The Goodtime Girl

by Tess Fragoulis

  Copyright © 2011 Tess Fragoulis

  First ePub edition © Cormorant Books Inc. May, 2012

  No part of this publication may be printed, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free 1.800.893.5777.

  The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for its publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) for our publishing activities, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation, an agency of the Ontario Ministry of Culture, and the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit Program.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Cataloguing information available upon request.

  Fragoulis, Tess

  The Goodtime Girl/Tess Fragoulis.

  EPUB ISBN 978-1-77086-116-9 | MOBI ISBN 978-1-77086-117-6

  Cover design: Angel Guerra/Archetype

  based on a text design by Tannice Goddard, Soul Oasis Networking

  CORMORANT BOOKS INC.

  390 STEELCASE ROAD EAST, MARKHAM, ONTARIO, CANADA L3R 1G2

  www.cormorantbooks.com

  In memory of my grandfather, Constantine Fragoulis

  A world ends when its metaphor is dead.

  — ARCHIBALD MACLEISH

  1

  SMYRNA, 1922

  Kivelli Fotiathi was a young woman in full blossom, a Smyrnean rose with a scent as fresh and intoxicating as an orchard at sunset, and it was her father’s task to find the appropriate man to pick her. Though Papa was worldly and refined, and had travelled the great cities of Europe and Asia, he refused to let her do the picking with her eyes, ears or heart. This was out of the question, although it was she who would look at her husband’s face until the moment of death, smell his breath on her pillow, feel the heat of his flesh as he lay with his full weight on her breast. These were not discussions Papa would tolerate, and her spinster aunt was no ally. Neither understood Kivelli’s dreams extended beyond Smyrna and The City, where Papa found most of the primped up boys from good families. She pictured him in their fancy homes, raising a crystal goblet to celebrate the perfect match. The high notes born of their clinking glasses echoed in her ears as if someone were thinking of her; but it was she who thought of them as they implicated her without her consent.

  Kivelli dreamt of faraway places with foreign names, which she practised pronouncing until they rolled off her tongue like a favourite song. Paris, London, New York: great cities she’d learned about at the American College for Girls, and where some of her former schoolmates returned to when their fathers’ business in Smyrna was done. Some of these young women sent her letters, and she memorized every detail, every word they offered. It was her father’s fault that her head was filled with so much foreignness. He insisted she attend classes with the daughters of dignitaries and rich men, although the Greek College was around the corner from their house. But even without the privileged schooling, she still wouldn’t be interested in his tailor-made swells from Constantinople, their cheeks pink and smooth, their hair slicked back like Valentino’s.

  Kivelli was waiting for the American naval officer she’d christened Lieutenant Lovegrove to walk up to her door, the gold buttons of his uniform dazzling everyone in his path. One afternoon in the front garden of a café on the Quai, she fell under the gaze of those miniature suns. She lifted her teacup, took a sip and pretended to be absorbed in the French novel she’d brought along — something by Colette. When the waiter delivered a note requesting the pleasure of her company on a walk along the waterfront after the sun went down, Kivelli glanced at the officer and gave him a coy smile, then folded the note into her book and walked out of the garden without looking back. She had no idea how such affairs were conducted in America, but here in Smyrna, in 1922, young women from respected families did not accept invitations from strangers — not even handsome ones wearing impressive uniforms at whom they had smiled brazenly, and in whose personal sunshine they had basked. It simply was not done, no matter what the travellers said. Kivelli kept his note as a souvenir, as proof of her power and allure. That night she slipped it under her pillow and dreamt of Lieutenant Lovegrove at the wheel of a black shiny car, which drove her over the sea all the way to America. There she saw, heard and tasted the things her friends had written about in their letters. She wore pyjamas made of cat’s fur, drank water that made her giggle and bit her handsome new husband on the neck.

  These fancies buried every young man who came calling, no matter how handsome, witty or rich. In any case, she was in no rush to marry; the foreign books she favoured had taught her that anticipation was more exhilarating than what was attained. Kivelli confided these thoughts to only one person, her cousin Amalia, in letters written in a coded language devised to hide their secrets from their parents. Kivelli’s imagination fed her cousin’s dreams, aroused her desires, and together they created a fantasy world that could not be penetrated by conventional proposals.

  When Papa returned from his latest trip to Constantinople, he brought home presents, letters from Amalia, and his latest protégé. The house was prepared to receive the master and his guest. Everything silver had been polished, the windows were so clean they were invisible, and bushels of roses saturated the rooms with their heady perfume. Even before the young man laid eyes on Kivelli, he would be seduced by the quiet luxury of the foyer and salon: the silk kilims hanging on the walls; the needlepoint tableaus, detailed as paintings; the tessellated bowls and vases with their opaque glazes — magical vessels placed casually throughout the rooms. Hers was a house filled with treasures. Kivelli was accustomed to their presence, so it was difficult for her to imagine the impression they made on strangers.

  But these decorations were just accessories to what the young man truly desired. Kivelli carried a hefty dowry made up of fertile land and satchels of gold. Her handpicked suitor cared little for the lace tablecloths and curtains, the linen sheets and crocheted bedspreads folded neatly in her hope chest. Nor could he imagine the radiance of the white silk peignoir wrapped in thin white paper, waiting patiently for her wedding night to make its debut. If he could see her in it, swaying in front of her mirror, he would give up all the gold in Anatolia for one kiss. When Kivelli thought of marriage, she thought only of beauty — the groom’s face, the bed’s lacy skirts and her reflection in the mirror, in the discs of her husband’s eyes, locked on her as she stepped into the candlelit bedroom in her diaphanous sheath.

  Though she was determined to reject the man no matter what he had to offer, she played along, choosing a colourful dress that was both elegant and provocative, twisting her chestnut hair into a chignon held in place by a Castilian comb, but letting a few capricious strands fall over her forehead. She stepped into her finest shoes, the soft white leather ones reserved for holidays and weddings, and powdered her neck, breasts and underarms with talc that smelled of exotic flowers which only bloomed at night in the desert.

  The young man, wearing his best suit and smelling faintly of lemon verbena, sprang to his feet when she stepped into the salon holding a silver tray. He blushed when Kivelli offered him tea and a sweet — a pink, sinful rose pastry that melted with the taste of Smyrna, of her, in his mouth. Though he did not know it yet, he was glimpsing that which would never be his. Kivelli smiled as she imagined him recalling this moment every time his future wife brought him his tea, the dark liquid on his tongue both bitter and sweet. But while he was hers, she enchanted him with her
many charms. She sang love songs in French and Turkish, played minuets on the blond piano from Mr. Kasanova’s shop, recited passages from epic poems in Greek. She asked many questions about his home, his family, his ambitions, and she cooed enthusiastically to his replies, no matter how dull. She treated him like a sultan, and even Papa, who had witnessed this performance many times, was encouraged, though Aunt Penelope threw her searing glances when no one else was looking.

  Kivelli hoped beyond hope that her father would give up his search, and intensified her own along the Quai: in lovely cafés filled with mysterious, dapper strangers, and on terraces where beautifully dressed ladies played cards and gossiped while their doll-like children were fussed over by nursemaids. In a small notebook Kivelli copied details from their dresses so that her favourite seamstress would be able to drape her in the latest fashions from abroad. When she was feeling particularly bold, she tried to fool these foreign women into thinking she too was a visitor to Smyrna, speaking in musical French to the Americans, in crisp English to the French.

  These trips to the Quai on her own, or with her black cloud of an aunt, took place when Papa was away on business, buying and selling silks rich enough for an emperor. His regular departures gave her a freedom not enjoyed by other Smyrnean girls of her class. Kivelli pitied them as she sipped fizzy lemonade on the terrace of the Grand Hotel, strands of her hair tickling her cheeks in the warm sea breeze. From this vantage point she observed the traffic of handsome young men, sauntering by alone or in groups, thinking seriously, she imagined, about stumbling upon her like a rare treasure of the East — an Anatolian pearl they would be unable to resist, which they would have to possess.

  2

  PIRAEUS, 1922

  She was discovered in a loge of Piraeus’s Attikon Theatre, asleep under a swatch of red velvet cut from its curtain. Others had been fetched by relatives or boarded in the homes of sombre-dressed strangers. This was different. Kivelli’s benefactress looked like High Queen of the gypsies: shiny red frock a few sizes too small for her mass; oversized, purple hat with a golden plume; and green satin slippers embroidered with sequins. Was she real or an apparition escaped from one of the young woman’s nightmares?

  “I’m Kyria Effie. Gather your things,” she commanded in a voice both shrill and coarse that stripped away the last vestiges of sleep and doubt. “I have a place for you in my house.” Things, there were no things, and Kivelli asked no questions. She straightened the patched skirt and yellowed cotton blouse she’d been given by the Refugee Relief Society, put on the second-hand espadrilles and followed the woman down the stairs. Kyria Effie talked, talked, talked the whole time; it did not matter to her one bit that her charge hadn’t said a word. She wasn’t looking for conversation, but for an echo to direct her out of this underworld where old men wept inconsolably for dead grandsons, wives for dead husbands and sons, young women for lost sweethearts, and the only laughter was anguish improperly channelled, like swallowing the wrong way and choking. No Greek had been untouched by the Catastrophe, not even this gargantuan woman in her carnival outfit. She filled the world with words, with noise, while Kivelli tried to shut everything out.

  Along Piraeus’s waterfront black curtains waved from open windows, boats in the harbour hoisted black sails and black shrouds hung off every tall building, the fabric stained and ripped like a whore’s nightgown. Fishmongers with blood on their aprons chased away stray, hollow-eyed children. Listless bodies lined the streets like casualties of war. Beggars, skinny as sticks hung with rags, thrust out grimy hands and cursed when Kyria Effie walked through them as if they were nothing more than swirls of dust that choked the streets. After so many weeks in the perpetual gloom of the theatre, Kivelli’s eyes stung from the glare of the noonday sun, and the stench of rotten fish and unwashed flesh turned her stomach. She coughed violently and almost vomited, but Kyria Effie, still babbling, did not notice.

  The women crossed an iron footbridge into a neighbourhood called Drapetsona, and passed through a square full of peddlers selling loukoumades, kebabs and halva. Idle men sat around small metal tables, drinking coffee, smoking narghiles, killing time. The men greeted them with lewd gestures and kissing noises as if calling a cat, which Kyria Effie ignored, but which filled Kivelli with shame. On a narrow sidestreet off the square, they mounted the steps of a two-storey house with russet roof tiles, soot-covered bricks and a cracked red door. Icy fingers clamped around Kivelli’s heart and squeezed, stealing her breath and making her gasp in pain. Perhaps she should have asked some questions, or at least listened to Kyria Effie’s patter. Then run. But where? Back to the theatre? No. Back to the sea.

  Once inside, they tramped up stairs that groaned beneath them, and at the end of a dim, gaslit corridor, Kyria Effie opened the door to a room no bigger than a broom closet. A mattress covered in a shabby quilt lay on the floor; a three-legged wooden chair leaned in the corner; and instead of a window, a wrought-iron grate looked into the next room. It was no better than the theatre, possibly worse, except for the door. “This is your home now, and you can call me Mother. All the girls do.” Kyria Effie pulled her lips into a ghastly smile and fiddled with a gold locket that hung from her neck. Kivelli stared at her feet, at the faded espadrilles, too small and ugly brown. “You will be fed and clothed and given an allowance if you follow the rules.”

  It boiled down to taking it with her mouth shut. Except when required to keep it open. In the theatre, “it” was traded for an extra hunk of black bread, a second dried out sardine. You took it, you gave it, and considered yourself lucky. But Kivelli had no appetite for her rations and gnawed the insides of her cheeks when she was hungry. She looked at the madam’s wrinkled, painted face, into her brown piggy eyes for the first time, and regurgitated words that caught like fish bones in her throat: “I will never call you Mother. Do you understand?”

  Kyria Effie’s eyes narrowed and her lower lip curled towards her double chin. She grabbed Kivelli by the arm and dragged her downstairs. In a dusty parlour closed off by a moss-coloured curtain, half a dozen men waited their turn. Some stretched out on the floor, their backs up against the wall, a few lolled on a threadbare divan and shared a narghile in the fulvous light of the room’s single lamp. The only one standing cranked a lively tune from a laterna strung with red and white carnations. When the music stopped, the mermaid decorating its top-board winked at Kivelli, who collapsed like a doll made of wood and string.

  “Please don’t let any of those beasts touch me, buy me for a few coins,” she blubbered, streaking Kyria Effie’s satin slippers with tears and saliva.

  The madam smirked, immune to such pleas. “It’s the ones who don’t cry I worry about most, my girl,” she said dryly and pushed Kivelli through the curtain with her sequined foot. She lay before the men like a woven carpet ready to be unfurled and trod upon.

  “Boys, I give you the Anatolian pearl,” Kyria Effie announced, glowing, proud. Kivelli peeked at her audience from under her arm. One of the tougher looking guys shook his head, twisted the end of his long moustache.

  “Heartless woman, I can still smell smoke in her hair.”

  “You just don’t have the money, Manolaki.”

  The others laughed, like caught thieves.

  Spared for the moment, she was sent back to the broom closet where she crawled into bed, pulling the quilt over her head to muffle the vulgar sounds coming through the grate. Her sleep was like death in the dank little room — without breath, without dreams.

  KYRIA EFFIE WAS NOT AS impatient as she first seemed. The next morning she told Kivelli that the Anatolian pearl would not be plucked by some fumbling diver right away. It would be saved for a big spender who collected such rarities and was willing to pay the price. Until he turned up, she would earn her keep by washing dishes, emptying chamber pots and cleaning rooms after her other “daughters” were done. Not after every customer, but after every five or so when a mustiness rose off the sheets and filled the room with a fug so thick t
hat it blinded and suffocated with its intensity. Kyria Effie assumed this would help Kivelli become accustomed to the atmosphere, to the parade of men with their flies undone. Though she’d never washed a dish or changed bedclothes in her life, the other job seemed infinitely worse.

  She did as she was told, spoke to no one and tried to become invisible, hiding in the broom closet or in dark corners of the corridor as the other girls led customers in and out of their rooms. What if someone from home recognized her? Not a young man, some seller of pumpkin seeds she’d flirted with from her window — those boys were all dead. But some lost old man, a friend of Papa’s who’d come to their house for dinner or lunch, carrying boxes of gold-wrapped Swiss chocolates for her and her brother Constantine. When the moans and the creaking of bedsprings subsided, the final goodbyes and complaints exchanged, she would slip behind the opening door. In the empty room she’d hold her breath and feel her way towards the window fumed by stale cries of passion. Flinging open the peeling brown shutters, she’d let out a sigh that turned into a song before she could stop it:

  Kiss me on the mouth, I can’t resist,

  open up your window and blow a little kiss

  Men from all over Drapetsona and adjoining neighbourhoods came to have a look at her, to put in their bids, but Kyria Effie rejected their meagre offers. As days turned to weeks, Kivelli almost persuaded herself that all the big spenders had left town and that nothing would change. But how much longer could she get away with dusting battered headboards, emptying cracked spittoons and shaking out dirty sheets? Hopefully as long as it took for Papa to come in a hired car and rescue her. Her knees were already bruised from scrubbing floors, and the endless dishes she washed cracked her hands until they bled in the cold, dirty water. This was still preferable to the alternative. There wasn’t a man who had come through the cracked red door that she could imagine touching. Not for all the gold in Anatolia. She would jump out a second floor window first, or hang herself from the lemon tree in the backyard.