The Black Russian

8: The Struggle for Recognition

In the fall of 1920, Wrangel’s White Volunteer Army lost its war against the Bolsheviks, dashing the hopes of Russian refugees in Constantinople that they would be able to return home. Following a cease-fire with Poland in October 1920, the Red Army was able to concentrate its forces in the south and pushed the Whites down into the Crimean Peninsula, until their backs were to the Black Sea. The only escape was by water. In early November, Wrangel began to assemble a ragtag fleet of some 130 vessels—everything from former imperial Russian warships and transports to passenger boats and merchant ships, private yachts, and barges towed by other ships. By November 19, the motley flotilla had finished staggering across the Black Sea and dropped anchor off Constantinople, transforming the Bosporus into a floating archipelago of human misery.

There were nearly 150,000 people on board and the conditions were horrible. All of the ships were overcrowded, some so badly that they listed dangerously. Sanitary facilities had been overwhelmed and water and food supplies were exhausted. Passengers willingly traded their wedding bands and the gold crosses around their necks for jugs of water or loaves of bread that enterprising Turks offered from small boats, which had flocked to the Russian ships. There were large numbers of sick and wounded on board. Many of the refugees had only the possessions on their backs.

The remnants of the White Volunteer Army numbered nearly 100,000 men, with the rest civilians, including 20,000 women and 7,000 children. During the days and weeks that followed, the French interned two-thirds of the troops in makeshift camps throughout the region, including the Gallipoli Peninsula, the site of the disastrous Allied landings during the war. But tens of thousands of others, military men and civilians alike, flooded into Constantinople, where they created a humanitarian catastrophe.

November was already cold; the winter winds were beginning to stream down across the Black Sea from the great Russian plain; and housing, food, clothing, and medical care were all in short supply. The Allied authorities, the American Red Cross, the Russian embassy, and other civic organizations did what they could to help. Some of the refugees were herded into hastily designated shelters—abandoned barracks and other partially ruined buildings—where they endured near-freezing temperatures and starvation rations. Some lucky ones got space in the stables of the Dolmabahçe Palace. But many had to manage as best they could on their own and to survive by their wits. There was no trade or job at which they did not try their hand. Those who knew languages tried to teach them or to work in Allied offices. Others hauled bags of coal and cement on the Galata docks; sold shoelaces and sweets from trays on Pera’s streets; spun handheld lottery wheels; hired themselves out as doormen, dishwashers, and maids; or simply begged. Army officers tried to sell their medals to passersby on the Galata Bridge. The writer John Dos Passos saw a one-legged Russian soldier standing in the street, covering his face with his hands and sobbing. Out of despair some officers shot themselves. So many Russian women peddled nosegays in an arcade on the Grande rue de Pera that it is known to this day as “Çiçek Pasaji,” “Flower Passage.” Anyone who had any money tried to start a business: small Russian restaurants sprang up all over like mushrooms after a rain (as Russians liked to put it). Secondhand shops displayed the luxury detritus of a vanished empire—jewelry, watches, icons, furs—that the fortunate had managed to bring out with them. Classically trained musicians, singers, and dancers organized performances and inspired a taste for Western arts that forever changed the city’s cultural landscape. Speculators created an unofficial currency exchange on the steep steps from Pera to Galata. A few made fortunes overnight but lost them the following day.

From the start, there was one thought on everybody’s mind: how to get out of Constantinople—how to go somewhere, anywhere, that would be better. Wrangel at first tried to keep his army intact, hoping to return to fight in Russia. But the Allies were not interested in supporting his anti-Bolshevik movement any longer and soon began to disperse his troops and the other Russians in the city to any country that would take them—in the Balkans, Western Europe, the Americas, North Africa, Indochina.

The tragedy affecting his former countrymen played out before Frederick’s eyes. That fall, when Stella closed for the season, he had to find another place to rent because the Jockey Club was no longer available. His new winter location in the Alhambra Theater was on a busy stretch of the Grande rue de Pera just a few blocks north of the Russian embassy, a neighborhood that became one of the main gathering places for thousands of Russians who milled about day and night in search of work, food, a place to sleep, news, visas, hope. Most of Frederick’s kitchen staff and waitstaff, and many performers, were already Russians. Many more showed up at his door after the massive November evacuation, asking for jobs or help. He hired a few out of kindness but turned away most because his staff was complete. However, no one left empty-handed, even though he was hard up himself. For many years afterward, grateful émigrés across the Russian diaspora who had experienced exile in Constantinople still remembered “Fyodor Fyodorovich Tomas” as “the black man with a broad Russian nature” who never denied anyone a free meal.

The Russians’ plight had given Frederick a vivid reminder of how one’s place in the world could depend entirely on having the right piece of paper in hand. Although he had fallen ill with pneumonia again at the end of November, and was not yet fully recovered, in late December 1920 he went back to the consulate general to inquire about the passport for which he had applied more than a year earlier. We do not know what excuses Allen gave him to explain the extraordinary delay in submitting the paperwork, or if he even admitted that he had never forwarded it to the State Department. But on Friday, December 24, he finally sent the passport application and the “Affidavit to Explain Protracted Foreign Residence” to Washington. As Allen could not have failed to realize, the application was doomed even before he put it into the diplomatic pouch, because he had left it shockingly incomplete. Nevertheless, as if to be doubly sure that it would fail, Allen also appended a statement that was striking in its dishonesty and malevolence.

Referring to the application as an “abandoned” one (but without explaining how it came to be so), Allen identified Frederick as an “American negro”—a loaded characterization that none of the American officials ever omitted in their correspondence about him—and “a waiter by profession.” The latter was Allen’s attempt to demean Frederick; if the tables had been turned, it would be like Frederick saying that Consul Allen was a “railway clerk” because he had been one in the past. But not only did Allen obscure the fact that by 1920 Frederick had been a major entrepreneur for nearly a decade; he also tried to make Frederick sound like a parvenu when he claimed that “there is considerable doubt as to whether Thomas is a partner or an employee” in his current enterprise. This too was deeply dishonest. Over the past eight months, diplomats at the American consulate had documented in detail Frederick’s relations with Arthur Reyser, Bertha Proctor, and Karp Chernov. In fact, Allen himself handled the money transfer between the two sets of partners and deposited a signed copy of the receipt in the consulate records. And just a month earlier, a subordinate whom Allen had charged with the task of pinning down the precise relationship between Frederick and Chernov reported that they were equal partners. Allen concluded with an especially damning complaint about Frederick that summed up all the diplomats’ irritation with him.

Two weeks later, Frederick’s paperwork landed on the desk of Joseph B. Quinlan, one of several dozen clerks in the Division of Passport Control in the State Department. Not surprisingly, he found the case “rather unusual,” and passed it on to a superior, G. Gilmer Easley. Whereas Quinlan came from the Midwest, Easley was a Virginian. This may have been why he had no doubts whatsoever about the case.

This answer is not only racist in the singular way it identifies Frederick; it is also either a lie or evidence of startling ineptitude. During his years abroad, Frederick had registered with American embassies and consulates, and applied for passport extensions eight times: on the first occasion in Paris in 1896, on the last in Moscow in 1914. All of these documents were duly forwarded to the State Department (and would resurface a decade later; but by then it would be too late). It is doubtful that Easley actually bothered to check these records, or that they would have made any difference to him if he did. He also did not seem to care that the application he was judging was scandalously incomplete.

Fortunately for Frederick, during this first round, Easley’s recommendation was reviewed at a higher level and overridden. Allen could not have been very happy with the official response that was sent over his head to his superior, Ravndal, by Wilbur J. Carr, the director of the entire consular service, who wrote on behalf of the secretary of state himself. The response, which arrived at the end of February, was a rebuke, in diplomatically measured bureaucratese, aimed at Allen for wasting everyone’s time by not following the instructions that were clearly printed on the forms: Frederick has to submit a complete application; he needs to provide evidence of his citizenship and “of his marriage to the woman represented to be his wife.” “He should also state definitely his intention with reference to returning to the United States for permanent residence and as to the future place of residence of his family.”

This was bad news for Frederick, although it could have been worse. At least his claim to American citizenship had not been rejected out of hand (as it would have been if anyone in the State Department had gotten wind of his Russian citizenship) and he was, in effect, invited to reapply.

In the meantime, he had to counter the considerable damage that Valli was continuing to inflict on his reputation. When she wrote to the consulate general in Constantinople she included copies of documents supporting her claims, including an official translation of her and Frederick’s marriage certificate from 1913. Frederick did not have a single document in support of what he said. As a result, the diplomats, who lived in a world made largely of paper and who had already found Frederick unreliable in other respects, believed her and not him. In a letter to Valli in May, Ravndal referred to Frederick as “your husband,” and in one to Frederick written on the same day he referred to Valli as “your wife in Germany.”

All this aggravated Frederick’s already poor relations with the American officials. He could do little except insist on his version of events. Shortly thereafter, he wrote, in his careful longhand, a detailed response to Ravndal, in which he politely and firmly explained “once more”: “I have no wife in Germany, because I have my wife with me here.” He continued, “As I wrote to you before, I divorced my former wife in Moscow, because she committed a break of marriage in having a Bolshevik Commissar for her lover for about 2 years.” Frederick then explained:

Frederick added the phrase about his birthplace as an afterthought (he used a different pen) to remind the diplomats of his claim to an American passport. However, none of this made any difference; the diplomats did not believe him. The next time one of them wrote to the State Department, he characterized Elvira as Frederick’s “free-love companion.”

Valli’s resurfacing in Berlin with Irma was not the only dramatic twist in Frederick’s family life at this time. Olga, his oldest daughter, suddenly turned up in Romania, alive, apparently well, and married, with the surname “Golitzine.” On June 13, 1921, she had a telegram sent in French from Bucharest to the American consul general in Constantinople requesting that Frederick be informed of her whereabouts and that she “manque totalement”—“has nothing.” Getting the news must have been a joy and a relief for Frederick because he had heard nothing about her for over two years, ever since she disappeared during the evacuation of Odessa. He had been very close to her and on the eve of the revolution was grooming her to help him in his business. Frederick may well have recognized her new surname because the Golitsyns (there are different transliterations) were one of the most famous and grandest of princely families in imperial Russia; it is likely, however, that Olga’s husband simply had the same name as this family. Frederick did respond to her plea for help. By 1923 he was sending her 1,500 francs a month, which would be equivalent to several thousand dollars today (things had improved for him by then), and he continued to do this for three years, even after she moved to Paris to study.

Despite his chronic money shortages, Frederick husbanded what he had and insisted on trying to give his family in Constantinople the best life that he could. He bought Elvira new outfits from a local couturiere in Chichli, although he did pass on getting her a fur muff that cost the equivalent of $500. As he told a friendly American tourist, he was having his sons educated “at some of the best schools in the Near East,” which in Constantinople meant those that were private and foreign. In the summer of 1921, Bruce was six, Fedya seven, and Mikhail fifteen. Given their father’s efforts to reestablish himself as an American, and his claim that he intended to return to the United States and place his sons in school, all three must have attended one of the English-language schools in or near the city; there were several to choose from. However, of the three sons, only Mikhail was destined to complete his education and to do so in Prague, which was to become a haven for young Russians in the diaspora in the 1920s.

At the end of August and the beginning of September 1921, the history of Turkey unexpectedly changed and Frederick’s fate changed with it. Some two hundred miles to the southeast of Constantinople, on the arid Anatolian highland near the Sakarya River—a place that seemed very far from the marble halls of power on the banks of the Bosporus—the Turkish Nationalist army that had formed under Mustafa Kemal’s leadership won a series of bloody battles against the Greek army that had invaded Turkey with Allied help two years earlier. The Turkish victory stopped a Greek march on Angora—“Ankara,” as it is now known—the Nationalists’ new capital, and was a turning point in what the Turks came to celebrate as their war for independence against the Allied occupiers. As a result, Italy and France dropped their plans to partition Anatolia and withdrew from the region. A year later, Kemal would force the Allies to abandon the Treaty of Sèvres, including their scheme to transform Constantinople into an international city, a decision that would affect Frederick directly. For his victory at Sakarya, Kemal, who had already been elected president by the Turkish Grand National Assembly in April 1920, was promoted to the rank of field marshal and given the title “Gazi,” “warrior against the infidels”—an honorific that dated back to the Ottomans.

These distant rumblings of war and changes on the geopolitical map of Turkey reminded Frederick once again that it was time to seek the shelter of an American passport. Moreover, in recent months his financial situation had finally started to improve. His income increased and he had managed to pay off most of his earlier debts. He had also begun to act more assertively toward his remaining creditors as well as the American diplomats, succeeding even in mollifying Ravndal at times.

When Frederick went to the consulate general on September 15 to fill out a new passport application he was better prepared. The official who took his information, Alfred Burri, a New Yorker by birth, was also far more conscientious than Allen had been two years earlier. Nevertheless, Frederick still stumbled badly when he came to the all-important “Affidavit to Explain Protracted Foreign Residence and to Overcome Presumption of Expatriation.” In a spirit of candor that was as misguided as it was surprising, he admitted: “At the present moment I have a growing theatrical business at Constantinople and wish to be near Russia where I wish to go to look after my property in Moscow at the first opportunity.” And as if this were not bad enough, he confessed that though he planned to make a “business trip” to the United States with his “oldest boy” soon, “I have so large a business in Europe & Russia that I must stay near these for some time to come & will keep my family with me.” When Frederick left the consulate general, he may have been satisfied that he had completed an important chore, but he did not realize that he had also made a gift to those in Constantinople and Washington who were eager to deny him the protection he sought.

Burri’s assessment of Frederick’s case, which he had to forward to the State Department, shows that his feelings were mixed. He acknowledges that Frederick is a very clever businessman and “owns and operates by far the highest class cabaret” in Constantinople. He also sympathizes with Frederick and implicitly distances himself from the prevailing American racial bias.

But none of this prevented Burri from using Frederick’s own words to hang him by concluding “that he will never return with his family to the United States for permanent residence.” And Burri’s final assessment of the application was devastating: “In my opinion Mr. Thomas is an American born negro, living with a free-love companion, [who] cannot satisfactorily explain his protracted foreign residence so as to entitle him to American protection; and this Consulate General should be instructed to deny him such protection.”

Frederick got the passport application out of the way at an exciting time in his life, when he was beginning to make plans for an ambitious new venture that could, with luck, make him rich again. By mid-September the summer season at Villa Stella was winding down. Its Winter Salon could continue to function for a while longer—Vertinsky crooned his decadent songs there to great acclaim in October—but the approach of cold weather meant that Frederick would once again have to move his operation to a properly heated space. What he needed was a place of his own that he could use year-round.

Frederick found it just off Taxim Square in Pera, an area where many amusements were concentrated, near the northern end of the Grande rue de Pera on Sira Selvi Street, and thus, unlike Stella, in the center of the European quarter. The space was actually the basement of a building that housed the “Magic Cinema,” one of the largest and most luxurious movie houses in the city. From the theater’s elegant, colonnaded main entrance a broad, bright staircase of twenty steps led to a large, well-lit, high-ceilinged hall that could accommodate several hundred people at a time. The far wall had windows and doors that opened onto a broad terrace with wonderful views of the Bosporus (a bonus provided by the steeply sloping terrain where the building stood, which also made it possible to enter the hall from the lower level). Frederick spared no expense in having the space renovated in a luxurious style, with ornate plaster ceilings, richly decorated columns, and polished metal and wood. When the weather warmed up, the terrace would become a spacious garden with gravel paths and cypresses framing the distant views of Asia. He called the new place “Maxim” in a nostalgic nod to its ancestor in Moscow, although its scale was more intimate and it was configured as a classic nightclub rather than a theater: a small stage faced a dance floor that was surrounded by rows of tables; there was also the obligatory American-style bar. For the next five years it would be Frederick’s most successful venture in Constantinople. It would also outlive him by another fifty and earn an indelible place in the history of Istanbul nightlife.

Word of Frederick’s plan for “a very special amusement rendezvous” first got out in early October and was greeted with enthusiasm by Villa Stella’s many fans. Frederick moved quickly and by the end of the month had hired the drummer Harry A. Carter to lead the enticingly named Shimmie Orchestra during the nightclub’s first, winter season. Carter, a white American from Minnesota, had been performing across Europe and in Egypt for several years and must have been very good at what he did, because Frederick was willing to pay him handsomely—20 Ltqs for an eight-hour workday, the equivalent of about $3,500 a week today; his contract also included “a first-class dinner” every evening.

Maxim opened on the evening of Tuesday, November 22, 1921. Frederick had designed it to appeal to the upper echelons of the city’s Westernized Turks, Levantines, and foreigners, and they responded enthusiastically: the “greatest artistic event in Pera… extraordinary tour de force… grand luxury… modern comfort… richness that does not exist elsewhere… a fairytale-like atmosphere… a real jazz band.” And all this was thanks to the “genial director,” whose “organizational skills” and “taste for the beautiful” ensured “complete success.” There were no superlatives left.

The fame and success that Maxim acquired immediately after opening were due not only to Frederick’s talent for serving up an intoxicating mix of first-class cuisine and drinks, hot jazz, beautiful Russian waitresses, and flashy variety acts. He also successfully put himself on center stage as Maxim’s public face and animating spirit. Impeccably turned out in black tie, worldly, poised, with a broad smile and a welcoming word for each new arrival—which he could deliver in French, English, Russian, German, Italian, or Turkish—Frederick relished what he had created as much as any of his nightclub’s most enthusiastic fans.

It was the rare visitor who did not succumb to his charm or identify it with Maxim itself. “Thomas, the founder, the host… the cheerful Negro with the big smile, who thrived in the gaiety, the din of the jazz band, the dazzling luxury, the women, amidst beautifully appointed tables decorated with flowers and crystal,” was how a Levantine devotee of Constantinople’s nightspots described him. Even a less worldly Turk found himself seduced by the new, electrifying atmosphere that jazz created, although it also overwhelmed him.

Frederick won his patrons over by treating them like members of his own select circle. He was a bon vivant with “a heart of gold,” as a longtime fan put it, and often helped people in distress. Fikret Adil, a young journalist, witnessed one such occasion shortly after Maxim opened. It involved one of Frederick’s beautiful Russian waitresses, who styled herself a grand duchess, and who had beguiled a rich young Turk into spending all his money on her. The young man’s despair was so great that his friends began to fear he might shoot the woman. But then Frederick got wind of the situation and decided to get involved. To everyone’s surprise, he discovered that the waitress had fallen in love with the young man; however, since he was now ruined and she had hardly any money left, their future looked bleak. “Then Thomas did something that still brings tears to my eyes,” Adil recalled.

Maxim was packed that night. Frederick waited for two Russians to finish their dance number, and after they had taken their bows he walked out onto the center of the dance floor.

The initial response of Maxim’s audience was confusion and consternation at this strange story. “What’s it to us?” some wondered aloud. But then Frederick replied: “Just this much: in ten minutes, they will be dead. My regards to you, ladies and gentlemen!”

What Adil witnessed was Frederick’s singular mix of calculation and kindness, which he seasoned, on this occasion, with a generous dollop of melodrama. Frederick was probably genuinely touched, but he also enhanced his reputation without having to spend a pound, embellished a dramatic story by inventing the lovers’ suicide pact, enthralled his audience with his own performance, and forged a bond with his clients that would keep them coming back for more.

Within a few months after opening Maxim, Frederick was able to tell Ravndal that business was “going very well,” but then he added—“taking present conditions into consideration.” His immediate concern was the economic crisis that was ravaging the city. But he also realized very clearly that he was in a tiny oasis surrounded by a swarm of threats and that his situation was still precarious from a variety of perspectives. Valli had not relented and continued to bombard the American and British diplomats with pleas that “you force my husband to show concern for his child and me,” to which he responded by sending some money. Several merchants were still unhappy with how slowly he was paying his bills. The Allied warships filling the Bosporus were a constant reminder of the menace that hung over the city, as were the armed patrols by the Interallied Police on the city’s streets. After his experience of revolution and civil war in Russia, Frederick took the danger of widespread upheaval seriously, to the extent of stipulating that his contract with the bandleader Carter would be “annulled in case of Marshal law being declared or Maxim being closed by the authorities.”

Constantinople was also in a state of tumultuous change as its centuries-old social fabric unraveled under the occupation. The emasculation of the sultanate’s civic institutions, the influx of hundreds of thousands of indigent foreign and Turkish refugees, the soaring living expenses, the thousands of bellicose young men on leave from their ships and barracks—all led to an upsurge in everyday crime and public violence. People who were out late at night, like Zia Bey and his wife, tried to rush through the streets of Pera and especially Galata because they were not safe. Pickpockets preyed on passersby during the day (even Ravndal lost a pocket watch this way) while “second story men” shinnied up and down rain gutters to plunder residences when their owners were out. Businesses had to hire armed watchmen who spent the night striking the pavement with sticks at regular intervals to scare off thieves. Greek, British, and other Allied soldiers got drunk and started fights in the streets, making some residents reluctant even to venture out after dark. In Maxim one night, an Italian count started “a fracas” with a Lieutenant “Bubbles” Fisher of the U.S. Navy and drew a pistol from under his coat, but the lieutenant deftly disarmed him. Prostitution was rife and many desperate Russian women became streetwalkers. Ten thousand cocaine addicts in the city were estimated to consume ten kilos of the drug a day.

However, of all the threats that hung over Frederick, the most serious was in distant Washington, D.C. The blow fell early in 1922. In January, the State Department completed its review of his passport application, and Ravndal received the response on February 21. His assistant, John Randolph, needed only one sentence to inform Frederick: “With reference to your application for a Department passport I have to advise that the Department of State has disapproved same, and this office accordingly is not disposed to accord you further protection as an American citizen.” Randolph also informed Berlin, which put an end to Valli’s hopes for a passport or for help against Frederick.

The letter to Ravndal was signed by Wilbur J. Carr, the number six man in the State Department. This was a fairly high position, and his response carried the weight and authority of the American government. What he said was hardly surprising, given Frederick’s comments on the application. Carr focused on Frederick’s admission that he did not intend to return to the United States because of his business interests abroad. He also made special mention of Frederick’s “living in a free-love relationship with the white woman whom he alleges to be his wife.” Carr’s final reason for “disapproving” Frederick’s application, however, was that “even should he be in a position to submit evidence of his alleged American birth, favorable consideration could not be given… because it is apparent from the foregoing statement of the circumstances in his case that he has abandoned whatever ties he may have had with the United States.”

For all of Frederick’s knowledge of the ways of the world, it is odd that he did not appear fully to grasp this “disapproval” and believed that something other than his skin color and long life abroad was the problem. He talked about the matter frankly with the young naval intelligence officer Robert Dunn, explaining that he had been denied a passport because he could not prove his American birth. When Dunn objected that providing a birth certificate would surely solve the problem, Frederick replied with a “resigned and wistful” expression on his face as he “bore with the ignorant Yankee”: “Say, Mista Dunn, you know jes’ as well as Ah does dat us niggers down in Mississipp’ ain’t never got no birth co-tificates.” Frederick was not above poking fun at himself with this kind of linguistic self-caricature (and Dunn was not above recording it), but the point remains that he believed all he needed was proof of his American birth.

In the meantime, the start of the summer season was approaching and there was an important new development in the life of the city that Frederick was eager to exploit—an influx of American tourists. In early spring of 1922, Constantinople began to reemerge as a popular destination for cruise ships plying the Mediterranean. In March alone nearly three thousand tourists came ashore for a day or two, the largest number since before the war. Their gaily illuminated ships enlivened the drab Galata quay and were a striking contrast to the hulking gray warships lining the Bosporus. As the prosperous-looking tourists trooped through the city, they were followed with a calculating gaze by restaurateurs, antiquarians, souvenir peddlers, and Russians who still had jewelry, furs, or other valuables to sell.

High on the list of tourist attractions—in addition to taking a quick look at the wonders of ancient Stambul and picking up some souvenirs—was having a drink at a stylish place with music and dancing, something that had been legally denied at home for two years, since the start of Prohibition. American tourists quickly spread the word that Maxim was the fanciest nightclub in town, and for the next few years many of Frederick’s former countrymen made it an obligatory stop during their visits.

Most of the time Frederick limited himself to regaling the Americans with his trademark mix of personal attention, seductive atmosphere, haute cuisine, good liquor, excellent jazz, flashy acts, and a smooth dance floor. But on occasion he and his staff also put on a show that revealed his extravagant side, and played to the tourists’ naïveté and their if-this-is-Constantinople-it-must-be-Tuesday itinerary. Negley Farson, an American businessman and writer who had known Frederick in Moscow during the war and ran into him again in Constantinople, describes what sometimes happened.

Farson’s concluding epithet may sound condescending, but he genuinely admired Frederick and saw him as “very sophisticated.”

However, many of the American tourists differed from Farson because they brought with them the same attitudes Frederick had encountered when dealing with the diplomats in Constantinople and bureaucrats in Washington; the difference was that none of the tourists had any doubts about Frederick’s origins and all were happy to buy his drinks. Southerners’ reactions were invariably the most flagrant. Mrs. Lila Edwards Harper, a fifty-year-old matron from Montgomery, Alabama, spent a month in Constantinople and talked with Frederick at some length. Once she returned home, she could not wait to tell others what she saw and heard. “Everyone in Constantinople knows Fred Thomas,” she gushed. “He is a good polite negro, rolling in wealth, and an admirable host. His career is an amazing story, worse than fiction.” Mrs. Harper was struck primarily by two things: Frederick’s rags-to-riches story, which he recounted to her in detail (including the fact that he encountered no “color line” in Russia); and that his waitresses were Russian noblewomen who had been his “most fashionable patrons” in Moscow. “Nobody avoids them on account of their misfortune,” she commented, with what is actually rather mean-spirited surprise: “I’ve seen the English consul dance with the waitress who served his dinner. She was a countess in the old days.”

Frederick treated Mrs. Harper the same way he did all his patrons. But because she viewed him through the lens of her white southern narcissism, she took his polish and charm as personal tributes: “Thomas is from Mississippi and was as hugely pleased at meeting a Southern woman from America as he could be…. Nobody objects to the fact that the manager of the restaurant is a negro.” She added: “He’s one of the dozen or so negroes in Constantinople. They are never presumptuous. I saw Thomas sitting at a table with one of his Russian lady dancers, but that was the only unusual sight I saw. The diners find him a likable, obliging negro.” Mrs. Harper makes it sound as if dealing with people like her was what made Frederick know his natural place. In fact, knowing how to deal with her type is what helped him become rich again, and that was his best revenge.

Frederick was friendly by disposition and also charmed his customers for the simple reason that this was usually the easiest way to get what he wanted from them. But there were limits, and he was no Pollyanna. The numerous military men in Constantinople could be especially difficult to handle, owing to the way that alcohol and the proximity of attractive women fueled their aggressiveness. The English were the worst offenders—because of their numbers in Pera, because they were armed in contrast to the other Allies, and because of their arrogance. Captain Daniel Mannix, a seasoned American naval officer newly arrived in Constantinople, witnessed this unsavory concoction at Maxim one evening. He was curious about the place and its “American Negro” owner because he had heard that Frederick “had done a lot for other refugees and was generally liked and respected.” A short while after settling in at a table with friends, Mannix noticed that two drunken Englishmen were abusing a Russian waiter for some reason. Suddenly, one of them leaned forward and hit the Russian in the face, but the waiter only stepped away. Then the Englishman reached out and hit him again, and this time the waiter responded with a blow of his own.

Mannix saw the Englishmen’s behavior as a shocking expression of their sense of national inviolability. But Frederick was neither impressed nor cowed, and in characteristic fashion came to his employee’s defense. He also knew that this would not damage his relations with the British authorities, because of Maxim’s popularity with the representatives of all the Allied powers.

Even Admiral Bristol, the most senior American in the city, patronized Maxim, especially for dancing. The music and entertainment there were always Western European and Russian. But on one memorable evening Bristol presided over a special party that included Turkish folk music and dancing that Frederick had arranged with the help of the young journalist Adil. The performer was known as “Champion Osman, the Tambura-Player”; he was a master of the “bağlama,” a long-necked, traditional stringed instrument, and the “Zeybek,” a martial folk dance peculiar to western Anatolia. When Adil brought him to Maxim, Frederick’s initial reaction to the big, slow-moving old man, with his handlebar mustache, thick fingers, and eyeglasses, was skeptical. But after Osman changed into his costume, Adil was relieved to see that Frederick’s face broke into a broad smile at the transformation that the diffident old man had undergone.

After a dramatic drumroll, Osman walked out onto Maxim’s dance floor. The impression he produced was extraordinary because of his costume—a colorful head wrap, short baggy pants, a yataghan thrust through the sash around the waist of his embroidered jacket—and the contrast between his enormous body and the tiny bağlama. This was the first time that a Turkish folk artist had ever appeared in a Pera nightclub. When Osman began to play a virtuoso improvisation called a “koşma,” the audience listened entranced, scarcely breathing. When he had finished, the silence at first was so complete that “one could’ve heard the humming of a mosquito,” as Adil recalled; then wild applause erupted. Osman replied with a calm and dignified bow, as if he had spent all his life performing for foreign dignitaries. Following a signal to the bandleader, who started up a Zeybek tune, Osman stretched out his arms and began the high-stepping dance, adding some remarkable moves that even Adil had never seen before. When it was over, the audience again exploded with applause. Admiral Bristol’s wife came up to Osman and invited him to their table. Showing worldliness that few expected from him, the old man offered his arm to the lady and escorted her back, to the delight of Maxim’s entire audience. When his hosts offered him champagne, he did not refuse it as a Muslim, but touched the glass to his lips and took two sips before putting it down. When offered a cigarette, he smoked it and, once he had finished, politely asked for permission to leave.

Elegant, pricey Maxim was at the upper end of popular tourist entertainments in Constantinople. But the city had many other levels, both native and foreign, and there was a lot to choose from if you had eclectic tastes or were not a prude. An American naval officer who went to a Russian restaurant where “the waitresses were all refugee Russian girls chosen obviously for their good looks” kept being urged, “You can be as wicked as you like” by the maître d’hôtel, a man “with a black beard who looked like Rasputin.” Vertinsky’s nightclub “La Rose Noire,” in which his singing was the prime official attraction, was reputedly shut down when a police raid “unearthed quantities of cocaine and 100 per cent syphilis among the lady servants and entertainers.” There were exotic “Oriental” entertainments that one could attend, like the “camel fights” between pairs of beasts that were held in the MacMahon Barracks Hippodrome in Taxim Square, not far from Maxim.

American tourists also treated as entertainments some Turkish cultural traditions and rituals of the Ottoman court that survived under the Allied occupation. The weekly ceremonial procession of the sultan to his mosque for worship attracted crowds of observers because of the magnificence of the scene: lined-up palace guards in bright scarlet; units of cavalrymen richly uniformed in red breeches, hussar jackets, and astrakhan hats, their lances tipped with red and green pennants; the sultans’ horses caparisoned with tiger skins and silver mountings. Especially popular with tourists were the dervishes, Sufi Muslim ascetics who resembled Western monks in some ways. Their religious practices, which varied by sect, included the famous dance-like “whirling,” as well as a form of collective prayer that supercilious foreigners called “howling.” There were also lurid forms of self-mortification, with individuals searing their bodies with red-hot irons, striking themselves with swords or spiked iron balls, and even thrusting daggers through both cheeks.

But probably the oddest entertainment in Constantinople was the “cockroach races” that the Russians invented. In an attempt to control the spread of gambling in the city, in April 1921 the Allied authorities forbade the “lotto” games of chance that Russian refugees had introduced all over Pera. After casting about for some other source of income, several enterprising souls dreamed up the idea of staging races using the ubiquitous insects. They sought permission from the head of the British police, who, being a “true sportsman,” enthusiastically granted it. A large, well-lit hall was found and a giant table was set up in the center, its surface covered with a series of tracks separated by low barriers. Announcements of a new “Cafarodrome”—after the French “cafard,” “cockroach”—were posted throughout the district. The public poured in. Men with feverishly glistening eyes and women with flushed faces crowded around the table, trans-fixed by the sight of the enormous black cockroaches. Each had a name—“Michel,” “Dream,” “Trotsky,” “Farewell,” “Lyulyu.” A ringing bell signaled the start of the race. Released from their cigar-box “stables,” the cockroaches dashed forward, pulling tiny, two-wheeled sulkies fashioned out of wire; some, dumbfounded by the bright lights, froze, waving their feelers around uncertainly to the despair of their fans. Those that reached the end of their runs found stale cake crumbs as their reward. Pari-mutuel winnings could reach 100 Ltqs—the equivalent of several thousand dollars today. The success of the first Cafarodrome was so great that competing “racetracks” began to pop up all over Pera and Galata, with word spreading to Stambul and even Scutari. Some of the organizers quickly became rich and started to make plans to leave for a new life in Paris. If you had the money, you could buy a forged passport, and if your assets were portable and the Interallied Police did not know you, you could board a ship and escape.