The Daughter (26 page)

But I had this funny feeling inside. I’m the adventurous type, you know, emotionally speaking, is what I mean to say. And I like observing the niceties. I just love to send out cards. Always send out cards on the occasion of the New Year to my impresario Kozylis Konstantinos and best wishes to his wife Eugenia, her name day is Christmas eve. I always send him a card because of when his mother left us the walnuts on our windowsill. May be of course I’ve got a bit of an ulterior motive, after all, maybe he’ll take me on. What I mean to say is, he did hire me one time, a couple of years back, just after the incidents at the Polytechnic. A left-wing play unfortunately, but it was a job. I didn’t have a lot of work back then, as I recall, so I say to myself, Why not give it a try, that pipsqueak Kostas, he’ll recognize 
me and give me a half-decent part. I call him pipsqueak because back in Rampartville, when we used to play in the drainage ditches down near his place, he was short with a big head, and I was taller than him and I kept on smacking him on the head or beating him up and he went and splashed water all over my drawers.

So I showed up and they gave me a part. I played a dead
Communist
. She’s dead at any rate, I said to myself. But he didn’t hire me on as an old friend. He saw me, looked me over, said to a helper I can use that face there. Didn’t even remember who I was. At which point I say to myself, don’t bother to let on you know him. When I start up my own troupe, then we’ll see. That was always my dream. Of course, I had well-founded suspicions that his leading lady, who happened to be his wife Eugenia, was jealous of me. She’s got the most gorgeous eyes in the capital, I’ve got to admit it, still, she was jealous of me but I wasn’t
jealous
of her, why should I be jealous? It’s all fate. Not that I want to run down the girl, far from it, still, if I’d been born
twenty-five
years later and if fate had given me eyes like hers and talent too, well, we’d just see. Furthermore, there’s one thing I had her beat at hands down: me, I’ve performed in 1,860 small towns. Her, she’s only played in a couple of capitals.

But that little runt Kostis didn’t recognize me. Better that way, I said. Didn’t want him asking after Mum, after all. So I played the dead communist part and he wished me a pleasant good night after every show, just like he did the rest of the cast. Right up until the end of our run, he didn’t recognize me. There, that’s what being far-sighted will do to you, I said to myself. Because I haven’t changed a bit in forty years, physically speaking. There were times ofcourse when I wanted to ask after his parents, to see if they still had that tangerine tree in their yard in Rampartville, the one I used to scale the wall to pick
tangerines
off and one time my drawers got caught on the rock and ripped. But I never did. Don’t bother, I said. 

Still, I kept on sending them cards every New Year’s day, even after. Only forgot it this year, slipped my mind completely.

One time, in fact, I took Mrs Kanello to one of his shows. Her he remembered, the ingrate. I ran into her at a meeting, at the office of the new MP for Rampartville, right here in Athens. Journalists all over the place. Mrs Kanello got up and praised the politician, but she put her foot in it, as usual; she’ll never be a diplomat, the poor woman, and not an ounce of femininity. The politician, a certain Mr George, he’s from one of the best
families
, I can’t mention his name so as not to compromise him. So, as I was saying, this Mr George is from Rampartville too, from a good family, and people in polite and not-so-polite society talked about him for two main reasons: because he had a talent for
languages
, because he went with men, even though he was a
nationalist
. Because he was plump and inexperienced, anybody who wanted to could do it to him, and out of politeness he wouldn’t say no. The high-school student who taught him English taught him other things, disgusting things. The high-school student who gave him French lessons gave George lessons in doing dirty things. His mother used to say, There’s nothing we can do, our little boy has an anomaly. Am I supposed to kill him, or what? Even took the kid to a fortune-teller, but nothing came of it. Then she sent little George off to a priest to say prayers for him in the hope he would cut out the men, but they say the priest did it to him, so we heard from this other priest George confessed to before communion. So his mother accepted it, it’s God’s will, she said, he’ll only stop when he gets married.

As soon as I got back home from Kozylis’s show where the ingrate remembered Mrs Kanello but didn’t know me from a hole in the ground, there was a lovely little consolation waiting for me, a surprise: a letter saying my Actor’s Fund pension had come through. Now, I said to myself, they can all eat my shorts, all of them, calling me extra and fink for all these years.
Money-wise
I don’t really need their pension, but artistically, it’s
recognition
 
of my contribution. I’ve still got my main pension, the one from Albania, that’s why I never married, so I wouldn’t lose it. You can count on your pension better than on any husband. It’s warmer, too. So maybe I’m cheating the nation but I don’t regret it for a minute. How come they sheared off my mum’s hair, just tell me that? I accept this pension mainly as if it was the nation begging for pardon from Mother, for the disgrace they made her suffer back then.

Years ago I used to have this nightmare: that somehow they never paraded Mum through the streets and humiliated her, and that Daddy came back from Albania thirty years later, and I had to pay back the pension to the government. Now I’m used to the nightmare. And when it comes I just dismiss it, it’s only a bad dream I say; they pilloried Mum and Daddy is dead and buried, no worry about the pension. I’ve got no regrets; when you get right down to it, all Greece is on a pension. I know what you’ll say, you’ll say What’s wrong with her, I’m not Greece, I’m Raraou, artiste, and my country is my two pensions. How come I’m always feeling so sad? My future’s all looked after, my health couldn’t be better, I look just like I did forty years ago, so eat, drink and be merry, Raraou, Mum’s gone to her reward and socially rehabilitated, what’s there to worry about?

So a couple of days ago I made up my mind. Since the year before last I’ve been thinking about my father. Me, I’m the adventuresome type, emotional-wise, I mean to say. Poor Daddy, I say. So, I kind of sum up my life: so far my career really hasn’t exactly taken off, and I’m over sixty. For a dowry all I’ve got is a couple of corpses. Buried in different places. My little pullet back in Rampartville. By big brother Sotiris buried God only knows where. Unless maybe he’s still alive. Mum here in Athens, in Athenian earth. Recently I’ve been thinking about her a lot at one point in particular; standing there in the truck with her hair sheared off, pointing at me and saying, Why is that dog barking at me, get that dog away from me! 

So one Sunday I get this flash. I’ll make a pilgrimage to my Daddy’s grave, I decide. Sure it’s a bit risky for the pension but then, you only live once, right?

I took the bus and a real uncomfortable trip it was, the
passengers
weren’t really my class of people. At Arta it was all I could do to find out where his village was, finally I locate it, go to the cemetery, me wearing dark glasses – I didn’t want my admirers recognizing me – and I find the grave. Here lies Arnokouris Diomedes. Him too, with a stage name. I think to myself. Here he lies, artistic-wise. I left him a bit of earth from Mum’s grave. You never did become of one flesh but at least you’ll end up of one earth, so just try and work things out between yourselves from now on because me. I’m a big girl now.

I get home and I’m worn to a frazzle, home at last, home sweet home … no more wild goose chases for me, that’s it, finished.

So that’s how I remarried my parents, and now, what’ve I got left to my name? I say to myself. A couple of graves. Each one all by its lonesome. But isn’t that how it’s supposed to be? Who am I to complain? Because I’m going to die? Alexander the Great died didn’t he? Marilyn Monroe too; who am I to say I shouldn’t die? Whatever I need, I’ve got it. Mum all fixed up in her own plot, the fridge full of eggs, remember back in the Occupation how you couldn’t find an egg? Back then for an egg you’d have to put out, for the older girls I mean. And now all I have to do is open the fridge and count my eggs and my heart soars, believe you me. Got my cassettes, lots of left-wing songs, and that’s just fine with me, they’ve got the pizazz. And at
election
time when we stay home, I put on my tapes with the
left-wing
song at full volume so my left-wing neighbours will think I’m on their side, being on the winning side is the best idea, the sidelines never did suit me.

Of course, maybe some of those snot-nosed little creeps from down the street make rude remarks when I go by, but I don’t 
care, only thing wrong with kids today is they want to live. Then too, I go to church a lot. Not that I’m religious, but I do light the odd candle now and then, besides, if members of parliament from our party can go to church every day, why can’t I? Of course, what they’re lighting is the big tapers, not the little oil candles. But my pension’s one thing, their’s is another. When I light a little candle it’s to say a big ‘merci’ to heaven, you never know what happens to us after death. But when it comes to prayers, I never say the ‘Our Father’. Me, I’ve got no Father in heaven, I mean, you think I’m stupid or something? I just make out I do, that’s call. There’s no such thing as God, I know it, you think he’s so stupid, to exist? All I know for sure is my mum exists. And my little pullet. They may be under the ground, but at least they exist.

Still, better to be on good terms with everybody, now that I’m a bit over sixty. Never said so much as a bad word about a soul, not once in my life, well, at least not to his face. Because, I said to myself, tomorrow I might need the rotten bastard. Can’t bring myself to use rough language; my femininity forbids it, you see.

Movies I get into free, thanks to my special pass. Not to
mention
all the theatres, go on in Raraou you old wheezebag they say, and I walk in proud as you please. Raraou, the extras all tell me, you’re just like Greece, you never die.

Frankly I couldn’t care less if Greece lives or dies, one way or the other. What did Greece ever do for me? I’m supposed to care if she lives on dies? Greece, she’s like the Holy Virgin: nobody ever saw her. Only nut cases and con men. Me, I can see my eggs in the fridge. My pension, I can see that. I’m a success. I’ll slip into my mustard-coloured outfit, the one I had seized from this actress back when we had the colonels, the rotten slut wouldn’t pay me on account of her son was getting it on with an army officer, so I’ll slip into my mustard-coloured outfit like I say, and go out for a French pastry and let the men fight over me. Anything wrong with that? 

What’s all this fuss about evil, anyway?

I spend a lot of time thinking things over lately,
unemployment
you know. How come what they all ‘evil’ should be
forbidden
, and even worse, condemned? First of all, we like it. You know how it is when when you think of a lemon and your mouth starts watering, well, that’s how my hands get, hungry for
murder
, as if they’re starving to wrap themselves around a man’s thighs. How come I can’t just go and murder somebody? Wouldn’t bother me a bit, just so they don’t catch me.

Lots of times, coming back from my nighttime stroll, I go down a little street behind our place, right past a basement apartment with the lights on and the windows open. Looks like a working-class family living there, happy and contented; a drooling baby, a daddy with striped pyjamas and a young mum wearing an apron. They’re so happy and smiling it makes me furious. I walk right by their place on purpose, so I can get good and mad. Maybe I’ll think of some way to ruin that mindless pleasure of theirs. Maybe take a can of petrol one night, splash it all over them and light it with a match? Because mindless pleasure isn’t allowed. I don’t allow it. Plus there’s a button missing from his pyjama bottoms. I’ll douse them with petrol and light a match and walk away just as happy as you please. And nobody will ever know who did it.

Never did get around to it; the fire, I mean. I’ll leave it for later, to have something to look forward to. The petrol and the matches I’ve got; just about broke my back hauling the jerry can home with me. And the more exhausted I got all because of that guy with the missing pyjama button, the more I was steaming and burning with rage.

Lately I’ve taken to studying at the sky a lot. I look up and I say to myself, all that sky! All that sky, for nothing. Fortunately I got my two pensions. Only just now I figured out what the sky is. The sky is the ceiling of an ocean. We live and walk around in the ocean, just as normal as can be and we look up at the
ceiling
 
over our heads and we call it sky. We look at it while we’re eating our pastry and then we head back home to sing our mother to sleep.

My mum I treat like a queen. With two pensions even.
Wherever
I go, to the dairy or the bakery, everybody says
Mademoiselle
Raraou, those are really classy clothes Mrs Mina wears, right out of the fashion magazines. And in the living room there’s this big gilded crown made of plywood hanging on the wall. Stole it from a stage set back when I was working in this patriotic review. Back then I wasn’t really getting out much,
seeing
as how Mum was under the weather. But I never expected she’d just die on me. I was basting a roast when I hear my old name: Roubini! Roubini! Must be hearing things, I say to myself, nobody here knows me by Roubini. I open the oven door and I hear it again, Roubini, my child, I’m dying. It was the voice of an old woman. I close the oven, go into the bedroom, Mum, I say, you hear anything? As if she could answer me. Never crossed my mind the voice could have been Mum’s. It was an old woman’s voice, I remember Mum’s voice when she was young, even back then on the truck when she was shouting, Get that dog away from me.