The Daughter (23 page)

‘Give me some too,’ says the cripple.

She hands him the bottle, he takes a mouthful, Bitter, he says. Let’s get out of here, maybe we can find a café open, cool off a bit.

They start up the hill. Fortunately the fire has stopped. Raraou loops the rope over her shoulder, holds her mother’s 
hand and they move forward effortlessly, why, if I only had a scene like that to play in the movies, she thinks, I’d show them what it takes to be a star. Now she says ‘movies’ instead of ‘motion pictures’.

They move forward, the heat as intense as ever, her ma has recovered, but Raraou is holding her tightly by the hand as they start their way up the slope. Everything is closed tight, the
corner
café too and the cripple damns the heat, damns it’s mother, come on, he says, we’ll ask for water at some open window.

The houses are all one-storey affairs with two stairs, scraggly mulberry trees in front, shutters closed tight. One of the houses, the one there at the corner has its shutters open,
someone’s
standing there. Let’s knock, says the cripple. They advance cautiously lest the cart squeak, two caryatids look down on them from high atop the tile roof; the window is open,
someone
is watching them from inside, motionless.

Raraou is about to say ‘kind sir’ in a low voice, the window is in deep shade and the man inside is motionless, eyeing them. Perhaps he’s been watching them all this time. Raraou leaves the cart, goes up to the window with the open bottle, says ‘good day’ and is about to ask for water. She raises her eyes to speak; the man looking at them is a statue, a statue of a man’s bust standing on the windowsill. She goes back to the cart and they continue on. The cripple picks up a stone from his cart and flings it at the window as they go by.

‘How come you’re stoning the place, no-legs? We don’t even know them,’ says Raraou.

Now they’re going downhill for a bit. And her ma is feeling better.

She lets go of the rope and moves behind to guide the cart by the handles.

‘I told you never call me no-legs, skag,’ he says. And he picks up another stone from the cart, throws it and hits her ma in the back. Raraou sees, comes to a stop, brakes the cart to a halt, then 
lashes the cripple with the rope, without a word. He tries to
protect
himself but Raraou lashes him, weeping wordlessly, in a trance. The cripple starts shouting, Police, help, police! Then Raraou releases the chocks, the cart starts moving, picks up speed, rams into a wall and stops. Now the cripple says nothing. Raraou goes over to him.

‘How’d you like that? Want some more?’ she says.

But he says nothing, her mum is waiting further down the street, Raraou grabs the handles of the cart and they move off again, this time towards the fish market. Her mother is staring straight ahead. Whenever they have an argument her mother stares straight ahead, as if she were gazing out over a valley full of birds and flowers.

‘The food market’s just ahead,’ says the cripple, ‘there’s got to be a café open somewhere.’

At the corner a gypsy gives them water. His dancing bear is exhausted from the heat, sitting under a mulberry tree without its chain. But the gypsy’s not worried the bear will run away. Where would it run to?

A little under-age whore, bedraggled and miserable, is
standing
in front of the bear. Business stinks, she tells the deaf-mute, even the Allies can’t stand the heat. Still, she’s good-hearted and high-spirited. There she stands, right in front of the bear, trying to catch its eye, to make it get up and dance, finally she ends up dancing by herself, the whore does, legs spread apart like she was pissing and the bear just sits there clumsily. After, she reaches into her handbag and hands something to the
cripple
, here, poor guy, she says.

Thanks so much, says Raraou, and the cripple nudges her to move on; how low can you get, taking charity from whores!

The sun burns down from on high, hotter than ever; it’s nearly four o’clock but instead of lessening, the sunlight is becoming more intense. Let’s try the fish-market, says the cripple; come on, let’s get this show on the road, you’re worse 
than useless, the both of you; for nothing I put the bread on your table. Since the day Raraou threatened him with the cement, the insults flew more thick and fast than ever, but they hardly noticed, let him get it off his chest, she told her ma, all men are the same, let him yell, and let off steam. And the insults poured out, thanks to me you’ve got food to eat,
freeloaders
!

Freeloaders he called them, but he feared them too; at night when they chained him before they went off to bed, he didn’t utter a peep. Only one time he asked Raraou, Hey, you, why don’t you take me to see that MP of yours, maybe he can fix me up with a disabled veteran’s pension. But the cripple didn’t have any papers, couldn’t afford a fake army discharge
certificate
. Besides, who would believe a man of forty-five had fought in the Albanian campaign? He didn’t even have an ID card, in fact, he gave the police a wide berth, because he was mixed up in dynamite smuggling.

Raraou had never even considered saying a word to Doc Manolaras about the cripple, firstly, because she would have admitted to being a beggar, and mainly because she wasn’t
concerned
about the cripple’s welfare. In fact, she hated him, mostly because of the way he talked to her mum, calling her dummy like he did. But she didn’t show her hatred, just let him talk until we’re out of this thing, she reasoned.

And she towed the cart at a steady pace in the direction of the fish market. The bear had fallen asleep, soon the young whore gave up and lay down beside it.

It was roughly the time they always hit the fish market, because most of the fishmongers didn’t have refrigerators, they kept their fish on ice in fish-crates. Come midday when the ice melted, poor housewives would flock to the market looking for half-spoiled fish at half price. When they couldn’t sell
everything
, the fishmongers gave the leftovers to impromptu outdoor food stands which would fry them on the spot. Sometimes the 
odd rotten fish would be left over; those times the cripple would have priority over the other beggars who had their two legs, and those nights they’d have fish to eat; fry it enough and you hardly noticed the stink.

As they approached the cook stands, Hey, you two, the
cripple
tells his two women, get a load of that bloke with the gal on his back.

The sight piqued Raraou’s curiosity. But when they got closer, they saw he was only a porter, a young man, and the woman on his back was a full-size plaster statue, probably a caryatid from some demolition site somewhere.

‘Get yourself a little cart like mine, mate,’ the cripple joked. ‘Set her up in the market like these here women of mine do for me, and you’ll be raking in the dough.’

The porter was wearing a woollen vest; he smiled at them, amused at the joke, and walked on by. The caryatid was lashed carefully to the young porter’s back; her back was damp from his sweat-soaked vest. Raraou watched the caryatid bobbing along, face towards the sky with empty eyes, indifferent, what did she care, thought Raraou as she knotted the rope around her waist, they had begun to climb again.

She never could accept it, the cripple calling them ‘these women of mine’; it was a little as though they were engaged, gave the impression he was the one who decided when they would go out together, but Raraou knew their cooperation was only temporary, before they fell asleep she would tell her mother, Don’t let it worry you, we’re only working with a
cripple
for the time being, us, our future is ahead of us.

Raraou tried to avoid the fish-market; they didn’t have much water at the blockhouse, and what they did have they had to haul from far away, even though it was easier of late, they could use the cart to haul the can and the jug, instead of carrying them by hand; first they would leave off the cripple, then run off for water. Still, those half-rotten fish the fishmongers threw their 
way needed one hell of a washing. Plus, Mum’s hands would stink of rotten fish for days afterwards, and there was Raraou, dreaming of a life of perfume, just as soon as the pension came through, imagine all the bottles and flasks she would
accumulate
when she became an actress.

And so she towed the cart along with a gleam of triumph, but deep down, unwillingly. Fortunately there were no fish today, and the cripple was cursing, Double-dealing bastard
fishmongers
, sell everybody and his brother rotten fish and for me, nothing, can’t you see my wife is sick, and he pointed to her mum and Raraou picked up the pace, no sir, she didn’t want anybody thinking a fine lady like her mum had a cripple for a husband. Just then a little boy appeared, timidly dropped two little bags into the cart and rushed off.

Raraou stopped; behind her the cripple was laughing and wheezing. She turns, looks at him; he’d opened one of the bags.

‘Confetti! Nothing but confetti! Instead of charity we get confetti!’ says the cripple incredulously, throwing a fistful into the air.

‘Don’t waste it like that,’ says Raraou.

‘Don’t you worry, carnival’s a long way off.’ But he’s afraid of her, doesn’t throw another shred. Several pieces of confetti are stuck to his forehead. Her mother goes over to him, wipes it off with a handkerchief.

‘Nice tidy little wife I’ve got here,’ he calls out to the public, but nobody’s there, and when he turns to Raraou his laughter stops abruptly.

‘What are you looking at?’ he goes. ‘Come on, put some shoulder into it, let’s head for home, can’t you see there’s
something
wrong with your mum? I’ll throw in the rest of the day’s take,’ he says, pointing to Raraou’s mom. ‘For her. Something’s wrong with her; must be the heat.’

Raraou looks at her mother. Something had come over her again, but she wasn’t fainting, she was coming around, walking. 

‘I’m putting my mum in the cart,’ Raraou tells the cripple. Not asking, telling him. But he erupts.

‘You nuts? There’s no room, the cart can’t take the weight, you want to wreck my cart, is that it? Besides, you couldn’t
possibly
tow the both of us.’

‘I could so, I could so,’ says Raraou; but now her mum runs on ahead; she doesn’t want a seat in the cart.

‘We’re taking a short cut,’ the cripple decides, pointing in the direction. ‘Only it’ll be tougher, climbing the hill, and you’re worn out; can you do it?’

‘Don’t you worry about me, I can do it,’ says Raraou.

And they turn off on to the short cut back to the blockhouse. Raraou with the rope wrapped around her breast is trying to calm her mother. And as her mother walks on, she turns first yellow, then goes white as a sheet. Every so often she takes a swig of water from her bottle, they’d stopped at a café, bought a bottle of soda pop and filled up their bottle with water. Raraou bought the soda for her mum, but Mum won’t touch it, and the cripple sips away at it as they make their way up the hill. Now there are no houses to be seen, only red earth and the newly paved street. Got a real future, this place does, says the cripple, won’t be long before it’s full of apartment buildings, tell that MP of yours to buy a lot or two.

In front of them lay the hill.

Now they struggle past a cement factory. All around are walled-in lots with red earth, right next to the cement factory is a garden full of stark white statues. All for rich peoples’ villas, says the cripple. Statues and fountains, a whole garden in
marble
. Maybe the garden’s too small, maybe there are too many pieces, but the place looks congested, Raraou thinks to herself as they pass. Now she’s learned to use Athenian expressions, provincial turns of phrase would be the kiss of death for her
theatrical
career, suddenly the statues became whiter, Venuses, nymphs with dolphins, and Christs with lambs, even some 
elaborately sculpted crosses draped with ornamental
vine-leaves
, the Christs must be for a children’s graveyard, mused Raraou. As they go by her Mum slows to look at the profusion of statues: got to remember to bring her by this way another time, Raraou says to herself. Now they’re making their way uphill. The landscape is nothing but hills, and a lone tree, not one of the decorative kind; a homeless tree, unwatered.

Her mother is trudging up the slope bent forward, as if
walking
into the wind. The incline is steeper now, but they’ve almost reached the blockhouse, See what I mean, how much quicker it is this way? the cripple tells Raraou. Sure you get a bit tired but we’ll get there quicker and your mum can lie down. Remind her to drink the rest of the medicine. Or did she take it all?

Raraou said nothing, she wanted to save her strength. All along the way she did her best to conceal it, but now they could hear her breath coming in gasps, her mum turns to look, Raraou can’t stop, the gasping was coming on its own, You sound like a donkey in heat, says the cripple. He says it to perk her up, to encourage her, he wants to help. Raraou understands, wants to thank him. They’re just like partners, the two of them. Instead of saying it in words, she pulls the cart along faster. Her breath sounds like braying, she can hear it herself, yes, sounds funny, she thinks. Imagine what my public would say if they could hear me braying like a donkey on heat, she thinks. Fortunately I’m not on stage right this minute. And her little partner the cripple is urging her on, just a little further, he says, it’s almost half past six, we’re almost there. Let them have it, Raraou. Raraou, you’re tough as nails.

Raraou wants to respond, say something nice but she can’t go on, something’s wrong with her knees, her knees start to
wobble
. She stops, doesn’t fall, calls her mother to set the chocks under the wheels to keep the cart from rolling back down the hill.

‘Just a little minute,’ she begs. 

‘Take your time, partner,’ says the cripple, ‘take a breather’. And he looks at her with pride.

‘I don’t need a rest,’ she pleads. Not angrily, but as if she’s afraid of losing the race, today a prize awaits her, a crown of glory, what exactly she doesn’t know, but today she’s a star. She jumps across the drainage ditch, slices off a mulberry branch with her pen-knife, comes back, hands it to the cripple, and wraps the rope around her again.