Free Ghost Train to the Eastern Star by Paul Theroux Page B

attention, but they are always in charge.
    Marjana, I could tell by her sideways glances, was getting signals from a Turkish man, probably her pimp, his heels locked onto the rungs of a chair as he rocked back with a drink in his hand.
    "So we go?"
    "Where?"
    "Not far. Near this place. I like you." The second drink was set down. "I think you are strong man. You are from what country?"
    "America."
    "Big country. Lots of money. I want to go to America."
    "How did you get here, to Turkey?"
    "My friend tell me I can make money here. She say, 'Work in café.' Good work." Marjana looked a bit rueful, pursing her lips as she sloshed the raki in her mouth, then swallowed.
    "You came—how? Bus? Plane?"
    "I fly in plane. Is little money."
    "Who's your boss? Ukrainian man?"
    "Turk man." She glanced to the side, where the man was still glowering, and she pressed her lips together. Then, with a toss of her head, "We go?"
    "Let's talk."
    "Talk, talk," she said, irritated and impatient. She leaned over and tapped my knee. "What about fuck?"
    I palmed some Turkish lire and put the notes into her hand, a gesture that shut her up but did not calm her. She looked at me as though I might be weird, but the money was in the meter.
    "You have family?" I asked. She nodded. "Husband?" She nodded, but more slowly. "Children?"
    At first she simply stared; then she began to cry, pressing her knuckles against her eyes. She shook her head and looked miserable. I hung my head, and when I saw her shoes—high heels, scuffed and twisted and damp from the wet streets of Taksim—I felt miserable myself at the sight of her tormented toes.
    A hard-faced woman loomed over her and began to mutter. She was plump, in a tight dress, and her potbelly was at the level of my eyes. I recognized the word
prablyema.
Marjana was still sniffling in sorrow.
    "What you say to Marjana?" the woman demanded.
    "Nothing," I said lamely.
    "She cry," the woman said.
    Marjana tried to wave the woman away.
    "I didn't do anything," I said, and sounded like a ten-year-old. But I had made her remember her small children.
    The woman muttered again to Marjana. Tears, recrimination, defiance, accusation, more tears—this was as far from sex as it was possible to be. And at the periphery was a suggestion of violence in the smoldering gaze and threatening posture of the Turkish man.
    The woman flicked her fat hand at me, grazing my face with her big fingernails. Though they were plastic glue-ons, they were sharp and claw-like, and could have served as weapons.
    "Maybe you go, eh?"
    Gladly, I thought. I stood up and backed away, a bit too quickly, but happy to go, saying goodbye. I had guessed that Marjana was one of many women lured to Istanbul and kept against her will—with a family elsewhere, unable to help her. I had wanted to talk, but in such circumstances, in most circumstances, talk is trouble.
    ***
    I GOT MORE NEWS of the dinner party: "Pamuk said he's coming." I was eager to meet him, not merely because of his well-made novels and his personal history in
Istanbul,
but because, as a passionate writer and self-described graphomaniac, he was probably eccentric, someone who lived at the edge of the world, the solitary soul that all writers must be in order to do their work and live their lives. Writers are always readers, and though they are usually unbalanced, they are always noticers of the world. From an early age I have not been able to rid myself of the notion that the best writers are deeply flawed heroes.
    Among the Turkish guests at the party, some of whom were writers, all of whom were polite, patient, and deferential, Pamuk was restless. Rather gangly and bespectacled, he thrashed around as he spoke. He reminded me of someone I knew. He was a taunter, hunching his shoulders, throwing his head back to laugh—and he had a loud, appreciative guffaw. He pulled faces, often clownish ones that his scholar's eyeglasses exaggerated. He was both a mocker and a self-mocker, a