Stolen Souls

11

MY NAME IS Galya Petrova,” she said. “Please help me.”

“Where are you?” the man asked.

“ “I don’t know,” she said. “Under a bridge. Near water.”

“Look around you,” he said.

“There is a big building,” she said. “Glass and metal painted red. I hear cars on the bridge. There are cranes and fences all around.”

“I understand,” he said. “That’s the Royal Mail building you’re talking about. Don’t move from there. Stay under the bridge. Stay in the dark. I’ll find you.”

Tears climbed up from Galya’s throat. “Thank you,” she said, and hung up. She retreated further into the shadows, clutching the phone to her breast as if it were a newborn infant.

It had only been this afternoon—no, yesterday afternoon— that Rasa had come to the bedroom where they had kept her locked up for almost a week. She told Galya she would start work that day.

Galya knew what kind of work.

Rasa had laid out underwear on the bed, tiny sheer things, and placed a pair of shoes on the floor. The shoes had platform soles and heels that were so tall Galya could not possibly have walked in them.

“Take your clothes off,” Rasa said in stilted Russian. “Put these on.”

“No,” Galya said.

Rasa smiled in the tired but patient way a parent does at a slow child. Galya guessed her to be twenty years her senior, maybe more, her face lined by age and tobacco. Rasa dressed like a businesswoman who yearned for younger men. “Don’t be silly,” Rasa said. “You want to look nice for your client, don’t you?”

Galya backed toward the wall. “Client?”

“The gentleman who’s coming to see you. He’ll be here soon.”

“Who is he?” Galya asked.

“No one,” Rasa said. “Just a nice man.”

“What does he want?”

Rasa laughed and sat down on the foot of the bed. “That’s for you to find out. And whatever he wants, you’ll do it for him.”

“I won’t do—”

“Whatever he wants,” Rasa said, her voice hard like bones beneath skin. “Come. Sit beside me.”

Galya pressed her shoulders against the wall, kept her feet planted firm on the floor. “I don’t want to.”

“Sit,” Rasa said. “Now.”

Galya moved to the bed and lowered herself onto the mattress, keeping a good meter between her and the other woman. She kept her eyes downward.

“Are you a virgin?” Rasa asked.

Galya blushed.

“Are you?”

Galya chewed her lip.

“Answer me,” Rasa said.

“No,” Galya said.

“One man?” Rasa asked.

Galya looked at the wall.

“Two men? More?”

“Two,” Galya said, wondering why she told the truth even as she spoke it. “There was a boy back home. We were very young. It was in a field near Mama’s house. It was so quick, he hardly started before he was done, then he ran away. He never spoke to me again. I didn’t sleep for two weeks. Not until the blood came.”

Rasa’s voice and countenance softened. “And the second man?”

“Aleksander,” Galya said. She turned to look directly at Rasa. If Rasa recognized the name, she didn’t let on. “In Kiev. The night before we flew to Vilnius. He told me I’d live with a nice Russian family in Dublin, that I’d look after their children, and …”

“And what?”

Galya almost said she’d teach them English, that was what Aleksander had told her as they drove the many kilometers from her village near the Russian border to Ukraine’s capital. Aleksander had told her of the life she’d have, of the places she would see, of the money she would make and send back home to her little brother Maksim so he could settle the debts Mama had left behind.

Aleksander told her about the good life she would have as he took her in his arms in that hotel in Kiev. Galya had never seen such luxury, such thick carpets, sheets made of silk, more food than she could eat. All this would be hers, he said, and he pressed his lips and his groin against her. And she succumbed, despite what Mama would have thought looking down from Heaven, because, dear God, she was grateful. And Aleksander was handsome and tall, with dark eyes and long lashes, and Galya needed to touch something beautiful, just once in her life.

Her orgasm had come like breaking glass and left her hollow like one of the mannequins she’d seen in the shop windows at the Metrograd center. For a minute, perhaps only a few seconds, she felt she might have loved Aleksander. But the feeling dissolved in her breast, washed away when he handed her a Lithuanian passport with a picture of a girl who looked just enough like Galya Petrova to satisfy a casual glance.

She boarded the plane alone, the passport clutched in her hand, a joyful fear in her heart. Her nerves sparked with anticipation. She had never flown before and gasped at the sensation of being pushed back into her seat by the speed of the craft. It left the ground, and she made a prayer that God would deliver her safely to Vilnius.

Looking around, she noticed the faces of other passengers. Whether they laughed with their companions or sat in silence, she saw that same prayer behind all their eyes.

Everyone believes in God when they fly, she thought.

Otherwise, who would have the courage?

“AND WHAT?” RASA asked again.

“Play with them,” Galya said.

“And now you’re here in Belfast. So what are you going to do?”

Galya twined her fingers together.

“So this Aleksander lied to you, and you wound up at that farm, slaving every hour of the day,” Rasa said. “You were filthy when I found you, you stank like a horse. Now look at the nice things I bought for you to wear. And you can make some money, once you’ve paid me back.”

“Paid you back?”

“The agency that brought you here. I had to pay them good money to get you out of that farm. How are you going to pay me back?”

“I didn’t ask—”

“I don’t care what you asked for,” Rasa said, that hardness in her voice once more. “I took you out of there. It cost me plenty, and you owe me. All you have to do is make the clients happy. Is that so bad? Just do what they ask, smile for them, be pretty.”

Rasa edged closer to Galya, reached out a hand to brush the hair from her face. “And you’re such a pretty girl, you know.”

Galya chewed a nail.

“Like a doll,” Rasa said. “That’s all you have to do. Smile, be pretty, and do what they ask.”

Galya turned her head to Rasa. “What if I say no?”

Rasa gave a sad smile. “Then the client will be unhappy,” she said, speaking slowly, the Russian colored by her Lithuanian accent. “And the men who gave you this room and this roof over your head, they will be unhappy. You don’t want to seem ungrateful, do you? You don’t want them to think you’re difficult, hmm? They’ll be upset. They need the money to pay your rent. You don’t want to make them angry, do you?”

“No,” Galya said, her voice barely audible even to herself.

“Good girl,” Rasa said. She leaned in and placed a dry kiss on Galya’s cheek. “Do as you’re told and everything will be all right. I promise.”

And so Galya had taken off the gray tracksuit and plain underwear they’d given her a few days before and put on the lacy things and the shoes she could barely stand in. She had sat there for an hour, goose pimples sprouting on her bare skin, waiting for the client to come. The weeks since she’d flown from Kiev to Vilnius, then Vilnius to Brussels, then Brussels to Dublin, they had blurred into one long, arduous smear, work and sleep, sleep and work, always wet and cold, always dirty, always tired, always aching for home.

Now she sat in a room with a soft bed, cold but dry, and all she had to do was make a client happy. Could she do such a thing? Maybe, if she forced Mama from her mind.

She might have done it, might have given herself away, if not for the kind man and the cross on a chain he’d pressed into her hand, and the piece of paper with a telephone number written upon it. The hope he gave her had turned to courage in her heart and blood on her hands.

“Call me,” he’d said in an accent that was not from Belfast.

“I can save you,” he said.

And Galya believed him.