The Daughter (6 page)

Anyway the partisans, they really disappointed me, as men. All us women used to whisper about them among ourselves. I imagined they were all like some kind of Captain Courageous in those penny novels Mlle Salome used to read us: real giants ten feet tall, well-fed with victory smiles just like the American actors in the movies after the war who went around liberating exotic countries. Mlle Salome worshipped the partisans, makes sense you’ll say, after all, she was from a left-wing family. Well, we used to get together at the Tiritomba family’s place before they went on the road, and trick our hunger with jokes. Aphrodite’s mother would be there with her lace, my mother would bring her mending, and Mrs Kanello would bring along 
fried chick-pea cakes for snacks. Everybody talked about what Mr Churchill said on the radio the night before. Mrs Adrianna Tiritomba was hard at work knitting a sweater from unravelled wool, the Partisan’s Sweater they called it, it was Mrs Kanello’s idea, just as they used to knit Soldier’s Sweaters when we had the war in Albania.

Mlle Salome was knitting a pair of breeches. One day she opens them out to measure, we do a double take, the things were a good six feet long, with a pouch the size of a kid’s head right between the legs. What in the world’s got into you, you made them big enough for three men, says Mrs Kanello. You’re only saying that because you’re a royalist and you want to bring down the Movement, snaps Salome. The partisans are giants and here you are, trying to tell me they’re midgets? Well, says Mrs
Adrianna
as she points to the pouch hanging there between the legs, If you’re starving you dream about bread. That set off a ruckus. But from that day on I got it into my head that the partisans were taller than normal people; that’s why I was so disappointed when I saw my first live specimens in the gaol-house kitchen that evening.

After we left the gaol house I felt sleepy and went right home to bed, so I missed it when Aphrodite expired. Signor Vittorio even came by but I told him Ma’s out and he left. After, I washed the dishes and cleaned up the floor, some little shoots were poking up through the earth again. In fact, over in the
pullet’s
corner the earth had started to sink, as though the pullet was sinking deeper and deeper into the ground.

I only made it to the funeral but I didn’t stick around for long, there was a memorial service close by, so little Fanis and I snuck over to get some sweets.

But I did go along on Aphrodite’s last outing, about a month before she died.

About a month before she died Aphrodite ups and says, Ma, take me for an outing, I want to go to the seaside. 

There was a little port about eleven kilometres from
Rampartville
by train, for the provinces back then it was an
enormous
distance, nothing like getting around in Athens these days with the trolley-bus. Of course it wasn’t the first time for me; before the war our school went on a trip there. But Aphrodite had never seen the water before, not once, she was always
making
plans to go, back before the war, but somehow things just never worked out. Come the Occupation there was no way you could go. The Germans had requisitioned the train and the only civilians who had permission to ride it were the black
marketeers
. So all poor Aphrodite could do was to stare at the sea from the top of a hill just up from the church, where we used to graze our dear departed pullet. Then all of a sudden, a month before she dies she comes out with, Ma, take me to the seaside.

Her mother Mrs Fanny had the windows closed and the
shutters
barred from a couple of days back. Keeping out the cold draughts, she said. But down deep she was getting the house ready for mourning. Got to let my husband know about the girl, I was supposed to tell Mrs Kanello for her. That’s when I
discovered
Aphrodite’s father was in the partisans but they kept it hush-hush and Mrs Kanello made me swear on the holy icons not to breathe a word to my ma, seeing as how because Signor Vittorio might catch on. Also she let drop that Mrs Fanny wasn’t getting along with her husband; an unfortunate marriage it was. Anyway, she tells me to tell the sick girl’s mother, God help him, Mrs Fanny if your husband hears about it and tries to come into town they’ll grab him and make mincemeat out of him.

On the spot Mrs Kanello up and leaves kids and husband behind, takes off from work just as bold as brass and goes off to look after her mother. (Now there’s an old strumpet if I ever saw one, ninety-six and still flirting with her grandchildren if you please, a temptress right up the last, old lady Marika was, and a real doll. I’ve got to admit it, I confess, even though she chewed the hell out of me when I went to her place with Signor 
Alfio. But now she’s gone to a better world by far, God rest her soul.)

At which point Mrs Fanny bars the front door too. The hunger was really something, but she was of good family so she wouldn’t dream of asking for food or fighting for a place in the queue at the soup kitchen. What was the use, anyway? The
consumption
inside her daughter kept getting bigger. Things went on that way for about a month, me, I’d forgotten they even existed, what with their house closed up tight and not a word. Only at night, sometimes, I heard a kind of howling sound, like a wolf. It was Mrs Fanny howling in her sleep, from hunger. Instead of dreaming dreams full of food to let off steam, all she did was howl, at least that’s how Mrs Kanello explained it to me after the war. I could hear the howling, for sure. If you’re not getting enough nourishment you don’t get a good night’s sleep, you see, and I asked Mother, what’s that noise? Go to sleep, she would say, it’s a jackal in town, or maybe the Germans are
torturing
someone at the Kommandantur. (She never had a bad word to say about the Italians.)

And one morning in April Mrs Fanny throws open all her doors and windows like she won the jack-pot. Neighbours, she calls out in a voice that sounded like she was laughing and at the same time tears were running down her cheeks, let’s go for an outing to the seaside. Doors popped open on all the balconies, but Mrs Fanny called on our little one-storey place first, and believe you me it was a big honour for my poor mother. Asimina, Aphrodite’s mother tells her, she’s lost all her blood, no chance anyone will catch the sickness. And she wants to go to the seaside.

And we all came out of our houses. How many women are we? asks one. They counted me as one of the women. Eleven altogether. My brother Fanis tagged along too. What with the train requisitioned by the Germans, we set out on foot for the port to give Aphrodite her first look at the sea and then say goodbye, that was always her wish before the war. 

And the front door swung open and four lady neighbours carried Aphrodite out perched in a chair, and we set out,
leaving
the door open so the house could breathe.

And not much remained of Aphrodite. Her breasts are gone, I said to myself. Her legs were shrunk: just like a little girl again she was, like an eleven-year-old boy with malaria. Just as if when she was starting to grow taller and get bigger, her body took fright and tried to shrink back into itself again.

And we carried her sitting in her chair, the eleven of us, all eleven kilometres to the port, trading off carrying the chair every 100 paces or so. Along the way the villagers threw stones at us so we wouldn’t steal their green crab apples or the buds on the grapevines along the stone fences. But little Fanis managed to swipe a head of lettuce.

And even me. I took part in carrying the chair along with three other women a couple of times. When I think about it, it was that day, on that very excursion, was when I was given the honour of becoming a woman. The others were all older than me but not one of them called me the kid or the dim-wit, nobody was afraid I’d tire myself out, nobody did me any special favours, not one. So by the time we finally reached the seaside, I wasn’t a kid any more. I was a grown-up and a woman.

And we spread out our blanket on the sand right by the water just as Aphrodite wished. And we set her down; the day was cool with a brisk breeze blowing in off the water and all of us had goose bumps. The salt spray spattered Aphrodite, but her skin didn’t feel anything any more, not even goose bumps. And she was like a piece of unclaimed baggage, like a trunk the morning steamer had left behind. That’s how come I knew Aphrodite was dying, she wasn’t getting goose bumps. The drops of spray and the salty surf, one big waste of time they were, couldn’t get a rise out of Aphrodite. All she could do was smile that washed-out smile of hers. 

And we sat down for a meal of raisins and two quinces cooked in grape syrup. Aphrodite, wasn’t a bit hungry, clutching two fistfuls of raisins. Hasn’t eaten a thing for a month now, said her mother. That was the only good thing about always having the taste of blood in her mouth: she wasn’t hungry any more. All the rest of us ate. And Aphrodite stared out at the sea and clutched the raisins in her hands and soaked up the sunlight with her legs wrapped in a blanket, like a little kid’s legs they were, and late that afternoon she let out a single cry of Viva! Then she clammed up.

And on our way back to town we had to trade off chair-
carrying
chores more often. Nobody had any decent food to eat for months and it was as if our strength had got smaller. Not one of us sweated because not one of us had anything left to sweat.

And by the time we stopped halfway back to town to pick wild greens the weather had turned cloudy. The hills had gone reddish brown and now they were turning dark grey. Little Fanis sat down next to Aphrodite, he didn’t know what to pick, what did you expect from a man? so he was having himself a good time; after all, we were on an outing and when you’re on an outing you’re supposed to have fun, aren’t you? So down he sits next to Aphrodite and he asks Aphrodite, how come you caught the sickness, what’s the sickness Aphrodite? Always was a bit simple minded. Seems that’s when Aphrodite finally admitted to herself that she was going to die and she says, The sickness is a little girl without a home and she likes blood to drink and she’s always cold. And whenever she sees a good
person
asleep without anybody to watch over him she cuddles up inside his chest to keep warn and sucks his blood and never comes out.

We got back home that evening. Seventeen days later Aphrodite was dead from the excess of tuberculosis. They stuck a little paper flag on top of her grave: it was a greeting from her father. Afterwards, when the partisans liberated Rampartville, 
he came back and put a real flag on her grave, a cloth one. One year later during the so-called December uprising in Athens it was, just before the Civil War, they captured him and slit his throat. But Mrs Fanny his wife is alive and well, right here in Athens what’s more.

Strictly between us, all this heroic business never made any sense to me. I always say, What if we just let the Germans through our Nation, just let them go about their business and leave them alone? Wouldn’t it have been better? Wouldn’t we have spared ourselves the Occupation, the starvation? I mean, just what do we have to show for it, family-wise and
nation-wise,
all that rushing off to Albania to the front lines and all the knitting sweaters and for nothing, the whole lot of it? The other countries, the ones who didn’t try to stand up to the Germans, were they so stupid? That craphead Churchill, a curse on his grave, how come we were the only ones he fooled? And
furthermore
, I always say, Exactly what did we get out of the so-called Liberation? A face-full, that’s what we got. We take the money from the Marshall plan and we rebuild Mandelas’s brothel in Rampartville and a night-club in Athens, the Neptune Club I think it was, on Syngrou Boulevard. They say it was the first building in Greece to be built with American Marshall money, back when we had the Tsaldaris government if I’m not
mistaken
.

That’s what I told one impresario and he gives me the boot smack in the middle of a tour. Being a bit of a queer wasn’t good enough for him, no, he had to be a patriot, and me. I’m not patriotic too maybe? You can bet if I was a boy no way would he dump me right in that dead-end dump but I gave him a piece of my mind, and how, and he just stood there gaping with little bubbles coming out the corners of his mouth.

Three days after Aphrodite’s funeral who should appear but Mrs Kanello with a newborn baby in her arms. The whole neighbourhood is stunned. Father Dinos gives her a
tongue-lashing.
 
Don’t you talk to me that way, she tells him. Aris is his name and that’s what you’re going to baptize him. I shall never bless the name of an idol-worshipper’s god, he roared; still, he could take a hint. Aris just happened to be the top partisan
bigshot
back then, so after things had calmed down a bit, Aris is what he ended up baptizing the kid. We all thought she was off looking after her sick mother. Mother’s just fine, so don’t start getting ideas, she’ll last until Liberation and then some, said Kanello. The kid’s my sister’s. (Her mother lasted until
Liberation
and the first beauty pageant and the Dictatorship: one tough old bird, believe you me.)

What happened was that her sister the partisan went and got herself knocked up and it was just about her time, that was the whole mystery. Her husband hid her in a sheepfold seeing as how she couldn’t very well keep up with the band in the rough country and take part in attacks what with her belly up to her eyeballs, what’s more she was useless as a fighter. Plus, Captain, someone in the band piped up, she makes an easy target.

So they sent out a call for Mrs Kanello. She pads herself,
pretending
to be pregnant, strolls right through the German lines and delivers her sister’s baby, another dingbat, that sister of hers. Her husband left her a rifle and a few hand grenades, just in case. So Mrs Kanello cuts the cord, everything’s just fine, and then she goes and lobs a grenade over the top of the hill for good luck, anyway, the kid came out male, scared the bejesus out of the sheep, it was all they could do to coax them back into the fold. Boy, did I ever get my fill of milk up there, just like a snake, Mrs Kanello told us as she suckled away. Come on, you little outlaw, suck, she’d say, and she’d unbutton her dress and push the kid’s face up against her breast until he found the teat. Mrs Kanello’s milk was always flowing, probably because of all the kids. Anyway, she nursed the little guy until Liberation, today he’s about to retire, a merchant seaman he is and a fine-looking man. A lefty though. Too bad.