Escape to Constantinople

"There certainly is. It's the talk of the American consulate. He rescued those children one by one from dire circumstances in the evacuation of Sevastopol, and he insists that he's personally adopting them all and taking them back to America when he is transferred there. And he's not even married. Bristol is livid. He says if he lets McCully do it, others will want to do it too. And McCully answered with a 'so what?' There's quite a struggle going on over that, but knowing McCully and how tenacious he was with the need for the United States to be involved early in the Crimea evacuation, I'll bet he finds a way to get those children to America. He'll probably just sail home with them."

"More power to him," Pyotr said in a small voice. He felt choked up—and it wasn't from the tough chicken the Moscovite was serving that evening.

In a move that Pyotr was to remember later, O'Dell carefully put his eating utensils down next to his plate, wiped his mouth with his napkin, took a hard look at Pyotr, and said, "Then you don't disapprove of an American adopting a Russian refugee to enable him or her to go to America?"

"No, I think what McCully is trying to do is admirable. If those children make it to the States, I'm sure they will be among the luckiest Russians to have survived this debacle. And it demonstrates how much more the Americans have done for my people than any other nation has. If there ever is another tsar, he must give that man a medal."

O'Dell smiled a small smile, inclined his head briefly, picked up his fork and knife, and once more attacked the unyielding chicken breast, which he'd complain about if those eating at the Moscovite weren't enjoying far better fare than most across Constantinople were, and in particular those in the Russian refugee camps in Stambul and on the Isle of Proti.

* * * *

Pyotr no longer lived in the refugee camp, or on the streets, or even at an establishment such as Martin's Tea Room. He now shared a garret apartment in a building of other Russian expatriates doing at least slightly better than most, with Mikhail and, when she wasn't with the American relief doctor, Samuel Covington, with Katya Betskoya. The three had become almost inseparable—like brothers and sister—ever since they had escaped Smyrna together on a U.S. destroyer at the behest of Covington. At least that was how Katya saw the relationship. Having seen Katya fucking Covington and still wishing it was him, Pyotr had great trouble being satisfied with a brother-sister relationship. Mikhail just seemed happy to be free of his Turkish captain again.

Both Mikhail and Katya worked on the wait staff at the Parizen restaurant. Both supplemented their incomes by going with restaurant clients when asked, with Katya's regular clientele being even more select than Mikhail's, and Katya was still servicing Covington a couple of times a week. But since the horrendous experience they'd all lived through in Smyrna, none of them had had sex with each other.

Pyotr ached to couple with Katya, even more now than before he knew she was a transvestite, but Katya never took the hints of interest he gave no matter how specific they were. Pyotr suspected that Katya didn't know he was aware of her secret and that for some reason it was important to her that he not know. He was conflicted over whether to tell her he did or not—and that it made no difference to him or the strength of his ardor. He was afraid of how she would react if he told her he knew.

He was determined that someday he would gather the strength to talk to her about it—and then to get across to her how much he ached for her. But that "someday" never seemed to come. He didn't want to possess her; he wanted her to possess him, just as he'd seen her mastering Covington.

He suspected that Katya knew that he was really—or once had been—a Romanov count. She may have remembered remarks casually dropped by others back on the evacuation ship to Sevastopol. Mikhail knew, of course, but Pyotr had sworn him to secrecy and was confident that Mikhail had said nothing. But the woman in the apartment on the first floor, rear of their apartment house, the Countess Demidova, had recognized him. He had denied he was a Romanov—and, specifically, the man she knew him to be—and she had dropped the effort to get him to acknowledge that he was who she believed him to be. But she was somewhat demented now, living in poverty off the seamstress earnings of a faithful servant who had escaped from Russia with her when she was marked for execution by the Bolsheviks, even though the countess had spent her entire life in charity work for the poor. The poor woman thought they were living on her own vanished wealth. Pyotr knew that she and Katya talked, and he was afraid that Katya knew who he was and was avoiding coupling with him not only to maintain the ruse that she was equipped as a woman should be but also because Pyotr was too royal for her.

He realized he was following a double standard. While he wanted Katya to know nothing about him, he wanted to know everything about Katya—about how she had come to be like she was. For a fleeting moment one morning in early fall, he thought he might be able to make those discoveries without prying them from her.

He was perusing the bookstalls along the Vatan Coddese when he ran across a novel by Katya's father, Fydor Betskoy. It was in Russian and the title of the novel, Demytri, My Son, struck Pyotr. He remembered that many of Betskoy's novels were reputed to be largely autobiographical. He picked the book up from the bin and turned it over and over in his hand, excited at the prospect that it would have revelations in it about Katya. He wracked his brain trying to remember whether Katya had ever said she had brothers.

He heard a voice behind him, on the street, calling out "Count Pyotr," though, and he dropped the book in surprise and turned toward the voice, instantly wanting to hush it up. It was Boris, the old servant of his distant cousin, Prince Toubetskoy. He was about to say something dismissive to the servant, when the old man broke in.

"I've been looking for you everywhere. The prince has urgent news he wishes to share with you and has sent me out to seek you."

Forgetting all else, Pyotr bade Boris show him the way and fought to control his own steps so that he didn't rush the tottering old man beyond his endurance.

The room was dark, and the prince, if anything, looked closer to the grave than to life.

"It is tragic news—for both of us—Pyotr," the prince said in a low, rasping voice. "But I knew you would not want to go through life with the uncertainty. And soon, I would not be able to tell you what I have been told."

"You are not well, Cousin?" Pyotr asked, thinking that health must surely be the issue.

With slight irritation, though, the prince waved the question off. "No, I am quite well, thank you. No, I am leaving to live in Paris soon—and I will do so as soon as I can find a young companion to carry the burdens of going there. Boris is older than I am, and I'm afraid he's well passed handling such a responsibility."

"Is that why you've called me?" Pyotr asked. "You want me to take you to Paris?"

"I may give you that privilege as a last resort, Pyotr, but I'm rather hoping that a younger, smaller man than you will be my companion. It seems I will not be permitted to travel with one as young as I like, so I suppose I am left with the need for youthful appearance."

Pyotr looked into the old goat's eyes and saw that he was quite serious about this. Would he never give up his proclivities? Pyotr wondered.

"So, why have you . . .? Oh, are you saying that you want me to procure a young man for you? Younger and more boyish then me, I take it?"

The prince just sat there, looking meaningfully at Pyotr, somewhat as a parent would at a child who wasn't understanding the obvious.

"And is this the momentous reason you had Boris search the streets of Constantinople for me?"

"It is just a side issue." The prince paused and turned his head away. When he looked back at Pyotr, his expression was a softer one, one of sadness, and he simply said, "They are all dead, Pyotr."

"I beg your pardon."

"Your family. None but you left St. Petersburg. They were all murdered by the Bolsheviks before you ever left Russia. They were too slow, too trusting of those around them, to leave in time. You need to know that. The tsar and his family are gone too. Rumors are already rife that one of the daughters—and the tsarevitch—somehow survived and were spirited away. But I'm sure that's all politics. The Bolsheviks have proven to be more organized than to let that happen. That era is over. Mother Russia as we knew is dead. Of that, I'm sure."

Pyotr sat, stunned. He'd always supposed that most of the family had been killed, but surely at least one of them . . .

"As long as you are here, perhaps you will indulge a favorite relative again."

Pyotr looked to his side, where the prince was sitting very close to him in his wheelchair, his lap blanket on the floor at his side and his cock out and being held in one hand. His other hand was unbuttoning Pyotr's fly.

Still in shock, Pyotr just leaned back in his chair and let what would be be.

He had the presence of mind to go back to the book stall where the prince's servant had found him after he had given the old fossil what he wanted—but look as he might he couldn't find the novel again by Fydor Betskoy about a son. And when he queried about the book to the bookstall owner, the look he received was as if he was hallucinating that such a book or author ever existed.

* * * *

It was twilight on a Sunday. Pyotr and Kenneth O'Dell had worked their shift in Helen Bristol's soup kitchen and, as usual, had retired to a hotel for a session of lovemaking. Once again O'Dell had asked Pyotr to go to the States with him and once again Pyotr had answered that he could not do that.

"But you saw Admiral McCully with those children the other evening—that he intends to adopt them. That's a way to get to America, Pyotr. I'm offering to adopt you."

"You aren't old enough to be my father."

"McCully is old enough to be those childrens' grandfather. And he isn't married either. I'm a decade older than you are. There's no reason for anyone to think that I can't be a father figure to you—even with them secretly understanding that I'm doing no less than McCully is doing. That I am saving Russians, one person at a time."

"I still cannot go with you. I can't leave Constantinople yet. I love you for the offer, but please don't press me further."

Showing his sadness and his frustration, O'Dell had washed himself off and quickly departed while Pyotr was still feeling too weak from the fucking to rise from the bed. He heard the door to the room open, though, and he turned to speak.

"Have you forgotten—?"

He only had time to rise, naked, from the bed in surprise and consternation, though, when a fist blow to his belly, followed by an uppercut to his chin sent him reeling back onto the bed.

"So, you are still at it, are you?" Nikolai Saltykov growled. He was unbuttoning and dropping his tightly tailored sailor's trousers. "I saw you lure that older fancy man to this hotel. I want some of what you gave him. And, seeing that we are old friends, you will be happy to give it to me for free."

"Nikolai, don't." Pyotr cried out. But Nikolai punched him again, snapping Pyotr's head back to where it cracked against the wall on the other side of the bed. Dazed, he lay there defenseless, as Nikolai jerked his legs apart and started to fuck him furiously.

Resigned to the fucking as he always had had to be with Nikolai, Pyotr turned his head to the headboard and threw an arm over his face both to protect his head from Nikolai's blows, albeit belatedly, and also so that he couldn't see the anger in Nikolai's eyes in the taking. It was no easier to see even with the realization that it wasn't personal—that Nikolai, by his origins, was no less contemptuous of the tsar's class than any of the Bolsheviks now ruling in Russia and tracking down and degrading and murdering any royal they could find.

He heard Nikolai give a cry and fall forward on top of him in heavy, lifeless weight, though, and his eyes flew open. The first images he saw were the surprised look on Nikolai's face and then the burst of blood flowing out of the former academy cadet's mouth. The second image, swimming up over Nikolai's collapsed torso was of the wild eyes of Mikhail.

"Mikhail! What have you done?" Pyotr cried out.

"I saw Nikolai following you and the American and I followed him to see if he would make mischief."

The knife Mikhail was holding in his hands was covered in Nikolai's blood.

Recovering quickly, as he knew he had to, Pyotr sent Mikhail to check the nearby rooms for one with an unlocked door and no occupant, while he did his best to contain the bleeding of Nikolai's body. Together they moved the body to an unoccupied room, exchanged the bed linens, and did what they could to clean up any evidence of where the murder had occurred.

Only when they were down the stairs and out onto the street did they feel free either to take a deep breath or to speak.

"What is to become of me?" Mikhail whimpered.

"You did what you had to do, and you did it for me," Pyotr answered. "I don't think you will be connected to the killing. But we can't chance it. The Turks would not be sad to summarily execute a Russian murderer. They would be especially happy that the victim was Russian too. Two fewer burdens to worry about."

"What is to become of me?" Mikhail repeated.

At that moment Pyotr realized that Mikhail would not be able to keep the deed secret. He was quaking, had vomited in the gutter as soon as they had vacated the hotel, and was muttering to himself almost as a madman.

Mikhail would have to go farther away than to the apartment they shared.

Taking a firm grip on Mikhail's arm, Pyotr said in a commanding voice that cut through the small, young Russian's meltdown, "Come with me, Mikhail. You are moving to Paris with a randy old goat of a Russian prince."

* * * *

Through the cold winter of 1922, Pyotr tried to tell Katya how he felt about her. But she would have none of it. He had thought that, with Mikhail gone and well settled now—as a letter from Paris had announced that the prince had formally adopted Mikhail and made him heir to a still-sizeable fortune—it might be different in their apartment with just the two of them. But not even when their breaths were fogged in the ice-cold, unheated room on the coldest nights of the deepest winter was Pyotr able to get Katya to bundle with him so that he might have a start of melting her heart and resolve.

Katya was kind and affectionate to him—but in the way a sister would be to a brother.

Pyotr did manage to tell Katya of his feeling for her and that it didn't matter whatever secret she was keeping from him—that he would still love her. But when he did this, she just looked sad and said their time had never had a chance—that she was serious about the American relief doctor, Samuel Covington now. She even remonstrated with Pyotr a bit, reminding him that he, as well as Katya, owed his deliverance from Smyrna to the American doctor.

She never came anywhere close to telling Pyotr that she was really a he, a transvestite who was a woman only in terms of the beauty and illusion of femininity she could create with cosmetics and the clothing she wore and the studied movements she made.

And thus, Pyotr had not been able to tell her that it didn't matter a bit to him. That he loved and was loved by men too—and that he wanted her inside him if that was how she expressed her love. It was how he'd seen her having sex with the American doctor.

The American doctor obviously knew what she was, and if they were still coupling, Pyotr felt the disadvantage he had against a man who was having and enjoying what Pyotr could not attain.

The day came when Pyotr found that nothing stays the same forever and that his chances with Katya had slipped out of his hands.

One night he came back to the apartment and Katya wasn't there. And she wasn't there in the morning either. He checked at the Parizen restaurant only to be told she hadn't worked there in weeks. He went to the American relief agency, but no one would tell him where the American doctor, Samuel Covington, lived.

On the third night of Katya's absence, a Saturday, the nearly demented Countess Demidova in the apartment on the first floor back remembered that Katya had left and given her a note to give to him.

I have gone to America with Samuel, which is the right thing to do for a man who saved us and wants me as I am. I would have had you by preference, but I cannot hurt you because of what I am. I am still a daughter of Russia; I could not live up to you and your family.

Pyotr read the note over and over, tears streaming from his eyes over what he had lost by not forcing the issue.

The next day, as Pyotr was standing beside Kenneth O'Dell and they were serving the tired- and defeated-looking line of White Russian refugees shuffling through the food line of Helen Bristol's soup kitchen, Pyotr leaned over and whispered to O'Dell, "Do you still wish me to come to the States with you?"

"Yes, of course," the American diplomat answered, almost dropping his serving spoon in surprise.

"Then I will do so," Pyotr answered. "I will want a new life, though. In America, I will be Peter, but I will need a new last name. I must change. With each step toward a new life, I must be a new person."

"It will be simpler if you take my name—if I formally adopt you. Is there any reason now why I cannot adopt you?"

Pyotr's thoughts went to Mikhail and Pyotr's awful old cousin, Prince Toubetskoy. Mikhail had written that he was happy being the prince's son. That everything was taken care of and that the prince only made one demand on him—one that was easily given considering what Mikhail had been through in life.

Thinking on what Kenneth O'Dell gave him, Pyotr considered that being adopted by a man he could then more openly live with—a man as vigorous and attentive as O'Dell—should be so much more satisfactory than even Mikhail's situation had become.

"Of course, I would like that," Pyotr answered. And then, thinking not only of Kenneth's devotion but also the years it might take for him to ever see Katya again, he added, "And if you are still interested, I suggest that we dispense with those skin condoms now. I am ready for the commitment that requires."

The look that O'Dell gave him almost sent Pyotr into tears in reflection of the selfishness with which he had been treating the man who had given him so much without demands in return.

* * * *

Late in the next spring Peter O'Dell stood at the rail of a passenger liner beside his "father," Kenneth, as the great ship pulled away from a Constantinople dock and into the Sea of Marmara en route to New York City.

Peter's first thought as Constantinople slipped from view was that this was the first time he had ever sailed from a port that wasn't in chaos from an evacuation. But his next thought as he turned his face toward the west, toward America, was that he would do all he could to satisfy Kenneth O'Dell—right up to the time when he had found his Katya in America and convinced her to let him into her life and bed.

Then he sighed, reminding himself what the last four years had taught him—to take his happiness and pleasures as he could find them and not to take the future for granted. He was happy with Kenneth O'Dell. Katya could remain as a dream out there—somewhere. But he would not let dreams deny him the happiness that he and Kenneth could grasp if the dream was never to be his for the taking.