The Cutting Room (34 page)

your statement.’

`It wasn’t anything to do with Les.’

`No? I thought he’d appear somewhere, though. Makes me

wonder what else you’ve left out. Here.’ He slid a slim file across the table towards me. `Vice have been closing in on

Trapp for a while. Your statement enabled them to get a

warrant to swoop on his saunas.’

As I read, it was as if the girl in the photograph had

suddenly rolled over, loosed herself of her bonds, and was

addressing me.

TRANSCRIPT OF EVIDENCE GIVEN BY ADIA KOVALYOVA

DATE: 30TH APRIL 2001 -TRANS. OLYA MCKENZIE

When you have no money you’ll do anything. Respectable

people don’t understand that, will never understand

it - why should they? They think that only bad people do

these things - that isn’t true - it’s the friendless and

desperate. You make a slip and then another slip and

suddenly you find that you are on your own when all you

ever wanted was a decent life.

I come from the Ukraine. In my country it is very

difficult to earn a living. I trained as a teacher, but still I found it impossible to get a job which would support me

and my three-year-old daughter. One day I saw an

advert in the paper seeking English speakers to work

abroad. This is everyone’s dream. A job abroad where it

will be possible to earn enough to send money home. I

telephoned the number on the advert and spoke to a

man. He asked me some questions, my age, family

situation, education, and then arranged an appointment

for the next day.

At the interview everything went well. The man was

smartly dressed, professional. He seemed friendly. As

well as inquiring about my experience of work, he asked

about my family. I had no reason to think anything was

wrong. I told him everything.

Straight away he said f had got the job. I was to be a

secretary working for a Ukrainian company in Britain and

should prepare myself to travel that very week. I was

amazed by the speed of everything, but of course this is

what I had prayed for. So I packed my clothes, gave up the

lease on my apartment, arranged for my daughter to stay

with my parents and kissed them all goodbye. Lots of tears

but happiness too. I had lived for so long without hope,

thinking only of today, never of tomorrow, now I could

plan a future. Leaving home was a sacrifice, but one I made

willingly for the sake of my family.

I didn’t know. Life in the Ukraine was hard, but if I

had any idea I would have run for home as fast as I could. In Britain I was met by another man. A white-haired man in an expensive suit. Once more he was friendly. He

asked about my flight, carried my bags to a car. I was

tired, I missed my daughter already, but still I was

excited, happy to be there. He said he was taking me

to my new flat, not very smart but clean.

At the flat everything was all right for a while. He

offered me some wine. I declined, but he seemed disappointed and I thought, Adia, this is one of your new

bosses, don’t begin by being antisocial. So then I accepted.

I asked him about the job and he said that his associates

would arrive in a short while. They would tell me all about

it. Soon after there was a knock at the door, he excused

himself and let them in.

As soon as the two men walked into the room the

atmosphere changed and I knew I had made a terrible

mistake. Everything about the white-haired man altered,

even his appearance became, I don’t know, coarser. One

of the two men said I belonged to them now, they had

spent thousands of dollars buying me and I was to earn it

back by sleeping with men, being a prostitute. I objected.

I said that this was not what I had been engaged to do. I

was educated. I had signed no contract. When I saw that

this was doing no good, I tried to leave. The white-haired

man blocked my way, I panicked and started to scream,

hoping someone would hear. The two men restrained

me. They beat me badly. When they were finished and I

was subdued and bleeding, the white-haired man … he

committed a sex act on me, I don’t want to say what it

was. They let me know that I was in for a difficult night.

And then …the other two men …they raped me.

After that it was difficult to fight back. They said that

they knew everything about my family. It was true, I had

told them myself. They said that if I did anything they

would take it out on my parents and my little girl. I

believed them. I was taken to a massage parlour on a busy

street. I worked there with six other girls. Their stories

were the same as mine. We were slaves. Every day from

eleven in the morning until twelve at night we were on

call. Sometimes the men would hurt us bad. We were

not allowed out, but I would peer through the frosted

windows and see people walking by, normal people.

Then I began to think, in a world where such evil exists,

are there normal people? Who were the men that used

us? Did they go home and kiss their wives, cuddle their

daughters, with the smell of our abuse still on their

fingers?

Every day another piece of me died. I thought about

suicide many times, but then I would think about my

family and worry that they would be punished.

When the police rescued us I was frightened. I thought

perhaps they were more bad men. When I realised that

they were there to set us free … I was relieved but I

couldn’t feel true happiness, feelings like that are lost to me now. The last bit of me died before they arrived.

Now I only want to go home.

I put my head in my hands. `The bastards.’

`Trapp was a kingpin in the trafficking of young men and

women into the city for the purposes of prostitution. There’ll be an investigation, but Trapp’s gone and McKindless really is dead this time. We’re going through the files, examining

unsolved attacks and murders to see if any of them might have been down to McKindless. I doubt we’ll ever know the full

extent of their involvement. In a way the pressure’s off,

they’re out of our jurisdiction.’

`But it’s not over, is it?’

`We’ll circulate what we have to other forces in Europe,

but Trapp will probably start somewhere else.’

`And meanwhile there’ll be someone who takes note of

Trapp’s absence, and slips from the gutter into his shoes,

ready to start all over again.’

Let love clasp Grief lest both be drowned,

Let darkness keep her raven gloss,

Ah sweeter to be drunk with loss,

To dance with Death, to beat the ground.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson,

`In Memoriam A. H. H.’

ROSE AND I WERE walking along the rue des Martyrs towards

Montmartre. Rose was fashion-model chic in a black trouser

suit teamed with white silk shirt and a jaunty hat that set off her new short, bobbed hair. I was a funeral scarecrow in my long black raincoat and black suit.

Rose looked up at me. `Bloody typical.’

`What?’

`Paris in the springtime and I’m here with you.’

`I could say the same thing.’

I smiled to show I was joking. The truth was too close for

both of us.

A week ago I had walked through Kelvingrove Park towards

the five-pointed spire of the university. At last the bad

weather had broken. The air was crisp and fresh, the sky

a cloudless Tyrolean blue. Daffodils hosted together in golden clusters and pink blossom drifted on the air. The kind of day that invokes a quickening of the heart, intimations of summer, nostalgia for springtimes past.

Over on the green students mugged a game of football.

Two girls in shorts and safety helmets glided past on rollerblades.

Somewhere a band was practising, the drummer a

beat behind the rest. A police car cruised by, windows down, the driver’s arm, sleeve rolled up, lazily half out of the open window. Three kids, hunched together on a bench, concealing

a half-rolled joint. A brightly painted ice-cream van parked opposite the pond. A jakey took a swig from his can and raised his face to the sun. Toddlers clambered around the play park.

An old man fed a bustling clutter of pigeons. Squirrels bolted, quick-fire, up a tree. Even the graffiti on the fountain

contrived to look cheerful. Only a discarded condom by

the swings reminded me that this was the scene of my neararrest.

I headed over the bridge and away towards the dark,

gothic turrets. I liked it best when I was the only one wearing sunglasses.

Professor Sweetman had greeted me effusively.

`Mr Rilke, how nice to meet you at last. Before we start,

what about a refreshment? He ignored a selection of herbal

infusions filed next to the kettle, saying, `You look like a man who appreciates the hard stuff. Earl Grey?

The professor was almost as tall as me, out of proportion

with the medieval dimensions of his office. As he lifted a pile of essays from a chair, I reflected that the world I inhabited was a jumbled place with never enough space even to sit

without displacing something. He passed me my tea. I looked

for somewhere to put it, but the desk between us was hidden

beneath a confusion of books and papers.

`So, Rose said you were interested in Soleil et Desole?? ‘I’d appreciate anything you could tell me.’

He passed me a book, open at a marked page. `I looked this

out when I knew you were coming.’

A black-and-white photograph of an undistinguished, bourgeois, four-storey house, anonymous in a row of similar

houses.

`It was a place??

‘Most definitely, yes. Not very exciting to look at, is it?

Now turn the page.’

The next page revealed a faded monochrome picture of an

elaborate Moorish chamber, glittering with mirrors and

exotically tiled mosaics.

‘Beautiful.’

Professor Sweetman beamed through his beard. `Isn’t it!

From the outside you would never know. Except people did,

of course. In its heyday Soleil et Desole’s interior was so

celebrated that society ladies would make discreet tours of it during the day.’

`What was it?’

He struck his hand against his forehead in exaggerated

exasperation. `Sony. I get carried away. Typical academic. I work largely in isolation, so when I find someone interested in my field I get overexcited.’

I shook his apology away and he resumed his account.

`Soleil et Desole was a house of ill repute. A brothel of the kind that could only have existed in Paris. Paris, as you’ll know, is popularly called the “city of love”. It was also

traditionally associated with sexual excess and with good

cause. In the nineteenth and well into the twentieth century, many a gentleman guarded his respectability by confining his adventures to Paris. By the end of the century the tradition was still strong, though ironically under attack from a loosening of sexual morality. Who wants to pay when you can get it

for free? There was even some acknowledgement of this from

the authorities in the form of licensed, short-term rooms. The kind of thing you read about in 1950s hard-boiled American

fiction. Maisons de rendezvous where you could rent a room for an hour or so. The result was the same as in any evolving

economy - the very best and the very cheapest survived.

`Soleil et Desole was one of the very best. Part of a

flowering of specialist brothels, maisons de grande tolerance where “particular” tastes could be catered for. It was established in 1893 and didn’t close until 1952. In its

heyday Soleil et Desole could reputedly provide you with

anything you wanted. There are anecdotes about clients on

their way to an assignation being passed in the corridor by

a nun, or a bride hurrying to her next rendezvous. It was

lavishly decorated with murals by Toulouse-Lautrec. One

of the beds was said to have belonged to Marie-Antoinette,

though its provenance was dubious. As well as the Moorish

room in that photograph, which incidentally you may have

noticed was decked out like a mosque, there were rooms

representing other nations, a Russian room, a Spanish

room, a Chinese room, a Scottish room - not the most

popular, I would imagine, an Indian room, a Persian room,

and so on. It also contained, among other things, a

“funerary chamber” where an obliging young lady, fresh

from an icy bath, would lie very still for those with

fantasies of necrophilia, an oriental boudoir and, of course, a torture chamber. This is what Leo Taxil had to say about

the “funerary chamber”.’ He lifted another book from the

mess on his desk, opened it at a section marked with a

ripped subway ticket, and started to read. ` “The walls

were lined with black satin and strewn with tears of silver.

In the centre a very luxurious catafalque with a lady lying

inert in an open coffin, her head resting on a velvet

cushion. Around her, long candles in silver holders,

incense-burners and livid-hued illuminations. The lustful