The Daughter
Authors: Pavlos Matesis
a novel
Pavlos Matesis
translated from the Greek by Fred A. Reed
Dedicated to Martis
CALL ME RARAOU
if you don’t mind.
Roubini’s my Christian name, of course, but when I made my theatrical debut they baptized me Raraou and now that I’ve arrived – look, I’ve even got it jotted down right here on my identity card: ‘Mademoiselle Raraou. Thespian’, so they’ll carve it on my gravestone, too. Quite honestly, I don’t care if I never see Roubini again. Don’t want to know about her. Same goes for my last name, Meskaris. Crossed it out long ago.
I was born in Rampartville, the capital city, even if it’s only a provincial capital. Guess I was around fifteen when we left the place. Me and my ma and half a loaf of dry bread between us, a couple of months after they made a public spectacle of her it was, they were still celebrating that so-called Liberation of theirs. Not even wild horses could ever drag me back there. Ma neither. Buried her right here, I did, in Athens, the only luxury she ever asked for, her last will and testament. ‘My child, I’m dying, but grant me a last wish, bury me here. I never want to go back there’. (She may have been born in the place but she never said the word ‘Rampartville’.) ‘I don’t care how you do it, just get me a lifetime grave. I never made you do anything else. Don’t you ever let them take me back, not even my bones.’
So I bought the plot, nothing special really. And visit her now and then, maybe take her a flower, or a chocolate, or sprinkle her with a few drops of cologne – that I do on purpose because as long as she lived she never let me, not once: that kind of thing was for sinful women she said. Once in her life she wore cologne I think. At her wedding. Well, now I sprinkle on all the cologne I want and, if she doesn’t like it, just let her try and stop me. The chocolates are because she was always telling me how she used to dream of chocolate during the four years of the
Occupation
: just one piece of chocolate of her own to eat, that’s all she
wanted. But afterwards the bitterness came over her, real
bitterness
; she wouldn’t even glance at chocolate.
So I’ve got my own little apartment, two rooms plus hallway, and my government pension as daughter of a fallen hero of the Albanian campaign. My actor’s pension should be coming through any day now too, just as soon as all the forms get approved, and generally speaking I’m fortunate and happy. Got no one to worry about, no one to love, no one to mourn. I do have a stereo and records, left-wing songs mostly. I’m a royalist myself, but those left-wing songs just turn me to jelly.
Fortunately
I’m so fortunate.
My father, he was a tripe washer by trade, but we never told anybody. He used to buy the tripes and the guts from the slaughterhouse, rinse them out and turn them inside out one at a time for making spiced liver sausages to roast over the coals. I remember him as a young man, he would have been what? around twenty-four at the time? What I mean is. I remember his 1932 wedding picture; if you really want to know, I don’t remember what he looked like. When they called him up in 1940 me and my two brothers were already born: one of them is older than me. He’s still alive somewhere. I think.
My only memory of my father is from the call-up when Mother and I saw him off at the railway station. He was so afraid he’d miss the train he went rushing on ahead with Mother
hurrying
after him, dragging me along behind her: the tears were pouring down her face but she didn’t care what people would say. I remember seeing my father standing there in the railway carriage going off to war, and us, all we had to our name was that one twenty drachma piece. Mother tried to hand it to him but he wouldn’t touch it. Then she threw it through the train
window
; at first he was crying, then he starts cursing and throws it right back at her, and Mother picks it up off the ground and heaves it into the carriage with all her might. All the other recruits are laughing, but the coin drops inside. She yanks me
by the arm and we leave on the run. Now, did he ever pick it up, or did someone else grab it? We never knew. That was the last time I can remember seeing my father as a young man, from the front. Mostly I remember his back as he sat hunched over,
rinsing
out the guts. So I keep in touch with his face in that old
wedding
photo. I forget dead people, people who disappear from my life, people like that: what I mean to say is, I forget what they look like. All I know is, they’re gone. Even Ma. She was over seventy-five when she died, but when you come down to it I never really had a good close look at her, so I keep in touch with her in the wedding photo where she’s a girl of twenty-three, that’s a good forty years younger than me. So I’m not bashful about taking her chocolates, now she’s like my daughter.
Age-wise
, I mean.
Thank God, for the war in Albania I always say. At least I got a pension out of it. Frankly I couldn’t care less if our nation was defeated. Anyway, you think maybe it’s the first time? Me, I’m as nationalist and as royalist as they come, but a pension’s a
pension
. Who’s going to look after a poor orphan girl like me?
So when Father went off to the war with the twenty
drachmas
, we went home, tidied up the place, bought some bread on credit and Mother took on a job as housekeeper in a good
family
and did sewing at night on that little mini sewing-machine of hers, the manual one. She wasn’t a real dress-maker, mind you: did things like blouses, underwear, kids’ clothing, helped out at funerals too – she made winding sheets for corpses. Every now and again we’d get a postcard from the front saying I am well best wishes. I would write the answer: I was just finishing my elementary school at the time. Mother, never went to school. ‘Dear Diomedes, the children are well I am working hard please do not worry take care of your health I kiss you by the hand of our daughter Roubini your wife Meskaris Asimina.’
I could never get it out of my mind that those cards of my father’s smelled of guts. That’s how I never could eat tripe, it
always reminds me of how human bodies smell. Couldn’t eat Easter soup either, even if I am a God-fearing person. Why just last year this impresario was making fun of me and saying How am I going to fit you into our new review Raraou? Nowadays people like to hear dirty talk but you, you’re such a little goody two-shoes.
Well maybe I am but the men always lusted after me. Still do, in fact.
This was the same impresario who used to stick a piece of styrofoam into his underparts to make a more manly bulge. Even on tour when we wanted go for a swim he used to stick a hunk of it in his swimsuit. All us girls in the troupe knew it so some of us would go feel him up, pretend sexy, but actually knock it out of place. But any girl who made that mistake would never work for his troupe again. I lost my job because when he started cursing me, Why you little slut and your bitch of a mother, for two cents I’d … I tell him. What with, smart ass? Styrofoam? So twice he kicks me in the behind. Big deal. Go on, kick away I say, you, you’re stuck with those two inches of yours till you croak and ain’t no plastic surgery can change it.
Well, maybe my father was skinny and hairy but he was all man. Our place only had one room with no partitions and an outdoor toilet. One time I saw him naked changing his
underpants
and let me tell you I really felt proud even though I
didn’t
understand why back then. My older brother, he couldn’t get along with my father. He was just a kid but he was always talking back: one day my father told him something when he came back from work, which he didn’t do much; usually he just went out into the back yard and rinsed out some tripe; brought the work home, you see. So my brother, he goes and throws some dirt into the big tub with the clean tripe and just like that he pipes up, ‘You ain’t a man.’ Remember, this is a thirteen-year-old kid talking. Anyway, that’s when my father speaks up. You’re no son of mine he says. Well, you ain’t no
father of mine you gut sucker, says my brother Sotiris. So go find yourself another father says my father and he goes into the house. Sotiris follows him inside, throws open the window and starts yelling Father! father! at every Tom, Dick and Harry passing by. And crying. Just imagine somebody going by in the street and hearing that. Then Mother gets up, closes the
window
, goes into the yard and rinses off the tripe. All set, she says: and he throws the tripe over his shoulder and leaves to deliver it to The Crystal Fountain, that was the name of the restaurant. Ma wipes her hands, covers the sewing-machine with a pillow-case and leaves; she had a neighbour woman’s body to wrap for burial. Mind they don’t go killing each other when your father gets back, you hear, she tells me. So when my father comes back he sits down on his bench in the yard
pretending
to smoke but I tell him, Come inside Pa, Sotiris has gone. And Father comes in and when Mother gets back from work she’s got sweet rolls for us. They’re in mourning, can’t eat sweets, she says. So we eat the rolls and Mother leaves again, We’re going to sit night vigil over her she tells my father, I’ll make the coffee, you go to sleep.
My brother Sotiris spent his evenings hanging around
outside
a house of ill-repute, Mandelas’ brothel it was called.
Rampartville
had three whorehouses all together but this was the place with the high-class patrons. I already knew what a
whorehouse
was and what they did inside. I actually set foot in one, during the Occupation. Must have been around thirteen I
suppose
: some Italian sent me on an errand. But I didn’t see
anything
reprehensible; they even treated me.
One other time I went calling on the whores, a couple of months later. Our parish priest, name of Father Dinos, sent me, from Saint Kyriaki’s church. Our house was right behind the sanctuary, you see, and every morning on the dot of half past six Father Dinos appeared. He was our alarm clock. And on the dot of half past six, he’d go round to the back wall of the sanctuary
for a piss before mass. Time to get up for school, Ma would call out. ‘Father Dinos just pissed.’ On account of we didn’t have a clock at our place so that was the only way we could be on time for school; if we were late the teacher would whack us with a ruler, five times on each hand. So one day during the
Occupation
, back when we were just about to break our record,
twenty-six
days without bread – boiled weeds was all we had to eat – and we were really curious to see how long we could last … like I was saying, on the twenty-sixth day, Father Dinos calls me over, ‘You’re a good girl’, he says. ‘I want you to run an errand for me, but you mustn’t tell anybody.’ He takes me into the church, and then into the sanctuary, I knew women weren’t allowed in there. Don’t be afraid, come on in, Father Dinos says. You’re still without sin. So he plunks this chunk of holy bread wrapped in an embroidered cloth napkin into my hands. I try to refuse, I’ll sell myself before I’ll feed you on charity was what Ma used to say. But the priest wouldn’t take no for an answer. You know The Crystal Fountain restaurant? he asks. Of course I did: the Germans were using the place as a canteen. Go and ask for Madame Rita and give her this. Tell her it’s from Father Dinos, she’ll understand.’ And I stand there gaping at him. ‘She’s a poor woman without any means of support and it’s our
Christian
duty to assist her. Off you go now, and be careful nobody steals it from you, and don’t forget to bring back the napkin; it belongs to my wife.’
I knew who Madame Rita was, all right; she was the number one whore in Rampartville, and she worked in the highest-class whorehouse, plus she did Germans on the side. She was rich, and she was tall. Walking along all I could think of was how scared I’d be because I’d never seen a German so close up; I was so scared I forgot to smell the crusty white holy bread. All of us were terrified of the Germans because they never spoke. The Italians we got to like because they laughed, teased the women in the street and sometimes threw bread to the kids. Little
loaves of army bread they called
paniota
. So when I got to The Crystal Fountain my legs were like rubber imagining how scared I’d be. From hunger too, maybe. Ma wouldn’t let us walk unless we had a very good reason, every step is a wasted calorie (that was a new word she’d learned) and every step was one step closer to the Grim Reaper.
So anyway I walk into The Crystal Fountain. The place is full of Germans eating, fortunately, me they didn’t even turn around to look at me: the waiter comes over, a Greek he was. What do you want, little girl? he asks (For reasons of hunger I was kind of underdeveloped for my age, didn’t start my
monthlies
until I was seventeen, if you can imagine.) I ask for Madame Rita. The waiter gives a kind of vulgar laugh. Hey Rita, another surprise from the reverend! he calls out. And Madame Rita gets up from another table. She’s all woman, but nice, really nice. What do you want sweetheart? she asks me. I give her the
message
and the holy bread. Ah, from the good father, she says. Here, sweetie, Mmnnh. And she gives me a kiss. What a nice lady, she looked like she was so happy. Pretty old too, I think to myself. Old to me the thirteen-year-old is what I mean to say. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-six at the time.
Anyway
, it was a big thing for me to meet her, like being socially accepted in a way. Why, I was so excited I even told Mother, even though I swore to the priest I wouldn’t tell a soul. During the Occupation my mother stayed at home. There was no work, only two or three homes in Rampartville were hiring cleaning ladies, besides, who needed a seamstress for things like breeches and kids’ clothing? They didn’t even sew up the dead in
winding
sheets any more. People were buried wearing whatever they had on when they died. Mother still did the night vigils out of respect for the departed but she could only come back at dawn. The curfew was in force back then, from seven o’clock at night.
I hardly get Madame Rita’s name out before Mother slaps me. You should have brought it here, she said. That was the first
time she ever ordered me to disobey, a priest too. I cried, because it was cold as well. Mother was working at the
sewing-machine
and to comfort me she let me give her a hand. She was unstitching our flag, the one we hung up beside the front door the day my father left, and one other time, too, when our army took some city or other somewhere in Albania. Korce I think it was. Now was the Occupation and the flag was worse than
useless
, it was downright dangerous especially if they ever searched our house. They searched all the houses, a Greek interpreter and two Germans. At first they sent Italians, but the Italians always got involved in small talk with the Greeks, so the
Germans
relieved them of that job. But they never got around to searching our place, which I took as some kind of social
humiliation
. Anyhow, on the subject of flags, I never kept one around the house again. I may be a nationalist but I never could figure out what good they’re for, except maybe in a patriotic number or two in some musical review or other.