The Daughter Read online

  Scared? Me? I knew what Italians looked like already, didn’t I? So I played in the sketch, and if I do say so myself, from that night on I knew I was destined for the stage. By the way, I almost forgot to mention that they had food like in the movies, too. The minute the hosts went downstairs to show their guests to the door the troupe made a rush for the half-finished dinner plates. Eat, eat, said Mrs Adrianna, but if you leave grease spots on my good dress I’ll whip the stuffings out of you. She had me dressed up in medieval dress, a Cavalleria Rusticana kind of stage costume or maybe it was an opera castaway. Anyway, I tucked my shift into my drawers, tightened the drawstrings (we didn’t have elastic back then), and stuffed my corset with whatever I could lay hands on. No one even noticed; I took it all home and the family ate its fill.

  Those fine upstanding citizens, the ones who made the Italians at home, they hated the partisans. Just you wait, when the partisans march into town one of these days heads will roll, that’s how Mrs Kanello put it. Over the clandestine radio we kept hearing about the royal family’s health; they were safe, somewhere in Africa I think it was. Why doesn’t some cannibal do the Christian thing and eat them, said Mrs Kanello, and we shivered. I’ve got a confession to make, deep down I’m a republican, but I never held with the idea of getting rid of the royals. It was awfully discourteous, doing a thing like that and expelling the royal family like they did, in the plebiscite. Since then, us having no royals makes me feel like I’m on stage without my drawers on. I want to vote for them every chance I get, every election, whether it’s for parliament or for city council, I don’t care: whoever’s on the ballot, I cry a little bit and I write, ‘I vote Royal. Raraou.’ Our member of parliament has my voter’s registration book; I gave it to him when he brought us to Athens, all expenses paid. Still has Ma’s too; she may be dead, the poor dear, but she still keeps on voting.

  That’s that. Fine with me, I mean, go ahead, be patriotic, with all the left-wing stuff and the trade-union talk and all the marches; me, I’ll demonstrate and I’ll go on strike just as good as the next man but give me the royals any day. Ever since they kicked them out I never really enjoyed Easter, even though I get my Easter bonus. Before, before the republic came in I mean, I used to go to mass at the cathedral every Easter and when I lit my candle, I told myself, the King was lighting his from the same flame! And the Commander in chief of all the armies would be there too! and after mass was over I’d go back to my little apartment, light my own little candle and keep the flame alive until the next Easter, even though I’m not a religious person. Nowadays, that’s it for the candles. We want people to treat us as Europeans and we don’t even have a royal family? I don’t get it.

  Nowadays I stay away from Easter mass. Not that I’m the religious kind; no more than I have to be. I used to think Mother was religious because she never said a word about God and all the rest. But one afternoon when she sent us over to the church so we wouldn’t get wet from the rain while Signor Alfio was visiting, I told her I was scared of the church, especially in the dark with the saints up there on the altar, all full of spite, they looked downright uncivilized, and Mother says, Don’t be afraid Roubini. God doesn’t exist. Take your little brother Fanis and stay put or else you’ll catch your death. That’s all church is good for. Plus the holy bread the priest gives you every Sunday. So, she says, take our little tyke and wait there till I’m finished, don’t be afraid of the church, there’s nobody there. It’s your own home you should be afraid of.

  That was the only catechism I ever got from my mother.

  When she was on her last legs here in Athens, when I knew that she was on her way out I thought maybe she wanted to take communion, but I had to bring it up in a roundabout way so as not to make her suspicious, so I said, Mum, how about I call a priest to say a couple of prayers, what do you think? And she rolls over and turns her back to me and stares at her little bottle of pills.

  Only one time I heard her cry, Holy Mother of God! The day when the Germans crushed our little Fanis’s hand. That was before we knew Signor Alfio. I can still see it all plain as day, the whole neighbourhood was crazy with hunger. And Aphrodite’s ma Mrs Fanny passes the word that Liakopoulos’s warehouse is full of potatoes. Word spread like wildfire through the neighbourhood and we all congregated in the little square in front of the store, just a bit down the street from the church. I figure there must have been a good fifty of us, women and children mostly. It was around noon on a Sunday; some of the people had it in mind to break the door down, they were carrying pick-axes. But the Germans got there first: it was Liakopoulos himself who called them to come and restore order, the mob was threatening his goods. Get back, shouted Kanello. She had an axe in her hands and was about to lunge when we heard the truck. Get back, it’s Germans, get back! They won’t stop, they’ll make mincemeat out of us.

  We flattened ourselves against the wall across the street, the army truck came to a halt in front of the store and Mr Liakopoulos was standing there in the window, wearing a hat and a tie, if you please, staring at us, the idiot, as if he still didn’t know what was going on.

  The Germans pointed their machine-gun right at us. We weren’t afraid, why should we be? Every day they pointed machine-guns at us. Then two of them climbed down from the truck, ripped open the metal shutter and went into the storeroom. Then Mr Liakopoulos understood; he’d just tied this own noose. So, they tear open the shutter and what do they see? Inside the storeroom are sacks of potatoes stacked all the way up to the ceiling. The Germans started loading them into their truck. When Mr Liakopoulos saw what was happening, something came over him: his daughters carried him back into the house, one of them even splashed water over his face.

  ‘Maybe we won’t be eating your stinking potatoes, you son of a bitch,’ shouted Kanello, ‘but you won’t be selling them on the black market either!’

  ‘Watch how you’re talking, lady,’ one of Liakopoulos’s daughters shouts back at her, ‘or I’ll turn you in to the Kommandantur.’

  ‘Go ahead and try it you slut,’ Kanello yells. ‘The partisans aren’t far away. I’ll have them burn your house down and the lot of you along with it, I’ve got my ways!’ (Sure enough, their house went up in flames when the partisans attacked the town; coincidence, most likely.)

  So there were the Germans emptying the storeroom; it was a regular potato requisition. And there we stood, petrified and drooling. I hope they turn to rocks in your guts and plug up your ass-holes, shouted Mlle Salome, but in a low kind of voice, more like a mutter.

  No one made a move. The truck was parked right in front of Liakopoulos’s door. Across the street was us, crowded together, and between us, the little square, empty. We didn’t want anything to do with the Germans. Just kill them. I try not to think about Germans because I only get upset and lose my sleep, even today.

  Three potatoes popped out of one of the sacks as two Germans were loading it into the truck. Huddled against the wall we let out a groan. Nobody move, said a man’s voice. The German with the machine-gun on the truck smiled at us and pointed to the spilled potatoes with the barrel of his gun. Don’t let them fool you, don’t move an inch, said the man. The other Germans stopped their loading, watching us, waiting to see what would happen. As for me, it was as though I could hear us breathing. They’ll crush them when they back up, said Mrs Fanny. They’ll crush them, the pigs.

  The Germans stood there, smiling. And we stood there.

  And then poor little Fanis comes running out of the crowd and makes for the middle of the square, ungainly as a plucked chicken. We stand there petrified. Little Fanis looks at Mother with a faint smile on his face and makes a bee-line for the potatoes and picks up all three of them. Nobody makes a move, then the smiling German with the machine-gun leaps down and smashes the boy’s hand with his rifle-butt. The potatoes tumble to the ground. Fanis bends down to pick them up and the rifle-butt comes smashing down on his fingers over and over again. I’m sure I could hear the bones snapping, but pe
ople say I’m being silly whenever I tell the story. The boy is howling now and all together, as one, we move forward. But the other three Germans take aim at us; I hear the click as they cock their rifles. We freeze again. The soldier with the machine-gun has it trained on us again. And in the middle of the square the kid is writhing and flailing around like a chicken with its head cut off. His hand was twisted backwards in the direction of his elbow. Then the Germans go back to work. Three Greek men take a step towards the kid, the Germans bring their rifles to the ready again, and the Greeks step back, while the little boy is still dancing around in the middle of the square.

  And then Mrs Kanello steps out of the crowd and heads toward Fanis. My mother is about to faint. Holy Mother of God, his hand, she cries, and I’m trying to keep her upright but half of her is leaning against me and the other half on the ground. I’m doing all I can but she slips out of my hands and falls. The soldiers pick up their guns again and aim at Mrs Kanello but she just keeps on walking towards our little boy as if she was God almighty. She kneels and takes him in her arms, she was wearing long black stockings, before the war the poor people wore them for mourning but come the Occupation who could be bothered with the niceties, bury them fast and get it over with, so the merchants sold off their stockings – nothing but useless surplus it was. As she kneels down to take the boy in her embrace, her stockings tear at the knee and run all the way to her ankle, I recall. A German comes up to her with a pistol, I can remember the dialogue to this very day, word for word.

  German: Little boy of you?

  Mrs Kanello: Yes. Of me little boy.

  German: Him thief. Punish.

  And the German turns on his heel and grinds the potatoes into the dirt, one at a time.

  Mrs Kanello is kneeling there with one knee in the gravel, the boy’s head resting on her other knee. As a matter of fact, you could see the white flesh above her stocking tops. We didn’t have proper garters back then, they made their appearance during the Civil War. I remember just like yesterday how white her thighs were, there above her stockings. I wanted to help my brother but I was scared to death, besides, I was holding my mother’s head.

  Meantime the German crushes the last potato. Slowly Mrs Kanello gets to her feet, begins to drag the boy over towards us as best she can, of course; she was as hungry as everybody else, suckled her kids until they were five when there was no bread to eat. But suddenly rage overwhelms her and she cuts loose at the Germans.

  ‘So he’s a thief?’ she says. ‘Me, I’m a thief too! And all these people, they’re nothing but thieves,’ and she points to us Greeks. ‘We’re all thieves. But what’re you? You call yourselves a country? Well, you’re nothing but a tribe. Your fatherland? I shit on it. Your flag? I spit on it! I dance on the grave that waits for your kids! Us, thieves? Maybe so. But we didn’t build Dachau. We didn’t build Belsen!’

  Mrs Kanello knew what she was talking about, she’d been to party meetings. But the German couldn’t have understood Greek much more than those few words of his.

  Then she picks up the boy in her arms and strides towards us in a towering rage, turning her back on the German, as if exhausted, and he picks up his rifle and shouts: Halt! And Mrs Kanello never even turns to look at him, just speaks, her eyes on us all the while.

  ‘You want to shoot me?’ she says. ‘Go ahead, shoot. All you’re good for is shootin’ women. Screw them you sure as hell can’t.’

  There she stood motionless. There stood the Germans. And us. Then, fearlessly, she turns back towards him (I was shitting my pants I was so scared, she told me dozens of years later) and lights into him.

  ‘What’s wrong? Come on, shoot! Get it over with. No food for three days and my kids are all over me because I can’t feed them and Churchill with his baloney over the radio – come on, shoot, I need the rest, I can’t take any more. Three days without food in my own house! Your women have enough to eat, I hear, well, may you never be buried in your own soil, may the vultures eat your balls! Your women, all they do is stuff themselves and make lampshades out of human skin! Go on, you son of a bitch, shoot! You too, the rest of you!’ and she gestures at the other Germans, their fingers on the trigger. ‘Shoot, you assfucking queers, fucking yourselves so you won’t dirty yourselves on the Greek girls. Shoot! But one of these days you’re gonna pay! The Muscovite is coming – you know the song? You’ll puke it all up, every last bit.’

  ‘Unfortunately, Mrs Kanello,’ I tell her at Mum’s memorial service as we’re talking over the past, ‘the Germans never paid us back. Not then, and not now. We never even asked them. Look how they’re our precious allies today, and oh so politely they let our men go to work for them, and in the United Nations they snap their fingers and we come running. We win the war, and them, they’re back on top.’

  ‘Us, win the war, Roubini?’ says Mrs Kanello, ‘you call that winning the war?’ And she broke down and cried. But at Mum’s funeral she didn’t shed a tear. Only at her husband’s funeral, but never mind, I won’t say a thing about that.

  So Mrs Kanello turns her back on the Kraut and starts towards us.

  He didn’t shoot. Meantime, Father Dinos had somehow got wind of the situation: there he came, full steam ahead, all decked out in his vestments – he’d left in the middle of a wedding – with his chasuble flapping in the wind. He came to a stop without a word. Mrs Kanello comes over, Get up Asimina, she tells my ma, we got to look after the kid’s hand, no time for fainting. Off we go to her house, me following along holding our little boy’s crushed hand. Straight up the stairs we go, rip up some old rags, and straighten out Fanis’s hand, and he doesn’t let out a peep, can you imagine?

  I didn’t have a clue what was going on outside; I was holding the washbasin while we rinsed off his hand with boric acid and camomile. Seemed like thanks to Father Dinos the Germans were gone. With the potatoes. O thank you so much, holy father, says Aphrodite’s ma. Stuff it Mrs Fanny, snaps the reverend father. And he sends out an order for everyone in the parish to turn out for Sunday service; there he reads out a curse and an anathema on the whole Liakopoulos clan. Why, at the Polytechnic Institute during the dictatorship, if even one asshole of a bishop stands up on his own hind feet, you wouldn’t have had the tanks breaking into the Polytechnic, Mrs Fanny told me later, back in Athens. But I don’t want to get mixed up in politics.

  So finally the kid comes around, Run and call the doctor, Mrs Kanello tells me. But as I’m on my way down, who should I see coming up the stairs but Doctor Manolaras. Someone had passed the word. He unwrapped our crude bandage, felt the hand. Nothing serious, he said, quit yelling. A couple of broken bones, that’s all. He had gauze bandages and Mum broke off a stick from our garden fence and we set it up as a splint. Now give him something to eat: he shouldn’t move his hand for a week, use your other hand when you peepee, he told Fanis, and the boy blushed. He won’t lose the hand, but it’ll always be crooked.

  The doctor gave him an injection, he was always injecting the hind ends of the just and the unjust with that Red Cross surplus of his. Then he said goodbye and left.

  And we picked up our little boy to leave. Mother could barely look Mrs Kanello in the eye, I’m so sorry for all the problems we caused you, she said, your stockings are all torn and it’s all on account of us.

  ‘And you, you go showing off your thighs so the whole town can see,’ pipes up her husband from the next room, as if he was dishonoured. Saw the whole thing from the little window in the toilet, he did. But Mrs Kanello didn’t answer back; she always respected him.

  We took the boy home.

  Time passed and the hand got better but it was twisted for good. Couldn’t make a fist. After the Civil War, or was it a little before? Doc Manolaras – by now he was elected to parliament – took him on as a hired hand at his spread on one of the islands. That’s where he works to this day, Fanis does, as foreman and quite a spread it is, too; you’ll have a job with me for life, the doctor promised, and he kept his promise. So Fani
s is doing just fine, even if I never see him. Every year I send him a card on his name day, drop it off at Doc Manolaras’ office. I don’t have to buy stamps that way. He can’t answer, seeing as how his right hand is the twisted hand, but I get all the news from Doc Manolaras, he’s been our family MP since way back then, for life I guess you could say. If only I could latch on with a road show, I’d say to myself, and stop over on his island, so the kid could see me on stage before he dies. What kid? He’s past sixty now. And what do you think he asks me to send him, just the other day, the scallywag? Potatoes. And staring up Mrs Kanello’s thigh when he came to? A real Greek, what can you do?

  Whenever I think back to the episode with the potatoes and the garters, and I see my own suspender belts hanging from the little line over the bathtub (I’ve got a second pair), I say to myself, Honey pie, when it comes to wrapping a man around your little finger, us modern-day vamps, we’ve got it all. Take toilet paper. I mean, back then newspaper was all we had for wiping ourselves, and I’m talking about our kind of girls, well-groomed girls with self-respect. Even in the bathrooms of the finest homes in Rampartville you wouldn’t find toilet paper. Only newspaper. I should know because I worked in more than a couple of homes like that after the so-called Liberation. Newspaper cut up into little squares with scissors all nice and neat (I did the cutting), but newspaper all the same. It was God’s miracle that we got as far as we did with the men, considering we put out and still kept our virginity up front. Ah, the little ditties we used to sing back before toilet paper! Not to mention underarm deodorant. How did we ever manage to turn mens’ heads when we had so little to work with I’ll never know. And today all the girls want to talk about is solitude and angst and now they’ve got all the deodorants and creams and I don’t know what else for the most confidential uses. Us, we used cotton sheets cut in the shape of a ‘T’ over and over again until they wore out. Plus we hung out our washing over the balcony or in the yard and everyone in the neighborhood knew our time of the month. Well you can just imagine the gossip, seeing as how some of the local women were keeping track. Why, you heard things like, Did you see, Karatsolias’s wife is late with her monthlies? Nothing on the line today, what’s going on? maybe she’s in a family way? Today, nobody can tell one way or the other. Sure, sure, no more flowers that bloom in the springtime for me, I know that’s what you’re thinking. But I still buy the sanitary pads just so I can see the look on you-know-whose face. Still, they’re like a little friend sitting there in my handbag, even if I don’t use them all that much.