The Daughter Page 2

  So, one day a gendarme and a guy in civilian clothes come knocking, asking Mother if she heard any news, or if she knew anything about Father’s politics. We showed them the postcards from the front, such as they were; what else were we supposed to show? He’d been absent without leave from his regiment for more than a month, they said.

  As soon as Granny found out she rushed right over: just about tore my mother’s eyes out, in fact, on account of we hadn’t put up the black crepe. Granny wore black the whole Occupation: one day she managed to lay hands on some wheat, so she boiled it up as an offering for the deceased, sent us over a plate and for two days we had food to eat.

  But we never hung up the crepe or wore mourning.

  You won’t catch me mourning him unless I get orders straight from the government, besides, it’s bad luck Mother said. Later, a lot later, after Liberation, we finally got a letter from the government saying that my father Meskaris Diomedes had been declared missing on the field of honour and that his family was entitled to a pension. Well, it just wouldn’t have looked right to go into mourning then. Besides, the religious waiting period was long over. That’s the pension I still get to this day, but we only started collecting it much later, of course, after we left Rampartville for good.

  Those two were the first officials ever to set foot in our house. Later, around the end of the first year of the Occupation they finally came looking for weapons. Italians, this time. They rummaged through the chest-of-drawers and then checked out the floor, some floor, nothing but hard-packed earth, wall to wall. One of the Italians took a long look at Mother. My name’s Alfio, he said, you can find me at the Carabineria. Looked like a nice man, the homely type; shy too. He spoke a few words of broken Greek. After they left, my brother Sotiris called her a slut and I smacked him one.

  That earth floor of ours was nothing but trouble. Ma was a real housekeeper; like mother like daughter, I always say. We had to keep the floor damp all the time. If we used too much water it would turn to mud. So we all took a mouthful of water and sprayed it over the floor to keep down the dust and make it hard like cement. Sprayed it during the winter time, too, all of us together. And after the spraying came the tamping. We’d lay down a board and all of us walked up and down on it, then we’d move the board to another spot and start all over again. Because if we didn’t look after the floor it would turn back into dirt, and weeds would start to grow, mallow mostly, but once a poppy sprouted right next to the sink.

  I know, I know it’s sinful to say, but I always loved that earth floor of ours. Maybe because I always had a love for earth, ever since I was a kid; figure it out if you can. I was always dreaming I had a little piece of earth all my own. Always carried this lump of earth around with me in my school bag. And I had this little corner in our backyard all to myself, called it my ‘garden’, built a little fence with sticks and planted green beans, but they never grew, planted them at the wrong time of year it seems. After that, I set up a little garden, right under my bed.

  In winter we kept the floor covered with rag rugs and dusters but it was no use, the weeds kept popping up. One day, early in the morning it was, I look over and I see the rug moving, rising up: it’s a snake, I say to myself. I lift up a corner of the rug and look: it was a mushroom! Like the sun rising right out of the floor.

  We did our best, whitewashed every Saturday and dusted every day, but there were always fresh cobwebs in the corners. But the spiders always popped right out and wove their webs all over again. Leave them, Mother told me one day, they don’t hurt nobody and they eat the flies besides. What’s more they keep us company.

  Must be from back then that I get these dreams of mine about snow falling in the house. Here I sit in my apartment in Athens, and there’s snow right in the house. Snow in the corners, snow at the feet of the console, snow on top of the chest-of-drawers and all over the washbasin. How can that be? I say to myself: doesn’t the place have a roof? Then I wake up. Sometimes I dream there’s snow in Mum’s grave. It’s nothing but a little hole in the ground: can’t imagine how I’ll ever fit in when the time comes. There are snowflakes in the corners. Nothing else. Not even debris from the casket; nothing. Nothing’s left of Mum but snow.

  So, we’re in the second year of the Occupation, and one day I burst out laughing. Let’s make a bet how many days we can last, I tell my brothers. Twenty-six days without bread, weeds and raw coffee, coarse-ground coffee was all we had to eat. A couple of days before there was a grocer’s break-in, but all I could grab was some coffee. We had a handful each to eat every afternoon, then go outside to play. Ma didn’t like us playing because we fainted a lot: we weren’t hungry any more, but we walked really slowly. The shop break-in was the first; up until then, self-respect was all that held us back, the whole population. But that day the Red Cross was supposed to distribute free food. The three of us queued up from eight that morning; I didn’t go to school that day, in fact we didn’t go to school much any more. Mother never went to a food handout, I don’t know why, maybe she was embarrassed. But she gave us permission, as long as we were clean.

  There we were, queuing. Around half past three they announced there wouldn’t be any food distribution. Then all of us, must have been close to 300, kind of shuddered at the same time. Silence. Then we all turned back and broke down the doors to three shops, pushing with our backs. One was a ladies’ drapery that had been closed for a long time. We snatched whatever we could lay our hands on. There were civil servants’ wives, and even Mlle Salome, strutting around dressed to the nines. People were trampling over someone lying on the ground. It was my brother Sotiris; but he wasn’t hurt, he was just lying there letting the people walk all over him while he stuffed something into his mouth. I managed to snatch a can, turns out it was full of that coarse-ground foreign-tasting coffee; the only kind of coffee we ever had at our house, before the war that is, was the Turkish variety. Like an apparition I see Mlle Salome come sashaying out of the ruined shop just as pleased as punch even though they’d ripped the fur collar off her coat. Always the charmer, she was. She’d looted some cosmetics, some rouge, a box of Tokalon powder and a lipstick, she showed it all to us afterwards. Found out later she was in the Resistance, even if she was from a good family. But what do you expect from an impresario’s sister-in-law after all.

  It was our twenty-seventh day without bread. The coffee was gone too. Mother had been gone all morning and the three of us were huddled in bed together, trying to keep warm, if only we had the pullet to sit on our feet and keep us warm. Poultry give off more heat than people, you know.

  The pullet was a present from Mlle Salome, bless her heart, wherever she might be, even though she never made it to Athens. Broke into somebody’s chicken coop, stole the bird and passed it on to Mother. Boil it and feed your kids the broth, she said, their glands are starting to swell.

  The pullet had bright-coloured feathers and a long neck; a lively bird she was, too. Didn’t have any idea we were in the middle of an Occupation. Ma please let’s not kill her, we begged. All right, we’ll let her grow a little, maybe we’ll get an extra portion. Maybe she’ll even lay an egg or two. But the first eggs we had to eat were when the English marched in to liberate us. So we kept the pullet about six months, tried to feed her, and I even dug up the odd worm: put her out to peck around for weeds and bugs in a vacant lot up the hill. We had to make sure nobody would steal her so the three of us carried her hidden under Sotiris’ overcoat. We had to carry her, it was all she could do to stand up she was so exhausted.

  That day when we get to the vacant lot I put her down to scratch for worms but she flops over on her side and looks up at me, too weak to scratch. I give her water but she can barely drink. Kids, I say, she’s not long for this world, let’s get back home so we can cut her throat before she croaks. But Ma says, No I won’t do it, and later that afternoon the chicken looks me in the eye one last time and drops dead. From hunger. I picked her up; she was heavier dead. You’re not going to bur
y her? You’re crazy, you think you’re rich or something? Mlle Salome shouts from her balcony when she spies me digging a hole in the yard. She’s still warm, come on, pluck her and boil her! A whole chicken going to waste!

  I go back inside. Saying, Ma, where’s the trowel? My brothers pull back the bed and I dig a hole right in the corner I was saving for my little garden and buried her nice and pretty then we put the bed back, just so. Every morning after that I moved the bed so I could have a look. One morning I found a snail right there on top of my pullet’s grave. Now you decide to show up, says Ma. Where were you when the chicken could have used you for food? And she picks it up in the palm of her hand and puts it outside in the grass. O she talked lots about the chicken, we even had a name for her, but I can’t for the life of me remember what it was, now, decades later.

  So there we were the three of us, huddled in bed trying to stay warm. In the afternoon Mother came back from the nearby villages where she’d been making the rounds and she had some fresh broad beans and a pocketful of wheat which she boiled up for us to eat. There’s no olive oil? asks Fanis, the youngest of the lot. Of course he knew there wasn’t any. No, says Mother. But if we had any you’d give it to us, isn’t that so Ma? asks Fanis, looking for reassurance. But Sotiris gets to his feet. Ma, I’m going to puke, he says. And Mother pops him one. It’s a sin to throw up good food, she says. You’ll go straight to hell. You don’t respect me, isn’t that so? Try to pick a few beans for you and get shot for my trouble. It was true: her head was spattered with blood, there, around her bun. Sotiris blushes, then pukes anyway. Ma slaps him without so much as a word, marches him over to the sink and washes out his mouth, and sits down on the window-sill. When night comes she gets to her feet, opens her little chest and pulls out her face powder – it was her wedding present – and powders her face. Then she takes her big sewing scissors and lets her hair down. She always kept her hair in a bun. That hairdo makes you look older Asimina, Mlle Salome would tell her. You look like a little old lady.

  When Ma let down her hair it fell almost to her waist; me, I get my lovely hair from my mother, that’s for sure. So, as I was saying, she goes over to the sink and starts to cut off her hair with those sewing scissors of hers while we look on wide-eyed. As soon as she finishes she cleans up the sink, twists the cut hair into a braid and throws it into the garbage can and tells me, Go ask Mlle Salome if she’ll lend me her lipstick.

  Mother never ever used make-up. Before that afternoon not once. And never since. Only one other time they smeared lampblack all over her face when they publicly humiliated her right after Liberation it was. Last year at the funeral, as they were lowering her into the ground. I dropped my lipstick into her casket beside her. Just to do it my way, for once.

  Mlle Salome was the impresario’s sister-in-law, I think I mentioned. ‘Artistes’ we called them, but they were fine people all the same. We are the Tiritomba family, Mlle Salome liked to declare with a simper. She had a sister, Adrianna, widow of a certain Karakapitsalas. An actor, he was, her late husband, and together the two of them toured the provinces with their troupe. What a life! He was the one who discovered my, shall we say, theatrical talents. Come October 28th, the day the war started, they just happened to be performing in Rampartville. The impresario enlisted then and there. But no sooner did he get to the front than he bit the dust: stray bullet. That’s what they told Adrianna to console her. But the truth is a mule kicked him in the head and he died on the spot. The troupe broke up. Some troupe! I mean, they were mostly relatives. Whenever one of their leading ladies would dump them in the middle of the tour to marry some guy in some small town or to work in some whorehouse along the way, which was pretty often, they had to fill in the role themselves: mostly it was Mlle Salome who took over the role, besides, she could play the mandolin. One time, in Arta I think it was, and Adrianna was still weak from childbirth. Anyway, there she was, playing the role of Tosca. But she was still nursing the kid so they had to change the title to Tosca, indomitable mother.

  So I nip over to Miss Salome’s place and she’s delighted to lend me the lipstick. Fortunately it was wintertime and she had it in the house. In summertime she kept it in the ice box at the coffee house down the street to keep it from melting. Mlle Salome taught me the trick, bless her heart. When I became an actress in a road company I’d butter up the coffee-house owner in this village or that so he’d look after my cosmetics: by then they had fridges, not ice boxes. Even today I always keep my lipstick in the fridge.

  Anyway, I get the lipstick from Mlle Salome and take it to Mother. By now I’m really curious. She puts on some lipstick, the short hair really did wonders for her but she didn’t realize it. Then she puts on her coat. Back soon, she says, be patient. And sure enough, she came right back with a determined look in her eye. Listen to me, she says, there’ll be a gentleman coming any minute now. You go out and play in the yard, and in about a half hour I’ll call you. If it rains wait in the outhouse or the church. And she filled the washbasin with water and got out a clean towel.

  We went outside and picked some buds from Mrs Kanello’s rose bushes, peeled off the outer leaves and ate them thinking how it wouldn’t be long before summertime and we could eat the buds from the grapevine, they’re really delicious: rosebuds are too sweet. And we hid behind the garden wall, because the man we saw going into our house was not some Greek gentleman it was Alfio the Italian from the Carabineria. Mlle Salome was hanging out laundry on her balcony. God help us, she says. Look at this Adrianna, come quick! Adrianna appears and Mlle Salome shouts at us, Hey kids, they’re searching your house, but her sister says, Shut up Salome, don’t go judging people, and shoves her back into the house.

  We were getting impatient and so hungry even the rosebuds didn’t help, so we went into the church. Not long after that we saw Alfio go by, then Mother called us Come on in kids, and we went back to the house.

  Mother slides the washbasin full of rinsing water under her bed and tells me to set the table. And she puts out bread – paniota it was – and margarine and a big can of squid. We said grace and ate so much there were still crumbs left over. Then Sotiris gets up from the table, throws down his napkin and says to Ma, You’re a whore. Ma didn’t say a word but I stood up, I was ready to scratch his eyes out. I smacked him, then he opened the door and walked out. Twenty-eight years later I ran in to him in Piraeus. He didn’t say a word. Never saw him since. Mother never saw him again; never even tried.

  Anyway, I cleaned off the table that night and we slept as sweet as can be, with full stomachs, and you know something? From then on Fanis and I slept better, just the two of us, instead of three in the same bed. Before we went to sleep I say, Ma you want me to empty the water? No, she says, I’ll look after it. And she thanked me. From that evening on I always spoke to her in the polite form, until the day she died. And today, when I visit her on All Souls’ Day, I speak to her in the polite form.

  Before bedtime I returned the lipstick to Mlle Salome, washed the dishes and shook out the tablecloth. But the crumbs I kept, and scattered them underneath the bed where my pullet was buried. That night I got up on the sly and helped myself to more bread and margarine.

  From that day on we were never hungry again. Signor Alfio started feeling more at home, and Ma didn’t have to put us out before he came any more. When he came visiting right after sundown twice a week he brought us a little of everything: olive oil – not much, mind you – and sugar included: he liked a cup of coffee afterwards. He would come in and wish us all a good evening and we would greet him politely, then I’d say to Fanis, Let’s go outside and play and out we went. One day we had to play in the rain because the church was locked up tight. Mrs Kanello was just coming home – she had an umbrella – and she says to us, What are you poor kiddies doing outside in the rain? you’ll catch your death. Shame, you bring shame on our neighbourhood, shouts Aphrodite’s mother from across the street. What did she ever do anyway besides crocheting lace for her precious
Aphrodite’s dowry? Before the war all she ever did was sit there on the stoop and crochet by the light of the street lamp just to save on electricity. Now was the Occupation and the blackout and she’s still at it: you can’t teach an old dog new tricks I say. Where was I? So Mrs Kanello goes up to our front door and calls out, Asimina, your kids are safe at my place. Then she turns to us and says, Come on my little lambs, and we huddle under the umbrella and she takes us to her place, a two-storey house it was. She gives us sage tea to drink, with dried figs for sweetening. We drink the tea then we eat the figs. All the while Mrs Kanello is looking out the window: finally she says. You can go home now, off you go.

  One day Mrs Kanello comes up to me in the street and says Child, from now on you show your Ma more respect; take no notice of the neighbours.

  Mrs Kanello was in the Resistance and everybody knew it. But even if she was, she still got on just fine with our family, always had a cheery good morning for us kids. She was a gorgeous women with curly hair like the goddesses from the museum at Olympia where they took us on a school trip before the war. Only she wore pins in her hair, big thick hairpins made of bone, and I don’t remember seeing any goddesses with hairpins, I noticed them because my mother’s were made of metal, more like wire.

  Mrs Kanello was tall and built like a man, and when she went by you could feel the earth shake. She worked as a telephone operator at the Three Ts, which is what we called the phone company back then. And today, even though she’s over seventy, she walks like an amazon, now there was a woman for you, even though she doesn’t have any of my, shall we say, femininity. Before the war, in the evenings, she and her sister used to sit on the front stop and croon ‘Those eyes of yours’, or maybe ‘Don’t shed your tears, it was just a wild fling …’ Every evening they’d sing but they never seemed to get any better: still, they were honest girls, even if they couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket. But when the Occupation started, the singing stopped. Her sister disappeared. Went off to the mountains to be with her fiancé people said.