The Daughter Read online

  So, as I was saying, these scraps of burned paper were fluttering over our house, and me, I was as curious as a cat. Out of our shelter I crawl and go over to open the front door; in the street I see a handful of corpses and I see Mrs Kanello, that woman’s curiosity was something else, let me tell you! The whole family was there, poking their noses up from the cellar. How’re you all doing, Roubini? Did you all survive? We made it, we did.

  Further off, from the town centre, you could hear noise. It was a human voice, calling through a megaphone. I couldn’t make out the words, was it partisans talking, or Secbats? But before long I see Kanello starting to jump around like Indians in a John Wayne movie.

  ‘We’re free, neighbours!’ she shouted.

  ‘You hear? We won!’

  The voice with the megaphone was coming from a partisan. Now I could make out a few words: people’s government, freedom, stuff like that. Then a hubbub from downtown, the people were coming out into the streets. Ma came to drag me back inside but in the meantime little Fanis scooted off; the two of us wanted to get a look at liberty. The little partisan was hanging from the bell tower like a bunch of grapes. Further off, smoke was rising.

  Mrs Kanello lined up her kids and they marched off to greet the people’s government. And there was her husband, watching from the upstairs gallery; fortunately it was Liberation and he could enjoy a bit of sunlight, said his wife. Holed up inside all this time, poor man, ever since the night spirits bewitched him. He looked at us for a moment, My, how you’ve all grown, he said, and went inside again.

  Smoke everywhere, lots of smoke. The Music Conservatory was on fire too, try and figure out why they’d burn that; the Secbats did it, people said. The Police Station also burned to the ground but things kept on exploding there in the ashes; probably ammunition, is what our Fanis told me.

  People were sort of numb, mostly staring out windows or standing in doorways. A few of the most notorious collaborators had British flags hanging from their balconies, or hammer and sickles. Now the voices from the megaphones were louder and clearer. And to top it all off, people from all the nearby villages were streaming into town.

  Peasants, that’s who it was, with donkeys or mules carrying empty sacks and pickaxes, come to town for plunder and for looting the shops. You figure out who told them. Let’s go take a look, goes Fanis, he spotted a real nice fire. But all of a sudden we hear voices from a back alley shouting Freedom! and stones hitting our roof, and shouts of Burn the Collaborators, burn the whores! The two of us turn on our heels and run. Fanis, they’re going to burn Ma, I say, let’s get out of here.

  What with all the hullabaloo, and what with our curiosity to see just what kind of thing it was, this freedom, we forgot all about Ma. We went down the back alleys so we wouldn’t get trampled by the peasants pouring towards the town centre, finally we reached the cemetery. They had about a dozen Secbats nailed up against the wall – I think they were nailed there anyway, I was too shocked to tell. They were stripped bare from their throats to their thighs. We went closer; they were all dead, slaughtered, two long crisscross slashes. After, people said, they dumped pickling salt into the wounds. I was just about to puke and I turned around and ran home with the kid.

  Meantime the peasants were heading back to their villages. On donkey back, furious. The partisans wouldn’t let them loot the shops. So they went off cursing and throwing rocks at windows as they left. But we never promised they could loot anything, Mrs Kanello’s sister the partisan told us, when she came down from the hills, family in tow. We never told anybody in the villages that we’d let them wreck the shops in Rampartville. That’s what she declared, back when we had Archbishop Damaskinos as regent. A little later, was it when Maximos was the prime minister, or was it Poulitsas, I forget which, how am I supposed to remember them all, politicians, you can have them, that’s all I need now, to remember their names, they were just a bunch of political walk-ons anyway, back then all the peasants voted the monarchy. And after that, which prime minister was it? some ugly short guy it was, Mrs Kanello’s sister and her family, they sent them off to exile to the whatever island they send those people to, Little Island, Long Island, never could remember which; what can I do?

  One thing’s for sure, we felt a little bit of a let-down that first day. That’s all there was to Liberation? We were nothing but kids, of course, what were we supposed to understand. So we took the water jug and went off for water, we weren’t going to let Ma out of the house, seeing as how they called her collaborator. Water had been cut off to all the houses; the Germans blew up the town reservoir on their way out.

  So we take the jug and head off for the Canals, a kind of irrigation ditch just down the hill from Saint Rosolym church. But we kept slipping and sliding going down the hill, because there was blood all over the street. The dead bodies were stacked up neatly off the roadside but the pavement had blood all over it. So we had to watch where we were going, we didn’t want to slip and crack the jug or else Daddy will give us a whipping, says Fanis.

  I turn and stare at him.

  ‘What daddy, Fanis?’

  ‘When he comes back from the war,’ he says, with downcast eyes.

  ‘What daddy, Fanis?’ I ask again. ‘Daddy’s dead, killed in Albania years ago.’

  ‘When he comes back from the war he’ll give us a whipping if we bust the jug,’ the boy kept repeating, with downcast eyes. ‘And besides, Ma won’t let us say he’s dead,’ he went on. ‘So people will think we’ve got someone to look after us. So they won’t burn our house down.’

  Finally we got back home with a full jug and safe and sound, and had ourselves a nice drink of fresh water. And that’s the way Liberation came, and that’s the way it began.

  A few days later I started my job cleaning floors and dusting houses, Doc Manolaras our future member of parliament put in a good word for me. I didn’t let on to Mrs Kanello how I wasn’t getting paid for working at Doc Manolaras’s place. Our Fanis would hang around the burned-out houses and wherever he saw the owners rummaging around trying to save whatever was left, he helped out as best he could, poor kid, that crushed hand of his you know.

  Mother, she stayed inside the house; we couldn’t open the shutters because they’d throw stones at us, twice it happened, and shout dirty collaborating whore. And generally speaking things were worse for us than the so-called Occupation. It’s time Mrs Kanello and Aphrodite’s mother Mrs Fanny took our side, it’s a sin, they shouted from their windows, the poor woman. Me, I went to work with a kerchief over my head like a pretend peasant woman, for fear somebody would recognize me on the street.

  Seeing as how in the meantime reprisals against the collaborators had started. Some of the well-to-do homes, the ones who invited the Italians into their living rooms, plus they had eligible daughters, well people went and nailed horns above their front doors, got them from the public abattoir. And we all went and laughed and stared, me and little Fanis, until one day Mrs Kanello talked some sense into us.

  A couple of families, the ones that engaged their daughters to Italians, went and locked and double-bolted their doors, but those kind of people didn’t have any food problem, their pantries were full, only the evening stroll with the rest of the town’s high society, that’s all they were deprived of. And the ones that were quick enough to hang an allied flag from their balcony, nobody even disturbed them: they opened their French doors and windows wide and threw flowers on the partisans’ heads. When the English came ashore and the so-called Liberation was complete they put up signs that read ‘Welcome Liberators’ right next to the flags. The signs were in Greek and Italian; nobody knew any English yet. When the British arrived people started learning English with the Xavier de Bouges Teach-Yourself method. Chocolates reappeared too. Foreign-made, better than our own chocolates before the war.

  Doc Manolaras’s wife – I was working at their place – she wanted her husband to send me back to school, to complete my education. Fine, I said, and they put
me one class higher than the one I never finished. But I was worried, the rocks kept on hitting our roof tiles. Though now they only threw rocks at night. Mrs Kanello heard the noise – she heard everything that went on in the street – and came out on her gallery shouting, That’s all your people’s courts are good for, going after poor people? What’s the matter, you don’t know where the big whores are? She had a point there, nobody wanted to mess with the collaborators from the best families, not even the leftest of all the Communists.

  I was the man of the house now, a woman just about almost sixteen years old. Mother sewed up pads for me expecting my period would come any day now but I had plenty else on my mind, how was I going to manage with school and four houses to clean. What’s more we were all waiting for the Allies. To bring us what I don’t know. But all of us, we were waiting, every house was waiting, personally. We imagined they would be much more dashing than our own local partisans, they were foreigners after all. In fact, back then everybody was talking about the modern movies we were going to be getting soon and they would all be in colour, people said. Every home was expecting the Allies, it was like a formal dinner invitation where first they would eat our food and then give us all gifts. What kind of gifts? At school they handed out allied rations – that was the main reason that I decided to go back to school for a couple of weeks, but I kept right on cutting class – powdered milk and a little individual ration can. Thanassakis Anagnos gave me his, probably trying to tell me something he was, but I never got to enjoy it. I open it up and what do I see? a condom and some razor blades. Mrs Kanello snatched the condom before I had a chance to blow it up like a balloon. Give me that, harebrain, quick, just once in my life I’m going to enjoy myself, I’m sick of the poor man pulling out just when. In the meantime, she had her seventh kid.

  Me, I knew what condoms were. I saw them back when Signor Alfio used to come by, used ones; threw them out along with the rinsing water before my little brother could spot them and ask Ma, What’s this thing? And besides the fresh ones I saw under the beds in the houses where I worked, they hung one all bulged out and half-full of water just outside our front door. Our little Fanis asks Mum what’s that balloon? and Ma smacks him one on the head.

  When they gave me a can with a condom inside I traded it with Mrs Kanello, her son got one with chocolate. The little fart wouldn’t let go of it for nothing, but Kanello, her mind was made up, I ain’t having no kid number eight, she said. And she yanked it out of his hand.

  So that was how I got to eat chocolate again. Used to eat it before the Albanian war, and now after the so-called Liberation finally I could eat it again. Whole Occupation long all I ever dreamed about was chocolates and sweets. Me, there’s two things I never could figure out: God, and how come in some homes, they don’t keep the sweets under lock and key. At our place Ma always kept the jar with the preserves locked up tight, for visitors, this was before the war of course. Never could get enough sweets to eat. When I was a little girl we didn’t have any. And when I became an artiste I couldn’t eat them, I was afraid I’d get fat, plus when I was on a diet I felt a little like a real leading lady. Now I’m just about ready to retire I’ve come down with diabetes. Can you believe it!

  Ma never really ever enjoyed chocolate either. Whenever we came across one in a ration tin she saved it for Fanis. He’ll forget his hand that way, was what she told me. She was always making plans how she would eat a whole bar all by herself. But the public humiliation came instead, and the bitterness, and from then on she never wanted to taste chocolate. Until the day she died.

  The first collaborators to pay the price were Madame Rita and Siloam.

  Madame Rita was a whore by profession. Rita was a pseudonym, Vassiliki was her real name. Madame Rita was the most respectable whore in Rampartville. A real star she was, I copied a lot of her tricks later on in my acting career. She had her own brothel, but she did call-out work too. For the Germans mostly, at the Crystal Fountain restaurant where I took her the holy bread from Father Dinos that time during the Occupation. The rumour was they had relations, that Father Dinos, he was a real skirt-chaser, plus his wife was super-religious. Plan too.

  When Rita went by in the street all the honest women crossed themselves. Holy Virgin protect us from such a fall, Ma said one time, right in front of Mrs Kanello. That was back in the Signor Alfio days. No smart remarks from Mrs Kanello, though; she never looked down on Ma because she was seeing two Italians.

  Madame Rita was a public official. Swished around like a church bishop, she did. Everybody greeted her in the street, even the judges, and as she walked along she was glancing right and left and making a mental note when someone didn’t say hello. A man ignored her at his risks and perils, and if he did. Madame Rita tore into him right there in public, in the middle of the market with curses to make your hair stand on end, reminded him how many times he visited her girls, at half price even. Only accepted high-ranking civil servants, she did. And military men, from captain up.

  Me, back before the war, I got goose bumps when I saw her, how grand she was. Only two people gave me goose bumps as a kid, Madame Rita and the queen, when I saw her for the first time. Unfortunately, we never met again. She came to Rampartville on the royal tour, still only the wife of the heir to the throne she was, so the little people would fall in love with her. There was such a huge crowd at the welcoming ceremony, we lost track of Ma. The crowd kept pushing us back until we ended up in the very last row, Daddy hoisted me on to his shoulders, Look at the queen, he was shouting, look at the queen. There was a big crowd and we were all the way to the back, and Daddy never even saw her in the end, being so short as he was, but he was weeping with devotion. Madame Rita was there too, even though she wasn’t with the dignitaries. Greeted the Prefect even; smart man, he returns the greeting, How are you, Madame Rita, and how is business?

  After Liberation they demolished half her brothel to make an example of her, and took away her permit for a whole year. But she opened right up again when the Allies arrived, thanks to our member of parliament Doc Manolaras; he was still a doctor back then. In fact later on she added three extra rooms on to the main brothel with money from the Marshall Plan people said, from the budget for war reparations, claimed it was destroyed in the bombing, all of that during the Tsaldaris administration.

  That was how Madame Rita was punished for collaborating with the Enemy.

  Siloam was the other one.

  Siloam was a tailor. He only went with men and didn’t even hide it. Stelios was his real name, I didn’t know what it meant, ‘going with men’, or why they gave him a woman’s name (Picked it out myself, dear, he tells Mrs Adrianna latterly; everybody who comes up to me, I want them to know what I fancy, not going around afterwards saying I lied to them. Like a sign in a shop window so people know what they’re getting and who they’re getting it from. You’ve got to tell the truth.)

  Siloam was nowhere near as grand as Madame Rita. But he was good natured and a bit of a sad sack, nobody was scared of him, or should I say her? Everybody who went by he greeted with deep bows, as if he was begging their pardon and they were obliging him by saying hello. Orphaned from age thirty, he was, and he kept his hair combed into a pompadour.

  A first-class tailor though, took pride in his work and if he wanted to swear on something, he said ‘by my scissors’. Just how good a tailor, Doc Manolaras told my father, back before the war. And a useful man to have around; he was the one who made men out of most of the boys of Rampartville, on top of him was where our young men learned their lessons. Seeing as the girls were all honest and they never went with a man before marriage, first they got married and then they took a lover.

  Anyway, nobody bothered him. Seems he knew plenty of secrets; many of the worthiest married men of Rampartville served their apprenticeship with Siloam. God forfend I should ever say a word! he used to say, Ass may not have bones but it surely can break bones.

  Collaborated with the Occupiers too. Come the Liberat
ion they arrested him but in jail he cooperated with the partisans so they let him go. After, the X-men arrested him but in jail he cooperated with the X-men so they didn’t ship him away.

  When you come right down to it we never did figure out what Siloam’s real political beliefs were, if he was left wing or royalist maybe. They were influenced by his emotions of the moment. He was in love with a partisan? Well, you got a lecture about Marx and a little embroidered hammer and sickles. He was head over heels with an X-man? You’d find him wearing a little crown pinned to his lapel. But he was no double-dealer, he stood up for his beliefs every time. Once during the Occupation he even gave me an egg. And when our whole family left town after the public humiliation, he stopped by to pay Mother his respects.

  Siloam stayed on in Rampartville. But after the partisans, the X-men and even the Brits (they took the bread out of my mouth, he always said) let him down, so people say, he finally put his foot down, cut his hair and went and got married. Today he’s faithful to his wife and his scissors, turned out fine children. So I heard. Of course, it did happen that he fouled his wedding wreath from time to time. They say he used to tell his wife: listen here woman, society is society, family is family, and ass is ass.

  Siloam and Madame Rita may have been the first of the traitors to be punished, but the other women collaborators weren’t far behind.

  We were liberated a good three weeks by then, cleared away all the dead bodies from the city streets. The burned stench just wouldn’t go away, but we were used to it by then. The only thing we couldn’t stand was this particular stink, right in our neighbourhood it was. Wouldn’t be coming from your house, by any chance, said this woman cattily as she went by; from a couple of streets over she was, dead now.