“Baccalum [We’ll see], Doris,” said Bertha, and took her by the hand to present her to the Major and his friend.
The Royal Dancing Club let Frederick limp through the winter. However, when spring came and he began to plan to reopen Villa Stella, Bertha and Reyser decided that its prospects were too dim and announced they were quitting. This was a serious blow for Frederick. He did not have the money to proceed alone, and the Villa had accumulated debts totaling 4,500 Ltqs, the equivalent of $75,000 today.
This case also landed in the consulate general. Allen and the others were becoming increasingly exasperated by Frederick’s financial problems, but they were still constrained in their dealings with him by their belief that he was an American and thus entitled to their assistance. They suggested that he submit to binding arbitration. The process was complex but when he emerged from it his hopes had been rekindled. He not only was free of his former partners but had found a new Russian partner with money, a certain Karp Chernov, who had faith in Stella’s long-term prospects. The debts had not disappeared, but as Frederick explained in a handwritten letter to Ravndal, he was doing everything in his power to pay them off in installments.
Constantinople le 10 of July 1920
Villa et Jardin
Anglo-Americain
Chichli No. 312
To His Honorable the Americain Counsul.
Sir
In answer to your letter of July the 7., I beg to explain, we, Thomas and Tschernoff, gave our word, that we would pay not only the person mentioned, but all our Dettes 4500. (turkish Pounds), in June. We have done our best, the month was cold and rainy, but we managed to cut it down from 4500. to 3000. t. P. The Firm in question has received from 1000 Pounds Dette 700-and Sir, the rest 300. Pounds, will bee settled in 15. days time. Hoping Sir, you will believe, that this explanation and figures are true,
Frederick was so pressed financially that several days after writing he sent Elvira to the consulate general to speak with Ravndal personally. She was an attractive woman with a sweet disposition and, in the end, her efforts paid off. Ravndal agreed to intercede with the biggest and most insistent creditor and won Frederick some more time.
That spring, two dramatic historical events occurred that seemed to secure Frederick’s future no matter where it would play out, in Turkey or Russia. The first was the Allies’ decision to consolidate their occupation of Constantinople. On March 16, 1920, the British landed additional troops and established what was effectively martial law. The Allies assumed direct control over all aspects of social, economic, and judicial life in the city, and seized hundreds of private and public buildings to house military and civilian personnel. They also tried to suppress both of Turkey’s political wings by arresting scores of prominent representatives of the old Ottoman regime, as well as numerous leaders of the new Turkish Nationalist Movement that had formed around Mustafa Kemal in opposition to both the sultanate and the Allied occupation.
The overall British aim was to force the Turks to ratify the very harsh Treaty of Sèvres, which formally abolished the Ottoman Empire and apportioned much of its territory to the Allies and their protégés. These included the Greeks, who had already invaded Smyrna on the Aegean coast, thus initiating a three-year war with the Turkish Nationalists; the Armenians, who were victims of Ottoman genocide during and shortly after the Great War and now claimed their own state; and the Kurds, who were also clamoring for independence. For the Turks this “second occupation” was a devastating blow to sovereignty and national pride (and a powerful stimulus to throw off the Allied yoke). But for a foreigner like Frederick it was a boon because it moved Constantinople a big step closer toward becoming an internationalized city, one where Western interests—and entertainments—could thrive.
The other development that spring was, if anything, even more promising because it affected the future of Frederick’s adopted homeland. On April 4, 1920, the leaders of the White Army in the South of Russia elected General Baron Pyotr Wrangel as their commander in chief to replace General Anton Denikin, who had lost their confidence and retired. A more able and charismatic leader than his predecessor, Wrangel reorganized and enlarged his forces and created an effective Black Sea fleet. The invasion of Ukrainian territory by Poland that spring helped him defeat the Bolsheviks in several engagements and double the territory that the Whites controlled in the south of Russia. The achievement was quickly heralded in Constantinople’s newspapers. For a time, it began to look as if the setbacks suffered by the Whites during the past year could be reversed and the Bolshevik regime might fall or be defeated. Were this to happen, Frederick and other exiles could return home and reclaim their former lives and property.
But the influx of Allied troops was not the only change in the city’s population in the spring of 1920, and the arrival of other newcomers presented Frederick with an unexpected threat as well as an opportunity. Despite the apparent successes of the Whites in the civil war, waves of evacuees from southern Russia kept crossing the Black Sea, and as a result Constantinople was becoming increasingly Russified. Among the new arrivals were many popular performers, some with experience running their own shows and theaters, and all needing to make a living. Russian restaurants and nightspots began to pop up all over Pera. Many tried to play up the “broad Russian nature” that foreigners found highly seductive—unbridled revelry and passion, although now tinged with a delicious sadness over a lost, glorious past. Frederick discovered that he suddenly had competition.
The biggest threat was a new garden, Strelna, that two famous singers, Yury Morfessi and Nastya Polyakova, decided to open just two short blocks away from Stella, in a strategic location chosen to siphon off Frederick’s clients. Their initiative paid off, leading Morfessi to boast that as “‘Stella’ dimmed,” Strelna’s affairs “blossomed” and went “blissfully well.” The drop in attendance at Stella could have been its end, especially because of all the other financial difficulties that were still hanging over Frederick. Only a bit of skullduggery on the part of one of his performers saved him: she denounced Morfessi to the Interallied Police for staying open after a mandatory curfew, and Strelna was shut down.
In addition to competition, however, the new waves of Russian refugees also brought a valuable resource with them—a substitute for the bar girls Frederick had lost when he and Bertha parted ways. Among the refugees were numerous members of the Russian nobility. Many of the women who belonged to this class had never had to work for a living and had neither professions nor salable skills. At the same time, quite a few of the younger ones were very attractive, had well-developed social graces, and often knew foreign languages, in particular French. The majority were also destitute and willing to take any work they could find. Restaurant owners like Frederick quickly realized their worth. Pretty and graceful young women, in particular blue-eyed blondes who were “princesses,” “countesses,” or “duchesses,” could be a very effective draw for any establishment trying to attract more customers. This was especially true if most of the clients were men who were used to only waiters—male waiters having been the norm in conservative Ottoman society—and it was even more true if the women whom Turkish men usually saw were olive-complexioned, sloe-eyed, dark-haired, and swathed in fabric from head to toe. Thus it happened that the French term “dame serveuse” came to denote a young Russian noblewoman who occupied a tantalizing place in Constantinople’s collective male imagination—whether that of a Muslim Turk, a Levantine, an Allied officer, a fellow Russian refugee, or a tourist taking in the city’s exotic sights. The thrill a customer would get from being served by a titled woman and the resulting tips were sufficient reason for many of these ladies to exaggerate their birthright, often quite shamelessly: never did any city in Russia have as many women of blue and even royal blood as Constantinople in the early 1920s. It was also inevitable that the ambiguous status of these young women—underpaid and frequently obligated to dine or dance with any male clients who took a fancy to them—made it easy for many to slip into the demimonde.