The Goodtime Girl

by Tess Fragoulis

  She was latching the shutters in the room next to hers when Kyria Effie galloped up the stairs, graceful as a pregnant camel, her breath as offensive. “Make yourself presentable,” she commanded, thrusting a pair of black, patent leather pumps at her, “and then come to the parlour.” Kivelli stared at her, frozen. “Immediately!” Though this moment had lurked like a bad smell in the bedding since the day she’d arrived, Kivelli was not prepared for it. She went through the motions, powdering her face, rouging her cheeks and lips in a gilt-framed mirror in the hallway that seemed equally displaced, though it showed her no sympathy. Running her fingers through her short, brown hair, she tried not to look herself in the eye. Then she stepped into the shiny shoes and walked down the stairs as slowly as possible. Everything would be lost when she reached the bottom.

  The gaslight in the parlour was turned up bright, which made the sagging and battered furniture look even sadder, like a room where only bad news was delivered. A thick-waisted man in a wrinkled tweed suit sat at the edge of the divan, mopping his brow and the underside of his chin with a white lace handkerchief. Was it hot in the room? Kivelli was shivering. She covered her mouth with her hand to keep her teeth from chattering. The man stood up when she entered, stuffed the handkerchief in his breast pocket and took a step towards her. She stepped back, looked away. “Barba Yannis, this is Kivelli.” Kyria Effie’s clammy hand grasped her elbow and pushed her forward.

  Barba Yannis cleared his throat. “I was walking by here a few days ago and heard you singing out the window like a nightingale, Miss.” He gave her a big grin, then blushed as if he’d admitted to spying on her in the bath. A half-smile formed behind Kivelli’s cupped palm. So the big spender had been caught with one of the flirty songs she’d once used to tease her suitors — the young men with creamy cheeks and perfect manners who had come to Smyrna from Constantinople in hopes of winning her hand. For a moment she forgot that she couldn’t say no.

  “I own a small taverna not too far from here,” he continued, speaking with some urgency. “I’ve lost my singer and thought you might stand in for a night or two.”

  Kivelli nodded. Consented. She wasn’t sure to what, only that it seemed less repulsive than what she’d expected.

  They bartered in front of her, and Kyria Effie made it sound like Kivelli had been reserved for that night a hundred years in advance, while Barba Yannis pointed out her flaws, trying to bring the price down. “She’s not that pretty and has no experience,” he insisted, “and who knows whether she can dance on those skinny legs.”

  “Can you dance?” Kyria Effie asked, signalling yes with her eyes.

  To be safe, Kivelli shook her head no. They eventually settled on the standard fee, times three, and he counted the coins into Kyria Effie’s outstretched hand. Neither asked her if she wanted to go. She was going to sing in Barba Yannis’s taverna as surely as she would drop her drawers if that’s what he demanded. Who was to say that wasn’t part of the deal Kyria Effie had struck with him before she’d come downstairs?

  Kivelli followed him out of the house, silent, obedient, reluctant, like a dog with a length of cord tied around its neck. Every few seconds she looked back over her shoulder. Girls squeezed into the gaudy hand-me-downs of dead women draped themselves over the sills of second floor windows. They waved, applauded, blew kisses and spat — for encouragement, for luck, for protection against envy.

  “Don’t forget to bring home your plate,” Kyria Effie crowed from the doorway. “You already owe me a fortune!”

  The taverna was in the nearby square and, on the way, Barba Yannis rattled off the names of a few songs: “Manghes in Trouble,” “I Bet All My Money,” “The Smuggler.” “Do you know any of them?” he asked hopefully. A few sounded familiar. Groups of buddies full of hashish and good spirits sometimes brought records to Kyria Effie’s house, singing along with the phonograph while they waited their turn and Kivelli served them ouzo or wine. Others brought baglamas and accordions or sang unaccompanied, clapping hands and stamping feet for rhythm. They were nothing like the playful love song that had hooked Barba Yannis, but songs about prison and intoxication and betrayal. Kivelli had learned a lot of things at Kyria Effie’s.

  “There aren’t many women singers in Piraeus. Not like where you came from.” Where had she come from? The theatre? The broom closet? Barba Yannis stopped in front of a squat, flat-roofed building with tall windows protected by mesh grilles. “But your voice lured me in like a lovesick fish, so I thought it might be worth a try.” He pulled open the thick wooden door and gestured for Kivelli to go in first.

  “What happened to the other singer?” she asked tentatively, hoping the white lace hanky was not all that was left of her.

  “He had to leave town,” Barba Yannis replied stiffly, clearing his throat again and mopping a new layer of sweat from his forehead. She didn’t ask any more questions, but hesitated before stepping inside. “Don’t worry, Miss Kivelli. You’ll be fine. And if it doesn’t work out, if the men don’t accept you, you still have your place at Kyria Effie’s,” he assured with a wink.

  3

  I’m welcomed like a brother

  When I walk into the dive

  They offer me a toke

  And I’m glad to be alive

  Men must be able to see in the dark. Kivelli could hear them and smell them, but all she could see were embers pulsing in the bowls of narghiles, burning red spots onto her eyes. They were talking amongst themselves, but she did not have the vocabulary to understand their language. What she heard was a string of sounds, some happy, some sad and angry, some slow and backwards — a secret dialect not meant for women’s ears.

  She was a hen in a den of foxes, a porcelain figurine in a bullpen, a scrawny cat in a doghouse. She almost fainted from the reek of hashish and sweat, and her shoes stuck to the spit and resin-covered floor as Barba Yannis led her towards a small platform made of halved barrels and planks of wood covered with a muddied Turkish rug. It took forever to get there. Kivelli convinced herself that when she sat upon the chair between the accordion and baglama player she would be safe, untouchable. Not that anyone reached out to touch or trip her as she wove between tables, an aberration, an apparition. But as the only female present besides the painted girls in the corner who knew their place, their function, she was an easy target. She knew the men saw her, smelled her, though not one head turned as she passed, holding her skirt against her legs so it wouldn’t brush anyone’s knees.

  Once she was seated on the platform, the fist that squeezed and punched behind her rib cage since she’d landed in Piraeus loosened its grip, and a calm that began below her navel spread warmth into her chest. Shapes began to emerge, faces to light up in the dark, and Kivelli squinted in order to see past the red spots floating before her, obscuring the men’s eyes, turning them into demons. A hipster wearing a double-breasted jacket pushed his Republican far back on his head like a gangster’s crown and sipped a narghile like fine brandy, savouring the taste of hashish and thyme wood with his eyes closed. A squat, ugly fisherman in a cap, vest and striped baggy trousers flipped amber worry beads rhythmically as if he were listening to music inside his head. Short men and tall men milled about, fat men brawled with men skinny as weeds. Kivelli sat still in her green dress and black pumps, not sure what she should do. No one seemed to notice or care she was there. They had no use for her. They had each other, the narghile. Were they hoping their indifference would drive her out, and that things in their lair would remain as they had always been? The hairs on her arms stood on end, even though it was hot and muggy in the room, the air thick with smoke, unbreathable. Running out would involve parading past their tables again, and now that she could see the scars slithering down their cheeks, their blank, stoned stares, this prospect was almost worse than staying. She was especially aware of a dagger — polished, beautiful and ready — lying on the table of a frightening, beautiful man. She closed her eyes to all of it, but the red spots continued to menace he
r, to make her dizzy with their dance.

  The bandleader made his entrance, improvising on his bouzouki while welcoming the men and wishing them a happy high. He gave Kivelli a droll look, then spat the name of the song in her face. She pulled away and held her breath, but when the accordion and guitar and baglama began to play, out of fear or desire or the need to find herself in the dark, she opened her mouth. A sound emerged, rising from beneath her navel and filling the room like light. “Hey, mangha, if you wanna use your knife, you need the heart, the soul to pull it out,” she wailed, squeezing her eyes tight. The taverna was silent as a cave fifty metres below the ground. She now had their undivided attention, yet she felt alone in the room. There was only the music and her voice. Nothing else. She didn’t dare open her eyes. She sang songs about broken hearts, sorrow and revenge. Men’s songs about men’s souls, her female voice softening the anger and the edges into melancholy. Hers was the voice of their lost mothers, sisters and wives — all the women who had loved and taken pity on them. They shouted encouragements between lines, verses; they called her name, as if they’d known her all along, had been expecting her.

  In response, she sang more confidently. A few manghes got up to dance. She felt the swish of air their arms created, heard the sound of their shuffling feet. And, for a moment, as she was singing and they were calling out and dancing, she became one of them. She grew a man’s heart, and her woman’s troubles and fears disappeared. She opened her eyes and stepped off the stage, clapping her hands above her head and throwing her hips from side to side to catch the winding rhythm of the song.

  When it was all over, she wove around their tables, shaking hands, accepting coins and compliments, filling her plate, her cloth handbag, her blouse with them. Barba Yannis took her aside and asked her to come back the next night. As if she had a choice.

  4

  Kivelli walked back to Kyria Effie’s with another girl from the house. Narella was short and plump, but pretty enough, with untamed curly hair and a complexion that betrayed some gypsy blood. She claimed to be seventeen, though it was hard to tell how old she was beneath the layer of paint on her face and the shiny orange sausage casing she wore. None of the girls told the truth about their age, but if Narella scrubbed off the makeup, put on a white dress and flat shoes, she might have looked like a schoolgirl on her way home after a class outing at the ancient Agora. Thanks to the wrought iron grate that connected their rooms, Kivelli knew more about Narella than was decent between strangers, though they had never spoken before beyond a morning greeting. A familiar face at Barba Yannis’s, however, was not to be wasted, especially one that had witnessed her success and could help carry it back to the house. She linked arms with the younger woman as if they’d been best friends their whole lives.

  Seized by a wild elation, Kivelli sang and laughed as they crossed the square. She felt like the Parisian artistes she used to read about, with trunks full of costumes and admirers lined up outside their dressing rooms carrying flowers and tantalizing propositions. How she’d loved those books and the escape they offered, when it was simply a lark, a place she could come back from.

  There were no books at Kyria Effie’s, and only a limited supply of good spirit in Piraeus. As gay as Kivelli felt, Narella felt fantastically dismal. She’d had a fight with the mangha she was currently entangled with — Crazy Manos, so named for both his antics and his effect on women. “He was making eyes at that blond bitch, Kiki, as if I wasn’t sitting right there next to her,” she complained, her eyes brimming with tears. “So I threw all the money I’d made in his face and told him what he could do with his mother.” If he hadn’t been so stoned, he surely would have chased her with his knife. And how was she to explain her empty purse to Kyria Effie? She could say she lost it, or forgot to ask for payment, but then there would be a penalty and Narella was already in such debt. “That old witch would charge us for the air we breathe if she knew how.”

  Kivelli laughed and tickled Narella’s cheek with one of her stray curls. “You see, that’s the one benefit of sleeping in the broom closet — no air.” Her new friend didn’t crack a smile. “Don’t worry about Kyria Effie, Narella,” she said, shaking her cloth handbag by its ribbon handle, the coins jangling inside sounding like three times their worth. “You can have some of mine.” It was easy to be generous. Whatever she’d made at the taverna would be confiscated the moment she stepped through the door to pay off her mounting debt. Kivelli wasn’t quite certain how much she owed. Money was not a thing Papa had ever discussed — where it came from and how it was made was as foreign to her as washing dishes and emptying chamber pots. For all she knew she was being charged for the air in her room, along with the hairpins, the stiff black shoes on her feet and the peach liqueur she never went downstairs to drink with the other girls. Tongues loosened by alcohol, they argued viciously with the madam about their accounts. Until now Kivelli had considered herself a burden to the house, so she didn’t dare ask.

  It was also taken for granted that the minute they left, Kyria Effie turned their rooms upside down, searching for secrets she could use or sentimental objects she could hold hostage. Kivelli had nothing to steal, hide or miss. Even the remaining coins bouncing around in her otherwise empty handbag were of no use to her.

  Had Kyria Effie never been a young woman with suitors and hopes? Had she never dreamt of a life outside the heavily curtained house that always smelled of dead mice and spoiled milk no matter how much lemon water she spritzed through the corridors? “Why not rose water or lilac?” Kivelli demanded. “Do men love lemons that much?” Kyria Effie gave each of her girls a sea sponge, a bowl and a clay pitcher of lemon water to freshen up between customers, but this only left their skin sticky and made it impossible to feel clean.

  “Lemons are cheap,” Narella offered, “and they grow outside Effie’s window.

  But Kivelli was no longer paying attention, her thoughts tripping down another path. Since the influx of refugees, Piraeus had been experiencing a severe water shortage; there was barely enough to drink let alone wash in. A real bath was something she would pay for — if only she knew where to find one. She slid two of the coins into the hem of her dress, gave another two to Narella, and saved the rest for the gatekeeper.

  “You know, they say her mother …” Narella wrapped her fingers around her throat, shut her eyes and stuck out her tongue, then erupted into a fit of giggles. The coins had lifted her spirits, whereas the next thing she said sank Kivelli’s further. “Imagine, she sold her own daughter to a doghouse when she was ten.” This was a statement free of sensation or sympathy, but a bolt of anger shot through Kivelli’s body.

  “Only a murderer would lie on top of a ten year old, empty himself into her like a pistol.” Kivelli imagined the girl crying, begging to go home, and a tear slid down her cheek.

  “Let’s not feel too sorry for Kyria Effie,” Narella said, handing over a white lace hanky, its edges stitched in pink. “Or what energy will we have left to feel sorry for ourselves? She ain’t wasting no sympathy on us. She loves that lemon tree more. Once I picked a lemon to lighten my hair and she nearly chopped my hand off.” According to Narella, their enemies in descending order were poverty, Kyria Effie, and stiff pricks. She paused, her brow wrinkling as she revised. “Make that cheap pricks. It’s hard not to admire a good, stiff prick.” The girl’s eyes softened; she batted her eyelashes and smiled. Kivelli tried to separate the humour from the cynicism, but couldn’t find the seam. How long had Narella been at the house? She didn’t have the heart to ask. “We should be sisters,” Narella exclaimed and stroked Kivelli’s arm affectionately. “You tell me everything about you and I’ll tell you about me, and when there’s something to laugh or cry about we’ll have each other.”

  A sharp pain pierced Kivelli’s temples and one of her legs gave way, as if it had all at once lost its will. Only Narella’s sudden grip kept her from falling. “The hashish must have gone to my head,” she lied. “I never had a little sist
er …” She pressed her eyelids with the heels of her hands to banish the spectre of her brother Constantine’s moonface hovering over hers while she pretended to be sound asleep.

  “You can’t be the big sister. You’re still a virgin. Age ain’t nothing if you don’t know the facts of life.” Narella’s face beamed, and her tone was smug but playful.

  “There’s more than one way to lose your virginity …” Kivelli sat on a rush-bottomed stool left outside Rovertakis’s kafenion, removed the stiff, black shoes and rubbed her chafed feet.

  Narella put her hands on her hips and spoke with the certainty of an Ottoman official. “The girls are laying bets, you know, on when Effie’s greed will outrun her patience. So if there’s a guy who’s caught your eye at the taverna, maybe we can pitch in and buy him for you, or you for him — however you want to look at it. It’s important that your first time be sweet, little sister.” She joined her hands prayer-like beneath her chin and nodded sympathetically, as if preparing to reveal a difficult but necessary truth. “Anatolian pearls ain’t so rare these days, you know, not like in the beginning. There’s thousands of them rolling around Piraeus, and they’s already going out of style.” Narella theorized that was why Kyria Effie had let her go to Barba Yannis’s at all — to display her to a new pool of buyers. And whatever the taverna keeper coughed up to take her out of the regular lineup for the night was all right too. She made some money without spoiling the goods for the big spender who liked grinding pearls between his teeth because he could afford it.