The Daughter Page 4

  We weren’t hungry any more. Not that we were living like royalty, mind you, but with what little Signor Alfio brought us every week we managed to stay on our feet, and little Fanis got over his adenoids. Signor Alfio kept on seeing Mother: better for him than going to some streetwalker not to mention no worry about venereal diseases. Besides, he was married back home plus he was shy, he couldn’t have made it with a whore, also he loved his wife, and praised her to the skies whenever he talked to us. So that’s why he preferred to satisfy his sexual needs with a nice clean-living little housewife.

  Leave the house? Mother wouldn’t hear of it – except maybe the odd evening when Mrs Kanello invited her over for some chit-chat, or maybe to help hang out the washing. Meanwhile, the toughest regulations were lifted; the conquerors realized we were law-abiding subjects, the curfew didn’t begin until midnight. The movies started up again: now it was all German operettas, of course, with Marika Rökk, and those Hungarian tear-jerkers with Pal Javor and Katalin Karady, plus the odd Italian item.

  Fanis and me would go to the movies together. Signor Vittorio would get us in for free, he was from the Carabineria too – a replacement. Signor Alfio had gone back to his home country by then. It was cheap, general admission – only five million. Nothing, really, when you think that a box of matches went for three million, but where were we supposed to find the money? Anyway, I stuffed Fanis’s pocket full of raisins and off we went to the five o’clock show. Before we went in we asked old Uncle Grigoris at the ticket window, Any food? And if he nodded yes, then we went in.

  Because we only went to the movies that showed food. Nobody ever ate a bite in the tear-jerkers. But in the operettas there were always banquet scenes, tables piled high with food, while the leads just talked, and no one ate, hardly touched a bite. It was so bad one day a man shouted out at Willy Frisch up on the screen, Eat something, for God’s sake! People came to drool over the food scenes, and they burst out laughing. But this German soldier, he thought they were insulting the fatherland, so he ripped the man out of his seat and beat him.

  We always got our fill with those movies, because there was a second food scene, where the star would take the female lead to a restaurant, or some swanky club to try and seduce her. At first all they would do was drink, and people would be getting impatient. But then would come the food. Mostly disgusting stuff like oysters and caviar – ever since then I can’t even look at seafood. You think they ever ate things like bean soup or roasts or boiled pig’s heads? In one film they did eat some eggs though. Most of the time when the food scenes were over, Fanis would tug me on the sleeve to go home because then came the love scenes and the mushy stuff. Since then, in fact generally speaking, I never cared much for love-making, it always seemed a bit like a kind of surgical operation there in bed, with the male of the species flopping around all over me, even nowadays, is what I mean to say.

  Signor Vittorio, he wasn’t as gallant as Signor Alfio. Even if he was an interpreter, too. Signor Alfio brought him by one evening saying he was going back home and he wanted to introduce his replacement to Mother. That evening he was so upset he forgot to bring us food. I’d say he was just about ready to cry when he kissed us, me and our Fanis. Anyway, he gave us some money, and we walked him to the corner so as to leave Mother alone with the new gentleman. Meantime, we could hardly wait for the introductions to end. Mrs Chrysafis, the lady with the narrow two-storey place just across the street, gave us a recipe book and in the evenings I would read recipes to Mrs Chrysafis and Kanello’s kids. First would come the main course, then the desserts, all chock full of meringues and custards.

  The money Signor Alfio gave us we clutched tight in our fists, and when Signor Vittorio left we hurried into the house. But Mother told me to get same paper, she wanted to write something. So I dug around until I found my school bag, pulled out my pen, my ink pot and tore a lined sheet of paper out of my exercise book, I hadn’t opened the bag for three years. Roubini, she says, after your brother’s asleep I need you. Fortunately our Fanis dropped right off and I wrote a letter to Signor Alfio just as my mother dictated it. Then I wrote it out again, clean, and the next morning Fanis delivered it to the Carabineria: fortunately Signor Alfio was still there, so he handed it right to him. The original I still have right here in my purse.

  Respected signor Alfio,

  I am the lady who you have been visiting for these last two years, just behind the church of Saint Kyriaki, Asimina by name, and I write you by the hand of my daughter Roubini being as how I am illiterate.

  I thank you for such regular visits for two years now, for your kindness and for your food. Also I thank you for introducing me to your successor, as I am a homebody and I never could have found him all by myself.

  Know that wherever you may be for the rest of your life I will always be thankful to you for rescuing my children from death by starvation, but also for giving me much satisfaction. I confess that as a man I esteemed you more than my spouse and primarily you made me a woman with the kindness which you showed me.

  I am a married woman, maybe a widow even, but I had tender feelings for you which it never happened to me before in my life to desire a gentleman so much. I never revealed them but I am telling you now when you are not present and you will not come back again to my house. I do not condemn my maybe dear departed husband, but if we had peace I would never take food from you. And the shirts and the underwear I washed for you I washed with pleasure, and I would happily wash them for you for my whole life. And as I was washing them in the soapsuds, I imagined you were my blessed husband, this you should know also.

  I send you my blessings. You are the enemy of my nation but you have a little mother waiting for you I know that much. I do not know what nation means and I never saw what they call a nation.

  I hope that you and your family will keep well, and that you have a safe return to your missus. She seemed so nice in the photograph you showed me. You were a real gentleman, and truly warm. That brought me comfort, especially in the wintertime, I felt so guilty with my children outside in the cold but fortunately you finished quick and neat. I want you to know that I only began this work with you, before I never did such a thing. And that with you I felt truly wonderful maybe it is not a patriotic thing to say it maybe it is a sin even, but I am not afraid for there is nothing above to punish me, for if there was, why did not it help me in my hour of need? Does the Above only exist to punish? Then it does not exist.

  I hope that you are well pleased with our cooperation, you are a man of fine sentiments, I have heard that all the Italians are like that, by nature.

  I wish you health and long life, and I wish for victory for your country and for mine also. And so you can understand how genuine are my emotions I end with two cheers Long live Greece, Long live Italy.

  Your very respectfully yours,

  Meskaris Asimina

  (by the hand of her daughter)

  I copied the letter out, then we broke down in tears and we didn’t even know why, just sat there in each other’s arms, crying hush hush, trying not to wake up my kid brother. I remembered the money from Signor Alfio, laid mine on the table and opened Fanis’s fist in his sleep and took his. Then I gave it all to Mother and that night I slept in her bed for the first time, I didn’t even ask her and she didn’t ask me. She even let me empty the washbasin.

  Back then we turned up money on the street too, small change, the odd 50,000 note. My teacher Mr Pavlopoulos – I wasn’t at school any more – he lived right around the corner from the church but he still said hello and every 15th of the month he’d take me along when he went to pick up his pay. They paid him in bills, two gunny sacks half full, and we lugged them along, him carrying one, me the other. A bit on the short side he was, but a good looking man, my first love, I think, but at the time I didn’t know it. Where could he be now? Always gave me a million drachma bill or two. The small stuff we found on the street, we saved it for the collection plate, Fanis and me, when we went
to church on Sundays. Not that Father Dinos would scold us if we didn’t give anything, that’s for sure. Why we went to church every week was so we could take communion at the end which Father Dinos cut up into good-sized slices, plenty of people – and he knew it – the only reason they came at all was to get a bite of holy bread, he gave us two extra slices, For your parents, he said. But if the faithful didn’t contribute he’d give them holy hell. So you can snatch the holy bread, but you can’t quite reach the collection basket to help the church, eh! He knew what he was talking about all right; some of them were wives of black marketeers or peasants who bought houses in Rampartville with payment in kind, say, two cans of olive oil and two loads of wheat for a house with a courtyard, you know, the kind of people the partisans sent packing.

  Sometimes we tried our luck at Saint Athanassios church, their parish priest was a saintly sort. He made us a sign to wait till after mass and then he slipped us a whole slice of holy bread. Still, we didn’t make a habit of it, seeing as how every time his son Avakoum would go by swinging his censer all dressed up in his altar-boy get-up, he hissed in my ear how he wanted to talk dirty to me and me, I was supposed to sit there and like it. That’s what all the men want from me anyway, generally speaking, but back then I just wasn’t in the mood. That’s all they ever want, you bet your life, maybe I do egg them on a bit, I admit maybe I am a bit of a tease, what am I supposed to do? Not come across?

  After Alfio henceforth Mother never went to mass as she knew it would scandalize the faithful. Only one time she went for evening prayers and some woman hissed, Collaborators get out of church, Father Dinos cuts the woman off cold: breaks off the prayer and says, Now listen to me, do not judge your fellow man, the Church is big enough for everyone. But Mother, she never went again. Here in Athens even, the only church she ever set foot in was the chapel at the cemetery, in her coffin I mean. Generally speaking, I inherited my self-respect from her. Once on tour, up in north Thessaly I think it was, some smartass starts making remarks right in the middle of the performance, How much a one-night stand? he yells. Once he says it, twice, so I stop the show, step up front stage and say, Listen here mister, just who do you think you’re insulting like that? I paid my money didn’t I, miss? he shoots back, You’re an actress, right? So you’re a whore. Listen here, mister, I say. So maybe we’re whores, but buggered out we ain’t. We got our work to do, so sit down and shut up. That got a laugh, but afterwards the director comes up to me and says, Raraou you got a hole where your brain ought to be.

  Not long after Signor Vittorio took Signor Alfio’s place Aphrodite died, poor thing. Fought death to the last, she did. Hour after hour we waited, every night for two whole months, first my mother then Mrs Kanello spent the night at their place, so her mother wouldn’t have to meet death alone; it was their first death. Her mother couldn’t sleep, all night long she crocheted away on Aphrodite’s dowry (after the Occupation she went and sold it all) and every so often she’d take off her glasses and check to see if her sleeping daughter was still breathing. Then back to her crocheting. Next to her my mother was nodding sleepily, and I was cat-napping with my feet all warm and cozy under Aphrodite’s covers. Good girl, keeping her feet warm, Ma said, but Aphrodite couldn’t feel the warmth. Couldn’t feel the cold neither. I say to Ma, Ma wake me up if she dies when I’m asleep. I don’t want to catch it. I thought you could catch death.

  One time our little Fanis goes to their place on an errand and Aphrodite sends him away. Don’t come in here, I’ve got the sickness, she said. The sickness, back then that was what they called consumption, it was kind of a fashionable sickness you read about in novels where the hero abandons the heroine and she gets consumption every time.

  Not that I never saw a corpse before, mind you; far from it. Before the war it was an everyday sight. Back then in Rampartville if you went to take your appendix out, most likely they’d cart you out of hospital dead, from wealthy families too, this banker’s son died in an operation and he was only seventeen.

  I was just a little girl, maybe seven years old, when I saw my first corpse and believe you me I wasn’t impressed. Looked just like everybody else, far as I could see. Lying there in the casket with the bearer walking alongside holding the cover and the priest following along behind, chanting and greeting people he knew on the street. Further back came the mourning family, and then altar boys carrying the church banners on the ends of long poles (sometimes they’d even start fencing with phem), and behind them came the mourners and the curious. They planned the funeral march so it would pass through all the main streets of Rampartville, that’s what almost all the relatives of the dear departed insisted on, plus it was kind of a social recognition, a way for the dead man to bid farewell to the street where he used to take his Sunday stroll. Wherever the procession passed, the shopkeepers would close their doors for a moment out of respect, make the sign of the cross, then it was back to business. People on the pavement would doff their hats and wait with bowed heads for the remains and the priest in his full church get-up to pass by.

  So when Aphrodite died it was nothing special, just so I didn’t go catching death from her. Ever since I was three I heard plenty of stories about dead people, how they climb up out of their graves at night and make the living do their bidding. Fairy tales, that’s all it is, my godmother told me once. Don’t you believe a word of it child, dead people are good people.

  Later, what with the Occupation and the partisans, I saw plenty of dead people, forget the coffins. Saw a two-week-dead corpse all puffed up, hanging from the bell tower, back when the partisans liberated us and before the English liberated us. And I saw Security Battalion Home Guards, Secbats we called them back then, trussed up against the wall with their bellies sliced open in an X all the way from the shoulder and their trousers pulled down to their knees. Now that I’m over sixty (even if I don’t look a day over forty – there was this man pulled out a condom so I wouldn’t get pregnant, can you believe it!) and I’m shocked at the sight of a dead body, as I should be if I may say so. Well, a small town girl is one thing and a lady from Athens is another you’ll say, and an artiste to boot, but these eyes of mine have seen plenty, you can be sure about that!

  I didn’t see Aphrodite dead because on the afternoon she expired I was playing outdoors, Mrs Kanello spots me and sends me off to a farm close by to fetch milk for our little Fanis as he was a growing boy.

  When I got back, Aphrodite had breathed her last breath. Her lamp ran out of oil, Ma said, go pay your last respects. Me, by the time I reached the top of the stairs the door was wide open like it was some kind of name-day party, in fact two Italians had wandered in thinking it was a house of ill-repute. I look into the girl’s room, but all I see is her feet, and Mrs Kanello rubbing them, trying to keep them warm, and Aphrodite’s mother is sitting there still crocheting her lace. But just then Fanis calls out from downstairs, Come quick, partisans, They caught some partisans, let’s go and see! We head for the square; nothing. When they brought in dead partisans they usually dumped them in the square, as an example. But this time they captured live ones and they were holding them at the gaol house, which was really a rented house.

  There were even some women partisans. Small people they were, nothing but skin and bones and dressed in rags, I never saw women wearing army tunics before, they looked like peasants. The Italians let us stare at the partisans but then a truckful of Germans came roaring up and they shooed us off, Via, via, they said. We left. So, that was my first look at real live partisans. They had them locked up in the kitchen, more than twenty of them, don’t ask me how they crammed them all in there. Anyway, you wouldn’t catch me in an army tunic even if I was freezing to death, even if not one but ten Motherlands said I had to, back then I was fashion conscious and I didn’t know it, that’s why the men just couldn’t keep their hands off me. Some can’t even today.

  Anyway the partisans, they really disappointed me, as men. All us women used to whisper about them among ourse
lves. I imagined they were all like some kind of Captain Courageous in those penny novels Mlle Salome used to read us: real giants ten feet tall, well-fed with victory smiles just like the American actors in the movies after the war who went around liberating exotic countries. Mlle Salome worshipped the partisans, makes sense you’ll say, after all, she was from a left-wing family. Well, we used to get together at the Tiritomba family’s place before they went on the road, and trick our hunger with jokes. Aphrodite’s mother would be there with her lace, my mother would bring her mending, and Mrs Kanello would bring along fried chick-pea cakes for snacks. Everybody talked about what Mr Churchill said on the radio the night before. Mrs Adrianna Tiritomba was hard at work knitting a sweater from unravelled wool, the Partisan’s Sweater they called it, it was Mrs Kanello’s idea, just as they used to knit Soldier’s Sweaters when we had the war in Albania.

  Mlle Salome was knitting a pair of breeches. One day she opens them out to measure, we do a double take, the things were a good six feet long, with a pouch the size of a kid’s head right between the legs. What in the world’s got into you, you made them big enough for three men, says Mrs Kanello. You’re only saying that because you’re a royalist and you want to bring down the Movement, snaps Salome. The partisans are giants and here you are, trying to tell me they’re midgets? Well, says Mrs Adrianna as she points to the pouch hanging there between the legs, If you’re starving you dream about bread. That set off a ruckus. But from that day on I got it into my head that the partisans were taller than normal people; that’s why I was so disappointed when I saw my first live specimens in the gaol-house kitchen that evening.

  After we left the gaol house I felt sleepy and went right home to bed, so I missed it when Aphrodite expired. Signor Vittorio even came by but I told him Ma’s out and he left. After, I washed the dishes and cleaned up the floor, some little shoots were poking up through the earth again. In fact, over in the pullet’s corner the earth had started to sink, as though the pullet was sinking deeper and deeper into the ground.