The Daughter (25 page)

And generally speaking, there’s only one thing concerns me now, what with Mum gone and all. I keep seeing sort of like TV shows in front of my eyes, they come and then they go away. Or I never see them again, maybe I’m only dreaming. I don’t know. Take that funeral, the one with the old hags, for instance.

I dream I’m at the fish-market, at the crack of dawn. The same place where the fishmongers sell their spoiled fish half price to the cheap restaurants, and whatever the cheap restaurants don’t take, they throw to the beggars. What I’m doing in such a place I don’t have the faintest idea, but it’s six o’clock in the morning and it’s about to rain. Me, I never get up so early, what am I
anyway
, some kind of worker, or cleaning lady? Anyway, it’s just after six, and you still can’t see the Acropolis there above the
fish-market
; the Acropolis comes back to earth around half past seven. And over there, the spot where the Parthenon touches down, there’s only a dark cloud. I’m thinking, shame on me, the Acropolis was always my dream as a little girl in the provinces, and now, here I am today, a sixty-year-old woman, and I never had the chance to climb up to the top. Make that over sixty. The fish-market, it’s dead still, nothing moving, just like in a
photograph
, not a customer in sight, nothing but a fine layer of broad fish scales the colour of mallow even if the sun isn’t shining, it’s too early for the sun. And the breeze hasn’t even begun to blow.

What’s got into me, coming out at this hour of the morning, fortunately the panhandlers haven’t showed up yet, imagine if 
one of my fellow actors, or one of my admirers were to think that it was me, Raraou in person, begging for spoiled fish.

Just at that moment a funeral procession comes through a neoclassical archway. The four of them, silent women,
slipping
and sliding on the precious scales which shine like Byzantine mosaics. The women are prostitutes, not low-class streetwalkers though. High-priced call girls. August women, women of stature. They look like a three-piece folding screen, each panel loaded down with necklaces, beads, glasses,
hanging
like votive offerings. Decorated like triangular church
candlesticks
; like holy icons in elaborate frames; like saints coming to sin.

The four are carrying a wide board high above their heads, an open casket, without a lid is what they’re carrying. But the
casket
is encrusted with sequins and flower petals and gold threads and strings of beads reaching down to the ground, swinging to and fro. Not a voice, not a sound. The beads are touching the fish scales which are the colour of violets.

The dead woman is invisible, completely covered, she too is a prostitute. Her beads are like a suit of armour. But the woman is my mother, I know it from the dream, there beneath the beads my mother’s face is hiding. Her body does not exist. Nobody’s ever given me the assurance, but in the dream it’s clear that they’re transferring her, taking her away for reburial in a
children’s
cemetery, something more in keeping with her life. Among the little children they’ll lay her to rest. That means problems for me, seeing as how they don’t put crosses on the graves and now I’ll have to put a little chocolate candy on every grave and sprinkle a few drops of cologne on every grave, just in case I miss Mother’s.

The four prostitutes carrying the casket are smoking
cigarettes
, dressed up like Byzantine icons painted in brilliant colours, colours straight out of a cheap musical comedy, bright and sassy colours, and they wear those colours with such
serious
 
expressions on their faces, no objections allowed, no
comments
. Their faces look more like masks. They’re smoking cigarettes.

Something is missing from the picture. That’s it: the funeral is ending, and there’s not a clergyman to be seen. And instead of the mourning relatives there’s a bear, without costume or makeup. And the bear showers the casket with confetti, and beside it stands another prostitute – a young apprentice, also without makeup. She is the bear’s servant, and stares at it in admiration, but she walks along stiffly, like a hanged woman.

They march past me without a greeting, without a glance. Maybe they don’t even see me. Then they vanish into the
neoclassical
fish-market. Meanwhile, I’m standing there holding a tambourine in my hand, but I’m not allowed to follow along behind; that’s understood too. Even if wanted to, I couldn’t. Because all of a sudden the funeral turns off and ventures out across the surface of the sea, the calm, motionless sea of dreams. And there the heads of eels stick out of the water and watch the bear as it passes, without sinking.

I lower my eyes with respect, as one must at funerals, and there, beneath the surface of the water swims the blue corpse of a woman, staring at me with boundless blue eyes. Just a minute, I say to myself, those aren’t eyes, they’re eye-sockets full of water, I was always crazy about blue eyes, me with my eyes black as a cast-iron frying-pan. The blue corpse is flat, as if it was made of cardboard. I lift my head, walk out over the surface of the water, and unlock the door to my apartment. What was I doing in the fish-market at the crack of dawn anyhow? Got out of there before the panhandlers showed up. Fortunately. But the doubt still gnaws away at me: the animal, was it a bear or a monkey? And the apprentice whore, how come she was its servant? That’s all.

I don’t know.

Me? My mind? Never had a care in the world; why, it’s just about as down-to-earth and rock-steady as you could hope to 
find. Let them talk, all those theatre people, let them think I got nothing but a hole in the head where my brain ought to be, why do you think I spend all my time at the hairdresser, hiding it with my coiffure. These days, of course, they’ve all forgotten the whole thing. They all greet me, Hi there Raraou, you old hole in the head, just as familiar as you please, just proves how young and vibrant I am.

Right here, in Athens for the most part. Don’t get all that many calls for tours these days, that kind of stuff’s for
beginners
, second-raters. Still, I could go for a tour or two, you get respect from the small town public. Not like my baker, I walk into his shop and the guy doesn’t bat an eye-lid.

Not that I wasn’t a bit of a sensation with the Athenian
public
. They made me what I am today, in fact. I remember how jealous fat little Mitzi used to be; good actress she was, all the talent in the world, but when it came to slender waists and sex appeal, she just couldn’t keep up with me, but the public just wouldn’t warm to her. Got so bad she up and married this
shoemaker
in Patras, right in the middle of a tour. Got a couple of kids and a boat. Send’s me a box of Turkish delight every so often, but how am I supposed to eat it, I’ve got to mind my
silhouette
, plus my diabetes you know. So I pass it around
wherever
I’ve got an obligation, mostly to Doc Manolaras, still alive, he is.

One year we were playing in Athens and Mitzi comes
backstage
after the curtain, and says to me – she’s laughing her head off – Raraou, there’s this admirer of yours waiting outside, hurry up, you’re in luck, and it’s about time.

Me, I overlook the snide remark; what’s his name? I ask.

‘He’ll be waiting for you outside,’ she goes, oozing that
sarcasm
of hers. ‘Looks harmless. An old country yokel’.

Took my own sweet time taking off my makeup, an old
politician’s
trick, that, I always slow down when people are waiting for me, why I just about missed Mum’s funeral, thought it was 
a performance. So, like I was saying, I take off my makeup and go out the stage door into the street. Not a soul in sight. Fat-face was putting me on. Just then an old man steps out from behind a newsstand. Not dressed all that bad, but still small town.

‘Is that you, Roubini?’ he asks.

I’m startled. Who’s this guy that knows my past? I take another look at him. Then I recognize him, from the wedding photo: it was my father.

‘Daddy, how are you?’ I ask. Without emotion. Hadn’t seen him for forty-seven years, since back then at the railway station the day he left for Albania, with the twenty-drachma coin.

My first thought was, O my Lord, now what do I do? He’s alive. There goes my pension.

‘I’ve been following you for a long time. I heard you were in show business, saw some photos of you years ago in Arta.
Outside
a coffee house.’

‘How is your mother?’ he says.

‘Died year before last,’ I retort with a little lie. Didn’t know what his intentions were.

He asked me about the boys. He didn’t know Sotiris left home during the Occupation. I told him; told him our Fanis has a good life, but I didn’t say where.

‘I heard about you in Arta, years ago, saw your photos,’ he said, repeating himself. ‘Always wanted to come and see you, kept putting it off, waiting for something to turn up. Finally I had some business in Athens, so I decided to come and get to know you.’

He didn’t have much else to say, kept talking about my
photos
back in Arta. After, he invited me to dinner in this little
taverna
. I accepted just in case he wanted me to invite him to my place, but all I could think about was the pension, better kiss your pension goodbye I said to myself, it’s a goner for certain.

Over the food we had a couple or three glasses of wine, the two of us, and we got more into things. 

‘So your mother’s dead,’ he says. Me, all this time, I’m
touching
wood and nibbling fried eggplant, even if it gives me
indigestion
.

‘Never could stand her, poor woman,’ he says. ‘Well, may she rest in peace.’

Me, I didn’t say a word about Mum’s past; he told me about his. Lasted two and a half months on the Albanian front, he said. One night he says to himself, What am I doing here, what am I fighting for? What country? What did my country ever do for me? Guts to wash, that’s all I got, my country never even set that up for me.

‘So I decided to turn back,’ he says. ‘I play dead in an attack, they leave me lying there, I get up and start walking, nobody says a thing, they’ve got a whole war to fight, me they’re going to worry about? I said to myself. So I end up in this little village not far from Arta to get me some rest, so this widow with some land gives me work and before too long she says, If you’re
unattached
I’ll marry you. I thought it over real hard, what’s the point of going back, all that slogging just to wash tripe, to go back to Asimina, never could stand the poor woman; all that way, and for what? So I told the widow, Yes, had ourselves a pair of kids. Gave a fake name, Arnokouris Diomedes from Sarande, Greek from Albania. Had a good life. And I’m still alive.’

No sooner had he finished his story than I breathed a sigh of relief. Almost felt sorry I told him Mum was dead.

‘Daddy’, I say, ‘everything came out just fine in the end, for all of us, the whole family. Fanis is taken care of, you’re doing fine there in the village. And I’m living the good life here in Athens. I’m drawing a pension, on account of you’re dead on the battlefield. So don’t come here again. You’re doing fine, so what do you want with me?’

‘Nothing, Roubini my child,’ he says. ‘Just curious, that’s all.’

I was terrified how he would take it. What’s this stranger want from me? I kept saying to myself as he chewed his food 
and stared at me as I spoke. The father I knew was a
twenty-five-
year-old leaving for the Albanian war with a
twenty-drachma
piece who made me feel good back then when I saw him naked as he was changing clothes. But this man here, he was the same age as me. All the time we were eating I tried my best to love him as a father, to feel even a little warmth. I couldn’t. I was more interested in the life of our cashier at the theatre.

I told him so. He gave his word to keep out of my life. You’re right, he said. We’re all getting on fine.

He paid for the meal, and we said goodnight at the entrance to the taverna, and he was gone; I never saw him again. But the fear was there, gnawing away at me.

Since then, whenever I sign anything, I always add ‘fatherless orphan’. Like an alibi. And after my encounter with my father, when even I go to the bank to collect my pension I wear grey, with a black armband to make my claim even stronger, and hold my passbook in my hand. There are three queues, and I know which window is mine. But I stop right in the middle of the bank and call out:

‘Which is the queue for orphans?’

And every first of the month when I go for my pension I put on the mourning, on my arm or my lapel, either one, and always ask where the orphans are supposed to queue. At any rate. I don’t care whether that twerp of a teller who waits on me laughs or not, Henry is his name. He’s always whispering something to the woman next to him, I picked it up, they’re talking about me, even though that Henry’s always making eyes at me. Well, good for him; he’s got cute eyes. Still, better I should really make sure of my pension.

Doc Manolaras’s office I dropped by too, pretending to ask after my brother Fanis, and he greeted me in person.
Fortunately
my Dad kept his word and didn’t give a sign of life. I was terrified he might have gone and told Doc Manolaras. 

But still, I couldn’t put it out of my mind. What if he gets it into his head to show up, then what? For years I was on pins and needles. Till last year an envelope comes to our association, from some clergyman. I open it, and there’s a clipping from a provincial newspaper, the ‘Obituaries’ page.

Diomedes Arnokouris, loving father and husband, passed away on etc., etc. … his wife Ioanna, his children so and so and so and so. And after their names it said: Sotirios, Roubini,
Theofanis
.

Must’ve confessed to the priest.

I didn’t know what to do next. Of course, it was one big load off my back, for sure. Imagine, losing my pension and being exposed as a parasite living off the public purse. You can be sure I never breathed a word to our Fanis. First I thought I’d send a condolence note (I have cards of my own printed up, with my name and profession in decorative characters), but then I say to myself, sit tight my little Roubini, you never know these days, what if some new brother or sister pops up and claims the
apartment
. So I never sent the note, he never did a thing for me
anyway
, apart from the meal he stood me in the taverna. Just let him rest right where he is, I thought.