The Daughter Page 12

  The Tiritombas didn’t have a clue about Valiant; no idea where Kanello and Mrs Chrysafis ran off to either. They heard the shots in the night, saw the tanks at dawn; all Salome could think of was her own crime. She confessed to her brother and sister that the goat she murdered belonged to the Zafiris clan, the same people who worked as stool pigeons and providers for the Occupation forces. Must be us they’re after, says Tassis, and rightly so. How are we going to get out of this one? So Mrs Adrianna gets one of her brilliant ideas: head for the hills.

  Take the show on the road, in other words. What else were they supposed to do?

  All night long they packed the dear departed’s costumes, rolled up the stage settings with their Sicilian-style castles oil-painted on canvas. Salome supervised the cooking of the goat. Not one of them was a real actor, of course; Adrianna was a housewife by birth, but she knew a bit about travelling shows; ticket sales, schedules, that kind of thing. Now really, can you call that a ‘travelling company’? A handful of amateurs, that’s all they were, so I discovered later, after the war. Oh well.

  Tassis, Marina and the two sisters, the whole family divvied up the roles. Tassis, he handled the dramaturgical side of things: rummaged through the dog-eared old portfolio where Zambakis Karakapitsalas the impresario kept the scripts; some of them were printed, some were hand-written in pencil, and everything on loose pages. Plus, Tassis was in such a dither that he stuck the final act of one play to the first act of another. Take Tosca, for instance, which had a happy ending off Cape Matapan. But staying alive, that was their main problem, to be honest, who gave a damn about what happened at Cape Matapan. Take care of your life and art will look after itself, Mrs Salome told me, over our second cupcake.

  Round about noon the troupe managed to get all their stuff crammed into the jitney, including Salome’s valuables: she was in fine spirits, in the search they unearthed a whole boxful of make-up accessories.

  And so it was we saw them turn, right after they crossed the bridge, like a stage coach straight out of a cowboy movie, except there were no Indians chasing after it, and no Germans. Still, you can’t say they weren’t decent people; fact is, they left a big plate of boiled goat on our window ledge, and one on Mrs Kanello’s front steps too, which her kids polished it off before their Ma got home from work. But their leaving was a blow for me; Tassis came and asked Ma for the fustanella I got from Mrs Adrianna as a gift.

  We reached this village called Pelopion after six hours on the road, the now-Mrs-at-last Salome relates (takes you less than an hour to get there today) wiping some crumbs from her lipstick. We were safe. Three days we stayed there, to pull ourselves together. The village was way up in the hills, crawling with partisans, tall and handsome too, every one of them. We said we’d suffered at the hands of the Germans. And we used Mrs Kanello’s name every way we could; you remember her? (That’s rich! Me, remember Kanello? Me?) Everybody who was anybody in the partisans knew her. They let us stay in the schoolhouse, we drew up our programmes, planned our route, got letters of recommendation to other villages controlled by the partisans, and some messages to pass on. We even held rehearsals. Of course, we had some disagreements over who would play what part, Mrs Salome admitted (over a third cookie, with a shot of brandy to wash it down), my dear elder sister insisted her daughter should play all the little girl’s roles, and I did the grown women, not to mention the time I played a man, a baron he was, can’t recall the play, name of Javert – wait a second; no, it was another play where I played Javert, anyway, here, have another cupcake.

  I took one, my fourth: no danger for my silhouette.

  ‘That tour of ours, the one that started back in Pelopion, in the Peloponese, ended almost a year and a half later, halfway between Albania and Romania, or was it Yugoslavia? Don’t ask me. Not bad, the cupcakes, eh? Homemade. In the meantime, we learned how to act and generally how to run a road company, travelling in partisan territory, and in occupied territory too. I deserted right here, in this town. My butcher was making eyes at me, and I said to myself, Salome, when’s the next time somebody’s going to fall for you head over heels? So I gave in. You can’t imagine what it cost me, she says, tossing back a glass of brandy to help down the last mouthful of cupcake, her fifth I think it was. You know, I was really beginning to get the knack, more than any of the others, she said. Maybe she was just being catty about my success with that last crack of hers.

  ‘Every time we had a new young woman’s role to play, we just about scratched each other’s eyes out to see who would get first shot at it, Adrianna or me, I mean to say. My niece? If she so much as hinted she wanted the part (the ingenue or charming maiden as the stage directions put it), we’d put her in her place and then we’d jump all over her. You’re still young, you’ve got all the time in the world to play young women; wait till you’re grown up, her mother said one day. If we don’t play these roles now, the two of us, when will we? As you can see, Adrianna had developed a taste for the footlights, even if she was a widow. The sad truth is I paid the price; sold out my art for a bed and a lifetime of meat; still, it was all lamb-chops, filet mignon and sweetbreads.’

  But Mrs Salome needn’t have worried about the troupe. One day, as they’re pushing the jitney up a steep hill, an Italian soldier, a long tall drink of water he was, leaps out in front of them rifle and all. They all surrender at once, of course, after blocking the back wheels with rocks to keep the whole contraption from rolling back down the hill. But as they’re standing there, hands over their heads facing the occupying troops, what should they see? The Italian was just a blond-headed kid, throws down his gun at their feet, starts blubbering and surrenders to them.

  Finally they figured it out; it was a deserter (than really could have used Mrs Kanello and her Italian right then). A fine kid, name of Marcello. Heard the Germans were about to ship them off to the Russian front, at which point he turns tail, trying to find somebody to surrender to. But instead of partisans, he happens on the troupe, so he surrenders to Mrs Adrianna, and later on, to Marina, especially her.

  Turned out to be really useful. Had a knack for just about everything, he did; a born joker and comedian. What’s more he could dance, do impersonations, and sing too, so they put him on stage. Certainly he was in no position to replace Mlle Salome, but they dreamed up a number just for him ‘And now, ladies and gentleman, the great impersonator, Michael and his Italians!’, Michael they named him. And Marcello sang his canzonettas and danced his tarantellas. At the same time, Marina gave him Greek lessons. But the lessons came to a halt, due to extenuating circumstances: one morning Mrs Adrianna nabs them in bed together. Him without a stitch on and Marina wearing only her undies, and smoking a cigarette! The sky just about falls on Adrianna’s head; last time she saw a naked man was before the Albanian war. (And what a man, let me tell you, she told Mrs Kanello when they met at Mum’s memorial service, my eyes just about popped out.) Long-suffering mother Adrianna unleashes a string of curses, eyes riveted all the time on the poor boy’s private parts. Hussy, she screeches at Marina, just what do you think you’re doing? Don’t you fear God? Smoking?

  The racket brings Tassis on the run. What’s the big fuss about? he says to his sister, they make a fine couple. Still, even he objected to his niece smoking. So he snatches the cigarette out of her mouth, puts the Italian’s clothes back on, and pronounces them engaged then and there. Today Marina and Marcello are married and living in Rimini, with three kids, all boys. May you grow up to be strong and inherit your father’s best attributes, Mrs Adrianna writes to her grandchildren every New Year, that’s what I heard back during the Renegades’ government, from Mrs Kanello it was.

  Well, after they took leave of Pelopion – the only things they staged there were some Resistance sketches to build up their courage – Mrs Adrianna steered the troupe back to all the places they did so well before while her dear late husband was still alive, they’ll remember us here, she said. Even got up kind of a poster for every occasion:
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  Adrianna (widow of Zambakis Karakapitsalas, hero of Albania) and her travelling players

  A new production every day

  Starring: the ever lovely Salome Papia

  (couldn’t live without her own stage name)

  Featuring the ever-alluring Marina Kara

  (lopped off the rest of her father’s name).

  The side-splitting Tassis.

  Admission in kind.

  Costume and evening-gown rentals for weddings and baptisms.

  In villages they played the coffee-houses mostly. Admission was in kind: eggs, bread, sausage, liver, whatever people happened to have.

  Didn’t always play to sell-out crowds, either. Sometimes they performed for five spectators, or for the proprietor only. Interpretation wasn’t really a big problem; in less than a month they’d learned all the plays and all about the public as well: whatever you played, they ate it up. No problem about critics of mixed-up pages.

  Tosca was their big success. They presented it as a British play, about the Allies, and the Resistance.

  Anyhow, there was this one coffee-house proprietor who takes pity on Adrianna, seeing as how in the last act of Tosca, she has to jump off a wall. So one night, to keep her behind from taking a pounding with every fall into the wings, he sets up two inflated inner-tubes. So, with all the flare of a true artiste, Adrianna leaps from the wall on to the inner tubes, and comes bouncing right back on to the stage and ends up straddling the wall, which is how they improvised the perfect happy ending.

  Lighting was no problem; they had acetylene lamps. Main problem was commercial success. Artistic success we had, in our hip pocket, says the now-Mrs Salome as she gobbles up cupcake number six (I was keeping pace with her, with brandy though). In lots of villages we couldn’t even put on one performance: had to spend the night hungry in the jitney. Way she described it, it made me think of the time we went hungry for three days, Signor Vittorio was on guard duty; all we had was a cup of rice, and Ma boiled it up, and mixed in some sawdust to make it look like more.

  One performance, Salome goes and keels over right on stage from sheer hunger. But Tassis – he was a whizz at improvising by this time – simply slings her over his shoulder and carries her offstage like a swooning lover, and gives her a raw egg; she pulls herself together and goes back to her role.

  But there were some villages where they took in extra, because they rented out costumes and evening gowns to the local rich people, for weddings or baptisms, or for memorial services; in some places memorial services were more like parties, with boiled wheat and a big cauldron of barley soup full of chopped-up innards. We ate all the barley soup we could stuff into ourselves and forgave souls for all we were worth, Mrs Adrianna confessed one time, when Greece had its first beauty pageant I think it was. Our best season was the springtime; had more spectators.

  With Adrianna there was a hitch; she didn’t always remember which lines went with which play, plus she was impetuous by nature, she was always forgetting the prompter’s box and letting herself go. In this medieval costume drama, just to give you one example, she drops the sock she’s darning and enters stage right, but instead of saying to the lead, ‘It’s I, the guilty one!’ she blurts out, ‘My son! It is I, your adulterous mother!’ At which point the audience breaks in and corrects her – the play was one of our most popular ones, so most of them had already seen it the night before. In another drama, in a more patriotic vein, a Turk appears (we had him dressed up as a Nazi SS-man) and starts stealing children. And Adrianna, she’s supposed to come rushing out as a mother who they’re going to turn her children into Janissaries. This time she’s busy cooking something backstage. Adrianna, you’re on, they call her. She’s confused. What do I say? she asks. Your child, they tell her. Fine, she says, don’t let the food burn. And she comes rushing on stage full of passion, embraces the Turk SS-man and cries, My child. It is I, your long-lost mother! Well, what was the Turk supposed to do? (Tassis was playing the role.) He kneels at her feet and cries Mama! And the crowd goes wild with applause.

  ‘Little snags like that we had plenty of, but everything we did was a big success. Another cupcake?’

  They had their bad days too, like any normal company. One time they come into this village, not a soul to be seen. They start shouting their pitch, not a window opens. When they reach the square they see five people, hanging. They hear a commotion, and down the cobblestones comes a little boy, maybe eight years old, with his mother in a push-cart, how he ever managed to cut her down, a little tyke like that? It’s enough to make you wonder. It was the Germans killed her. Partisans ambushed them down on the highways, at which point the Germans trooped into the village and hanged the civilians to set an example.

  ‘Everyone that could make it fled for the hills; and they weren’t coming back. We could see them there, up among the rocks, motionless as tree-stumps. We helped the little boy get his ma to the graveyard, Tassis pulled the cart’, Salome went on, now she wasn’t eating. ‘Buried her, the boy knew which was the family plot. Afterwards we cut down the others, loaded the bodies into the jitney and carted them off to the cemetery too. We nearly busted our rear ends from all the digging, but we looked after the lot. The boy gave us each one’s name, and we stuck a little marker with the name on it on top of each grave, so their families could find them when they returned to their homes. After, the boy drummed up a loaf of bread and kills two chickens for us, and we left.

  ‘There was this other village we didn’t even go near, even if it was on our schedule: from far away we saw it was burning. The place was crawling with Germans, no show here tonight, we say to ourselves; so we hide the jitney in a sheep-fold until they’ve disappeared and then go on our way. We ran into the villagers a bit further on, bent double under their belongings, the girls were carrying their dowries on their backs but you can’t very well put on a show in the open air, can you?

  ‘If you take away a few episodes like that, we did pretty well, I’ve got no complaints,’ goes Salome, and pulls out a cigarette. Smokes now, she does, even though it’s a small town. I gave her some of mine, filter-tips, and that really impressed her.

  ‘If you really want to know,’ she goes on, ‘I was the star of the show, thanks to my mandolin-playing. Before the war, back in Rampartville, I always got invitations to certain homes for name-day parties, I played tangos or fox-trots on my mandolin while they danced. Not that they were anything special, socially speaking, as they didn’t even have no phonograph, mostly teachers or bank-clerks’ houses it was, dear. On tour, whenever I’d forget my lines, I grabbed my mandolin and came out with a barcarole, and my partner exited stage rear with a look of ecstasy on his face, they whispered him my lines, and the show went on. Only one time, in a royalist town it was, some sonofabitch in the audience makes me sing “Son of the eagle” in honour of the king, while we’re performing The Adultress of Sicily. What could I do? I break off the love scene and do the song, but I throw in some risqué bits such as “from in front and from behind”.

  ‘Another time, this merchant takes a shine to Mrs Adrianna and in the interval he sends her a message with the coffee-house owner: If she desires to make his acquaintance and a half-sack of flour to please drop by his store after the performance. Adrianna sends back her answer: We may play kept women consumptives with camelias but we’re honest housewives; in fact, I’m going to tell my brother.

  ‘But in comes Tassis – didn’t have an idea what was going on – as they were discussing the matter, so they disclose the immoral proposition so as to, you know, such and such local wants Adrianna to come by his store to give her flour, but she won’t go.

  ‘Tassis didn’t have an immoral thought in his head, in fact, generally speaking, he was an easy-going kind of guy and a bit slow on the uptake; so he goes up to the merchant. Holy Virgin, now they’re going to kill each other, thinks Adrianna. But Tassis says to the man, Thank you very much, but my sister is indisposed and can’t come, maybe you’d like me to
drop by your store?

  ‘Later we tried to tell him,’ goes Salome, ‘why the merchant cursed him like a dog, called him a rotten limp-wristed artiste and kicked him in the bargain. As it happens, it wasn’t really Adrianna he wanted,’ Salome says, busting out laughing. ‘It was me, but the coffee-house owner mixed up the roles (the guy had told him, the one who plays the mother). But I never breathed a word of it to my sister. Go on, let her think someone has the hots for her, I say to myself.’

  Other places, further north – this was after Salome dropped out and Marcello the Italian joined the troupe – it just so happened they invited the whole audience (six people it was) up on stage, because during the first act interval word got around the Krauts were about to surround the village and take reprisals. That story I heard from Mrs Adrianna. When was it? Must’ve been when we had the National Rally government.

  The coffee-house proprietor got wind of it, and herded them all up on stage as a kind of chorus; fitted them out with costumes of sorts and they escaped certain death, the poor devils. Can you believe it, those uncultured Krauts, interrupting an artistic performance? says Mrs Adrianna as she gives me a light; she was smoking too, took herself for a veteran of the footlights, if you can imagine!

  ‘That’s why I just don’t have any respect for German artists, they’ve got a nerve, coming here to our various festivals after the war and all. Playing their roles as if they’re still wearing their Wehrmacht helmets, men and women, it’s all the same! You want to know what I think? After the Liberation there should be one big mud puddle where Germany is, insisted Mrs Adrianna.

  What she never told me was how once she executed a German while he was doing a caca. They were just leaving a village in the jitney, she spots him from the window, grabs Marcello’s rifle and fires. Gets him with the first shot and everybody congratulates her, first time she ever touches a gun and bang, scores a bull’s-eye on her first shot, that bit of information I got from Mrs Marika, Kanello’s mother, she was past seventy by then and everything seemed funny to her, her daughter especially.