The Daughter Page 5

  I only made it to the funeral but I didn’t stick around for long, there was a memorial service close by, so little Fanis and I snuck over to get some sweets.

  But I did go along on Aphrodite’s last outing, about a month before she died.

  About a month before she died Aphrodite ups and says, Ma, take me for an outing, I want to go to the seaside.

  There was a little port about eleven kilometres from Rampartville by train, for the provinces back then it was an enormous distance, nothing like getting around in Athens these days with the trolley-bus. Of course it wasn’t the first time for me; before the war our school went on a trip there. But Aphrodite had never seen the water before, not once, she was always making plans to go, back before the war, but somehow things just never worked out. Come the Occupation there was no way you could go. The Germans had requisitioned the train and the only civilians who had permission to ride it were the black marketeers. So all poor Aphrodite could do was to stare at the sea from the top of a hill just up from the church, where we used to graze our dear departed pullet. Then all of a sudden, a month before she dies she comes out with, Ma, take me to the seaside.

  Her mother Mrs Fanny had the windows closed and the shutters barred from a couple of days back. Keeping out the cold draughts, she said. But down deep she was getting the house ready for mourning. Got to let my husband know about the girl, I was supposed to tell Mrs Kanello for her. That’s when I discovered Aphrodite’s father was in the partisans but they kept it hush-hush and Mrs Kanello made me swear on the holy icons not to breathe a word to my ma, seeing as how because Signor Vittorio might catch on. Also she let drop that Mrs Fanny wasn’t getting along with her husband; an unfortunate marriage it was. Anyway, she tells me to tell the sick girl’s mother, God help him, Mrs Fanny if your husband hears about it and tries to come into town they’ll grab him and make mincemeat out of him.

  On the spot Mrs Kanello up and leaves kids and husband behind, takes off from work just as bold as brass and goes off to look after her mother. (Now there’s an old strumpet if I ever saw one, ninety-six and still flirting with her grandchildren if you please, a temptress right up the last, old lady Marika was, and a real doll. I’ve got to admit it, I confess, even though she chewed the hell out of me when I went to her place with Signor Alfio. But now she’s gone to a better world by far, God rest her soul.)

  At which point Mrs Fanny bars the front door too. The hunger was really something, but she was of good family so she wouldn’t dream of asking for food or fighting for a place in the queue at the soup kitchen. What was the use, anyway? The consumption inside her daughter kept getting bigger. Things went on that way for about a month, me, I’d forgotten they even existed, what with their house closed up tight and not a word. Only at night, sometimes, I heard a kind of howling sound, like a wolf. It was Mrs Fanny howling in her sleep, from hunger. Instead of dreaming dreams full of food to let off steam, all she did was howl, at least that’s how Mrs Kanello explained it to me after the war. I could hear the howling, for sure. If you’re not getting enough nourishment you don’t get a good night’s sleep, you see, and I asked Mother, what’s that noise? Go to sleep, she would say, it’s a jackal in town, or maybe the Germans are torturing someone at the Kommandantur. (She never had a bad word to say about the Italians.)

  And one morning in April Mrs Fanny throws open all her doors and windows like she won the jack-pot. Neighbours, she calls out in a voice that sounded like she was laughing and at the same time tears were running down her cheeks, let’s go for an outing to the seaside. Doors popped open on all the balconies, but Mrs Fanny called on our little one-storey place first, and believe you me it was a big honour for my poor mother. Asimina, Aphrodite’s mother tells her, she’s lost all her blood, no chance anyone will catch the sickness. And she wants to go to the seaside.

  And we all came out of our houses. How many women are we? asks one. They counted me as one of the women. Eleven altogether. My brother Fanis tagged along too. What with the train requisitioned by the Germans, we set out on foot for the port to give Aphrodite her first look at the sea and then say goodbye, that was always her wish before the war.

  And the front door swung open and four lady neighbours carried Aphrodite out perched in a chair, and we set out, leaving the door open so the house could breathe.

  And not much remained of Aphrodite. Her breasts are gone, I said to myself. Her legs were shrunk: just like a little girl again she was, like an eleven-year-old boy with malaria. Just as if when she was starting to grow taller and get bigger, her body took fright and tried to shrink back into itself again.

  And we carried her sitting in her chair, the eleven of us, all eleven kilometres to the port, trading off carrying the chair every 100 paces or so. Along the way the villagers threw stones at us so we wouldn’t steal their green crab apples or the buds on the grapevines along the stone fences. But little Fanis managed to swipe a head of lettuce.

  And even me. I took part in carrying the chair along with three other women a couple of times. When I think about it, it was that day, on that very excursion, was when I was given the honour of becoming a woman. The others were all older than me but not one of them called me the kid or the dim-wit, nobody was afraid I’d tire myself out, nobody did me any special favours, not one. So by the time we finally reached the seaside, I wasn’t a kid any more. I was a grown-up and a woman.

  And we spread out our blanket on the sand right by the water just as Aphrodite wished. And we set her down; the day was cool with a brisk breeze blowing in off the water and all of us had goose bumps. The salt spray spattered Aphrodite, but her skin didn’t feel anything any more, not even goose bumps. And she was like a piece of unclaimed baggage, like a trunk the morning steamer had left behind. That’s how come I knew Aphrodite was dying, she wasn’t getting goose bumps. The drops of spray and the salty surf, one big waste of time they were, couldn’t get a rise out of Aphrodite. All she could do was smile that washed-out smile of hers.

  And we sat down for a meal of raisins and two quinces cooked in grape syrup. Aphrodite, wasn’t a bit hungry, clutching two fistfuls of raisins. Hasn’t eaten a thing for a month now, said her mother. That was the only good thing about always having the taste of blood in her mouth: she wasn’t hungry any more. All the rest of us ate. And Aphrodite stared out at the sea and clutched the raisins in her hands and soaked up the sunlight with her legs wrapped in a blanket, like a little kid’s legs they were, and late that afternoon she let out a single cry of Viva! Then she clammed up.

  And on our way back to town we had to trade off chair-carrying chores more often. Nobody had any decent food to eat for months and it was as if our strength had got smaller. Not one of us sweated because not one of us had anything left to sweat.

  And by the time we stopped halfway back to town to pick wild greens the weather had turned cloudy. The hills had gone reddish brown and now they were turning dark grey. Little Fanis sat down next to Aphrodite, he didn’t know what to pick, what did you expect from a man? so he was having himself a good time; after all, we were on an outing and when you’re on an outing you’re supposed to have fun, aren’t you? So down he sits next to Aphrodite and he asks Aphrodite, how come you caught the sickness, what’s the sickness Aphrodite? Always was a bit simple minded. Seems that’s when Aphrodite finally admitted to herself that she was going to die and she says, The sickness is a little girl without a home and she likes blood to drink and she’s always cold. And whenever she sees a good person asleep without anybody to watch over him she cuddles up inside his chest to keep warn and sucks his blood and never comes out.

  We got back home that evening. Seventeen days later Aphrodite was dead from the excess of tuberculosis. They stuck a little paper flag on top of her grave: it was a greeting from her father. Afterwards, when the partisans liberated Rampartville, he came back and put a real flag on her grave, a cloth one. One year later during the so-called December uprising in Athens it was, just before the Civil War, they c
aptured him and slit his throat. But Mrs Fanny his wife is alive and well, right here in Athens what’s more.

  Strictly between us, all this heroic business never made any sense to me. I always say, What if we just let the Germans through our Nation, just let them go about their business and leave them alone? Wouldn’t it have been better? Wouldn’t we have spared ourselves the Occupation, the starvation? I mean, just what do we have to show for it, family-wise and nation-wise, all that rushing off to Albania to the front lines and all the knitting sweaters and for nothing, the whole lot of it? The other countries, the ones who didn’t try to stand up to the Germans, were they so stupid? That craphead Churchill, a curse on his grave, how come we were the only ones he fooled? And furthermore, I always say, Exactly what did we get out of the so-called Liberation? A face-full, that’s what we got. We take the money from the Marshall plan and we rebuild Mandelas’s brothel in Rampartville and a night-club in Athens, the Neptune Club I think it was, on Syngrou Boulevard. They say it was the first building in Greece to be built with American Marshall money, back when we had the Tsaldaris government if I’m not mistaken.

  That’s what I told one impresario and he gives me the boot smack in the middle of a tour. Being a bit of a queer wasn’t good enough for him, no, he had to be a patriot, and me. I’m not patriotic too maybe? You can bet if I was a boy no way would he dump me right in that dead-end dump but I gave him a piece of my mind, and how, and he just stood there gaping with little bubbles coming out the corners of his mouth.

  Three days after Aphrodite’s funeral who should appear but Mrs Kanello with a newborn baby in her arms. The whole neighbourhood is stunned. Father Dinos gives her a tongue-lashing. Don’t you talk to me that way, she tells him. Aris is his name and that’s what you’re going to baptize him. I shall never bless the name of an idol-worshipper’s god, he roared; still, he could take a hint. Aris just happened to be the top partisan bigshot back then, so after things had calmed down a bit, Aris is what he ended up baptizing the kid. We all thought she was off looking after her sick mother. Mother’s just fine, so don’t start getting ideas, she’ll last until Liberation and then some, said Kanello. The kid’s my sister’s. (Her mother lasted until Liberation and the first beauty pageant and the Dictatorship: one tough old bird, believe you me.)

  What happened was that her sister the partisan went and got herself knocked up and it was just about her time, that was the whole mystery. Her husband hid her in a sheepfold seeing as how she couldn’t very well keep up with the band in the rough country and take part in attacks what with her belly up to her eyeballs, what’s more she was useless as a fighter. Plus, Captain, someone in the band piped up, she makes an easy target.

  So they sent out a call for Mrs Kanello. She pads herself, pretending to be pregnant, strolls right through the German lines and delivers her sister’s baby, another dingbat, that sister of hers. Her husband left her a rifle and a few hand grenades, just in case. So Mrs Kanello cuts the cord, everything’s just fine, and then she goes and lobs a grenade over the top of the hill for good luck, anyway, the kid came out male, scared the bejesus out of the sheep, it was all they could do to coax them back into the fold. Boy, did I ever get my fill of milk up there, just like a snake, Mrs Kanello told us as she suckled away. Come on, you little outlaw, suck, she’d say, and she’d unbutton her dress and push the kid’s face up against her breast until he found the teat. Mrs Kanello’s milk was always flowing, probably because of all the kids. Anyway, she nursed the little guy until Liberation, today he’s about to retire, a merchant seaman he is and a fine-looking man. A lefty though. Too bad.

  Back then, before the war, the women used to suckle their kids right on the front step with their breast showing, and there wasn’t a husband who said a word, of course I’m talking about the lower classes of women. But they were proper ladies in every other respect and if a stranger so much as looked at his wife sideways the husband would beat her black and blue if he was a bit of a pipsqueak. But if he had some muscle and some guy dared to steal a glance at his wife he’d whip the piss out of the guy instead. Even during the Occupation men didn’t give nursing mothers a second look, not the locals anyway. Me, maybe I was only thirteen years old, but they were always gobbling me up with their eyes. In fact, a couple of them even invited me to the dance academy. Don’t you dare or I’ll beat you within an inch of your life was Mrs Kanello’s advice when I asked her (I never asked my mother about matters of morality, since she considered herself a collaborator and a compromised woman, on account of how Italians visited her).

  The dance academy used to be a former lumber warehouse. For the town pharmacist, a certain Mr Patris who rented the top floor, it was an affront to his personal honour, he had this French wife, you see, and she didn’t really have much time for Rampartville high society. The dance academy was for men, strictly. Society mothers sent their sons there for social polishing. Girls learned to dance from their mothers, or arranged for private lessons at home from the academy. The dance master Mr Manolitsis taught the tango, the fox trot and the waltz mostly, plus the rhumba and the hesitation waltz. Come Liberation, he started teaching swing. He was plumpish, short and light-footed and he wore high heels and he always danced the lady’s role himself, and when he went by on his way to church he always greeted us politely. After ten lessons the most advanced pupils danced with each other and Mr Manolitsis took on the next group of beginners. But even when the lessons were over and the pupils graduated, they didn’t leave. They spent their afternoons at the academy, it was like a kind of social club and everybody there dreamed of dancing with a real woman, not with some classmate or other.

  Still, a few girls managed to sneak in. But if they did they could say goodbye to their good name, at least till they got married. That’s how you never saw a woman go near the place. Later in the afternoon grown men would show up. They would dance with one another, men and boys, taking turns leading, so nobody’s masculinity would suffer. They even say high school kids used to smoke cigarettes in there.

  That was one of the things the grown-up women talked about at our get-togethers at Mrs Kanello’s place. In wintertime we sat in a circle, you see, we were used to sitting in a circle around a charcoal brazier. So there we sat in a circle, with nothing in the middle, who could afford charcoal? Aphrodite’s ma would drop by too, always brought her crocheting, she did, the same old lace for the dowries. Can you believe it? after Liberation she actually found some customers, everything she crocheted for her daughter during the Occupation she sold as a good price, why even a British officer bought some.

  So we sat in a circle around the charcoal brazier that wasn’t there, each of us with a blanket thrown over our laps to keep warm, and to hide our flab, cracked Mrs Kanello. But she avoided making remarks about flesh if my mother was around; Kanello was what you’d call a born self-taught gentlewoman. She’d steer the conversation around to social life in Rampartville, or politics. At least we’re rid of those bastards the royals, she said. Just wait’n see what happens if the Brits try and stuff them down our throats after we win, it’ll be the partisans all over again. Then my mother would open her mouth and disagree, You can’t have Greece without a king, she said.

  At Mum’s forty-day memorial service I got it from Mrs Kanello how right after her first Italian, Signor Alfio, she ran to Father Dinos to confess her sins and – this is the priest telling Kanello, mind you – what was really bothering her worst was the royal family. (Father Dinos was the biggest gossip in the neighbourhood; if you wanted everyone to know your deepest secret, just go and confess, so be it.) Mother was a royalist. She believed the Allies would win and bring back the Crown with full honours. The worst thing for Ma was sinning with the enemy, said the priest; how could a turncoat and an adulteress like her bear to live in the same country with the royal family, that was so honest, such a shining example? Don’t worry your head, Asimina, the priest told her – what a nut he was! – how are you supposed to keep your kids alive? If I w
as in your place I’d be a whore too. Get a load of this, Rita’s sweetheart the whore-priest calling her a ‘whore’. That’s when Mother really hit bottom, said Kanello. She always knew she was a turncoat, but a whore? Never even crossed her mind. So when the priest called her one there went her self-respect.

  Well, naturally, back then I didn’t know what they were talking about, sitting around the imaginary charcoal brazier; all I could think about was that before the war we used to put aluminium foil over the coals to keep them burning longer. Politically speaking, I didn’t have a clue.

  The better class of people in Rampartville, they didn’t think too highly of the partisans. After the first year of the Occupation, almost all the more affluent homes in town began to invite the Italians in. Some even opened their doors to the Germans, they were bullheaded, the Germans I mean, wouldn’t set foot in the house of a conquered people. But the Italians, talk about friendly. Why, open your door and they’d come strolling right in, with all the gratitude in the world. They weren’t even too proud for our place, dirt floor and all. I know, I know, Signor Alfio and Signor Vittorio, they weren’t exactly the cream of the crop you’ll say.

  Homes like that, they didn’t respect the partisans at all, that much I picked up from Kanello, and later from Salome. Sometimes, for their evening parties they hired the Tiritomba clan to put on a sketch, and Italians would be there. They were always good for a laugh, the Italians I mean, even if they didn’t understand a word, applause too; as obliging as can be. One time Mlle Salome took me along for a bit role. You don’t have a speaking part, she went; just stand still and I shove you towards Adrianna, and she shoves you back at me, nothing to be scared of.