The Daughter (15 page)

At that very moment we hear gunshots, machine-gun fire this time it was and the gr-gr-gr of treads. A German armoured car heading in our direction. No time to get back upstairs, we all crowd into our house: lucky for us it was a
single-storey
place: first went Salome with the Mauser, Kanello’s kiddies hid behind a homespun blanket hanging over their balcony. No sooner do we lock the door behind us than we hear knocking and whimpering,
Aprite, aprite per pietà, belle signore!

Kanello opens the door for a split second and we let the
Italian
in; saved him just in the nick of time. Can you imagine what the Germans would do to him if they found him without his gun? The armoured car whirls around angrily, pointing its
cannon
at one house after another, and me, I’m staring out through the keyhole. Finally it roars off; fortunately it completely misses the sack with the goat.

‘Go to hell’, yells Kanello after it, with impunity, of course, the Germans were long gone. We make double sure, then push the foreign kid out on to the street, give him back his gun, dust off his trousers even, he was all gratitude,
Grazie, grazie mille, belle signore
. Out he goes, wipes the slogans off the wall with his sleeve and goes about his business.

Then the Tiritombas left. You, Salome orders Adrianna, you haul the trophy upstairs. And up the stairs she goes, just like Aida (I never performed that particular play).

Meantime Mrs Adrianna opens the sack, sees the big game, her eyes start to glaze over again. Hey, she shouts, where’d you steal this from?

‘I killed that goat myself. That’ll teach you to call me shirker and Brit-lover,’ she said as she swept up the stairs without so much as a backward glance. ‘One leg’s for you Mrs Asimina,’ she calls out to my mom, ‘for little Roubini’s help.’ And all the while Kanello was looking on wide-eyed from her upstairs
balcony
, jealous probably. 

‘You imbecile,’ goes Mrs Adrianna. ‘If they catch us they’ll eat us alive.’

‘Let them eat our shit,’ shoots back Mlle Salome haughtily, from the balcony.

‘Don’t you go using foul language in front of my children,’ yells Mrs Kanello from her balcony.

‘Have Tassis skin the goat,’ Salome says from high up, as Marina tries to heave the sack on to her back.

‘It’s not even a billy goat, it’s a nanny’, says Mrs Adrianna as she looks closely at the trophy.

Here Mlle Salome just about comes unstuck.

‘Whatever I do it’s not enough! As far as you’re concerned, my whole life is nothing!’ she said, stung to the quick, and went inside whimpering.

Adrianna was right, though. It was a nanny goat.

Anyway, they brought their prize upstairs and we closed our windows, hoping for some boiled goat to eat the next day; I got some macaroni put aside, Ma tells us. First time she ever
mentioned
Signor Vittorio’s little gifts.

But that was the night the Germans sealed off the
neighbourhood
, the night they shot Valiant. What really happened is, they executed him right in front of his mother’s then dumped his body in the marketplace (I know who ratted on him, guy’s big in frozen food today, so be it, you won’t get another peep more out of me, these are evil times). The whole neighbourhood, it was crawling with Germans all night long, even broke into the church; we couldn’t sleep a wink, lying there in bed awake,
listening
. Every now and then we heard gunshots. Ma tucked us under the big quilt, right up to our chins. Now go to sleep, she said, tomorrow we’ll have goat to eat. What worried us was maybe we couldn’t go snailing next morning at Deviljohn’s bridge.

Tassis wanted to skin the goat right there in the courtyard but his sisters wouldn’t hear of it. Everybody in the neighbourhood 
will know, said Salome, plus we’ll catch the evil eye. So he ended up skinning and gutting the carcass in the dining room; strung it right from the chandelier and slid a roasting pan underneath to catch the innards, and there was Mrs Adrianna, watching the Germans through the balcony-door curtains, all on
tenterhooks
. And all this time Salome was hacking up the meat as the big cook-pot was heating over the brazier. Around three in the morning the Germans withdrew and we all breathed easier.

Come daybreak, as the cooking was in full swing, they hear Kanello hammering on Mrs Chrysafis’s door, her shouting something and then they catch a glimpse of the two of them rushing off God knows where with a two-wheeled cart which immediately makes Salome think Kanello is trying to make a break for it, leaving her kids behind. Meantime, Germans start appearing again.

‘That’s all it was, a misunderstanding, but it changed my life; and I met the butcher of my dreams,’ was how Mlle Salome described it to me years later in that hick town near Grevena when I was passing through with the travelling players. They invited me over for dinner; after all, it’s not your everyday
backwoods
butcher’s wife who can boast she’s had a true artist at her table. Still, she always had a liking for me, since back when she was a maiden lady. After the meal, over coffee and cupcakes – her husband went off to open the shop – she brought me up to date on everything that happened.

The Tiritombas didn’t have a clue about Valiant; no idea where Kanello and Mrs Chrysafis ran off to either. They heard the shots in the night, saw the tanks at dawn; all Salome could think of was her own crime. She confessed to her brother and sister that the goat she murdered belonged to the Zafiris clan, the same people who worked as stool pigeons and providers for the Occupation forces. Must be us they’re after, says Tassis, and rightly so. How are we going to get out of this one? So Mrs Adrianna gets one of her brilliant ideas: head for the hills. 

Take the show on the road, in other words. What else were they supposed to do?

All night long they packed the dear departed’s costumes, rolled up the stage settings with their Sicilian-style castles
oil-painted
on canvas. Salome supervised the cooking of the goat. Not one of them was a real actor, of course; Adrianna was a housewife by birth, but she knew a bit about travelling shows; ticket sales, schedules, that kind of thing. Now really, can you call that a ‘travelling company’? A handful of amateurs, that’s all they were, so I discovered later, after the war. Oh well.

Tassis, Marina and the two sisters, the whole family divvied up the roles. Tassis, he handled the dramaturgical side of things: rummaged through the dog-eared old portfolio where
Zambakis
Karakapitsalas the impresario kept the scripts; some of them were printed, some were hand-written in pencil, and everything on loose pages. Plus, Tassis was in such a dither that he stuck the final act of one play to the first act of another. Take
Tosca
, for instance, which had a happy ending off Cape
Matapan
. But staying alive, that was their main problem, to be
honest
, who gave a damn about what happened at Cape Matapan. Take care of your life and art will look after itself, Mrs Salome told me, over our second cupcake.

Round about noon the troupe managed to get all their stuff crammed into the jitney, including Salome’s valuables: she was in fine spirits, in the search they unearthed a whole boxful of make-up accessories.

And so it was we saw them turn, right after they crossed the bridge, like a stage coach straight out of a cowboy movie, except there were no Indians chasing after it, and no Germans. Still, you can’t say they weren’t decent people; fact is, they left a big plate of boiled goat on our window ledge, and one on Mrs Kanello’s front steps too, which her kids polished it off before their Ma got home from work. But their leaving was a blow for me; Tassis came and asked Ma for the fustanella I got from Mrs Adrianna as a gift. 

We reached this village called Pelopion after six hours on the road, the now-Mrs-at-last Salome relates (takes you less than an hour to get there today) wiping some crumbs from her lipstick. We were safe. Three days we stayed there, to pull ourselves together. The village was way up in the hills, crawling with
partisans
, tall and handsome too, every one of them. We said we’d suffered at the hands of the Germans. And we used Mrs Kanello’s name every way we could; you remember her? (That’s rich! Me, remember Kanello? Me?) Everybody who was
anybody
in the partisans knew her. They let us stay in the
schoolhouse
, we drew up our programmes, planned our route, got letters of recommendation to other villages controlled by the partisans, and some messages to pass on. We even held rehearsals. Of course, we had some disagreements over who would play what part, Mrs Salome admitted (over a third cookie, with a shot of brandy to wash it down), my dear elder sister insisted her daughter should play all the little girl’s roles, and I did the grown women, not to mention the time I played a man, a baron he was, can’t recall the play, name of Javert – wait a second; no, it was another play where I played Javert, anyway, here, have another cupcake.

I took one, my fourth: no danger for my silhouette.

‘That tour of ours, the one that started back in Pelopion, in the Peloponese, ended almost a year and a half later, halfway between Albania and Romania, or was it Yugoslavia? Don’t ask me. Not bad, the cupcakes, eh? Homemade. In the meantime, we learned how to act and generally how to run a road company, travelling in partisan territory, and in occupied territory too. I deserted right here, in this town. My butcher was making eyes at me, and I said to myself, Salome, when’s the next time
somebody’s
going to fall for you head over heels? So I gave in. You can’t imagine what it cost me, she says, tossing back a glass of brandy to help down the last mouthful of cupcake, her fifth I think it was. You know, I was really beginning to get the knack, 
more than any of the others, she said. Maybe she was just being catty about my success with that last crack of hers.

‘Every time we had a new young woman’s role to play, we just about scratched each other’s eyes out to see who would get first shot at it, Adrianna or me, I mean to say. My niece? If she so much as hinted she wanted the part (the ingenue or charming maiden as the stage directions put it), we’d put her in her place and then we’d jump all over her. You’re still young, you’ve got all the time in the world to play young women; wait till you’re grown up, her mother said one day. If we don’t play these roles now, the two of us, when will we? As you can see, Adrianna had developed a taste for the footlights, even if she was a widow. The sad truth is I paid the price; sold out my art for a bed and a
lifetime
of meat; still, it was all lamb-chops, filet mignon and sweetbreads.’

But Mrs Salome needn’t have worried about the troupe. One day, as they’re pushing the jitney up a steep hill, an Italian
soldier
, a long tall drink of water he was, leaps out in front of them rifle and all. They all surrender at once, of course, after
blocking
the back wheels with rocks to keep the whole contraption from rolling back down the hill. But as they’re standing there, hands over their heads facing the occupying troops, what should they see? The Italian was just a blond-headed kid, throws down his gun at their feet, starts blubbering and surrenders to them.

Finally they figured it out; it was a deserter (than really could have used Mrs Kanello and her Italian right then). A fine kid, name of Marcello. Heard the Germans were about to ship them off to the Russian front, at which point he turns tail, trying to find somebody to surrender to. But instead of partisans, he
happens
on the troupe, so he surrenders to Mrs Adrianna, and later on, to Marina, especially her.

Turned out to be really useful. Had a knack for just about everything, he did; a born joker and comedian. What’s more he could dance, do impersonations, and sing too, so they put him 
on stage. Certainly he was in no position to replace Mlle Salome, but they dreamed up a number just for him ‘And now, ladies and gentleman, the great impersonator, Michael and his Italians!’, Michael they named him. And Marcello sang his
canzonettas
and danced his tarantellas. At the same time, Marina gave him Greek lessons. But the lessons came to a halt, due to extenuating circumstances: one morning Mrs Adrianna nabs them in bed together. Him without a stitch on and Marina wearing only her undies, and smoking a cigarette! The sky just about falls on Adrianna’s head; last time she saw a naked man was before the Albanian war. (And what a man, let me tell you, she told Mrs Kanello when they met at Mum’s memorial
service
, my eyes just about popped out.) Long-suffering mother Adrianna unleashes a string of curses, eyes riveted all the time on the poor boy’s private parts. Hussy, she screeches at Marina, just what do you think you’re doing? Don’t you fear God? Smoking?

The racket brings Tassis on the run. What’s the big fuss about? he says to his sister, they make a fine couple. Still, even he objected to his niece smoking. So he snatches the cigarette out of her mouth, puts the Italian’s clothes back on, and
pronounces
them engaged then and there. Today Marina and
Marcello
are married and living in Rimini, with three kids, all boys. May you grow up to be strong and inherit your father’s best attributes, Mrs Adrianna writes to her grandchildren every New Year, that’s what I heard back during the Renegades’
government
, from Mrs Kanello it was.

Well, after they took leave of Pelopion – the only things they staged there were some Resistance sketches to build up their courage – Mrs Adrianna steered the troupe back to all the places they did so well before while her dear late husband was still alive, they’ll remember us here, she said. Even got up kind of a poster for every occasion: