Fire Raiser (27 page)

When the doors open, the brilliant daylight spilling across huddled bodies reveals that during the night one of the girls managed to crack a plastic water bottle and use it to slit her wrists.

“SOME OF THEM might be Jewish,” says the woman. Her thick false eyelashes look like clippings from the fur vest that buttons tight under her breasts and pushes them toward her chin. “If we can pass them off as Jewish, it will be easy to get them into Israel. It’s the Law of Return or something. I know several houses in Tel Aviv—”

“But will Jews buy Jewish girls?” This from a very young man, perhaps not even twenty, who is thin and fair and looks very stupid.

“I didn’t say they had to
stay
Jewish,” she snaps. “Just long enough to get them into the country. What about her? Does she look Jewish to you?” She points at a girl who is so obviously Romany that she could never be mistaken for anything else. “Too bad we can’t take any of the boys,” she continues, then laughs through her nose. “It’s much easier getting girls into Israel as Jews than it is to try the same with boys!”

Her companion doesn’t understand. She reaches over and takes a handful of his crotch. He winces away and takes several steps back, out of her reach.

“How about it, little one?” she says to the Romany girl. “How would you like to go to the Promised Land?”

They are speaking Italian. They arrived this afternoon at the warehouse by the docks where the truck disgorged its cargo. Waiting had been a real toilet over in the far corner, and a table with loaves of bread, rounds of cheese, and more bottled water. There are crates and boxes scattered about, all of them stenciled with the word VLORË. She thinks this might be the name of the seaport they are in. It isn’t that she needs to know this, or wants to; she merely wishes to exercise wits growing stale and stiff from lack of sleep and lack of food. If she keeps thinking, she has a chance.

What this chance might look like, when it might come, and what it might lead to, are things she meticulously does not think about.

A side door slams inward and a darkly mustachioed man makes his entrance. “
Mi scusi!
” he calls out. It is the same cheery, carefree voice her father uses when he’s had enough liquor to make him jovial and not enough to make him morose. “I had to go find another two
scafisti
—I had only two, and you have brought me such riches!”

Scafisti
is a word she does not know. She finds she is irrationally angry because of it. How dare he use terms with which she is unfamiliar? How is she supposed to survive this, to recognize her chance, if she can’t understand what’s being said?

Moments later she recognizes the fury for what it is: exactly like all the crying and wailing and moaning the other girls have done. It is hysteria. Fear. Horror at what is happening to her, at what will happen to her.

The four
scafisti
turn out to be motorized rubber boats. Mustache tells his “captains” that across the Straits of Otranto it’s only forty-four nautical miles (how these are different from miles on land, she does not know and decides not to care), so hurry but don’t be in a hurry, yes? If they spot the Italian Coast Guard, throw the merchandise overboard and speed off. While the Italian authorities scramble to rescue abandoned girls and boys from the sea, the boats will return to Albania.

“Use the Cape lighthouse as your guide—and remember we’re going to Mestre this time!” he finishes, and leaps into the boat like a pirate king.

The woman has added a wool coat to her fur vest, but still she huddles shivering in the boat as if she were wearing only the spring cottons of the merchandise. Her companion whines about wanting to drive the boat; Mustache tells him to wait for open water. The engine coughs, roars, and the boat tilts as it gathers speed, and soon the wind is flaying skin from bones. She hunkers down as best she can to shelter from the cold. Someone vomits; the wind lashes the stink away. The young man drives the boat for a time, and his reckless bravado—steering from side to side, making it rock and sway while he laughs and the girls scream—earns him a snarl from the woman.

After a long while, the boat slows. The woman snaps an order, and the young man distributes dark blankets. They are not for warmth; they are spread over the girls so that light will not find them. This must mean they are nearing shore. The word
silence
is repeated in several languages. The engine is muted to a soft purr. Bouncing atop white-crowned waves has given way to sliding through black water. Someone else is sick, and the smell this time is caught under the blankets. At last the motor cuts off. The boat lurches up onto sand. Everyone is hurried ashore. The Mustache waves a merry farewell, and leaps back into the boat for the return trip to Vlorë.

She stumbles up the slope, the blanket wrapped around her like enfolding wings. Up a hill there is a road, and a van, and everyone is shoved inside.

The woman, who is behind the wheel, lights a cigarette and starts the engine. “Can you do this by yourself next time, Gianni, without fucking things up too much?”

“I was fine!”

“You nearly dumped us all in the sea! Do you have any idea how much money is sitting back there? On my first shipment, I paid two thousand five hundred American—each—for ten girls. I made it back in a week.”

“None of them were fat or ugly?” he sneers. “Not even one?”

“My suppliers know better.” She drives fast, and the girls collide with each other at every corner. “I tell you, Gianni, it’s the perfect investment. No government in the world is serious about rescuing whores.”

“But if you get caught?” he wants to know.

“Sometimes there is a fine, sometimes a month in jail. Usually the charges are dropped—can you guess why, smart little boy?”

“My father says it’s because the girls won’t testify, and without testimony there’s nothing they can hold you on. But what happens to the girls?”

“They get thrown out of the country as illegal aliens—or sent to prison for being prostitutes. There
are
laws!” She turns her head to grin at him, and the car swerves, and she throws her cigarette out the window.

Gianni lights the next one for her. “So you will be my father’s partner in this,” he says. “His houses, your merchandise.”

“Half the whores in Italy are from Eastern Europe. That’s not a guess, that’s a fact. What other commodity is so plentiful? So cheap? So easily replaceable when it wears out? Much easier than smuggling guns or drugs—”

“And you can sell a gun or a kilo only once,” Gianni muses.

One of the girls starts to cry. Perhaps she also understands Italian. The language of Dante. Appropriate: the language of hell.

The house is massive. There are fluted white pillars and cool marble floors and glasswork chandeliers hanging from the foyer ceiling like gigantic garish spiders with orange, blue, and yellow globes dangling from each leg. There is a deep blue carpet on the curving staircase, and the next day her bare feet luxuriate in the softness when they allow her and the seven other girls in her room to come downstairs. The grass outside is very nearly as soft: warm where the sunshine drenches it, wet further down toward the turf. Surely this place is too grand to be a whorehouse. But finding and selling whores would seem to pay very, very well.

The valuable merchandise is escorted down the stairs in groups of twenty or so, and let out into the open air. Men with machine guns watch, simultaneously alert and bored, as clusters of girls and boys shift nervously across the grass. She wants to stay aloof and alone. But she knows better than to attract attention by detaching herself from a group. So she huddles with a little knot of terrified girls. Well aware that the small pleasures of sunshine and fresh air are not intended as pleasures, she guesses that the hour outside is meant to keep them healthy. So is the food. So is the warmth of her bed, and the uninterrupted quiet from twilight to dawn.

So is the attention of the man addressed as
Dottore
who comes to the house the following day. She is twentieth in the line of girls that stretches from the top of the stairs down to the foyer, along a back hallway, and into a room. The line jerks forward at irregular intervals, for some girls emerge quickly from the room while others are kept for quite a while. Each girl emerges visibly undamaged, but some come out weeping. That no one limps or curls around bruises or cradles a twisted arm reassures her. That some are crying moves her not at all. What puzzles her is the change in their clothing: gray sweatpants and either a green or yellow sweatshirt. The girls in yellow are directed down the hall; the girls wearing green cross the corridor to another room.

She hears whimpers from behind her on the staircase, and shifts impatiently forward. She doesn’t understand how some of these girls can still be afraid, how they can be so stupid as to show it. Anything other than silence and an expression of blank lifelessness attracts notice. Sure enough, she hears the slap of an open palm across an unprotected cheek, and resists the impulse to shake her head with disgust as a wailing cry of protest results. And, of course, another slap. She knows better than to turn and look. Curiosity is dangerous, and defiance is insanity.

It is her turn. A woman wearing a hideous polka-dot blouse addresses her, trying different languages. All of them are spoken badly, and none of them are Hungarian, so she does not respond. Short, hang-nailed fingers clasp a clipboard and a pen, and when no response comes after two more enquiries, the woman writes on an index card and hands it to her. She is Number 353/2005. This year—and it is only May—have there truly been three hundred and fifty-two others before her in this house? Probably so; she is twentieth in line today, and at least fifty more girls line the hall and stairs behind her.

She walks in the direction the woman points, carrying the index card. At a closed door, another woman in nurse’s whites takes the card and says, “
Dottore
” as she swings the door open. Within is a tall, reedy man with a balding head and a look of lifelong aggravation. He snatches the card, turns it over, and begins writing on the back. The woman leaves, and the door snicks shut.

She stands silent while he mutters in Italian. He makes a series of gestures, and after a moment she pretends to catch his meaning. She has learned to mime initial puzzlement so she has a little time to think. A little time to school her reaction. A little time to steel herself for whatever might happen.

He wants her to take off her clothes.

She does, folding them neatly as her mother taught her. He indicates an examining table. She sits on the hard surface covered by rough white paper. The nurse opens the door and says, “
Dottore
Santangelino—” but retreats when he snarls. She tells herself that she must remember the name—and then wonders why she thought such a foolish thing. Remember it for when? As if there will be a time when she is free to speak this man’s name to the authorities. As if there will ever be such a time.

As if any authorities will be interested.

As the examination proceeds, as her knees are bent and her thighs parted and her most private places painstakingly explored, she stares up at the painted ceiling with its garlands of flowers held by smirking cherubs. When the
Dottore
pokes her belly and handles her breasts, a small gold crucifix on a chain around his neck swings into her view. She wants to squeeze her eyes shut but keeps them open: she has endured without reaction all this time, surely she can last a little longer. His fingers slide down her ribs to her hip, and this is no longer a medical examination.

He is careful not to leave any evidence or do any damage. He is just as careful not to make a sound. All he does, really, is fondle her with one hand and himself with the other. But the child’s crucifix on its gold chain sways with his rhythm, and her world abruptly contracts to nothing but the tiny, smooth, naked gold feet folded one atop the other. She thinks that she ought to be able to see the nail. Light pulses with the cadence of his hands, and for an instant, as he cries out softly to Jesus, she feels dizzy and tiny flickering flames spread up the naked legs to the twisted body, the spread arms, the lolling head. She is mesmerized by the imaginary fire.

After, the nurse gives her the card and gray sweatpants and a green sweatshirt, and she is sent to another room. Her blood is drawn by a young man who says, “So you’re a ‘type and test,’ are you? Lucky girl!” The testing must be for diseases, but she doesn’t understand why her blood will be typed.

When she goes upstairs, the waitress is back in their room, wearing a yellow sweatshirt, with a new menu to study. She plods mindlessly around the room, mumbling, memorizing English words for sex acts, and the price in dollars for each.

Late the next afternoon, as lazy rain taps on the roof and soaks the wide green lawn, the girls are taken to a large room with a carved stone fireplace and more ugly glass globule chandeliers. More than sixty girls and at least a dozen boys line up, cards in hand. Each is told which of three new lines to join. She glimpses the tall woman and the stupid young man out the window. He is holding her umbrella as the van is loaded with their new merchandise. Among the girls—all wearing yellow—is the one who was traded for a television set.

The line she is directed to is the shortest. She wonders what it is about her and the nine other girls in green that makes them special. She wonders what she has in common with them. Not height, not age, not coloring, not nationality—

Blood type?

She is still trying to puzzle it out when she is taken to another room, given clean denim trousers, a white blouse, a black sweater with big gold buttons, tennis shoes, a cheap leather purse, and a passport. She has become a Russian named Natasha Ivanovna Slutskaya. She knows the English word. Someone has a sense of humor.

Natasha and the other seven are directed back into the foyer. The
Dottore
strides through, shouting furiously, something about why didn’t someone tell him earlier? Another voice attempts a soothing tone; he is having none of it.