The Goodtime Girl (4 page)

7
PIRAEUS, 1923

Because of your heartlessness
I wander your neighbourhood
Getting drunk and wasted every night
You're driving me crazy
I can't stand it — stop it Have pity and turn on your light

Spiros Mavromihalis was not bad looking — some might have even called him handsome in a ratlike way. He was of medium height, neither fat nor thin, with a full head of hair and a curled moustache under his pointed nose. It was his small, black eyes, however, that made him unattractive — the hunger in them, the malice. The way he looked at Kivelli repulsed her, and she recoiled from his swampy breath when he spoke, boasting of his exploits and prowess by insulting others.

Because he was the bandleader at Barba Yannis's and Kivelli was his singer, Spiros felt he had rights even the scaliest mangha wouldn't presume. He regularly walked into the taverna's storeroom when she was changing, or crying, or staring at herself in Barba Yannis's shaving mirror, trying to recognize who she was becoming. Her protests did nothing to curb his arrogance, and if he knew how to apologize, he did not deem it necessary. As her nights at the taverna accumulated and her popularity increased, he became even bolder, more possessive. He wanted everyone to think she already belonged to him, like his suit and his bouzouki. Whether she liked it or not, it was in Kivelli's best interest to tolerate his dogged pursuit, his presumptuousness, his passes. He had as much power over her as Papa once had, and he'd kick her out like a cat in the rain if she misbehaved. Then she'd be forced to go back to Kyria Effie's, where her debt was not yet fully paid and there was only one way left to settle it.

Between sets one night, Spiros cornered her in the storeroom and shoved his tongue into her mouth. Kivelli bit down on it, then screamed at him to get out, but when he pressed up against her, a warm and sticky sensation momentarily quelled her hatred and revulsion. She slapped his face and he slapped her back. After he left, she touched the welts rising on her cheek with something approaching affection. She did not bother to cover them with powder before taking her place next to him on the platform.

The men in the audience seemed agitated, hostile, and the room was charged with a prickly restlessness she hadn't felt before. Spiros was stoned, more full of himself than usual, and as Kivelli sang and clapped, he called her a cunt then slipped his hand up her skirt, which elicited vulgar cheers and encouragements from the audience. Mortified, she bolted towards the door, stumbling over outstretched legs, crashing into the closely packed tables, knocking over narghiles. The men cursed her, and a few grabbed at her arms and legs, trying to pull her onto their laps. The moment she stepped off the stage, she was just another woman who had spurned them. No one, not even Barba Yannis, was going to take her side.

Spiros ran out after her and pinned her against a wall, close enough to the taverna to be caught but hidden by shadow. His tongue invaded her mouth, his hands pawed her breasts and buttocks, setting off small furious explosions in her brain, between her legs. But instead of struggling, Kivelli clung to him, poisoned, dying, and barely felt it when he slid inside her. When he was done, he called her a filthy Turk, pushed her away and stalked back inside. With quaking hands she adjusted her clothing. Her skirt was soiled and two abalone buttons were missing from her blouse, lost forever in the darkness and dirt.

Catcalls and leering grins accosted her as she entered the taverna and made her way to the storeroom, where she wiped off the warm blood trickling down her thighs with a rag. She then took her seat on the platform as if nothing had happened, and sang to Spiros's accomplices for the rest of the night.

At closing time he expected to go back to her room. Kivelli laughed in his face: “Do you think I love you now because I let you put your bird in me?” She hated him, even more than before. Spiros's eyes widened as if a vein were about to rupture in his head. The hand he raised to slap her trembled, and Kivelli caught it by the wrist before it flew into her face. They were interrupted by Mitsos the accordion player, and she managed to slip away while Spiros was browbeating the little man for grandstanding during a number that was supposed to highlight his virtuosity on the bouzouki. She assumed that a combination of indolence and fickleness would keep him away. He might proposition Kiki instead, or get his mother out of bed to cook for him, or follow the manghes to their caves in Keratsini, where they went to get stoned, make plans and amuse themselves.

But Spiros followed her home like an abandoned dog. “If you don't open up I'm going to start smashing everything, windows, doors, everything,” he howled, waking the wives of fisherman, and wives bereft of husbands, and the children of both, as well as Margarita, who went outside waving her biggest frying pan. “Back to the mountains with you, mangha,” she yelled, then promised the neighbours she'd throw Kivelli out in the morning like the parts of a chicken that couldn't be eaten, no matter how they were cooked. From her darkened room Kivelli watched the spectacle, neither moved by Spiros's ugly serenade, nor too concerned about her landlady's wrath, which would be easily appeased with a few extra coins in the morning.

AT THE TAVERNA THE NEXT night, Kivelli sat with a few customers, sidled up to Barba Yannis and did her best to avoid Spiros. He looked in a fouler mood than usual, as if he were enveloped by black clouds crackling with lightning — the kind that split trees or picked off one swimmer far out in the sea. Wherever she went, Spiros's eyes followed, his nostrils and lips flaring like those of a dog ready to attack. He pounced the moment she stepped into the storeroom.

“Didn't you hear me last night,” he demanded, spittle gathering in the corners of his mouth and stippling her face as he closed in on her.

“I'm sure I have no idea what you're talking about,” she replied airily in an attempt to keep the fear out of her voice. She took the handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiped her cheeks, then gave him a coy smile and blew him a kiss.

“Goddamn cold-hearted bitch. It's my fault for being so kind to you.”

This did not mean that he'd given up, but he did change his tactics, and after much haranguing, blackmail and shameless begging, Kivelli let him come home with her a few nights later, and many nights after that. In a way, her submission made things easier. Now that it had begun, it would have to end. Something to look forward to. There was also a wayward thrill in sneaking him past Margarita and Aspasia, in letting him stare as she undressed, grope and bite her and call her a Turkish whore. But she never permitted him to sleep beside her, despite his pleas, rages and threats to send her back to Kyria Effie's. This no longer struck Kivelli as the ultimate consequence. Their arrangement didn't seem that different, and at least the madam would soon be paid off. Spiros, on the other hand, seemed as permanent as the Virgin Mary in Aspasia's room: the whole house could collapse and she'd still be nailed to the wall, just as Spiros had fastened himself to Kivelli's body.

This was her life now and he was part of it. She watched it from outside, like a silent picture at the Ciné Pathé, even when Spiros was in her bed, inside her, lost in his convulsions. Sometimes she spied from behind curtains or through holes in the wall like the poor men at Kyria Effie's who could not afford a girl for themselves. She watched with shock and shame and fascination and hoped the poor woman lifting her hips up off the mattress, heaving her chest and digging her fingernails into the brute's naked back, gave birth to that demon churning inside her belly, pushing its way out between her legs. Kivelli hoped it got out before he had a chance to ram it back in. Because that's what Spiros was doing: ramming her hatred back inside of her. He needed it to stay there because if it escaped, he knew there would be nothing left between them.

It would be a lie, however, to say that the physical act gave her no pleasure. There was a deadly spark between them, and though Kivelli felt no tenderness for Spiros, she was hooked on the strong feelings he brought out in her. They were addictive as war; she wanted to conquer and vanquish him as much as he did her. There was also a measure of power in accepting his advances. She could respond, then withhold, and make him crazy in a manner that only women not in love could do to men who desired them.

Kivelli's teasing turned Spiros into even more of a tyrant, a rabid dog growling and threatening any man who approached her, even the customers who filled their plates. The taverna's regulars began to ridicule him behind his back. Black Spiros became Pitsiriki — little squirt — the kind of kid who polishes his marbles and shows them off, but won't let anyone else play with them. This only made the men more determined to steal them from right under his pointed nose. Sakis the Sweet-Talker showered Kivelli with flowers as she sang. Marinos the Moustache bought her drinks when she was done. And Kostas the Knife offered to escort her home every night.

Spiros burned with jealousy, and instead of tiring of her as the weeks passed, he tightened his grip, afraid she would try to run away. In this he was not wrong. From the moment Kivelli surrendered, let him take her up against the wall, where anyone could walk by, where everyone could hear them, she began rehearsing her exit. It would not be as simple as throwing over some flowerbearing mangha with love in his eyes. She would have to leave the taverna and the neighbourhood, disappear completely. Or find a more powerful man to protect her — a bigger bandleader with better songs. Someone Spiros was intimidated by. Someone who owed him nothing.

8

You'd better calm down, show-off
'Cause I'm going to smash you
I'll pull out my pistol, show-off
And I'm going to blast you

A real mangha was someone who could hold his own in the company of the top dealers, not only in Drapetsona, but throughout Piraeus and even in the darker quarters of Athens. Spiros liked to think of himself as one of the boys, though he'd never gone through the initiation of challenging a leader — a king of the crooked narrows — nor would he have the nerve. A less conceited man would have understood there was no way to forego this step, to simply be invited into the circle, no matter how well his songs tickled the cauliflower ears of stoned men. Music was necessary to their high, the piercing trills of the bouzouki essential to the process of intoxication. The manghes appreciated Spiros's skill as a musician, and for the service of being entertained, they filled up his narghile and let him call them by their secret names. But a song could never replace action.

The hideout of Manolis the Cucumber and his gang was a hillside cave near Keratsini. Half a dozen tough guys, already stoned enough for trouble, shared the finest hashish from Bursa with two sailors who'd asked the right questions when their ship docked in Piraeus, and with a carnival strong man who had arms the size of small pigs. Spiros was there too, a squeaker among these men of the streets, of the world, with nothing but his bouzouki to save him.

How exactly he'd offended the Cucumber was not spelled out to Kivelli by Sakis the Sweet-Talker. To repeat the slight would be to commit it again and put himself in danger. You didn't even dare smile at a big man like the Cucumber unless he smiled first, let alone mouth off about his business. What Sakis could tell her was that Spiros had said the wrong thing at the wrong time, and that the Cucumber, so named for both his hardness and coolness, did not react other than to tell him it was time to go home and start packing. This could be interpreted in several ways. Leave the neighbourhood for a while. Skip town altogether. Or make your final arrangements: run up some debts, get crazy high and fuck like a spring rabbit because that permanent black cloth would soon be pulled over your face. And like the song went, once they put you in the cold earth, everyone would forget your name.

But Spiros did not go home to pack, did not make any arrangements one way or another. He showed up at the taverna that night as if nothing had changed. Had he not grasped the implications of what had taken place and the Cucumber's prerogative to settle the score, or did he believe his music was magic? Kivelli never got the chance to ask him whether he was afraid or ready for his big test, though she was sitting next to him when it happened. The shock that registered on Spiros's face told her he never saw it coming. Not when the Cucumber and his gang stepped into the taverna. Not when the big man raised a glass to him. Not when the Colt .45 was pointed in his direction. And not when the bullet penetrated Spiros's chest — a perfect shot right at the end of a song the Cucumber had requested. It was the last song Spiros ever played, a lively song delivered with gusto and pride, celebrating his killer's fierceness in love and war. There was complete silence in the room. Kivelli held her breath, waiting for the second bullet that would bind them in death, or for Spiros to sit up and drag her outside, where he would punish her for believing herself free of him and rejoicing.

When the Cucumber stood up and walked towards the platform, the men began to applaud. He was short and thick around the middle, red-faced and flabby-jowled, and there was more white than black in his moustache and eyebrows. His Republican was dark blue and never removed, not even in church. Once, during a game of dice, a guy trying to prove something knocked it off on a dare, but he wasn't around anymore to answer questions about what was underneath. The Cucumber ruffled Spiros's hair and apologized to Kivelli, not because he'd shot her lover but because blood had spattered her dress. “We had debts to clear,” he said and shrugged, then handed her a gardenia and tossed a few coins into her plate. It was the honourable thing to do for the widow of a man you'd just killed. “He was a good guy, and a top player. It was nothing personal, you understand.” Kivelli nodded and stopped herself from smiling. “If there's anything I can do for you, just send a message.” He winked as if they were in cahoots and signalled his men, including sweet-talking Sakis, towards the exit.

“You've done enough,” she called out after him, then brought the flower to her nostrils, ran its petals across her lips. She was tempted to touch Spiros one last time — his oily hair, his longnailed hand that had grabbed her with a desperation so intense it might have been erotic had it not been so selfish. Instead, she slid the gardenia behind his ear and left him on the platform by himself, slumped over his bouzouki, taking his final bow.

Some regulars waved her over and offered her a drink, a drag on a narghile, which she gladly accepted. Nobody spoke. The place emptied out, and Barba Yannis was supervising a couple of men who were carrying Spiros's body into the storeroom. He didn't seem too flustered, considering he had just lost his long-time bandleader and friend. Whatever his true feelings, Barba Yannis was first and foremost a businessman who knew this settling of scores would only enhance the reputation of his taverna. Stories were already being told down at the docks, songs would soon be sung, but not by Kivelli. She'd had more than enough of Spiros while he was alive.

Sakis came back after a little while and sat next to Kivelli as if he had a reservation. “What now?” he asked, and she understood this had more to do with the next few hours rather than whatever was left of her life. She took a long sip from the narghile and let the fragrant smoke expand in her lungs.

“Do you want to walk me home?” she asked, slowly sliding her hand along his thigh. Whether he thought this was inappropriate, he never said. There was no time for such moralizing as she snuck him past Margarita's room and up the dark steps, then pushed him into her bed.

It was true that nothing whet the appetite for sex like death. Kivelli was not yet certain whether it worked in the other direction as well, though she suspected it might.