The Goodtime Girl

by Tess Fragoulis

  If Kivelli slept at all, it was only long enough for a fragment of a bad dream to wake her again. Luckily she had nowhere to be, not in the afternoon, not in the evening. After Marianthi went home, she would sleep straight through to the next day. This thought comforted her enough to drop off again until Marianthi kissed her cheek good morning. Despite the insomnia her presence had caused, in the brief interval of sleep Kivelli had managed to forget her guest and was momentarily as startled as the first time she’d appeared in the room in her flowery frock. Marianthi smiled like an indulgent lover, her pretty face marred by black smudges around her eyes and a deep crease across her cheek from the pillow they had shared. Otherwise she seemed fresh as a morning blossom with dew on its petals.

  “You don’t have to get up,” Marianthi whispered, the tang of last night’s wine on her breath. “But I should get home before Panayotis begins celebrating my disappearance.”

  Kivelli groaned and drew the covers over her head.

  “Can I borrow one of your dresses, my dear? I can’t very well walk around in the pink thing in the middle of the day. The shoes will be bad enough.”

  “Whatever you want,” Kivelli mumbled. “Whatever fits.”

  Marianthi kissed her cheek through the sheet and got out of bed, humming a tune that was too light and lively for early morning. Kivelli spied on her as she held one dress after another over her body.

  “I had so much fun last night, I may come again next Saturday,” she announced as she peeled off the nightdress and shimmied into the red dress Kivelli had worn at Kyria Effie’s, worrying its seams. It was not quite a day dress with its wide neckline and the oversized rose at the hip, but it would call less attention to her than pink satin in the fish market. Marianthi unlatched the shutters and stood by the window, posing with her hands on her hips. “Do you think anyone in the square will mistake me for you?” She sounded hopeful. Kivelli squinted through the sunlight. The dress was not only too tight but too long; it made her look like a legless statue pulled out of the sea.

  “I doubt it. But you’re welcome to it.” If she hadn’t been so sleepy, so agitated, she might have humoured Marianthi a little, though she also felt the need to guard against her aspirations. She watched her friend put herself together in the mirror: ordering her hair, wiping away the smudged makeup with a handkerchief dipped in the clay water jug. She helped herself to rouge and powder without asking, and for some reason this small liberty bothered Kivelli. She then began to hum again, the same cheery tune.

  “Is that one of the Smyrniot’s?”

  “And mine,” Marianthi replied, still preening in the mirror. “Why don’t you come over for dinner this evening, after he’s at work, and I’ll show it to you.”

  “Not tonight.” Kivelli pulled on the nightdress over her underclothes and was enveloped in the other woman’s flowery smell.

  “Come tomorrow, then,” she said, sitting on the edge of the bed to put on her too-high shoes. “You’ll love it as if it were written for you. It probably was, since I’d already imagined you before I found you.” Kivelli reached out and lightly touched her back. “Sing a little of it for me now, to give me a taste of it, something to look forward to.” Marianthi’s body tensed under her fingertips.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t do it justice. And I really must be going.” She took Kivelli’s hand and kissed it. “I’ll give it to you tomorrow. I’ll give you back your dress too. Leanna will launder it, and it will be good as new.” She stood up and opened the door.

  “Don’t bother, my friend,” Kivelli called after her. “It was never new.”

  On her way down the stairs, Marianthi was confronted by Margarita, but Kivelli was certain she would come up with an appropriate excuse for her presence. If worse came to worse, she’d give the old Harpy some money. Aspasia scratched at the door a while later, eager to provide the details of the exchange, but Kivelli wasn’t interested in being visited by anyone but sleep. Before she drifted off, she noticed that Marianthi had left her pink dress behind. It was propped up on the chair — a headless, limbless woman sitting vigil and waiting for her to tell all. “Goodnight, Marianthi,” she said to it and closed her eyes, spreading herself out as much as she could in her narrow, empty bed.

  19

  SMYRNA, 1922

  For her nineteenth birthday, Papa took Kivelli to the Theatre of Smyrna, where an Italian company was premiering Pagliacci: “the tragic tale of a troupe of vengeful clowns,” according to the advertisements posted all over the city. For weeks she had pestered Papa to reserve tickets, and she was beside herself with anticipation though, in truth, she did not like clowns, nor did she care that much for opera. Kivelli preferred the love songs of Smyrna’s celebrated musicians, their merry accordions, mandolins and sweet voices serenading the dark-eyed flirts who cracked men’s hearts into a million pieces with one saucy glance. It was the drama of going to the famous theatre, where the city’s high society mingled, that had her spinning. What she would wear preoccupied her most, since she’d heard that what went on in the audience was watched more ardently than whatever was transpiring on stage. It was imperative that she be well prepared for her debut as bewitching ingenue, a role she hoped to repeat often.

  With a little bit of cooing and cajoling, Papa was adequately convinced of her need for a new outfit for this momentous occasion. This fawning was purely a ritual that he enjoyed and encouraged. All she had to do was ask sweetly and give him a peck on the cheek. His daughter was the greatest treasure in his house, and nothing that made her happy was ever spared.

  Kivelli toured the boutiques on rue Franque with Smaro, a young village woman with a golden touch who could look at a gown and reproduce it as if by magic. At Paradis des Dames she found exactly what she was looking for. Papa sent a bolt of his finest burgundy velvet to Smaro’s house, and within a week she created a dress as fine as the one in the exclusive shop: its bodice was fitted, and the jet beads sewn around the neckline, hem and pointed edges of the long sleeves sparkled slightly but dangerously when Kivelli moved through the room. The finishing touch was a matching velvet headband, worn just above her brows, which made her look like she’d stepped out of the latest issue of La Mode. She admired herself in the gilt-framed mirror in her bedroom, and after a final pat of powder, blew a kiss at her reflection.

  Papa beamed with pride as she walked into the salon, and tears filled his eyes. “When did you become this splendid young woman, the spitting image of your mother?” he wondered out loud. Moved by his emotion, Kivelli sat next to him and took his manicured hand in hers, sighing deeply for the mother she hardly remembered. Worried he’d upset her, he tickled her under the chin as if she were a little girl. “I have a surprise,” he announced, then called for the photographer who’d been waiting in the foyer. A nervous young man shuffled in with his camera and captured the moment, their emotions making both Kivelli and her father look vulnerable. After the young man left, Papa said he hoped the photograph would always remind her, wherever she might be, that he cherished her above all other people and things in his life. His face was very serious, too serious for a birthday celebration, Kivelli scolded, and with her gloved fingertip stanched a tear before it ruined her powder.

  A hired car was idling outside, a black Bugatti convertible with a uniformed driver at the wheel. The interior was apple red, and Kivelli reclined luxuriously in the back seat, holding hands with Papa. But halfway to the theatre she yelped in distress. In the excitement of the photograph, of the departure, she’d forgotten the most crucial accessory for her evening at the opera. A neighbour had offered to lend her a pair of opera glasses if she stopped by on her way out to show off her new outfit. How would she be able to see who was watching her now? This was certainly a tragedy, a blight on what otherwise promised to be a perfect evening. She almost cursed, but bit her tongue just in time. Papa patted her gloved hand and smiled consolingly, then extracted a small, golden pouch from his jacket pocket and dropped it on her velvet lap. Kivelli took a mome
nt to admire the contrast between the golden silk and the deep burgundy of her dress before dipping two fingers between the pouch’s drawstrings.

  It contained a pair of sterling silver opera glasses with her name engraved on the side. She immediately lifted them to her eyes and peered into passing windows, doorways and shops. Everything intimate and hidden was all at once at her discretion, hers to do with as she wished. Kivelli was fascinated by the details and secrets revealed by the glasses, and the notebook she once used to copy the trimmings of foreign women’s dresses became the repository for all she spied, all the things that attracted and repulsed her. There was no greater plan yet for these notes; they would simply be a map of the realm she inhabited, a place both real and imaginary in which she was queen.

  The performance on stage was not as interesting as the view of the audience the new opera glasses provided, though Kivelli was occasionally touched by the plaintive voice of the lovelorn hunchback whose heart was breaking. What impressed her most was the grandness of the theatre, modelled after l’Opéra in Paris, and the beauty of the patrons in their costumes and jewels. The atmosphere was festive, her fellow theatregoers chattering enthusiastically, exchanging glances more gripping and revealing than anything the Italian actors could muster. Those who sat quietly, their attention focused on the stage, were most suspect and out of place. They were either uncomfortable foreigners who had not yet acclimatized to the spirit of Smyrna, or illicit lovers who had schemed to sit next to each other in the dark theatre, the possibility of being caught adding to the thrill of their liaison. Kivelli trained her opera glasses on a dandy rubbing elbows with an icy blond woman, who closed her eyes and took a deep breath, the suggestion of a smile creasing her stiff upper lip. So preoccupied was she with the affairs of the audience that she’d lost the thread of the story unfolding on stage. Two of the clowns were now dead and the hunchback was declaring, “la commedia e finita.” Following Papa’s lead, Kivelli stood up and applauded with gusto and felt completely satisfied.

  Arm in arm, they walked along the Quai to the Sporting Club, where her father was a senior member. On the rooftop terrace the sea breeze washed away the dreaminess of the theatre, and the moonlight opened up a pathway on the water — an ephemeral road flanked by the silhouettes of ghostly ships that led to invisible worlds all in motion while Kivelli sat there, enjoying the view. Smyrna, she declared, was one of the most beautiful places on earth — at least as beautiful as Paris — and she was one of the luckiest girls in the world because the city had created her to adorn and enjoy it in a way that could never be fully understood by an outsider. They were inseparable — one could not exist without the other. No matter where she went, she knew she would always return. As these thoughts swirled around her moonlit head, Papa asked if she’d enjoyed her evening. “Magnifique,” she crooned, then gazed at the people still strolling the Quai on this enchanted night, the few whose eyes she met looking up at her with both envy and admiration.

  20

  Every Wednesday, Marianthi visited Kyra Xanthi, the neighbourhood fortune-teller. She claimed it was “just for fun,” though she seemed to take the old woman’s advice very seriously, wearing yellow for one whole week to avert a stretch of stormy weather in the household, and putting out milk for stray cats to encourage fertility, though it hadn’t helped in either case. She also insisted that it was because of Kyra Xanthi that she had found Kivelli, not the first time at Barba Yannis, but at Margarita’s house.

  “When I crossed the bridge into Drapetsona, I was accosted by a group of ruffians, so I ran up a side street. An old woman who looked like the widow of hope was sweeping her steps. She was small and wrinkled as a marionette, unlucky as a black cat, and she scowled at me as if I were a trespasser who should turn around and leave or suffer wicked and painful consequences.”

  “Perhaps you should have worn a dress less gay and left the hat with the feathers and pompoms at home. Then you might still have it.” Margarita had tried to sell it to Kivelli, but it had ended up on Pandelis the hat seller’s cart.

  “But I’d left the house so quickly,” Marianthi replied with some lingering regret, “without thinking.”

  Undeterred, she walked past the old woman and tried to look like she knew where she was going, all the while counting her footsteps and taking mental notes of street names and shop fronts. As she crossed the square, she hoped that somehow she would be able to find Kivelli without having to ask anyone. Maybe she would bump into her, or hear her voice through an open window. She didn’t dare go to the taverna again where some acquaintance of her husband’s might see her and report back to him. Then she’d have to explain her sneaking around, asking questions he insisted were none of her business.

  “That’s when Kyra Xanthi came out and saved me, invited me in for a coffee and a chat. ‘Come in sweetness,’ she said, ‘I won’t eat you. I’ve already had lunch. But some big bad wolf might decide you’re tasty if you keep wandering around with that lost sheep look on your face. People are hungry around here, you know.’ And then she told me how to find you, and I did.”

  “Because of her cousin the cobbler, not through her amazing powers,” Kivelli reminded Marianthi, but she waved off her doubt. “You don’t find it even a little impressive that Xanthi was the person who invited me in?”

  “You’re free to believe whatever suits you. And I’ll do the same.”

  On this particular Wednesday, Kivelli had reluctantly agreed to go along, despite her mistrust of such nonsense. How could the reading of coffee grounds or the random flipping of playing cards indicate anything meaningful about her life, her future? Even the lines on her palms could not to be trusted, for they were more likely a result of the number of dishes she’d washed at Kyria Effie’s than a map of her destiny. None of the grannies or gypsies in Smyrna with their cards laid out on the ground could have ever predicted she would end up in Piraeus. Some things were beyond imagination. And even if Kivelli believed the future could be read, she wasn’t sure she would want to hear the story. She preferred to approach each day as if it were her last; in this she found some solace.

  The women turned down a street Kivelli had never been on before, identical to all the others that ran off the square. An old woman wearing a bright red kerchief with a black diamond pattern and a sack dress covered in large flowers waved at them. “Are you looking for me?” she called out and motioned them over. Marianthi waved back and pulled Kivelli towards her. “You’ve brought your friend today, I see, good, good.” The old woman’s smile was so open and friendly that Kivelli could not help but return it. “Come in and we’ll drink some coffee, then you’ll tell me some stories, and I’ll tell you some, and we’ll see if they match.” She drew the beaded curtain that hung at the threshold, stepped in after the two women and closed the door.

  Kyra Xanthi busied herself brewing coffee, her back to her guests. Everything she’d ever owned seemed to be crammed into the one, dark room that smelled like a church. There was a sunken divan pushed against the wall, a heavy wooden table with two mismatched chairs, a washbasin turned upside down on the floor and a china cabinet with its glass doors missing. On its shelves were stacks of plates, hundreds of wooden spools stripped of their thread, religious icons with candles burning before them and dozens of old shoes in all colours, shapes and sizes, piled one pair upon the other. The walls of the room were covered with pictures: old women and young women posed in fancy dress, men in uniforms, children in sailor suits and costumes for Carnival parades. There was a yellowing picture of Prime Minister Venizelos when he was still young, torn out of a newspaper and placed in a glassless frame, and so many others that Kivelli could have spent days studying them.

  “Watch that your eyes don’t fall out, Miss Kivelli.” Kyra Xanthi pulled the two chairs away from the table. “Sit down now, my girls, and I’ll tell you everything you need to know.” Kivelli’s chair had a big crack in its seat, and she worried it would snag her dress, tear it off if she tried to flee. She sat at
the edge and stared at the beaded curtain, the wooden door behind it. Her breath was short and her nerves were rubbing against each other like the hind legs of crickets. Could the old woman hear their song? Kivelli swallowed hard and brought her hands over her ears to muffle the ringing, to suffocate it. It was perhaps the smallness of the room, overburdened with uncanny objects, combined with the strong odour of the brewing coffee and the persistent smell of frankincense coming from she was not sure where, that induced this sudden dizziness and languor. If she folded her arms on the table, put her head down, she might have fallen asleep. Instead, she forced herself to speak.

  “You live here by yourself, Kyra Xanthi?”

  “No, my loverboy is hiding under the bed.” She cackled and clapped her hands several times, and Kivelli half expected some dusty pirate with a patch over his eye to roll out from under the divan. This thought made her laugh, harder than she normally would have had she not felt so uneasy.

  “Plain, medium, or sweet?” Kyra Xanthi asked as she heaped sugar into the briki before either woman could reply.

  “However you’re having it,” Marianthi replied and shrugged.

  Xanthi carried over the coffee cups and sat on the divan, close to Marianthi’s chair. From her apron pocket, she pulled out a deck of old red cards with a faded Persian rug design on their backs. She placed them on the table before Marianthi, who picked them up immediately and began to shuffle.

  “Cut the cards, my girl, and we’ll see what the future holds for my favourite married lady.”