Authors: Pavlos Matesis
Back then, before the war, the women used to suckle their kids right on the front step with their breast showing, and there wasn’t a husband who said a word, of course I’m talking about the lower classes of women. But they were proper ladies in every other respect and if a stranger so much as looked at his wife sideways the husband would beat her black and blue if he was a bit of a pipsqueak. But if he had some muscle and some guy dared to steal a glance at his wife he’d whip the piss out of the guy instead. Even during the Occupation men didn’t give
nursing
mothers a second look, not the locals anyway. Me, maybe I was only thirteen years old, but they were always gobbling me up with their eyes. In fact, a couple of them even invited me to the dance academy. Don’t you dare or I’ll beat you within an inch of your life was Mrs Kanello’s advice when I asked her (I never asked my mother about matters of morality, since she considered herself a collaborator and a compromised woman, on account of how Italians visited her).
The dance academy used to be a former lumber warehouse. For the town pharmacist, a certain Mr Patris who rented the top floor, it was an affront to his personal honour, he had this French wife, you see, and she didn’t really have much time for Rampartville high society. The dance academy was for men, strictly. Society mothers sent their sons there for social
polishing
. Girls learned to dance from their mothers, or arranged for private lessons at home from the academy. The dance master Mr Manolitsis taught the tango, the fox trot and the waltz mostly, plus the rhumba and the hesitation waltz. Come
Liberation
, he started teaching swing. He was plumpish, short and light-footed and he wore high heels and he always danced the lady’s role himself, and when he went by on his way to church he always greeted us politely. After ten lessons the most advanced pupils danced with each other and Mr Manolitsis took on the next group of beginners. But even when the lessons were over and the pupils graduated, they didn’t leave. They
spent their afternoons at the academy, it was like a kind of social club and everybody there dreamed of dancing with a real woman, not with some classmate or other.
Still, a few girls managed to sneak in. But if they did they could say goodbye to their good name, at least till they got
married
. That’s how you never saw a woman go near the place. Later in the afternoon grown men would show up. They would dance with one another, men and boys, taking turns leading, so nobody’s masculinity would suffer. They even say high school kids used to smoke cigarettes in there.
That was one of the things the grown-up women talked about at our get-togethers at Mrs Kanello’s place. In wintertime we sat in a circle, you see, we were used to sitting in a circle around a charcoal brazier. So there we sat in a circle, with nothing in the middle, who could afford charcoal? Aphrodite’s ma would drop by too, always brought her crocheting, she did, the same old lace for the dowries. Can you believe it? after Liberation she actually found some customers, everything she crocheted for her
daughter
during the Occupation she sold as a good price, why even a British officer bought some.
So we sat in a circle around the charcoal brazier that wasn’t there, each of us with a blanket thrown over our laps to keep warm, and to hide our flab, cracked Mrs Kanello. But she avoided making remarks about flesh if my mother was around; Kanello was what you’d call a born self-taught gentlewoman. She’d steer the conversation around to social life in
Rampartville
, or politics. At least we’re rid of those bastards the
royals
, she said. Just wait’n see what happens if the Brits try and stuff them down our throats after we win, it’ll be the partisans all over again. Then my mother would open her mouth and
disagree
, You can’t have Greece without a king, she said.
At Mum’s forty-day memorial service I got it from Mrs Kanello how right after her first Italian, Signor Alfio, she ran to Father Dinos to confess her sins and – this is the priest telling
Kanello, mind you – what was really bothering her worst was the royal family. (Father Dinos was the biggest gossip in the neighbourhood; if you wanted everyone to know your deepest secret, just go and confess, so be it.) Mother was a royalist. She believed the Allies would win and bring back the Crown with full honours. The worst thing for Ma was sinning with the enemy, said the priest; how could a turncoat and an adulteress like her bear to live in the same country with the royal family, that was so honest, such a shining example? Don’t worry your head, Asimina, the priest told her – what a nut he was! – how are you supposed to keep your kids alive? If I was in your place I’d be a whore too. Get a load of this, Rita’s sweetheart the
whore-priest
calling her a ‘whore’. That’s when Mother really hit
bottom
, said Kanello. She always knew she was a turncoat, but a whore? Never even crossed her mind. So when the priest called her one there went her self-respect.
Well, naturally, back then I didn’t know what they were
talking
about, sitting around the imaginary charcoal brazier; all I could think about was that before the war we used to put
aluminium
foil over the coals to keep them burning longer.
Politically
speaking, I didn’t have a clue.
The better class of people in Rampartville, they didn’t think too highly of the partisans. After the first year of the
Occupation
, almost all the more affluent homes in town began to invite the Italians in. Some even opened their doors to the Germans, they were bullheaded, the Germans I mean, wouldn’t set foot in the house of a conquered people. But the Italians, talk about friendly. Why, open your door and they’d come strolling right in, with all the gratitude in the world. They weren’t even too proud for our place, dirt floor and all. I know, I know, Signor Alfio and Signor Vittorio, they weren’t exactly the cream of the crop you’ll say.
Homes like that, they didn’t respect the partisans at all, that much I picked up from Kanello, and later from Salome.
Sometimes
,
for their evening parties they hired the Tiritomba clan to put on a sketch, and Italians would be there. They were always good for a laugh, the Italians I mean, even if they didn’t understand a word, applause too; as obliging as can be. One time Mlle Salome took me along for a bit role. You don’t have a speaking part, she went; just stand still and I shove you towards Adrianna, and she shoves you back at me, nothing to be scared of.
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.