Orest Stelmach - The Treachery of Russian Nesting Dolls

“Why?”

“I’m not sure. It was a game. Or that’s how it turned out. We met in Tilburg at a T.R.A.S.H. performance.”

“What’s that?”

She sighed as though I were an idiot. “T.R.A.S.H. is the cutting edge of dance in Holland. Actually, it’s more than dance. It’s a combination of dance, performance art, and live music. I’m friends with Kristel, the choreographer. I was in town to see a performance. Iskra was there for an audition for a summer series. Something she could do between semesters at school. Kristel asked me to sit in.”

“Did Iskra get the part?”

“No, but she got me. You know how sometimes a man stares at you, and it’s not because he admires your brain?”

“Only when I diet, tan and wear a lime green bikini.”

“That’s funny,” Sarah said, giving me another unsettling once-over. “You’re one of those insecure types that has a lot more going for her than she wants to admit. That’s how Iskra looked at me. Like those men. Like she wanted to consume me. It gave me goosies. It gave me goosies up and down my arms. I wanted her right then and there. That never happened to me before with a woman.”

“So you agreed to meet in De Wallen ?”

She nibbled on some bread and nodded.

“She told you she was a prostitute?”

Sarah Dumont smiled. “No. That was the sexy part. She gave me a business card. No title. Just a name, an address, and a mobile number. She said she worked late, to show up at midnight. I figured she worked out of her home. I thought I was going to her apartment.”

“Instead you found her standing in a window with a green bikini and headphones on, sipping mineral water from a bottle.”

“Mmm. So sexy.”

“Was it just sex or did you talk, too?”

“No talking. Until the last night we were together.”

My ears perked up. “What happened then?”

“She asked me if I wanted to get a drink. I said ‘sure.’ We went to bar and talked for two hours.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Her. We sure as hell didn’t talk about me.”

“Why do you say that?”

Once again Sarah Dumont glanced at me as though I were devoid of brain cells. “Why would I want a sex worker to know anything about my business?”

“So you really had no feelings for her.”

“My body had feelings for her body. She gave me pleasure. But a woman with another woman, like in a relationship… That’s not natural and it sure as hell is not for me.”

“I’m guessing she felt differently?”

“You guessed right. She’d fallen for me, big time. Don’t ask me why. We didn’t know anything about each other. Maybe it was because I’m a fast learner, and it didn’t take long for me to give as good as I got.”

“Did she tell she was in love with you?”

Sarah Dumont rolled her eyes. “Poor thing. It was painful to listen to but I didn’t want to upset her so I went along with it.”

“You mean her body was still providing your body with pleasure, and you didn’t want to lose the opportunity for more of the same.”

She raised her fork and pointed it at me. “You’re a smart woman, aren’t you? Yeah, that’s about right.”

“What did she tell you about herself?”

“She said she knew she was a lesbian since her early teens but she’d never told her parents. She said they were old-school Russians and they’d never understand. Said her father would have gone nuts if he knew. Disowned her, stopped paying for university.”

“She was sure of that?”

“And how. She told me that there’s no sympathy for gays and lesbians in Russia. None whatsoever. She said being gay was considered a mental illness in Russia until 1990. That seventy-five percent of Russians think being homosexual is immoral. That you can’t work with children in Russia if you’re gay. And if you have a job in child care and they find out you’re gay, you’re fired.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” I said.

“And if you talk about gay rights in front of a child you can be arrested for espionage. You can be tried for treason and killed. And there’s a movement to pass a law that would allow the government to take children away from gay people.”

I remembered George Romanov’s assertion that homosexuality and pedophilia were somehow connected.

“And Iskra’s father is sympathetic to all of this crap,” I said.

“You say that as though you met him,” Sarah Dumont said.

“I had lunch with him.”

“Iskra said Russians think Americans spread the word about homosexuality like a weapon. To destroy the moral fabric of Russian children and ruin their society. I guess the government has brainwashed them. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I have plenty of gay friends and I don’t think it’s moral, but neither is prostitution and I had a real good time with one myself. To each his own, you know?”

“Did Iskra give you a key to her apartment?” I said.

“What for? To tell you the truth, I liked her better when I didn’t know anything about her. Once she showed she was just another needy girl. I was automatically turned off. Not that I wouldn’t have sampled the goods a few more times…”

This time I paused for a few seconds and let her finish her food and sip her wine. I didn’t want to appear overeager with my final query.

“Are your parents originally from Belgium or the Netherlands?” I said.

Sarah Dumont stared me down. That question didn’t have any obvious bearing on Iskra’s death. I knew it, and she knew it, too. I’d asked it out of curiosity, because her age and profession didn’t seem consistent with her lifestyle. Contrary to what the taxi driver had suggested, I hadn’t found much about her on the internet. She’d been the choreographer of two highly acclaimed dance shows and had won accolades across Europe. But I doubted that success could have generated sufficient income to build her glass mansion in Bruges.

“That’s okay,” she said. “I don’t mind you asking. I’m proud of my parents. My mother’s Belgian. She’s a school teacher here in Bruges. My father started out as a city planner in Brussels. He made a lot of contacts. Then he went into construction. He was very successful. He died three years ago. He left my mother and me very comfortable.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” I said. “And you’ve lived in Bruges long? I saw your house from the gate last night. It’s very beautiful.”

“You know how long I’ve lived here. The taxi driver or someone in the hotel would have told you that. Wherever you go, one thing stays the same. People love to know other people’s business. I lived in Holland for a while, but that didn’t work out for me so I moved out here to be with my mother. I can get to anywhere in Europe pretty quickly. But listen, you’re asking the wrong questions.”

“What are the right questions?” I said.

“You should be asking me who else had a key to her apartment.”

I smiled, and she answered without making me ask the obvious question.

“Sasha had a key,” she said.

Sasha was the boy I’d seen in Iskra’s photos, the one whom her father had dismissed as an innocent family friend.

“How do you know that?” I said.

“She told me.”

“Why?” It seemed incredible that during their first conversation outside the bed, Sasha’s name would come up.

“We were talking about the fact she kept her sexuality a secret. That she had to keep it a secret given her parents were hardcore Russians. I asked her if anyone knew and she said yeah, her friends at school knew. She had a lot of guy friends from school. Her father thought they were all boyfriends but they were just beards. Whoever said men were useless never needed to keep her lesbian ways a secret.”