Escape to Constantinople

Pyotr lay on his belly on the bed in the cheap hotel, naked, and watched the American, Kenneth O’Dell, equally naked, soaping up his jaw and carefully shaving off a day’s worth of blond beard. Pyotr had met the handsome, self-confident man while serving at the refugee soup kitchen near the Sirkidji train station, near the tip of Seraglio Point in Stambul. Stambul was the old city of Constantinople on the Golden Horn, where the Bosporus entered the Sea of Marmara. The main thought in the young Russian’s head at the moment was that the American looked good from the rear. He was a good decade older than Pyotr was, but he had the build of an athlete, with broad shoulders tapering down to a thin waist; no hips to speak of, but heavily muscled thighs and well-shaped buttocks flaring from there.

O’Dell had told Pyotr he worked at the American embassy in Constantinople and put in time helping with the food kitchen that Helen Bristol, wife of the chief naval officer and top American diplomat in Constantinople, had set up in the center of the area in which the Russian evacuees had their temporary camps until they--hopefully--could be pawned off on Western countries. In answer to Pyotr’s question of how he had kept in such good shape, O’Dell had answered that he had played American football for the 1913 national champion Notre Dame University team and had swum vigorous laps ever since--that he had welcomed the embassy assignment to Constantinople largely because it had enabled him to swim the width of the Bosporus Strait at increasingly wider points. The notion of swimming the Bosporus was romantic to O’Dell because he had read of Lord Byron having done so.

O’Dell had told Pyotr that he was a romantic at heart, and Pyotr thought O’Dell had fucked like one, which Pyotr found both surprising and inviting.

Pyotr had no idea what American football was, but he well appreciated the swimming comments and was impressed at the stamina it must have built up in the American. His stamina throughout the night in the hotel room had, indeed, been impressive, and Pyotr was surprised that what O’Dell had told him about the university sports team he’d been on--the championship year he had played--meant that the man must be pushing thirty. Years older than Pyotr, but the man had fucked like a much stronger, more vigorous man.

Not that a lot of the men who were fucking Pyotr weren’t vigorous--the Turks he went with were particularly so--but O’Dell was also the most attentive man Pyotr had lain with. He had been hard for an hour or more at intervals throughout the night, and he prepared Pyotr and worked him such that Pyotr begged for the cock and ejaculated twice to each time O’Dell ejaculated--the first time with O’Dell patiently rubbing across Pyotr’s prostate until he had come. At the same time, O’Dell had complimented Pyotr on how many ejaculations Pyotr had given him through the night. He had said that he’d be hard pressed to remain awake at the embassy today because of how many times he’d wanted Pyotr in the night--and had been willingly received by Pyotr--and had exploded with Pyotr.

Pyotr hadn’t gotten to sleep much either, but any time he could spend in a hotel room, no matter how primitive, was a comfort to revel in. He was particularly grateful to O’Dell for not treating him as a prostitute even though, in their coupling, there was every reason for O’Dell to know that Pyotr now was quite experienced and harbored few inhibitions. Pyotr sucked and rode a cock like a pro.

Pyotr had been in Constantinople over three months now and was working the streets, along with far too many other of the Russian evacuees, thankfully more women than young men, and sleeping on a pallet in a refugee camp tent during the day. Most of the work he was able to do was in the late evening and early night period and was conducted on the steep-sloped Horhor street near the Hagia Sofia mosque and Topkapi Palace in the old city district of Fatih.

When he first landed in Turkey, Pyotr, along with all of the survivors of the Rion, was taken off the ship on the Isle of Proti, which had been set up as a gateway for the refugees. Here they were deloused; their clothes, including the gray with red trim Imperial Military Academy tunic that had given Pyotr recognition and cachet, were taken from them and burned; and they were given worn but serviceable clothes to wear. Some attempt was made to record their backgrounds at this embarkation point--with Pyotr manufacturing a background that was dull enough to satisfy them without raising their interest--and to attempt to link them up with relatives and friends outside of Turkey who would take them. The more believable they could be that they would leave Turkey quickly, the more likely they were to be permitted out of the filthy, disease-ridden encampments on the Isle of Proti and to cross the water into Constantinople proper.

There were case workers there to talk to the refugees about how they could start fitting into life in Constantinople and prepare for relocating elsewhere. The official who talked with Pyotr had been quite straightforward. He had complimented Pyotr on his looks and obvious cultural refinement, had told him flatly that his best prospects were probably as a male prostitute on the streets or as a waiter in one of the expatriate supper houses, which was much the same thing, and had quickly propositioned him. Pyotr had risen and left the conversation immediately, but the kernel of reality had been set in his head.

After three days in the Proti camps, Pyotr returned to the administrative unit, found a presentable Turkish official who wanted to fuck him, and was then quickly cleared to leave the Isle of Proti behind and disappear into the Russian camps in Stambul’s Fatih District on the European bank of the Bosporus.

Pyotr had immediately fallen into the routine of earning a bit of money to supplement what he could get in the refugee camp by walking the streets of the sailor bars near the Seraglio Point docks and sucking off half-drunken sailors from a myriad of nations or letting them quick fuck him against a wall in the alleys off Horhor.

The first time he was taken to one of the cheap hotels in the district was nearly the last time he had worked the streets.

He was on the street in front of one of the bars when he heard a gruff voice call out. “Pyotr Romanov. Count Romanov, is that you?”

The two young men he was standing with to while away the intervals and to give the clients a choice turned their heads toward him in surprise upon seeing that he had reacted. They were both Russian. They knew what a Romanov was. Of course Pyotr was going by the name Apraksin now.

Pyotr checked his reaction and tried to act as if he hadn’t heard. Out of the corner of his eye, though, he tried to locate the face of the man who had called out to him, half recognizing the voice. Thus, he wasn’t completely surprised when he saw that it was his fellow imperial academy cadet, Nikolai Saltykov, who had worked his way into taking Vasily’s place between Pyotr’s thighs back during the retreat from Kazan.

Nikolai was dressed like any of the other sailors off the docks now, and he was nearly as drunk as a sailor would be at this time of night. Leave it to Nikolai, Pyotr thought, to be able to disappear back into the working population.

“I’m sorry . . . who?” Pyotr murmured as Nikolai strode up to where they stood. “I don’t know . . .”

“No matter,” Nikolai declared, obviously understanding from the looks the other two men were giving Pyotr that they had no idea who Pyotr really was. “Come with me.” He grabbed Pyotr’s wrist with a tight fist, and Pyotr followed where he was being led, saying nothing to Nikolai until they were well out of earshot of Pyotr’s two acquaintances.

“How did you come to be here? Are you a sailor now? What of Grigory Orlov?”

“Shut the fuck up. Yes, I’m a sailor now. One has to live. I see how you’ve chosen to do it. And I don’t know what the fuck happened to Orlov--and care even less.”

Nikolai pushed Pyotr into the doorway of the nearest cheap by-the-hour hotel, paid for the room, and manhandled Pyotr up the stairs. Once in the room, Pyotr turned to ask Nikolai more questions, but Nikolai punched him in the stomach with one hand, while uppercutting a fist into his jaw with the other, and Pyotr fell back onto the floor. Nikolai kicked him viciously in the ribs and then pulled him up by his hair with one hand and punched him in the face with the other fist. Still holding a crumpled Pyotr with one hand in his hair, Nikolai unbuttoned his fly with the other and pushed Pyotr down on his knees on the floor.

“Suck this, your majesty,” Nikolai growled. “And be good at it, or I’ll beat your royal ass to a pulp.”

They never made it to the narrow bed in the room. After Pyotr had sucked Nikolai’s cock hard, the bigger man pushed Pyotr down on all fours, mounted him like a dog, and fucked him brutally, following Pyotr across the floor and brutally thrusting and thrusting again as Pyotr sought a safety that was unattainable. At the far end of the room, beaten and with no more struggle in him, Pyotr was flipped onto his back and just lay there panting and looking dully up at Nikolai’s hatred-enveloped face, as the sailor pushed his knees under Pyotr’s buttocks and the small of his back and pistoned his channel hard and deep. Nikolai left Pyotr moaning on the floor and clinching his sides with no further explanation how Nikolai had gotten from the Crimea to here.

After that, Pyotr had been wary about where he was in the bar area of the Fatih District and who was coming out of the bars and onto the street. For some reason, even while Nikolai was cruelly fucking him, Pyotr had been nostalgic for the past and wondered even more now who among his fellow cadets, the academy faculty--and his own family, for that matter--was still alive and what they were having to do to remain so.

This encounter with the American embassy man, O’Dell, was only the second time Pyotr had been in a hotel room in the Fatih District--this time a far better one, but still one frequented by prostitutes and their clients. And it was the first time he’d been kept for the night. It also was the first attentive sex he’d had since Grigory Orlov was teaching him how to make the most out of taking the cock, although, as challenging as it was, Pyotr had found the double cocking of Rion’s captain and the redhead with the long, long cock about as arousing as he’d ever had--in just the realization that he could take two lustful men at once.

Kenneth O’Dell’s commitment to Helen Bristol’s refugee soup kitchen near the Sirkidji train station was for early Sunday afternoons. Their hands had touched while O’Dell was scooping gruel into bowls the first Sunday Pyotr had seen him there, and both had looked up at each other in surprise. O’Dell had smiled and Pyotr had then smiled as well. The next Sunday, taking his time in the service, O’Dell asked Pyotr if he smoked.

“I did when I could buy cigarettes,” Pyotr asked.

“I’ll be finished in an hour,” O’Dell had said. “If you’d like to share a cigarette with me, you might stay around. I will gladly spare you one for the company.”

Pyotr stayed around. There wasn’t much else he needed to do until several hours after the sun went down anyway.

One of the first things O’Dell said to him as they were standing in the shadow of the train station and looking up at the Hagia Sofia mosque was, “You aren’t like the rest. You seem better educated. And you carry yourself with more pride.”

“My parents were teachers,” Pyotr answered. “Simple village teachers outside of St. Petersburg, but I suppose they educated me better than most. And as far as carrying myself with pride, I don’t know how you would reach that conclusion. There isn’t much pride for a refugee from Russia in these days.”

“Are you en route to joining your family?”

“I don’t know if I have any family left.”

“What will you do?”

“Blow with the wind, I suppose.”

Then O’Dell told Pyotr about how he was an American of Irish descent who had gone to Notre Dame University in the middle of the United States and played American football there. And how he was in the American foreign service because he wanted to see the world, and that he was a long-distance swimmer, and loved the exotic atmosphere of Constantinople that left a person free to be what they couldn’t be back home in the middle of the United States.

He had looked expectantly at Pyotr, but Pyotr had given no such gushing commentary on his past nor did he pursue the nuances of what O’Dell had said to him. He just thanked O’Dell for the cigarettes and expressed appreciation that the Americans were running a soup kitchen for the refugees.

“The Bristols take marvelous boat outings up the Bosporus and out into the Sea of Marmara,” O’Dell said. “He’s commander of the American Black Sea Fleet too, you know--and has the greatest ship to sail on. I often get invited to go with them. Helen Bristol is always looking for handsome young men to play bridge on their outings. Do you play bridge?”

“Alas no,” Pyotr answered, although he, in fact, played an expert hand of bridge. He had learned that back in his sloth years as a teenager with no purpose rambling around a St. Petersburg palace. “And that all sounds like an entirely different world.”

Kenneth O’Dell followed Pyotr out of the refugee camp that night, saw him soliciting sailors on Horhor Street, and obviously understood what Pyotr did in life in Constantinople.

The next time they shared a smoke in the shadow of the soup kitchen building, O’Dell was more direct.

“You aren’t like the other male prostitutes.”

Pyotr looked at him in surprise. O’Dell had been so matter-of-fact in saying it. This would probably mean he would be dismissed from working with Helen Bristol’s soup kitchen effort, Pyotr thought.

“You know then.”

“I’ve seen you in the alleys of Horhor Street--with other men. Furtively against the walls. I wanted to tell you that you didn’t have to do it . . . to degrade yourself that way.”

“We refugees do what we must do to survive,” Pyotr answered. He wasn’t about to show embarrassment or to apologize. But he couldn’t resist adding, “So, you see how impossible it would for me to go to Mrs. Bristol’s bridge outings with you.”

“I would still take you, gladly,” O’Dell answered. “I didn’t mean to say that you shouldn’t go with men if you want. I meant that, with your good looks and regal bearing, you should not have to be having sex with sailors in alleys.”

“As I said, we do what we need to do to survive,” Pyotr said. And then he walked off, fully expecting to receive notice not to appear at the soup kitchen the next Sunday. But the dismissal didn’t come.

The two had little to say to each other the next Sunday. But that evening, when Pyotr took to the streets, he expressed surprise when O’Dell walked up to him and asked Pyotr to go with him.

“When I said you need not do it for sailors in alleys, I was saying that I would gladly pay the price to take you some place safe and clean. I was saying that I very much want to fuck you.”

At that moment, Pyotr felt that whatever relationship there had been building between the two had been tarnished, but a paying client was a paying client. O’Dell hadn’t batted an eye when Pyotr told him how much he would cost--and for what.

O’Dell could tell that Pyotr was embarrassed and reticent as O’Dell was asking about the various hotels, picking out the most presentable Pyotr could be made to identify, and paying for a full night at the hotel desk, which caused the hotel clerk’s eyebrow to raise as much as it did Pyotr’s. Both were equally surprised when O’Dell enquired about shaving toiletries, lubricant, and a large supply of condoms and paid for them. Of those items, the shaving gear took the longest for the clerk to produce, although when O’Dell asked for skin condoms, the clerk said that they, regrettably only had the cheaper, latex, variety.

“Next time I’ll bring my own,” O’Dell said, and Pyotr felt a shiver travel down his spine.

O’Dell hadn’t shown the slightest indecision or furtiveness. When he had told Pyotr straight out in a matter-of-fact way that he wanted to fuck him--using that word rather than a euphemism, his blunt directness had shaken Pyotr. He knew then that O’Dell, a suave diplomat, was also a man of considerable experience in these matters and that he had probably discerned in Pyotr exactly what he wanted in a sex partner the first time Pyotr had walked through the food line he was serving.

Once inside the door, O’Dell didn’t make Pyotr face him for the first fucking--nor did he turn on a light. He pulled Pyotr’s back into his chest, wrapped his arms around the young Russian, and used his hands not only to disrobe them both, but to work Pyotr’s body into high arousal. Pyotr panted as he felt O’Dell’s hard cock stroking up the small of his back. Pyotr could tell the man was large and thick. He spread his thighs and began to moan as the man’s cock head started rubbing back and forth over his entrance. This already was more foreplay and preparation than Pyotr had gotten during a sexual encounter since he’d left Kazan. He groaned and buried the back of his head in the hollow of O’Dell’s neck as the older man’s lubricated fingers began to open his channel up.

“You frighten me,” Pyotr whispered. “You are a man of such standing and responsibility--and respectability. And yet you are so expert at this. You know the difference in condoms even.”

“When I take you, I would wish nothing less than not to use them . . . for us to be so closely bound that not even that came between us. Perhaps in time, but. . . . You think that men of standing and respectability don’t fuck other men?” O’Dell asked. And then he laughed. “In many ways you are an innocent, Pyotr. You don’t seem to realize how desirable you are. How many ‘respectable men,’ as you say, want to fuck you from the moment they see you. And now I have you. What shall we do with you now?”

Pyotr turned his face to O’Dell’s and they kissed. “Please, now. Take me . . . fuck me,” he murmured when they came out of the kiss. “I want you inside me.”

“It’s what I want too. But I think you need some loving attention, not just sex and your money,” O’Dell whispered. “And making love to you is what I want to do.”

Pyotr felt O’Dell’s arm go around his stomach and his feet were being lifted off the floor. O’Dell was taller and heavier than Pyotr. The young Russian tried to find the floor with his toes, but O’Dell just gave a little laugh and kept pulling Pyotr’s buttocks cheeks up into his crotch. The cock head was in position and slightly, to the rim of the head, lodged inside Pyotr’s hole.

“Relax. Just let yourself go, bend toward the floor, and let me control. You will enjoy this, I think--giving yourself entirely to my control.”

Pyotr did so, and he moaned as O’Dell stood on the floor, holding Pyotr’s jackknifed body to his crotch, and entered him to the point where his cock head was resting against Pyotr’s prostate.

“Oh . . . my . . .god,” Pyotr whimpered as O’Dell started to worry the prostate with his bulb--and continued to do so as Pyotr melted to his focused attentions. After Pyotr had shot off on the floor below them, O’Dell started to fuck him in earnest without changing position--until Pyotr came a second time and O’Dell came the first time.

After a brief respite on the bed, O’Dell fucked Pyotr again, slowly and languidly and completely, this time crouched facing Pyotr and hanging over his body, with Pyotr asking that the light be put on so he could watch O’Dell’s muscles ripple in the act of sex. After a brief sleep, O’Dell did it again. And then in the early morning hours, yet again. He took nearly an hour each time, forcing Pyotr to be so aroused that he was begging for the cock. Pyotr could do so on demand for a client, but this was the first time that he involuntarily did so, completely lost to what Kenneth O’Dell could give him and whimpering for it.

“You seem to enjoy the sex,” O’Dell said as he was standing at the basin, shaving early in the morning. He was looking at Pyotr through the mirror over the basin to where the young, glassy-eyed Russian, lay on his back on the bed. “Or is that just a well-developed act? I haven’t quite figured out why men do it for money, whether some actually enjoy it.”

“With you I enjoy it.”

“But you don’t want to be doing what you’re doing--out on the street?”

“It’s a way to survive.”

“But you wouldn’t want to be doing it if you had other options? Letting men bed you?”

“It depends on the man. It’s not so bad. I haven’t had other options for so long that I haven’t considered it.”

O’Dell returned to concentrating on his shaving. He was working on the area around his Adam’s apple. It wasn’t a good time to also be carrying on a conversation. But Pyotr could see the man was thinking about something, and when he finished, he spoke again.

“I know a house, near the top of Horhor. It’s a very private, rather refined place. It’s called Martin’s Tea Room. But it’s not really a room, and they don’t serve tea there. And there is no one named Martin involved, although they like to keep both their employees and clients in the Westernized, refined vein. If you go there and give them my name and tell them I recommend you--which I will do if they ask me--I think you could be off the streets and out of the refugee tents.”

“Do you go there?”

“I have been known to do so. If you are there, I may do so again.”

Pyotr didn’t answer for a while. He just lay there and watched O’Dell finish up his shaving.

When he was done, Pyotr said, in a low voice, “Come here and let me feel how smooth you are. And are there any condoms left?”

“The skin ones are nicer. They give a more natural feel to both. Raw, natural, of course, is the nicest by far. Perhaps with someone handled as carefully as they do at Martin’s . . .”

“Then next time you might bring some of the skin ones? You said something like that to the hotel clerk.” Pyotr was desperately fishing for an indication that O’Dell had liked the sex enough to want to do it again.

O’Dell didn’t answer that, and, as it turned out, he never visited Martin’s Tea Room while Pyotr was living there. But at this point, Pyotr was in no position to ask again, because he was sitting on the side of the bed, legs spread, with O’Dell standing between them, Pyotr gripping the older man’s buttocks cheeks with the palms of his hands, and sliding his mouth slowly down and up O’Dell’s shaft.

Pyotr had told O’Dell that he’d enjoyed the night so much that O’Dell need not pay him, but when the American embassy officer left for work that Monday morning, Pyotr found enough money on top of the bureau that he didn’t have to go out on the street for the rest of the week--indeed, not before he mounted the steps of the brick townhouse at the top of Horhor with a brass plaque beside the door identifying it as Martin’s Tea Room, and pressed the buzzer.

* * * *

“We don’t usually go out, but this is an important client, and he can’t come to us.”

“That’s all right, Marcel,” Pyotr answered. “I haven’t been out of the house for some time. If I can find it, I’ll be happy to go.”

“Jamir will accompany you there and back.”

Pyotr knew that Jamir wasn’t going along with him just to guide him. Once set up with Martin’s Tea Room, Pyotr had learned, it took dynamite for a young man to pull free of it, even for a few hours, before he no longer was desirable. Martin’s provided complete assurance of cleanliness and exclusively for the use of gentlemen for its clients, and a single mishap or indiscretion could shut the operation down.

Marcel was who passed for Martin. Pyotr didn’t have the vaguest idea who really owned the house, and none of the other young men who serviced the clients claimed to know either. But Marcel ran it like a velvet prison. Still, Pyotr knew that Kenneth O’Dell had done him a favor by guiding him here. The men here ate well, their time with clients was regulated--indeed the quality of their clients was regulated--they were well clothed, and they each had a private room of their own. If Pyotr had stayed out on the street, he would probably be dead or diseased or hopelessly deformed by now. So, he had every reason to be grateful to Kenneth O’Dell for his introduction. The bad that came with the good, however, was that O’Dell hadn’t visited Martin’s and Pyotr couldn’t see him outside Martin’s.

Jamir escorted Pyotr to what must once have been a palace but now was cut up into apartments. Still, the apartments were large and the building was located in a wealthy part of the city and sat high on a slope overlooking the Bosporus and had delicately carved stone-latticed balconies designed to let the breeze in from off the water without permitting anyone to look in. Staring up at the wall turned toward the water before they entered, Pyotr wondered if this had once been one of the sultan’s harems. The building was only in a mild stage of disintegration--as opposed to the perpetual advanced stage suffered by most of the other Constantinople palaces of past sultans.

The elderly man who answered the door of the third-floor apartment looked vaguely familiar, but Pyotr couldn’t locate him in his mind until he entered a room with a long dining table and saw sitting near the far end of it, in a wheel chair, Prince Artomon Toubetskoy, the cousin of his father’s who he had attended to in Sevastopol.

“Oh, it is you,” the prince said, as surprised to see Pyotr as Pyotr was to see him, and almost simultaneously, both enquired of the other, “How did you manage to escape Sevastopol?”

The prince recovered first. “An old Armenian lover was kind enough to give me and my faithful retainer, Boris, passage here on his own ship. And you?”

“On the Rion.”

“The Rion? I heard that was one of the worst crossings.”

“I would hope there were none worse, cousin. But as you can see, I now work at Martin’s Tea Room. You sent for someone. But if this is an unfortunate coincidence, I can always return and send back someone who--”

“No, no. You will do splendidly. I found you to be a sweet young man. If you were only ten years younger . . .” He sighed, no doubt at the memories of many years past. “Come sit close to me here--very close. You do look so much like your father--or what he grew to look like years after I first knew him.”

After the prince had unbuttoned Pyotr’s fly and readjusted the covering over his own naked lap, he expertly sucked Pyotr to an ejaculation and then leaned back--before indulging a second time--and ordered up wine and stuffed figs for them both.

“You enjoy it at Martin’s, do you?” he asked Pyotr.

“It keeps me alive. I perhaps wouldn’t be if Martin’s hadn’t taken me in.”

“I am surprised that Marcel allows a Romanov count outside of the walls of his best bedchamber.”

“He does not know I’m a Romanov--or a count.”

“Ah, and you’d prefer he didn’t? You don’t want the Romanov name dragged down to this? You are ashamed of--?”

“I am ashamed of nothing, cousin. We all do what we have to do to survive, and the Bolsheviks have cut the Romanovs down to a more human size, I would think.”

“You would think that, would you? I would not count the Romanovs out so quickly, I don’t think. I prefer to think of these Reds as a nasty interlude--that the Russian people will come to their senses when they see how these Bolsheviks rule.”

“And most likely will then find a third way, cousin, I think. There are many who think the Romanovs were not much better.”

“But still, I would think a better position for you would be more in keeping with your heritage, even if you have foresworn the Romanov name. Perhaps I can help you there.”

Pyotr wanted to shrink from this shriveled up old man living in the past and of no use to anyone in the present. He had a vision of the prince telling him that he could come live here and be sucked off by this dried-up prune twice a day. As good as Toubetskoy was at blow jobs, Pyotr couldn’t imagine of a life such as this until the old man chose to die--which then, no doubt--would mean that Pyotr would be tossed out on his buttocks. And then he’d be in no better circumstances than he was now--just older and less desirable. He could not see letting Prince Toubetskoy use up the best years of his remaining life.

“I believe I can help you obtain a waiter’s job at the Parizen. Vladmir Smirnoff is an old family friend, you know.”

“A waiter’s job?” Pyotr asked in disbelief. “And that is a better position than the stable at Martin’s.”

“Yes, much. You would be more visible there. Its clientele is even more discrete than that of Martin’s, and the waiters and waitresses--nearly all Russian nobles, as you are, despite your disclaimer--are free to go with whomever is attracted to them after they have finished their daily shift. I know of several of our kind who have gone on to better places from Constantinople with the help of patrons they have served there.”

“Vladimir Smirnoff? He will know who I am. I’m sure we met in St. Petersburg.”

“It won’t matter. He will tell no one--except perhaps to your benefit--if you do not wish him to.”

* * * *

One balmy night in May of 1921, two momentous changes in Pyotr’s life were set in motion within an hour of each other as he was helping to serve dinner to a full room at the Parizen. The restaurant was crowded more than usual this night because the most popular night spot for the European, Russian, and American community of diplomats, naval officers, and expatriate community, the Le Grand Circle Moscovite--known in short as the Moscovite--was closed for a private function.

The first event was the sighting of the Imperial Military Academy cadet friend of his, Mikhail Shevemetev, who Pyotr had last seen flailing around in Novorossiysk harbor when the barge taking cadets out to an evacuation ship had turned over. Pyotr had been sure that Mikhail, who couldn’t swim, had drowned in that incident.

Pyotr still couldn’t believe it was Mikhail sitting with a severe-looking, but handsome and imposing, Turkish army officer until Mikhail saw Pyotr as well, almost broke into tears, and rose and ran to him.

“Pyotr?”

“Yes, it is me. Mikhail?”

In parody with what Pyotr had shared in first question with his father’s cousin, Prince Toubetskoy, only a couple of months earlier--a question blurted out by many a White Russian refugee upon meeting someone unexpectedly they had known before escaping to Constantinople--the two asked in harmony, “How did you escape and come to be here?”

“You first, Mikhail,” Pyotr said.

“I was pulled back onto the dock at Novorossiysk half drowned and put on a ship that went to Smyrna on Turkey’s western, Mediterranean Sea coast. I was taken in by that Turkish army captain at the table there--the one who obviously wants me to come right back to him; he’s really so possessive. His name is Edom Yilmaz and we are in an encampment not far outside Smyrna, which, you probably don’t know, the Greeks now hold. He’s in Constantinople on some sort of military strategy conference--and he doesn’t trust me to be away from him alone.”

“He is your protector?”

“Yes. In every sense of the word. It’s a good arrangement for me, Pyotr. I wasn’t cut out to be a soldier myself.”

“I do not sit in judgment on such things, Mikhail. Not anymore. I would have no reason to do so, considering what I have had to do to survive.”

“Were you in the Crimea at the fall?”

“I left just before everything collapsed. Professor Orlov made sure I got out, although I don’t think he made it. The cadets were on the line facing the mainland when the Bolsheviks managed to cross.”

“God certainly wasn’t with us when the wind blew the water away and the mud was frozen,” Mikhail said.

“I do not think God has been with Mother Russia and the tsar for several years, Mikhail, maybe longer. I am beginning to think that all of the gossips who said that the tsarevitch’s blood disease and the hold that mystic, Rasputin, was able to have over the Romanovs was a harbinger of God’s wrath on Russia were right. I have changed my name to Apraksin. I am Pyotr Apraksin now, the son of simple country teachers.”

“I will try to remember that Pyotr, although I don’t know if we ever will meet again. Captain Yilmaz is signaling me insistently to return now--and we leave again tomorrow for western Turkey. It is such a relief to know you are alive, though. I worried about you.”

“And I about you,” Pyotr said. And, as Mikhail was turning to return to his Turkish caption, Pyotr reached out to hold him for one last question. “And Vasily Bestuzhev-Ryumin? He went into the water when you did.”

“I’m sorry, Pyotr. I never saw him again. I have no idea whether he survived. I’m sorry. I know you and he--”

“Not really, Mikhail. No. I just wonder about all of the cadets I once knew. All of that seems like it was in some far off, separate life.”

“I know what you mean. I must go, though, Pyotr. The best of luck for you for the future. I am so happy to know that you live.”

“And I you as well.”

As Mikhail went back to his table and to his Turkish captain, who put a possessive arm around his neck as he sat down, Pyotr’s mind went back to all of those who had been in his life and had suddenly dropped out of it--his father and mother, and his siblings. And then, later, in Kazan, with the Imperial Military Academy, his fellow cadets, particularly Vasily and Mikhail, and, of course, Grigory Orlov, his professor and protector. The man who had initiated him and controlled him in such a similar, possessive way as Mikhail’s Turkish captain was now controlling him. But, above all, Katya Betskoya, the Kiev beauty who had stolen his breath away in just a few moments of contact, but who was almost constantly in his thoughts now. What of her? Had she managed to escape Sevastopol? And, if so, where was she? Was she, even now, here in Constantinople, just a few blocks away from here? Would he stumble on her some day in the same manner as Mikhail had just appeared? And would there be a Turkish captain with his possessive arm around her shoulders when they did meet?

The Turkish captain and Mikhail left soon thereafter. But as they were leaving, a middle-aged Greek, obviously from his dress and demeanor very wealthy and important, came in for dinner. Pyotr was assigned to serve him, and the Greek showed interest in the young Russian man immediately--an interest that they did not need to define, as the Greek had seen Pyotr at Martin’s Tea Room weeks before.

“I have seen you at Martin’s,” the Greek said, as Pyotr brought him his check.

“Yes, sir,” Pyotr answered. There was no reason for him to lie.

“I missed you not being there. I came once explicitly to engage your services, and you weren’t there.”

“Sorry, sir.”

“Perhaps you would be interested in going with me tonight?” He was doling out money on the tray Pyotr had provided to pay his bill--and he was doling out over twice the cost of his meal.

“If you wish, sir.”

“You do not find me too old or repulsive?”

“No, sir. You look just fine to me, sir.” And indeed, although old enough to be gray-haired, the Greek had kept himself in presentable shape.

The Greek, who turned out to be a merchant with interests across the Aegean region and into the Black Sea, was named Theo Maneates. He fucked Pyotr in the backseat of a big, black motorcar parked just down the street from the restaurant. Pyotr gave him exemplary servicing, and Theo Maneates was quite pleased.

“You have a fine car here,” Pyotr whispered as he sat in Maneates’s lap, and the Greek’s cock was softening inside him.

“Would you like to drive it?”

“Drive it? I can’t drive a motorcar.”

“Would you like to learn?”

“Certainly. Someday. That would indeed be an adventure.”

“Would you like to learn to drive someday soon--and come work for me as my chauffeur? Driving this motorcar? My chauffeur has died and I need a replacement--one who is as willing and entertaining as you. My wife does not like me to leave the house in the evening when she is in Constantinople. That’s why it took me so long to come visit you at Martin’s. She’s very suspicious. But the chauffeur’s room is just over the garage at my residence. You could drive me in my car during the day--and I would pay you well if I could drive you in the chauffeur’s room at my whim and when I could manage it in the night.”

“I can tell the idea is arousing to you,” Pyotr said, with a low laugh. “You are rising inside me again.”

“Yes, I want you again now. Are you interested in my business proposition?”

“Why not,” Pyotr answered. And why not indeed, he thought. It would be a less taxing job, a full step up from waitering during the day and prostituting himself to whoever wanted him at night. The man was middle aged and a bit fat, but he was not bad looking, he fucked with vigor, he evidently had a full purse, and he had been able to go hard twice in the same evening.