The Daughter (12 page)

She looked wonderful, even if she did have varicose veins. The butcher turned out to be the ideal husband, worshipped her like a goddess, gave her two kiddies. Just in the nick of time, dear, she tells me, I was over thirty-eight but in the maternity hospital I gave my age as thirty-four, I know I was taking a chance, I say to myself, but I never told the invaders my age and I’m not about to change now. Better die in childbirth. But I made it! Two kids after forty. As she talked she kneaded the mince meat, her fingers were full of rings, she was a real princess now, thanks to that butcher of hers. That night they came to the show. Darling, you were born for the stage, she told me afterwards. Remember I always said so, back before the war even? Who gave you your first role, back then in Rampartville remember? Remember how hungry we were? I still miss it a
little
bit to tell you the sinful truth; my waist was as slim as a wasp’s, remember how I used to look?

Listen to that, Salome missing the hunger! I asked her about the rest of the Tiritomba family.

Well, to tell the truth, their last name wasn’t really
Tiritomba
. And they weren’t real stage people either. Salome was from Rampartville on her father’s side, the place across from ours was her family’s, she was even engaged, before the war that is. It just happened that her sister Mrs Adrianna married an entertainer, still, deep down she was a housewife. The guy was from Salonica, name of Zambakis Karakapitsalas. Married for love, mutually. He had a troupe of travelling players, even acted himself. People said he even used to have a dancing bear in the troupe, before Adrianna, that is. 

So, this guy Zambakis Karakapitsalas had the most lavish sets and costumes of any road show.

Anyway, this opera company from Sicily goes bust in Salonica and Zambakis, who was a young man at the time, somehow scrapes together enough to buy the whole show, lock stock and barrel, even though it’s all opera leftovers. That’s how he made his name, putting on
Cavalleria Rusticana
or
The
Intrepid
Albanian Maid
with the same stage settings; in the
Unknown Woman
– get this – the chambermaid making her entrance in a broad-brimmed hat and petticoats. And the female lead in the
Shepherd Lass of Granada
appeared in Greek national costume along with lace gloves and parasol from
La Dame aux
Camélias
(which he changed the title to
Consumptive for Love
). Well, you make do with what you got.

He and Mrs Adrianna made a perfect match from day one, except he was the jealous kind, wouldn’t let her out of his sight, even dragged her along on tour, the man was a bit of a
hotblood
. If you’re not here when I want you, I’ll do it with
somebody
else, he said, just as barefaced as that. But they lived happily, seeing as how Adrianna had a bit of the wanderlust
herself
, liked new places. Before the war in Albania (fight over a country like that? Big deal!) she visited 570 villages and towns on all her various tours, picked up some wonderful home-made dessert recipes along the way; Mrs Adrianna was just wild about cooking. Me on the stage and you at the stove. Zambakis was always telling her tenderly. They had a daughter, too.
Fortunately
for them, on account of two plays in their repertoire had little orphan girl roles, and Mrs Adrianna always blessed her child before she went on stage to play the orphan.

Hubby wouldn’t let her set foot on stage though, except to sweep up after the show. I want my wife to be an honest woman, the poor guy tells her. So she ran the wardrobe department: she was the one who mended Tosca’s or Marguerite the
consumptive’s
evening gowns, glued the sets for Nero’s palace back 
together when it got ripped in transit, and minded her husband in the bargain, particularly when he was playing a role where he had to wear a fustanella, she would un-eye him as a
precautionary
measure, and double-check to make sure he was wearing his drawers. Because one night the rogue slipped by her and
suddenly
there he was, dancing a folk dance in his fustanella with no drawers on, wanted to impress some young lady in the
audience
so it seems. That was when Mrs Adrianna whipped him for the first time. The first time, and the last time. No wonder, you’ll say, never gave her cause, never went on stage bare-
bottomed
again.

They reached Rampartville in October of 1940, late in the month, just a little before ‘No’ day, as luck would have it. They only had one work lined up.
The Orphan’s Daughter
. The
daughter
in question had to be five or six years old, so they announced a contest: all families with daughters were invited.

All the high-class mums with daughters took on seamstresses to get ready for the audition. But talk about good luck, that very same day Mlle Salome drops by to order tripe for her fiancé, takes one look at me. Diomedes, she says to my father, your daughter’s a natural for the role, let the kid do it – and pick up a few drachmas while she’s at it.

Next day she takes me to the cinema herself, the ‘Olympian’ it was called, and they picked me, unanimously; have to thank Mlle Salome, she was the first one to unearth my natural talents. They didn’t pick me just because I happened to be the tripe merchant’s daughter, no, they saw that inner spark of mine and that’s the story of how I got started on my future career.

So I played the part which put the high-society mums in one fine dither because some gutwasher’s kid beat out their precious little darlings, not to mention all the seamstress money. My part only lasted two minutes, no lines to speak either; I played this little girl whose mother was always beating her and sending her to her illegitimate mother-in-law and she, the mother-in-law, 
would send her right back again, anyway, generally speaking, they made a football out of me, right up to the final curtain.

The premiere, which took place on October 26th 1940, was my triumph. The audience, all high-society people, was relieved when they saw the kid getting slapped around and tossed to and fro like an old rag doll; that’s what my part was. And on account of how back then nobody played
expressionistic
, all the slaps were real naturalistic and my head was spinning and I was seeing double, not to mention them pitching me back and forth across the stage, but the leading lady wasn’t all that strong so I fell plop on to the floor like a ripe watermelon, and a cement floor it was too. But even then I didn’t let out a peep, not a tear; from that moment on, I was in it for the glory. Got paid, too, three drachmas for the premiere: probably to make sure I’d show up for the next performance. Of course I played the second night, got another three drachs, which I handed over to my mother, and that was how I entered the world of the
Theatre
.

On the twenty-sixth was the premiere, my moment of glory as the motherless child, and on the twenty-eighth the war breaks out, you’d have sworn somebody was out to sabotage me, artistically speaking. Zambakis, he’s called up on the spot and gets himself killed even before he reaches the front, kicked in the head by a mule and that was curtains, so to speak; end of career. And us, as a nation, we have to go and say that cursed ‘No’, just to spoil my future. Anyway, fatherland comes first, even if you can’t see it.

Mlle Salome’s future was futzed with that ‘No’ of Mr Metaxas’, he was prime minister back then, God curse the ground that covers him: there. I’ll say it, even though I am a nationalist. That’s when her fiancé leaves for the front. Scared out of his wits and miserable, but her fiancé all the same. Not that she really wanted him; the whole thing was Mrs Kanello’s doing, August 15th it was the day they torpedoed the armoured 
cruiser
Elli
. The wedding date was set for October 28th, after the last performance. Mrs Kanello liked playing the
matchmaker
; even today she’s always harping on the matter, but you won’t catch me getting involved in any love match, not on your life.

So the moment he hears the declaration of war on the
coffee-house
radio, Mr Fiancé dashes off to enlist, primarily he was deserting, actually, running out on love. Snuck out of town, he did, so not even his fiancée could catch a glimpse of him.
Actually
, it was really Mrs Kanello he was afraid of, afraid she would beat him and force him to get married, right then and there, at the railway station.

Not too much later Mlle Salome gets a card from the front and shows it all around, just as proud as she can be. Loaned him to the nation, was how she put it. What are you so proud of? says Mrs Kanello, believe you me, I have to crawl on all fours to set you up and now you go lending him out, the nation is better than you, that’s what you’re saying?

Kept his picture on her dresser, Mlle Salome did; during the Occupation she would kind of look sideways at it and say, His face reminds me of somebody, but who? Us too, his face reminded us of somebody, impossible to say who.

Until one fine day during the Occupation, Mrs Adrianna’s daughter Marina goes and draws a moustache on the fiancé’s photo, just to annoy Salome. Mrs Adrianna takes one look and goes, Holy Christ and Blessed Virgin! She shows the photo to Mrs Kanello and she goes, Holy Christ and Blessed Virgin! all this time, and we never noticed! They muster all their courage and show Salome the photo, but just as she’s about to sigh with longing, she gets a good look at it and goes, Holy Christ and Blessed Virgin, why, he’s the spitting image of Hitler.

That’s when we realized just who the fiancé reminded us of. Aye, so that’s why the Germans show you all so much respect when they search your house, says Mrs Kanello. 

From that moment on Mlle Salome put him out of her heart once and for all, like a true patriot. Recovered from the complex she got when her fiancé stopped writing after the first postcard (we never found out whether he ever came back, nobody ever heard a word about him, down to this day). But she goes over to Kanello’s and says, Pay me back for the engagement rings, dear. That’s how we found out Mlle Salome bought the rings out of her own pocket. And she went back to her knitting, making sweaters for the partisans.

After Mrs Adrianna’s husband died – by then the
Occupation
was settling in for the long haul – she says to herself, That’s all for the artist’s life and the tour we’ll live and die right here in Rampartville, in our family home. Now she was a
forty-year-old
housework with an eighteen-year-old daughter and her
sister
Salome unmarried and almost-married, and the main thing in her mind was how would they survive and what would they have to eat. So Mrs Adrianna calls all her relatives, meaning her brother Tassis. He’s the one who had the little jitney, before the war he did the run between Rampartville and a couple of
villages
up in the mountains, full of scrub oak, goats and now
partisans
. He converted the jitney to a wood-burner. But business was slow; real slow.

They were fine for clothes though: still had the late lamented Zambakis’ stage wardrobe. All their artistic
accessories
were stored on the first floor, in memory of him; they lived on the second floor. Managed just fine what with bits and pieces from this heroine or that, especially Mlle Salome, she was always dressing up in cloaks and lace shawls and pill-box hats. Mrs Adrianna had a knack with the needle and thread, so she would model the costumes a bit, Madame Butterfly, Lady Frosini at Ali Pasha’s Court, the Unknown Woman, you name it. But Mlle Salome would wear the evening gowns as is, all she had to do was take them up a bit at the hem. Why, even the German patrols stopped to look, like the time she went out in 
a three-quarter cape, just like Errol Flynn in
Elizabeth and Essex
.

One time she even took the parrot along for a stroll. The bird was an engagement present from her former suitor and now it was all hers. When we took Korce, in Albania. Mrs Kanello taught the parrot to sing ‘Mussolini, macaroni’, you’d swear it was Sophia Bembo, the singer, even if he only learned one line. Come the Occupation, they locked him in the house and tied his beak shut on account of how he would pipe up with the song; even the parrots in our neighbourhood are in the Resistance, Mlle Salome used to needle us, back when we had Signor Alfio.

Come the second winter of the Occupation Mrs Adrianna took pity on me with that thin cotton skirt of mine; she brought me over to her place and fitted me in a fustanella. That’s when she found out I was wearing drawers made out of a flag. I tried it on. Looks great, she said. A bit long, but you’ll keep warm, poor kid. Wear it, and as soon as we’re liberated bring it back.

I liked it fine, even if fustanellas were men’s skirts and it was way too big for me. It came to below my knees and I held it up with a trouser belt just under my arms. Mother didn’t like it one bit but no way I was going to take it off, not when my bottom finally warmed up a bit.

But when it came to shoes the Tiritomba family truly
suffered
. Had to wear clogs, same as everybody else. All they had in the wardrobe was men’s clodhoppers with tufted toes. At first they sold off some of the small stuff for food, but then Mrs Adrianna put her foot down, It’s profanation of our dear departed, she said.

Back then we made the rounds of the villages, selling dowry supplies to the local yokels. Me, personally, I couldn’t sell eyes to a blind man, but I went along with Adrianna, to keep up her spirits. We traded hand-knitted goods and jersey underwear for a sack of wheat … Father Dinos’ wife even managed to sell off some of the priest’s vestments. And on the way back we
gathered
 
kindling for the charcoal brazier. Those outings of ours were pretty well organized affairs. I can tell you, several women all together, because if the peasants ran into a lone woman, they’d grab all her food, Even if they don’t rape us, Mlle Salome joked one time. Who could even think about rape back then?

But we went on other outings too, the sneaky kind. Mrs Kanello, Mrs Adrianna and her daughter Marina. Mlle Salome and me and our little Fanis – the two of us they dragged along as a kind of alibi, who was going to suspect a couple of little kids? Plus, seeing as we were so small it was easier for us to squeeze through the holes in fences. We set out fully loaded. That loony lady Kanello had us draped with hand-grenades and ammunitions of all kinds; we pretended we were off to pick dandelion greens, but what we really did was deliver the stuff to the contact who was that pipsqueak Thanassakis, the
schoolmaster’s
son from Vounaxos village. The man who took final delivery of all the weapons. Today he’s a top man on the
nationalist
side, but I’m not naming names, might cause him
embarrassment
.