one) turned to look at them in the hope of seeing more clients at the door. As soon as they recognised Max and figured that my sisters were the new dancers, the expressions on their faces changed to ‘Fuck! We can’t believe this old, giant bitch is featherbedding, when the club is empty every night!’ Their last hopes of making some money in that shithole evaporated on the arrival of those two.

The giant bitch was Rosy, the owner of the club. She stepped out from behind the counter and, without saying hello to the new arrivals, called one of the girls.

‘Show them around’, said Rosy, levelling a distinct misanthropy at the pretty blonde she’d called, before going back to the bar.

The excessively friendly and energetic girl reached to shake my sisters’ hands. ‘Hi, my name is Angel,’ she said. After a brief pause, she smiled and added in Russian, ‘That’s my stage name. My real name is Olga.’

When Max had eventually settled their suitcases and hotfooted it away, Olga took them on the tour, explaining their duties and club’s utilities. When they went upstairs to see the private rooms, their bleached usher abruptly turned and said, with a knowing smile on her face, ‘You are not allowed to have sex with the customers,’ then kept moving onward.

‘We both sighed with relief,’ Natalia carried on, as Lena nodded.

Suddenly father walked into the kitchen. We fell silent, exchanging glances on our blushing faces: we had never spoken to him about what my sisters did and always tried to keep our voices low to make sure he would not accidently hear us. Clearly, the reality in which Natalia and Lena had being working as pros was ‘slightly’ changed to a version in which they were waitressing.

It was common for working girls to lie to their families. How could one tell her mom that she was nothing but a whore? Of course she would come up with a more palatable interpretation – that she was working as a babysitter or a cleaning lady. And even though the money she earned was freaking huge for such a short period, and for a four-dollar-an-hour job, her mom, of course, would disregard the obvious and swallow the comfy colouring. How could a mother admit that her girl was nothing but a whore?

‘Come on, girls. How many times have I told you not to smoke inside?’ Our father went on, bawling us out: ‘Go onto the balcony! There is so much smoke in here you can hang an axe in the air!’ He pulled his usual disappointed face, opened the window wider, and went back to his beloved.

We cracked up as he left, but decided to move anyway. Natalia grabbed the bottle while Lena and I took the ashtray and the glasses. We parked on the old brown pleather corner seat, which for a typical concrete Soviet-realism-style apartment building was a real luxury. The night was warm and quiet, as it is in the Kherson summer; the shrill chirping of crickets accompanied our straight talk, which we didn’t start until we’d made sure that the door behind us was closed.

‘So yes,’ resumed Natalia, ‘the words – no prostitution – were like balm for our exhausted nerves.’

My sisters wanted to believe this fib so badly that they forgot about their conversation with Irina, who had, after all, confessed about what kind of ‘dancing’ she performed. Moreover, the sign in Russian next to every private room – ‘Throw condoms into the crapper only – NEVER INTO A WASTEBIN. Management.’ – that was aimed at the girls in case of a police raid, didn’t make them think twice.

‘Imagine, Jul, our faces, when in the middle of that first night the rhythmical beat of the couch against the wall in the private room next to our accommodation, accompanied by dull pants and sighs – soprano and baritone in unison – woke us.’ We rolled with laughter again.

Suddenly I fired it off: ‘I am going with you this time.’

They froze for a second and then exclaimed as one, ‘No way!’

I started gabbling something about being mature and capable and responsible and I don’t remember what else.

‘It’s a bad idea!’ exclaimed Natalia

‘It wouldn’t be the right place for you, especially not after what you went through three years ago, Jul …’ Lena shook her head while looking away.

‘What does that have to do with my future plans? I can’t believe you brought it up, Len! So now, because you cannot deal with your guilt issues you are going to seal me in a jar and store me in a cool and dry place so I won’t get hurt again? Is that your plan, Len? To keep me safe, turning me into a pickled gherkin? It’s my life and I will decide what to do with it …’

We argued all night long, until Natalia lost her temper, screamed ‘Over my dead body!’ and stormed out.

Guess what … two months later, three of us are flying to Luxembourg.

Natalia could not stop me, but she did make sure we were going to work in the same place, a cabaret called Sexy Girls.

The hot August day is in full swing when we land. We grab a cab and go straight to the club.

Lena asks the driver to pull off next to the four-storey apartment building with the red sign above the entrance. The billboard with pictures of half-naked girls arrests my attention. Despite the girls’ cheesecakes being covered with a glass panel, most of the photos are faded and have curved yellow corners from the merciless sun.

We force our luggage through the doorway and stop in the poky hall. It has a door on the left to the club area, a wall-sized mirror on the right and stairs further down the hall.

While Natalia and Lena are looking for a manager to get the room keys, I avidly peer at the dark bar, taking in every detail. The day shift is rolling. Waves of excitement and fear rage through my body when I think about working here … in just a few hours … tonight!

It’s difficult to make out much – after the bright daylight the place looks absolutely pitch-black. All I see is a small group of girls sitting silently on the curved sofa; two men accompanied by sexily dressed girls at the bar, a few steps away from each other; and one sleepy barman. The cigarette smoke and slow, quiet music make them look like a bunch of zombies.

My sisters come back with the keys, and news that there is only one room available with two beds; the others are half-occupied.

It’s a real sweat to push the luggage up the narrow, steep stairs, all the way to the fourth floor. The second contains the private rooms, and the third and fourth are the girls’ accommodation. As we reach the top, a door on the left flies open. A woman stands at the threshold with a glass of wine in her hand.

‘Oh, look who’s here! Natalia and her daydreaming sister! Welcome back,’ she exclaims in a hoarse and bumbling voice. Then she points at me, discourteously: ‘And what is it that you have dragged in with you this time?’

Natalia haplessly sighs, and then greets the woman without even looking at her. ‘Hey, Masha.’

She is in her thirties, almost two meters tall, with a strong but beautiful face. Despite the time of the day, Masha is already quite intoxicated. She’s wearing a knee-length, pink, slightly wrinkled kimono-like robe, which exposes her athletic legs.

Something tells me Masha used to play basketball … a lot.

Natalia turns to Lena and says quietly, ‘You and Jul stay in this room; I will have to share with this one,’ and nods towards Masha.

‘Wait, wait, wait!’ The ball hawk struggles to pronounce the words. ‘I don’t want you in my room!’ She punches the air with the glass of wine and spills some on the decayed linoleum. ‘You are crazy with your early jogging! You will wake me up every goddamn morning! I would rather stay with the puny one!’ She punches again, this time towards me, and spills more wine.