The Goodtime Girl

by Tess Fragoulis

  Marianthi cut with her left hand, and Xanthi began to lay them out in three perfect piles. The washed-out cards revealed many things about Marianthi’s near future, some of them obvious, some incomprehensible, others hopeful but unlikely. Marianthi did not utter a word through the stream of conjectures, predictions, warnings, and nodded whether what Kyra Xanthi said made sense or not. Kivelli could tell by the intensity of her friend’s gaze that she believed every word offered in the cryptic monologue. The summation included calm waters, good harvest and health, and a strong recommendation for the colour blue.

  When it was Kivelli’s turn, she demurred. Kyra Xanthi was not pleased to have a doubter in her midst, but nor was she discouraged. “You may be the infamous Kivelli, but Pythia was my great, great grandmother,” she boasted and smiled, showing off her single gold tooth. She took Kivelli’s ice-cold hand and rubbed it between hers. “You let me tell your fortune, Miss, and if it comes true, tomorrow, next week, next year, you can come back and give me something for my trouble — a picture, a bit of thread, whatever you think.” Kivelli looked around and wondered what on earth the old seer might need besides a bigger room.

  “How could it hurt?” Marianthi piped in, seized by some vicarious thrill. Indeed, how could it hurt? But how could it help? Kivelli looked directly into Kyra Xanthi’s clear blue eyes for the first time since she’d arrived. They were bright and inquisitive as a child’s and already seemed to be looking deep inside her. “Kyra Xanthi, you tell me whatever you want about the future, but leave the past alone. And I’m not going to give you any hints. I’m just going to listen.”

  The fortune-teller brought Kivelli’s hand very close to her face, her thin, grey lashes tickling the younger woman’s palm when she blinked. Nothing out of the ordinary was predicted. Long life, sunny skies, success and prosperity through her innate talents. Kyra Xanthi patted her palm and closed her fingers over it like the lid of a jewel box. “And don’t wash dishes in cold water anymore,” she added and winked. “It will shrink your life line to nothing.” This made Kivelli laugh genuinely for the first time since she’d stepped through the beaded curtain.

  “Now there’s a piece of solid advice,” she said to Marianthi, who didn’t look amused. “From here on I’ll throw my dishes out the window after every meal, like a celebration.”

  Marianthi furrowed her brow, crossed her arms over her chest. She glowered at Kyra Xanthi as if the old woman were cheating her. “What about a man? Isn’t there a man hidden between any of those lines?” If she had not insisted on an addendum, perhaps he might have been reserved for some little widow who was looking for a new husband.

  Kyra Xanthi pushed a shallow breath through her nostrils, and without even uncurling Kivelli’s fingers pronounced: “Of course there’s a man, silly. Tall, dark and handsome. I saw him sleeping in the crease between the head line and the heart line, but then I got distracted by a seagull flying across the sunny sky, and when I turned around he was gone.”

  “Maybe the sound of all those dishes smashing against the road woke him up,” Kivelli offered, and Marianthi slapped her arm. Old Xanthi had to be given credit for not babbling on about wedding wreaths and white doves. If there was one thing Kivelli knew about her future, it was that she would not be marrying. Unfathomably, despite Papa’s best-laid plans, she’d become the kind of girl men hid from their mothers. And if some mangha proposed, she would decline. She’d heard a story about a singer from Thessaloniki who went blind out of despair when her new husband refused to let her sing, even though that was why he’d fallen in love with her in the first place. He became jealous, as if her singing for the pleasure of other men was a betrayal. Kivelli could not afford a love like that.

  Then there was Marianthi. Though she did not consider herself her husband’s servant, their marriage was hardly inspiring. Kivelli kept quiet about the songs her friend wrote, which were making the Smyrniot more and more popular. Their arrangement suited her, she maintained, and quickly changed the subject. But despite her loyalty to the Smyrniot, Marianthi still craved drama and romance.

  It was her nature. And since she couldn’t live it fully herself, she believed she should be allowed to live it through Kivelli.

  As the women prepared to leave, Marianthi placed two coins on the table, so shiny that they seemed to burn holes in the dark, battered surface. The fortune-teller gathered up her cards and slipped them into her apron pocket, but did not touch the coins. “I thank you for the company, ladies,” she said, and turned her own coffee cup onto its saucer, tapping its bottom. Kivelli’s hand had already parted the beaded curtain and was gripping the door latch. The late afternoon light momentarily blinded her, and she tripped over a stone on the path, grasping Marianthi’s arm to regain her balance. Kyra Xanthi followed them as far as the front stoop. “You come again, Miss Kivelli, anytime you want, and we’ll talk some more.” Before she had a chance to reply, the fortune-teller stepped back through her beaded curtain, into the repository of old shoes and wonders on the other side.

  21

  Arms linked, the women walked towards the square. Marianthi was light on her feet and humming, pleased with Kyra Xanthi’s predictions and convinced that their only task now was to wander the streets until they found this tall, handsome man who had been frightened off by Kivelli’s broken plates. “There’s hope for you yet, my little spinster,” Marianthi chirped. Several men greeted the singer along the way: the lottery hawker with his rack of false promises, the shoeshine man she suspected was Sakis’s father because of his hazel eyes, and an old cop named Hector who used to come to the taverna when he was off duty, returning confiscated hashish so the musicians would play for him.

  “Do you think he’s the one, or him, or that one?” Kivelli teased as they passed each man, but Marianthi was on a mission and pointed out that the first one was not tall enough, the second not dark enough, and the poor cop was so ugly that even Aspasia would not be able convince herself otherwise.

  All of a sudden Marianthi stopped in her tracks and began to spin slowly, gracefully, as if she were dancing to a private melody. When she stopped, her face was flushed, her eyes bright, and her gaze was fixed on a man sitting by himself at a café table, fiddling with the mouthpiece of a narghile and scribbling along the margins of a newspaper. “There he is, there’s your man,” she whispered, and squeezed Kivelli’s hand. “Don’t be silly,” Kivelli began, but was shushed, so she took a minute to study him. She had no illusions that he was her man, or that the old snaggle-toothed grandmother of the devil had conjured him out of her cold palm, which for some reason was sweating. But she had to admit that he was quite the specimen with his dark wavy hair, aquiline nose and admittedly long legs in fine grey trousers. He was absorbed in his thoughts and indifferent to the hubbub going on around him in the square — the hawker’s cries, the men’s debates, the yapping of dogs vying for crumbs under the tables. He seemed equally unaware that two women were standing a few metres away, staring at him as shamelessly as if he were a naked statue in a museum. Kivelli felt a cramp in the place her voice rested when she was not singing. She rubbed her belly and groaned quietly.

  “What?” asked Marianthi.

  “Nothing,” she replied, rubbing harder.

  “Quite a dandy, isn’t he?” Marianthi ran her fingertips over her lips and lightly kissed them. “And a good singer too. Writes his own songs and performs them in Athens. He knows my husband. So what do you think?” She waggled her fingers in a bashful wave, or perhaps to release the kiss, but the man did not notice.

  “I think you and the old witch are up to something.” She turned to walk out of the square, but Marianthi grabbed her arm and dragged her towards his table. Kivelli’s whole body quaked with fear, as if he were a fire encroaching upon her. Her skin braced in anticipation of the first lick.

  The man didn’t look up from his paper until they were standing right next to him, and even then it took him a few seconds, raising his head slowly, as if he’d just been w
oken from a deep sleep. At first he seemed confused, but a smile crept over his face as he recognized Marianthi. He took her hand and she blushed so vividly Kivelli could feel the heat radiating from her friend’s skin. With the measured words of the very stoned, he asked after the Smyrniot. But when Marianthi’s response emerged at the same gummy pace, Kivelli understood it was she who had changed speed, and that no detail, no matter how minute, would be missed or forgotten: the twitch at the left corner of Marianthi’s lips, the slight thrust of her breasts, the man’s lascivious grin and his fingers drumming on his thigh. This had happened to her once before, on the Quai, in a crowd, before the flames pushed her into the water; forgetting it was proving to be a monstrous task, as arduous as collecting a lifetime’s worth of details in a notebook she intended to destroy. Perhaps if she left the square right now, before any more of this slow time elapsed, she would be able to do away with the episode unfolding before her.

  After the briefest of introductions — she didn’t offer her hand — and before running off, Kivelli glanced down at the paper the man had been so absorbed in when they’d first come upon him. The margins were not filled with notes or words caught like dandelion parachutes in the wind, but with snakelike squiggles and small circles that closed in on themselves, eating their own tails. There was not a blank space left on the entire page. While chatting with Marianthi, he turned the paper over and continued to doodle, as if his actions were those of someone walking and talking in his sleep. “Not only dangerous, but crazy,” Kivelli mumbled, but neither Marianthi nor the man was paying attention.

  Her friend was now smiling and flirting openly, posing coquettishly as she spoke, as brazen as Narella inviting attention to herself at Kyria Effie’s. Perhaps she’d picked up a few pointers on the night she’d dropped by in her pink dress. Kivelli excused herself, citing some important business she’d just remembered. Marianthi looked both suspicious and amused, as if she knew what was going on inside her head; the man looked bemused, as if he had just noticed Kivelli standing there. She walked out of the square slowly, so as not to appear afraid. But on the inside she was running, running towards the sea, running for her life.

  When she got home, she locked her door and splashed water on her face to cool herself off. She then tore a piece of paper from her notebook and wrote his name on it — Diamantis Skarlatos — and the words mad and dangerous underneath. After folding it into a small, thick square, she held it over the flame of a candle stub until it caught. She dropped the lit paper into a cup and watched it burn orange-blue, then red, before disintegrating into black ash, which she tossed out the window.

  22

  The picnic was planned for a Monday, as everyone in Piraeus was far too tired on Sundays to do anything but sleep the day away or sit in the square late in the afternoon. Marianthi had come up with the idea a few days after their visit to Kyra Xanthi’s and their encounter with Diamantis, which neither woman mentioned, as if it had been a dream. It didn’t look like Barba Yannis’s taverna would be reopening anytime soon, and other than her Saturday nights at Kyria Effie’s, Kivelli frequented neighbourhood clubs and beer gardens. She was occasionally invited up to the bandstand for a song or two, which allowed her to pass a plate around afterwards. But, mostly, she was killing time, waiting for the next opportunity to root her out of the dark. In the meantime, she visited Marianthi and learned a few more of her songs. Together they plotted a future that no one could suspect, let alone predict. Except maybe the Smyrniot.

  Eager for distraction, Kivelli welcomed the chance to get out in the fresh air and have a few laughs when the countryside was not swarming with people. She invited some of the musicians from Barba Yannis’s — like her, most had nothing much to do for the time being — as well as a few girls from Kyria Effie’s. Marianthi invited the Smyrniot’s musicians from the Bella Vista, as well as their wives, who all declined when they found out some of Kyria Effie’s girls would be present. It was their loss — their husbands would probably have a better time without them; Marianthi certainly would without Elpiniki breathing down her neck. Kivelli was not sure what the Smyrniot’s company thought of the Piraeus gang, but the boys from Barba Yannis’s were excited about the meeting. They hoped it would open up some new opportunities, a road out of Piraeus and into a larger world where musicians made records and smoked hashish in gold-plated narghiles while being chauffeured around in limousines. They were going to bring their instruments, for what kind of party would it be without music, as well as wine and a little bit of Bursa Black. The women agreed to bring all the food, though a few of the Smyrniot’s men threw in some money for a lamb, already roasted so they wouldn’t have to waste their energy turning the spit when they could be having a good time.

  Marianthi made a cake heavy with walnuts and dripping in honey, whereas Kivelli’s contribution was a full-sized meat and fennel pie, bought from Ari’s grill house in the square where she often had lunch. Even if she’d been familiar with the private parts of chickens and fish, Margarita would have never let her use the kitchen. Kyria Effie’s girls, on the other hand, created elaborate dishes to prove they had more than one talent: stuffed zucchini flowers, baked rabbit in yogourt, delicate cheese pastries shaped like pincushions. They packed picnic baskets woven with flowers and arrived at the meeting place wearing colourful sundresses, wide hats and gloves, like genteel ladies strolling through idyllic landscapes in quiet, watery paintings.

  On a sunny and promising Monday morning, five cars rolled out of Piraeus along the coastal road towards Sounio. Marianthi rode with her husband and a few men from the Bella Vista. Kivelli was squeezed in with Narella, Sophia the Cappadocian and Mimis, the bouzouki player from Barba Yannis’s, who pronounced himself the luckiest man in the world. They chose a spot in an open field at the foot of the cliff with Poseidon’s temple perched at the top. It was only a few metres from the sea, though none of the men deigned to step out of their immaculate suits for a dip in the cool water.

  After the food was unloaded and spread out on a blanket on the grass, it became painfully apparent that their party was already suffering from a great divide. The Smyrniot, who always stood apart from any group, was acting as a magnet for the rest of his men. They surrounded him, forming a nervous-looking gang on one side of the blanket. The boys from Barba Yannis’s had also bunched up and were whispering, guffawing and occasionally glancing in the direction of the Smyrniot’s group, then whispering again. Marianthi and Kivelli stood between these two factions, arms linked in solidarity.

  “Nobody eats,” Marianthi announced, “unless he pays for it with a song.”

  Kivelli backed her up at once: “Whoever starts gets the most choice.”

  Normally this added encouragement would have been unnecessary. These were all men accustomed to playing, to being admired for their talents, and having their efforts rewarded with applause and other forms of love. But with the tension clouding this perfectly sunny day, extra inducement was needed. Narella stepped forward, linking her arm with Marianthi’s. “And I will dance for every man who steps forward,” she added, making eyes at one of the Smyrniot’s men. With Crazy Manos still in jail, she felt free to make new friends.

  Who knew whether it was hunger or ego that pushed the first man forward — perhaps it was both. Mimis smiled like a wolf at Narella and sent a few notes from his bouzouki into the open blue sky. In response, Narella tossed her hips and began to skip around the food-laden blanket as if it were the king’s bed. A baglama joined in, again from Kivelli’s side. As the notes called and answered each other, a third man, this time from the Smyrniot’s camp, stepped forward with his clarinet, snaking in and out of the flow the first two men were creating, occasionally overtaking them and pulling the music into new directions the remaining men found irresistible. Kosmas’s toumbeleki added rhythm, and those who were not playing began to clap, to call out praise. Mimis began to improvise a song about a man in love with a lying woman, and was soon joined by a wailing and melodic chorus of ama
n, aman from both sides.

  The first song led to a second and a third, each side seducing the other into uncharted territory. These were men who rarely crossed paths, let alone played together, and their musical duel was both cacophonous and sublime, especially in the rare moments of surrender. Had there been a hapless shepherd nearby, he might have sent his big white dog to chase them away for aggravating his sheep with their infernal noise. But for Kivelli, listening to those brand new notes filling the air for the first time, hearing both the possibilities and impossibilities was even more thrilling than being at a fancy club in the city where the sheer perfection of the music sometimes came close to breaking her heart. The combination of the Smyrniot’s professionally trained virtuosos and the rawness of the self-taught neighbourhood boys created something better than what either had separately. She wasn’t sure whether the men involved could hear it, or whether they were prepared to acknowledge it, but she sensed that this thing they were creating together was not going to go away. When she thought to glance over at Marianthi, she saw her friend was equally enthralled.

  After the music reluctantly came to an end, there was a moment of silence. Nobody moved, not towards the food, nor to their respective sides. Everyone listened to the echo of the final notes as they floated up towards the temple on the cliff, where they slithered between the white marble columns and finally disappeared. Surprisingly, it was the Smyrniot who broke the silence.

  “I think it’s only fair,” he began, “that Miss Kivelli and my wife, who brought us out here today, offer us a song.” He cast a smug glance at Marianthi, who turned redder than the tomato salad sitting in a white bowl at the centre of the blanket. She held her hands in front of her as if closing a door against an intruder.

  How the Smyrniot felt about this outing had never been made clear to Kivelli. He’d been informed of the picnic only after everyone else had agreed to come, so he was in no position to refuse. Now his challenge seemed like more than a lark; the Smyrniot was not a man for larks. Marianthi tried to seem lighthearted while protesting that she did not sing, not even in the bath let alone in public, but her objections were drowned out by the men’s clapping and whistling.