The Daughter Read online

  Meantime the New Year was approaching. Better Black Year, I should say. The Year of Our Lord 1943. They had one head of cauliflower to their name, plus ten hand grenades in the ice-box, as well as the three Mausers stashed in the ceiling. Keep up your spirits, said Mlle Salome. The British are coming, and we’ll all be eating pudding. She didn’t have the faintest what pudding was but she was quite the Anglophile, because she liked the King of England, now there’s a real man, she would say. If he were to ask for my hand, how could I refuse?

  She said as she hammered a long nail into her heel to keep it in place, then stepped out to finish her promenade; you can never be too careful; people will talk.

  ‘Won’t be long before New Year,’ goes Mrs Adrianna cattily. ‘Think your Englishmen will get here in time for the pudding? Weren’t they supposed to be here in 41?’

  Still. At New Years dinner they had meat on their table. It was boiled, and there wasn’t much of it. But it was meat, and there was plenty of broth.

  ‘Can’t even chew the stuff,’ grumbled Mlle Salome, ‘what kind of meat is this, anyway? it’s purple. What is it, ferret?’

  ‘It’s as fine and tender as you could wish,’ her sister shot back, ‘just chew it; your teeth aren’t used to meat, drink some broth and you won’t go fainting away in the arms of the Occupation troops.’

  Mlle Salome gets up from the table in a huff, without so much as crossing herself, doesn’t even undo the napkin from around her neck. Whenever she’s in a huff she goes and complains to her parrot. Into her room she goes; no parrot. Then she realizes what’s happened; like divine revelation almost. Back into the dining room she storms, napkin dangling from her neck. Cannibals, she screams! Fortunately the others had gobbled up the parrot in the meantime; in fact, Marina snatched the half-eaten portion from her aunt’s plate.

  Salome let loose a torrent of invective; her sister listened silently with head bowed, what I mean to say is she couldn’t speak because she was still chewing her last mouthful of the parrot’s thigh. Mlle Salome was devastated. You don’t respect my engagement present? You went and cooked your little sister’s love? and such like. But when she called her Medea to her face, and man-eater, Mrs Adrianna burst out:

  ‘You listen to me little lady,’ she says. ‘As if I wasn’t sorry enough I had to kill the poor innocent bird, it just about bit my finger off! What am I supposed to do? Let my kids starve?’

  ‘One kid, that’s all you’ve got. And barely, at that,’ Salome says sarcastically, seems as though Mrs Adrianna never managed a second one, at least that was Father Dinos’s version, the one the whole neighbourhood knew.

  No holding back Adrianna now.

  ‘Three. I’ve got three kids,’ she says. ‘That good-for-nothing daughter of mine who all she can do is hand out leaflets, my good-for-nothing brother who I send for wheat and what does he come back with? Inner-tubes for a bus that won’t even run …’

  ‘Well excuse me,’ Tassis cuts in, stung to the quick. ‘You want me to steal? With pleasure. Just tell me where to go. But you won’t catch me gleaning, a grown man of thirty-two, never!’

  But Adrianna wasn’t about to be stopped.

  ‘And my third kid is you, my precious little lady! My good-for-nothing sister. We do a warehouse break-in but you, it never occurs to you to pick up some food, to help out a bit. Nothing but Tokalon powder. And lipstick for that mouth of yours that looks like a chicken’s behind. The only reason we can still remember what a chicken’s behind looks like is because we’ve got your mouth to look at. Snotty-nosed Brit-lover!’

  She had a point there. Those were the days when people broke into bakeries, grocery stores, warehouses, ‘busts’ we called them. When we found out somebody was hiding food, our self-respect just evaporated. Even Mrs Adrianna – she was such a respectable woman back in the pre-war days and the Albanian war – let herself go, didn’t miss a single break-in. Last time around she brought Mlle Salome along all dolled up in her high heels and her turban, although she didn’t have any makeup on. In the confusion they lost track of each other. But everybody got back safe and sound. Mrs Adrianna with two loaves of bread, Marina with a half-empty sack of raisins, Tassis with a pocketful of feta cheese and a carburettor. Back comes Mlle Salome in triumph like the Empress Napoleon, with a lipstick, some rouge and a jar of face powder, some domestic brand it was, still … One of her high heels had snapped off.

  For Mlle Salome death by firing-squad was better than going out without her makeup on, which she considered indecent. When they announced our surrender to the Germans over the radio she ran straight out and bought ten lipsticks, five rouges and five pounds of talcum powder, the kind they put on babies’ rear ends; that was all she had to spend. So that’s how she faced the Occupation, fully equipped. How long could it last? Five or six months? The English are such gentlemen, they’ll set us free in no time. She was so blinded by her pro-English sentiments that she ran out of cosmetic supplies, which is why now she began stealing herself. Cosmetics only, though. Which was how come her sister was giving her hell.

  Her sister was right, Mlle Salome had to admit it, the King of England was a little late for his date with Greece. But she wouldn’t budge on one thing, they had to give her back the parrot’s feathers. So she washes the feathers, and hangs them out to dry on the balcony, one clothes-peg each (that she did on purpose so all the neighbours could see how cruelly her own family betrayed her), then she sews the feathers on to her turban. Later she even wore the contraption on stage when she played Angela in A Priest’s Daughter, it was a role for a seventeen year old, God forfend.

  From that day on, the day she ate her own parrot, Salome vowed on his memory to make a liar out of her sister, who accused her of being a good-for-nothing Brit-lover right in front of the whole family. Meantime, she spotted a few domestic sheep grazing on the Zafiris family pasture; not far from Thanassakis’ first mine-field. The Zafirises weren’t concerned about thievery; they were German collaborators so their animals grazed unguarded except at night when they herded them into the living room.

  Never even crossed their minds they should guard against us, Kanello and her friends that is, seeing as how due to our cowardice and our pride they never suspected us, didn’t even pelt us with rocks if we picked greens on their land.

  The day after the boiled parrot, Hey, Roubini, Mlle Salome says, let’s go digging wild onions and get some fresh air. She was dressed to kill, complete with her niece’s shoulder-pads, which were all the rage back then, even Mussolini wore them they say, one thing for sure, all the German charmers of the silver screen wore shoulder-pads, Jenny Jugo and Marika Rökk especially. Mrs Kanello didn’t approve of shoulder-pads, mostly on account of the German connection.

  ‘What’re you doing walking around in shoulder-pads in broad daylight,’ she says to Salome. ‘You look like that fiancée of Hitler’s.’

  ‘Well, no accounting for tastes,’ goes Mlle Salome. And with a yank on the arm off we went. But the remark really stung, as she didn’t respect Hitler one bit, she knew he had this relationship but never married the girl. The no-good brute, she always said, playing her along all these years, when is he going to make an honest woman out of her? If it was me I’d hand him his marching orders.

  We were on our way to dig wild onions; the sun was out, a good source of calories, is what they said. I was carrying my little trowel, you’ve got to dig to get the onions out of the ground.

  By the time we reached Thanassakis’ first mine-field I was starting to get suspicious. Mlle Salome, I ask, are we going for Resistance again? No, she says; you wait here and pretend you’re digging for onions and don’t say a thing no matter what happens.

  ‘See those sheep?’ she says.

  ‘Goats,’ I tell her. ‘They’re the Zafirises’ goats.’

  But even that couldn’t hold her back. She’s carrying a sack, and a shoulder bag. I watch as she steps into the minefield, leaping this way and that like Imperio Argentina when she sang in
the film of Antonio Vargas Herredia, back before the war.

  The livestock were grazing contentedly. All the time looking back over her shoulder she gradually steered them into this deep ravine. Then she leaps in after them like a Souliot woman and I lose sight of her. All the while I pretend I’m hunting for wild onions. But it’s not long before I see her climb out of the ravine dragging the sack behind her, stuffed to bursting. To this day I still can’t figure out how she steered it through that minefield with those high heels of hers, the turban and the shoulder bag. She comes up to me. Give me a hand, she says, and don’t let out a peep if it drips blood a bit. I do as she asks and what do I see? A bloody knife sticking out of her bag. In the sack is a butchered goat. Let’s be on our way, she says, you go on ahead with a big smile on your face and without a care in the world, now get moving.

  Now just picture us, walking along without a care in the world, two starving women with a load like that. Truth is, it was all we could do to drag the dead goat along behind us.

  When we finally get to Deviljohn’s bridge she says to me, You go on ahead, we don’t want to attract attention. She sees the other kids waving at me, besides, it was almost curfew time and I had to pick Fanis up. I found him of course; but in the meantime Mlle Salome sets out for home hauling the goat along behind, anyway, it was a paved road for the rest of the way to town.

  When we got home Salome still hadn’t shown up. Every couple of minutes Adrianna popped out on to the balcony, looking up and down the street and what does the woman see: on the wall of Aphrodite’s place Mrs Kanello is teaching Marina Italian. They were using the wall as a blackboard, and Marina had written REDICOLO MUSSOLINI without a mistake, and underneath HITLER EPYLEPTIK, which she didn’t get quite right. As she’s watching the spelling lesson all of a sudden she sees a short, stocky Italian soldier with a rifle slung over his shoulder come round the corner, probably on his way to his girlfriend’s, with a big grin on his face. He says hello to them, then spots the writing on the wall, and comes to a stop. Mrs Adrianna rushes downstairs and what does she see? The Italian with his gun lying on the ground arresting Marina, trying to be courtly and chivalrous and patriotic all at the same time; wanting to take her off to the Carabineria. So there’s Kanello looking for a way out of the mess, there’s Marina, yelling, Get your filthy hands off me, and there’s Mrs Adrianna falling over in a faint – at a time like that, yet! – when, all of sudden, they hear a sound like a burst of machine-gun fire. They turn; it’s Salome’s high-heeled wooden clogs on the cobblestones. Like in a dream, and faint from fear and hunger, Adrianna sees her sister let the bag drop and march right up to the Italian, frothing at the mouth.

  ‘Let the kid go, scum!’ she goes. ‘She’s a Greek! Hands off the Greek lass, you scum!’ She goes.

  The Italian mumbles something, tries to get out a few words, even Kanello can’t understand him, but all the while he keeps dragging Marina in the direction of the Carabineria.

  By this time curfew is in force and Mrs Adrianna has come to, but when she sees blood dripping from the sack she’s just about to faint again, fortunately at that very moment we hear a faraway gunshot, from a patrol. Kanello is chasing after her five kids who came running outside to see what all the fuss was about and Mlle Salome is tugging on Marina’s other hand, Let go my niece, you nincompoop, you’ll pull her arm out of its socket! she yells at the Italian who’s starting to look worried by this time. Then comes a second gunshot and Salome is really fuming.

  ‘You can take your firecrackers and go to hell!’ she yells in the direction of the gunshots, just like Leonidas before Thermopylae.

  She yanks her niece’s arm with all her strength; nothing. That pipsqueak of an Italian wouldn’t let go. Suddenly Mlle Salome lets go Marina’s hand, she falls over and so does the Italian, the poor sucker, which is when Salome lands him a swift kick in the shin, he doubles over in pain, weeping and begging, ‘No, no signorina.’ Salome hears that signorina of his (she was just dying for people to call her Madame Salome) and grabs the rifle, the young Italian is weeping and clutching his shin and Mrs Kanello is screeching from her balcony Adrianna, Tassis, hold on to that overgrown tomboy or she’ll make mincemeat of the poor kid.

  Meantime Marina slaps her mother to bring her around and she comes to, sees her sister with a gun in her hand, the foreign occupant weeping, hopping around on one leg like a stork, and cuts loose at her.

  ‘Hey, leave the guy alone, give him his rifle back; we’ve already got three hidden in the ceiling,’ says Adrianna. ‘Mama, shut your big mouth, you’re giving us away’, squeals Marina.

  Fortunately the Italian didn’t understand a word of Greek plus with his shinbone hurting like that I bet he couldn’t even understand his mother tongue.

  At that very moment we hear gunshots, machine-gun fire this time it was and the gr-gr-gr of treads. A German armoured car heading in our direction. No time to get back upstairs, we all crowd into our house: lucky for us it was a single-storey place: first went Salome with the Mauser, Kanello’s kiddies hid behind a homespun blanket hanging over their balcony. No sooner do we lock the door behind us than we hear knocking and whimpering, Aprite, aprite per pietà, belle signore!

  Kanello opens the door for a split second and we let the Italian in; saved him just in the nick of time. Can you imagine what the Germans would do to him if they found him without his gun? The armoured car whirls around angrily, pointing its cannon at one house after another, and me, I’m staring out through the keyhole. Finally it roars off; fortunately it completely misses the sack with the goat.

  ‘Go to hell’, yells Kanello after it, with impunity, of course, the Germans were long gone. We make double sure, then push the foreign kid out on to the street, give him back his gun, dust off his trousers even, he was all gratitude, Grazie, grazie mille, belle signore. Out he goes, wipes the slogans off the wall with his sleeve and goes about his business.

  Then the Tiritombas left. You, Salome orders Adrianna, you haul the trophy upstairs. And up the stairs she goes, just like Aida (I never performed that particular play).

  Meantime Mrs Adrianna opens the sack, sees the big game, her eyes start to glaze over again. Hey, she shouts, where’d you steal this from?

  ‘I killed that goat myself. That’ll teach you to call me shirker and Brit-lover,’ she said as she swept up the stairs without so much as a backward glance. ‘One leg’s for you Mrs Asimina,’ she calls out to my mom, ‘for little Roubini’s help.’ And all the while Kanello was looking on wide-eyed from her upstairs balcony, jealous probably.

  ‘You imbecile,’ goes Mrs Adrianna. ‘If they catch us they’ll eat us alive.’

  ‘Let them eat our shit,’ shoots back Mlle Salome haughtily, from the balcony.

  ‘Don’t you go using foul language in front of my children,’ yells Mrs Kanello from her balcony.

  ‘Have Tassis skin the goat,’ Salome says from high up, as Marina tries to heave the sack on to her back.

  ‘It’s not even a billy goat, it’s a nanny’, says Mrs Adrianna as she looks closely at the trophy.

  Here Mlle Salome just about comes unstuck.

  ‘Whatever I do it’s not enough! As far as you’re concerned, my whole life is nothing!’ she said, stung to the quick, and went inside whimpering.

  Adrianna was right, though. It was a nanny goat.

  Anyway, they brought their prize upstairs and we closed our windows, hoping for some boiled goat to eat the next day; I got some macaroni put aside, Ma tells us. First time she ever mentioned Signor Vittorio’s little gifts.

  But that was the night the Germans sealed off the neighbourhood, the night they shot Valiant. What really happened is, they executed him right in front of his mother’s then dumped his body in the marketplace (I know who ratted on him, guy’s big in frozen food today, so be it, you won’t get another peep more out of me, these are evil times). The whole neighbourhood, it was crawling with Germans all night long, even broke into the church; we couldn’t sleep a
wink, lying there in bed awake, listening. Every now and then we heard gunshots. Ma tucked us under the big quilt, right up to our chins. Now go to sleep, she said, tomorrow we’ll have goat to eat. What worried us was maybe we couldn’t go snailing next morning at Deviljohn’s bridge.

  Tassis wanted to skin the goat right there in the courtyard but his sisters wouldn’t hear of it. Everybody in the neighbourhood will know, said Salome, plus we’ll catch the evil eye. So he ended up skinning and gutting the carcass in the dining room; strung it right from the chandelier and slid a roasting pan underneath to catch the innards, and there was Mrs Adrianna, watching the Germans through the balcony-door curtains, all on tenterhooks. And all this time Salome was hacking up the meat as the big cook-pot was heating over the brazier. Around three in the morning the Germans withdrew and we all breathed easier.

  Come daybreak, as the cooking was in full swing, they hear Kanello hammering on Mrs Chrysafis’s door, her shouting something and then they catch a glimpse of the two of them rushing off God knows where with a two-wheeled cart which immediately makes Salome think Kanello is trying to make a break for it, leaving her kids behind. Meantime, Germans start appearing again.

  ‘That’s all it was, a misunderstanding, but it changed my life; and I met the butcher of my dreams,’ was how Mlle Salome described it to me years later in that hick town near Grevena when I was passing through with the travelling players. They invited me over for dinner; after all, it’s not your everyday backwoods butcher’s wife who can boast she’s had a true artist at her table. Still, she always had a liking for me, since back when she was a maiden lady. After the meal, over coffee and cupcakes – her husband went off to open the shop – she brought me up to date on everything that happened.