The Daughter Page 3

  Nowadays Mrs Kanello can sing to her heart’s content. Mind you, I don’t approve of her songs politics-wise, I mean to say. She’s still living there in Rampartville, but her children are in Athens. So when she comes to pay them a visit, she drops by to see me too. There I’ll be, in the kitchen brewing coffee and I overhear her singing to herself, just as off-key as ever, but I don’t mention it because she’s kind of sensitive, always thought she was some big deal as a singer. Her kids grew up just fine though; why she’s even got a married daughter living in Europe, but she never took on airs, socially speaking. A good-looking woman, widowed, with a pension, which she got strictly on her own; one look at her from behind and you’d swear she was my age, that’s what I say to make her feel good. Got the idea from this psychiatrist after the time I had a fit on stage; since then it’s tough to find work with a reputable company. Anyway, my director takes me to this psychiatrist, you can bet your life it’s on my health insurance card. Don’t you worry, dear, the doctor says, go on a pension and take a long rest. And say nice things about people. Saying nice things about people is the best medicine. You artists are always saying nasty things about people, especially you actors, that’s why you’re all so unhappy.

  After that it takes more than a little fit or two to faze me. I don’t even stick my head out the window any more, just close it and wait, what’s there to worry about? It’s just a fit, it’ll soon be over and done with; five or six hours and it’ll be finished. Why, I even bite into a hand towel so nobody can hear me, learned that trick at the movies. That’s why I say nice things about Mrs Kanello’s waistline and her appearance too, and besides she’s a fine lady, with a fine pension.

  She married before the war, fine looking man, and a hard worker too. They had four children, one after the other, but come the Occupation there she was, stuck with the little tykes and a husband who couldn’t work any more. The way I hear it, he opened the window one night around midnight and, all of a sudden, he was bewitched, wham, right in the eyes, may even have been the evil eye; people are always jealous of good looks and happiness. Anyway, from then on the poor man suffered some kind of phobia, never left the house again; imagine, barely thirty years old. A fine, handsome man, for sure. He helped out with the housework, looked after the kids while his wife was working at the TTT, even learned how to repair shoes; he fixed ours for free! Only you didn’t dare ask him to stick his nose outside. He got as far as the balcony maybe twice, after Liberation. Finally, thirty-four years later he left the house with honour and dignity, his own kids carrying him in an open casket. They held the funeral at the town cathedral – Mrs Kanello spared no expense. She used to work double shifts at the TTT, then line up for the public soup kitchen, bring home the boiled wheat in her lunch bucket, feed the kids, do the laundry and next morning off she’d go to work at seven o’clock sharp.

  On Sundays, she and Mlle Salome used to scour the countryside for food to steal. Aphrodite tagged along too, coughing: that was while she could still get around. Pieces of fruit from garden fences, or vegetables from garden plots, you name it, they grabbed whatever they could lay their hands on. It was a scary business. Let me tell you; the peasants had illegal guns and they’d start shooting at the drop of a hat, before you even set foot on their land. Anyway, one time they came across a grazing cow. Hey, there’s one they missed, says Mrs Kanello and she lies down right smack under the cow’s udder and milks it into her mouth, then she gets up and holds the cow while Mlle Salome and Aphrodite take their turn at the tit. After that incident she always carried this little bottle around with her, but she never ran into a stray cow again.

  One thing we never could figure out was how come they were always toting bags or baskets full of vegetables on those country outings of theirs. Later we found out the baskets were filled with hand grenades. They were really secret messengers all along – Mrs Kanello was the leader – and the grenades were for the partisans. Who would ever suspect a couple of half-starved women? And Aphrodite was only seventeen at the time. Mlle Salome even brought along her mandolin, they made like they were going for an outing in the country, downright batty they looked. The grenades they handed over to Thanassis, a retarded kid about my age, the schoolmaster’s son from a village name of Vounaxos.

  Half the TTT was occupied by the Italians. In the meantime, Mrs Kanello managed to pick up a few words of Italian, learned it from a Teach Yourself book – what a gal! – the better to eavesdrop on the Occupying Powers. She wrote everything down on scraps of paper she dropped off at the public urinals. That was another scandal, a woman hanging around in the men’s urinals, a lot of people were whispering about immoral behaviour. In fact one old fellow gets all confused one day and asks her, What are you doing here, you virago? But she fires right back at him, Come on, old man, button up, you ain’t got much to show there.

  All that I found out later; I heard they even gave her a medal, when the Republic came in. But still, people say that on account of her lousy Italian she passed on mistaken information and they blew up the wrong bridge, but they were probably saying that out of jealousy; people were jealous of her because she was a linguist. Anyway, back then, every so often some peasant or another would come by the TTT during work hours and drop off a basket of potatoes or mustard greens. From your Godmother he’d say. The rumour was that Mrs Kanello had a lover. Only my mother didn’t believe it and took her side (Signor Alfio was visiting her regularly back then). Mrs Kanello a lover? Can’t be: she’s an honest woman. Finally Mrs Kanello finds out and says to Ma, Shut up Asimina and let ’em talk. I sure as hell don’t want ’em thinking I’m doing anything else. Because she was one patriotic lady, let me tell you. The baskets were crammed full of grenades, bullets and all kinds of ammunition hiding there under the potatoes. And she’d go strutting by – can you imagine, she had to be crazy! – in front of the Carabineria just as proud as you please carrying those food baskets of hers; after all, it was right on the way to her house. Had to rest every so often, too; those baskets weighed a ton. The Italians at the Carabineria knew her; half of them worked with her at the TTT in fact. So one fine day, one of them comes up to her when she sets down the basket right next to the sentry post in order to catch her breath and the sentry says, Signora, let me give you a hand. She was pregnant again, by the way. That’s very nice of you, she says, and together the two of them lug the basketful of ammunition all the way to her door. Mangiare, eh? says the Italian (that’s how they say ‘eat’). What am I supposed to do with four and a half bambini to feed? she says. Talk about a dingbat!

  When her belly starts to show Aphrodite’s mother pipes up, Are you crazy? Getting yourself knocked up when everybody’s going hungry and starving! How are you going to manage? I really wasn’t all that wild about it, says Mrs Kanello. I’ll have a tough time hauling the ammunition, but my husband’s indoors all the time, he can’t go to the movies, can’t find his favourite sweets, what’s he supposed to do for entertainment? Still, she wouldn’t hear of getting rid of it, no matter what Plastourgos’s wife said, even if she was a trained midwife and an honest woman besides. So Mrs Kanello went about her work with a bulging belly, not to mention those Sunday outings of hers with the hand grenades.

  But one day they call her into the Carabineria for questioning. Seems someone squealed on her about the outings with the mandolin. What I really mean to say is. I know who – a woman it was – squealed on her. She’s married to a member of parliament now, so I don’t want to get involved and maybe get my pension cut off.

  We knew all about the Resistance; but even if they slit the throats of our dear ones we would never breathe a word, even if we were nationalists back then. Mother sent me to find Signor Alfio before it was too late, but I couldn’t find him. So they held her, questioned her for five hours in the Carabineria, even beat her, and her seven months pregnant. Fortunately Signor Alfio finally appears, I know the signora from the TTT, he says, she’s all right. And the whole time that dingbat Kanello is screaming at
them, Let me out of here, it’s my shift, I’ll get fined! Finally they let her go. She lost one of her shoes in the beating – we all wore clogs with thick wood soles back then – and when they told her, Get going, off with you, she hustled down the stairs as fast as her legs would carry her.

  When she reaches the street she realizes she only has one shoe. Corporal, give me back my shoe! she shouts. An upstairs window pops open and the clog comes flying out, hits her smack on the forehead, you wonder how it didn’t knock the poor woman out – those women’s clogs weighed a good five pounds each. Anyway, she slips on her shoe and stalks off swearing, with a goose-egg this big on her forehead, cursing Italy up and down like you can’t imagine.

  Like I say, all the women wore open-heeled wooden shoes back then: you tell me where were we supposed to find shoe leather – any kind of leather – for soles? When all their pre-war shoes wore out, the women changed over to clogs. Before, the only people who ever wore them were washerwomen, poor washerwomen at that, to keep from slipping on the soapsuds. But during the Occupation they were all the rage, even ladies from the best families just had to wear them. They made the soles from a solid piece of wood, with thick, high heels that looked something like upside-down castle turrets, and the uppers they wove into patterns taken from curtain material: then the women would take them to the shoemaker and he would tack them together, and hey presto, you’d have your year-round open-toe, open-heel model. In wintertime women wore them with long woollen stockings plus ankle socks against the cold: chilblains were the biggest problem. And when you’d get three women walking down the street together, the Italians would rush out on to the balcony of the Carabineria with their guns at the ready. The drumming of clogs on the pavement sounded like a machine-gun going off. Not to mention the howls of pain from inside the houses from sprains and twisted ankles and suchlike. What did they really want with those massive five-inch wood heels anyway? So you take the high heels and hunger, and people got so dizzy that the streets were full of women with dislocated joints, high society ladies too. Me, I wore clogs for the first time just before the socalled Liberation, when I began to be a little miss.

  Six weeks after the beating Mrs Kanello gave birth. The pains came at night but it was curfew; what a dingbat, always doing things topsy-turvy, just how were they supposed to fetch her mother all the way from the other side of Rampartville? Sure, Plastourgos’s wife volunteered. She was a trained midwife and as honest as they come. Lived close by too, but the women didn’t trust her. She was too educated they said and, worse yet, she was too young: they wanted somebody with plenty of experience. Fortunately Signor Alfio was just leaving our place so he escorted me over to fetch her mother, who delivered her just fine. The old lady had me stay to boil water but when I opened the door to hand her the kettle she cursed me for bringing an Italian to her house. Now people will say I’ve taken an enemy of the Motherland for a lover, she said. Anyway, the baby came out just as fine as you could wish, a little boy. That’s my last one, said Mrs Kanello. How was she supposed to know she’d have yet another one when the war was over, when Scobie was running the country.

  Bright and early next morning Kanello is up and around, suckles her newborn, swaddles it and then herself; around ten she picks up her lunch bucket and an extra cooking pot and is just about to go out the door. Her mother is furious: You heathen, you’re not going out? You still got thirty-nine days to go, you’re unclean! But just try and hold her back, unclean or not: she wasn’t about to miss the Red Cross soup kitchen.

  The lady neighbours – Aphrodite’s mother and the Tiritombas, you know, the impresario’s family – spot her queuing for her portion of porridge, looking pale as a sheet and thin as a rail. Padded belly or no padded belly, it was no use: she was ash-white from loss of blood and her eyes were glazed over. She did her best to walk like Scipius Africanus but she couldn’t stand up straight. What’s the matter? the impresario’s wife asks her. What happened to your belly? They prod her and poke her just to make sure, then carry her back home, and she’s braying the whole way back about losing her ration. Just then Mother comes out on to the street. What with Signor Alfio she didn’t have to queue at the soup kitchen. I’d go instead, with ration coupons; Sotiris was gone but we used his coupon anyway. So what, if it was illegal? The Red Cross ladies gave me his portion. They couldn’t imagine how a cute little girl like me could be cheating them.

  While Mrs Kanello was recovering my mother put in her first appearance at the food line, to pick up her rations for her. At first the Red Cross ladies drove her away, but Signor Alfio went over and told them something in a low voice and they dished up the rations for Kanello’s family without saying a word; in fact, they even threw in an extra spoonful. It went on that way for a whole week, which was how long Mrs Kanello was bedridden. The other women in the queue made nasty remarks about Mother, here comes the collaborator, they’d hiss. Well, maybe we were collaborators, but Aphrodite’s mother and the Tiritomba family took our side. Poor Aphrodite, she couldn’t come to the food queue any more because she’d just come down with consumption.

  Just as soon the new mother could get around, Ma stopped going to the soup line. But Mrs Kanello, she talked to us, treated us like human beings, even when they humiliated Mother in public right after the so-called Liberation. Anyway, before we knew it, she was back on her feet, caring for Aphrodite too. The girl’s consumption was getting worse by the day, but she kept on crocheting her doilies. One day Kanello tried to convince some village yokels to sell her a little olive oil. He kicked her out. Believe you me, was she fuming! On the way back to give Aphrodite’s Ma the bad news, she runs into the daughter of the local newsstand owner, Koupas was the guy’s name. Koupas’ brood mare, we called her; well-built and plump she was, and as far as we were concerned that made her just about the best-looking woman in town. Get a load of the fat oozing off her, the men would say, drooling. But she wouldn’t so much as glance at a man because she was shacked up with an Italian officer. Anyway, Mrs Kanello spies her coming down the street, shaking and shimmying, and out of the blue she grabs her and starts pounding her for all she’s worth. And the poor girl stands there whining, Why are you hitting me, Madam? Who are you? Have we been introduced? What did I ever do to you? Introduced or not, fires back Kanello. Take that, you fat cow!

  That was the best she could do for Aphrodite. And meantime, the poor kid was getting weaker and weaker.

  Aphrodite, now there was a real beauty for you. With a real bust. She and her mother crocheted lace for other girls’ dowries, but come the Occupation the customers dried up. I never had much of a bust myself, before or after the Liberation, and later when I was in the theatre, you know, my various lovers and admirers really let me hear about it, teeny tits they called me. Not only did Aphrodite have a bust, she had lovely skin, the colour of ripe grapes, and clear blue eyes, the only pair of blue eyes in the district, all the rest of us were darkies. Me, I only turned blonde since the Dictatorship. She had this warm laugh and hair that seemed to curl in the wind. A gorgeous girl. But six months after she got consumption all that was left of her was a shrivelled up sack of skin, like some saintly relic. Even her eyes went pale. Ma would take her margarine whenever Signor Alfio brought us some, but the girl kept getting thinner and thinner. Her knees where thicker than her thighs. Be brave my little one, her ma would tell her as they crocheted away, We’re almost there, Mr Churchill says so. That was because we heard over the underground radio that Churchill was winning and Hitler was losing. Mrs Kanello told us the same thing when she’d come back from her ammunition delivery outings with a basketful of wild artichokes. She had bats in her belfry, that woman. One day, so she said, as she’s slogging along bent double under the load, she reaches the top of a little hill. All around her, nature (what does nature care about people’s troubles, anyway?) is dolled up in its Sunday best; she turns to Salome and says, I’m going to celebrate, and blow off a hand-grenade. Been carrying them all this time, never once heard one
of them go off. So she climbs up the hill, pulls the pin – that’s what she called it – and heaves the grenade down the hill. All springtime echoes with the explosion. In fact, one of the strings on Salome’s mandolin pops. Then two German soldiers come dashing out of the swamp at the bottom of the hill, underpants down to their boot tops; they must’ve been performing some unnatural act or other when the grenade went off. The Germans officers wouldn’t let the soldiers go with local women, that’s why they had to satisfy each other, so people said.

  Mrs Kanello’s front window was bright and sunny all day long. Later, when our Fanis came down with adenoids because he grew too fast and had to spend most of his time in bed, Mrs Kanello would invite him over and sit him down in the window, The sun’s full of calories, nothing like it for what ails you, she said. We gave him a medicine called antipyrine, something like quinine powder but bright yellow and bitter. Our front window got no sunlight. We only had one floor and it was behind the church.

  That’s when Mrs Kanello got it into her head to bring Aphrodite over for some sunlight. But Aphrodite didn’t care about anything any more, all she did was smile that faint smile of hers. She didn’t even care that she wasn’t getting any news from her father in the partisans. Plus in addition we had some unseasonal rain storms. Aphrodite would sit for hours on end at her window, with the curtains half-drawn, staring off into the distance, seeing nothing. As her condition got worse, her mother had to lift her up and carry her over to her chair. For hours on end she would draw invisible shapes on the window glass with her fingertip. I waved at her from the street as I went by, but I don’t think she even saw me.

  In the meantime the Tiritombas family left town, on tour, believe it or not. I’ll get around to that in a minute, it’s a whole story in itself. If you can imagine. A whole company going on the road on account of a goat!