The Daughter (11 page)

Fanis and I stopped playing, collected whatever snails we could gather, and went home. We told Ma and I was scared because she said, The animals have turned their backs on our city, animals know when there’s danger. Now great tribulations lie in store for us, Mother said, and I was scared; I didn’t know what that word meant and that made me even more scared.

We had trouble getting home seeing as the Germans had the neighbourhood sealed off. The Tiritomba family troupe just managed to clear town in their jitney, and all because of a
misunderstanding
: they thought the army cordon was for them, but that’s Mlle Salome for you, always putting on airs. Because the day before she stole a goat from some collaborator, she thought that was why, and they pretended they were going on tour. But the Germans, they knew what they were doing, you think they’d go sealing off a whole district for some Greek goat, which turned out to be a nanny-goat? No, the reason was because they knew Mrs Chrysafis’s son was coming. I know who
double-crossed
him, but I’m not talking. Don’t want to lose my
pension
, the guy’s got a top position in both parties, one after the other.

Mrs Chrysafis lived in this narrow two-storey house on the little square, on the opposite corner from Liakopoulos’, the collaborator with the potatoes: her son was in the partisans, went by the name of Valiant. The poor kid wasn’t all that bright, how many times did Mrs Kanello tell him to be careful, but he wouldn’t listen. So every so often he snuck into town to bring his mother food; she was a widow, you know. That son of hers name of Valiant was really a kind of partisan alias, he was a
gendarme
before, and the finest-looking man I ever saw or ever hope to see, one look at him and you’d say, Holy Virgin, just let me have him and I’ll never look at another man again, I swear. And if they ever build a Paradise just for men, that Paradise would be for him, for his perfect beauty. Mind you he might have been ugly, but for me he was handsome; today I can’t really
recall what he looked like exactly and if you showed me his
picture
today I don’t think I could recognize him. Tall, like a fine steel blade with that golden hair of his, you’d swear his whole body quivered like the surface of the water in that uniform of his. A handsomer man you couldn’t hope to find, just thinking about him was enough to stop your tears and heal your hurt. He was a gendarme. But when the partisans started up he was one of the first to join. It was a former mate of his ratted on him, I won’t say who, you think I want to lose my meal ticket on account of a man I can’t even remember his face; plus. I may be in hot water for talking too much already.

He dressed up as a priest to sneak into town. But that night they were waiting for him, and at dawn they shot him in an alleyway then dumped his body in the public market, by the fishmongers’ stalls.

Mrs Chrysafis was waiting for him, nothing but boiled weeds that’s all she had to eat for two days, and she could only think of the food her hero was going to bring her. Mrs Kanello spots him dumped on the ground eyes wide open next to a stack of crates full of eels. She was on her way home from her shift at the TTT – because of her work she had a safe-conduct.

And right through the German lines you go, Kanello; straight home and you get a two-wheeled cart with handles and a bowl of boiled chick-peas with olive oil and you go to Mrs Chrysafis’s place. Eat Chrysafina, eat, you tell her. But Mrs Chrysafis turns angry. What for? my son is bringing me food; but it was as though she knew something was wrong, so she took a few bites. And then Kanello, you tell her, Come along Chrysafina and bring the cart, poor woman, you say, Time to bring your son home.

At the public market the two of them loaded him into the cart, arms and legs dangling over the sides; he was a big man, too big for the cart. A handful of small-time black marketeers were standing around, the ones with the eels, but they just 
looked on, didn’t want anybody accusing them of helping. Mrs Chrysafis went first, pulling the cart behind her, and Kanello took up the rear, yanking the ends of the dead man’s cassock out from the wheels. Matter of fact an eel ended up on top of him and one of the black marketeers snatched it up and threw it back into the crate. Along they went, with Kanello trying to stuff the dead man’s arms and legs back into the cart and Mrs Chrysafis towing until she fell down in a faint. Then some people came out of a store and splashed water over her. She came to, and that’s how it was that they brought the fair youth home to
prepare
him for burial. The Germans let them pass, just like that.

When they get to her front door Mrs Chrysafis lifts the bolt then turns and starts pummelling Kanello. Get out of here, I’ll look after him myself, go on, get out. And she hoists the body on to her back and lugs it up the stairs. The neighbourhood was still sealed off, for fear of trouble. But we didn’t say a word of protest. We only watched.

For two days and two nights she wailed over the body. Not with words; with sounds like the sea.

She closed her windows and her balcony door, but left the shutters open; staged her mourning just for us, she did. For two days and two nights, hysterically. We couldn’t hear a single word, nothing but sounds like the open sea. But we could see her dressed in black with a black kerchief over her head,
holding
her dead son’s cassock in her hands, lashing her body or throwing herself against the walls. Through the windows we could see Mrs Chrysafis appearing and disappearing like
someone
going by in the street or climbing on top of trunks, or tables as though she wanted to break through the ceiling and fly up to the sky.

The inside walls of her house were whitewashed, and the windows were narrow.

So we could see her clear as day, but bits at a time. Only glimpses of a huge black bat. Desperate to break free from its 
cage, she pounded against the walls, trying to find a way out. Like a huge, gawky, blind bird she was. But instead of flying towards the window, she kept crashing into the white walls.

At night she looked even larger, as the shadows looked bigger in the light of the acetylene lamp. The house was dark on the outside, and bright on the inside, besides the acetylene lamp, she put the electric lamp and the candles to burn, for her dead son to see better. She just didn’t want to close his eyes. We could see her, like a wild blackbird missing the windows, crashing into the walls, backing up and crashing into them yet again; and then she would climb up on to a table or a chair to catch her breath. Then her shadow would cover the whole ceiling, and after that she seemed to swoon and fall, we waited for her to come to, and then we caught sight of her again. Two whole days and nights we watched over her.

The first day we all stood there on the pavement across from her house and that night everybody crowded into our windows. The second night we forgot all about the curfew and, all of us women went out on to the pavement to mourn the fair lad, right outside her door. And inside she kept flitting back and forth like a bird trying to fly towards the light. The inside of her house brightly lit, and the front of it was darkest black. Nobody said a word to us about being out.

At dawn on the second day she came downstairs, opened the door and begged for food, she needed strength to keep up her lament. They gave her food, she ate, bolted the door again, and went back upstairs to mourn her son. We watched over her. Every so often one of us would have to leave for work, or to answer nature’s call, or to eat. Then someone else would take his place. Mrs Kanello left all her kids right in the middle of the pavement and went off to work. Don’t you budge, she told them, even if the Germans show up.

The Germans showed up. That evening it was. They stared at us, pretending to be puzzled. One of them stopped in front of 
Mother but before he could say a word she tells him in a soft voice, We’re watching over her. And pointed to the bat coming and going in the lighted windows, that was illegal too, the
blackout
was in force. Maybe he understood, maybe he didn’t, but he left, the German did. Laughed and went away.

On the third morning comes Father Dinos, scowling like an icon and all dressed up in his finest vestments, and shouts Chrysafina! Here’s where your dominion ends! And he broke down her door and carried the body away for burial. She
followed
along behind like a little girl, speechless.

There were a lot of us at the funeral. In the front of the church lay the dead man in an uncovered coffin, carefree now, his eyes still open, like a tiny rowing boat cutting its way through the waves without so much as a farewell for us. After the burial mother kissed Mrs Chrysafis’s hand and says, Don’t waste your tears, you’ll never get over it. Until you die. That was when some woman shouted, What’s that whore doing here? and Mother said, Forgive me, all of you, and took my hand and we left the cemetery. They didn’t put a cross over his grave; just a tiny little flag made from a white sheet of paper, with a blue cross painted on it. Beats me where they found the coloured pencil.

Every day Mrs Chrysafis went to the cemetery and ate a
little
earth from her son’s grave. That’s what we heard from Thanassakis, Anagnos’s kid, the school master from Vounaxos village. If you can imagine, the yellow-skinned kid would play right there, in the cemetery. Afterwards, we heard the same story from Theofilis the sacristan; saw her with his own eyes and being as he was a bit of a gossip he told Father Dinos,
figured
he shouldn’t be giving her communion. If I was in her shoes, I’d eat dirt, Theofilis, he said, so get the hell out of my sight and go and sweep out the church, tomorrow’s Sunday.

Subsequently, after the so-called Liberation it was, some
partisans
’ committee wanted to lay down a marble gravestone, like 
a kind of monument. But Mrs Chrysafis wouldn’t hear of it. All she wanted was to eat the earth from her dead son’s grave, a
little
at a time, just a pinch. Like holy communion, said Mrs Kanello. Kept it up even after UNRRA appeared on the scene. I don’t know what happened to her, but she was certainly still alive when we had the Junta; every three days she’d pay a visit to the cemetery, never moved to Athens, did Mrs Chrysafis. Time passed, and I lost track of her. As a matter of fact, it was Mlle Salome who asked after her, years later, when we met in some hick town near Grevena it was, and me on tour at the time. She wasn’t a ‘Mademoiselle’ any more as it turned out; now she was the wife of the biggest butcher in town. When I say ‘on tour’ you might get the idea I was the star. But at least I got some lines of my own, a whole half page of dialogue, in fact. The actress who was supposed to play the role got knocked up along the way, so they rang me; of course I did it on the cheap, extra’s pay, but when opportunity knocks, who’s going to spoil it by haggling? It was summer anyway; better than spending my
holiday
in the apartment.

So there we were, playing in Grevena, and nipping up to this nearby town for a quick show. I head for the local coffee-house. Nice town, know what I mean, I tell the owner (some town, the place was a run-down dead-end if I’ve ever seen one, but me, all my life I’ve been buttering up people to survive, and believe you me I’ve survived): anyway, the guy was so flattered – here’s an actress from Athens talking to him, after all – he wanted to stand me a spoonful of vanilla treacle, but what I was after was to keep my lipstick in his icebox. It was summertime and the damn thing was melting all over the place. I always let the
village
coffee-house owners fight it out for my favours; had to
protect
my lipstick, you know.

So there I am in this hick town near Grevena, back during the Papagos and Purefoy administration it was – you know, the field marshal and the ambassador – just after I nip over to the
coffee-house
 
to pick up my lipstick round about midday I say to myself, why not take a peek into the butcher’s, right next door, the habit stuck with me from the Occupation, butcher shops were romantic places back then. Across the street some men were taunting me in a highly unseemly fashion; forget them, I say to myself. In fact I’ll just hang around at bit longer, let them tease me; give my stock in the company a boost. So I turn my back on them – I was always more spectacular from behind – by then they were howling Hey look, it’s Raraou! they must have seen my name on the poster under my picture. I’m pretending to be eyeing some ox liver when all of a sudden I hear a woman’s voice from inside.

‘Why if it isn’t Roubini! Roubini? You are Roubini, aren’t you?’

It was Mlle Salome, of all people. Last time I saw her was that day during the Occupation when we were gathering snails under Deviljohn’s bridge and she drove by in the wood-burning jitney clutching a caryatid.

Lo and behold, there she sat at the cashier’s window in the butcher’s shop looking like Cleopatra sitting on the Sphinx, and behind her on the walls were pictures of the royal couple (the late and former, these days), and Christ. Next to them was a
picture
of an Alpine meadow full of woolly Merino sheep, an ad of some sort.

Mlle Salome was sleek and portly now, but I recognized her right off. Just imagine the hugs and kisses and the tears, why she even gave me two pounds of mince meat, plus she ran over to the coffee-house, got my lipstick and put it in the refrigerator where they kept the best cuts.

Remember, they were the ones who went on the lam from Rampartville just before the Germans sealed off the
neighbourhood
. Actually stole a goat with her own two hands, she did; they thought that was the reason. There was only one way to save themselves: take to the road. But Mlle Salome
abandoned
the troupe when they hit this particular town, eight months after the premiere. That was where the town butcher asked for her hand in marriage. What swept me away were his thigh cuts, that’s how she put it, and so I bade farewell to Art, she said, waving at the joints of meat hanging all around her.