The Goodtime Girl

by Tess Fragoulis

  “That’s very kind of you, but the hat is all the extravagance I can afford today. Pandelis almost gave it to me for nothing.”

  “You can have the shoes for nothing too,” the cobbler piped in, and before his cousin could protest: “I’ll bring a chicken for the pot tonight, Xanthi. Herakles owes me one, and the shoes were mine to begin with.” She cast a strange look at him that meant nothing to Kivelli, but that made the old cobbler blush even harder.

  “I miss hearing you sing so much, Miss Kivelli, and I’ve asked around to see if you were working in some other taverna, but whenever you did, I only heard about it the day after. And I’m too old for Kyria Effie’s now. So maybe the new shoes will take you some place you can sing again, and then I can follow …”

  “Leave the fortunes to me, Alekos. Fine, if the shoes fit, she can have them. But the chicken better be young and juicy, not like the stringy one he fobbed off on you last time.”

  The old man’s admiration warmed Kivelli, and she took his hand, kissed him on the cheek. “If they fit, I might come back and serenade you in the square, Kyr Alekos.”

  “Be careful, young lady,” Xanthi cackled. “You’ll give the poor old boy a heart attack.” It was true that Alekos looked as much shocked as pleased, but if he dropped dead, at least he would die happy. “Let’s go then, see about those shoes and where they might take you.” She took Kivelli’s arm, but turned towards her cousin one last time. “Don’t forget the chicken, you old fool, and be prepared to do the plucking.” Alekos nodded dumbly, that shocked smile still plastered across his face.

  On foot to Kyra Xanthi’s house, Kivelli lagged behind the energetic strides of the seer, who said nothing, asked no questions. If she hadn’t been so busy trying to keep up, she might have asked why they were in such a rush, what they were running after, but the pace left those questions behind, and she was just thankful that the old shoes she was wearing were flat and sturdy.

  Once they stepped through the beaded curtain, Kivelli collapsed on the divan and tried to catch her breath. “Do you want some water?” Kyra Xanthi asked, and the younger woman nodded. “Youwould have never made it in the nunnery, my girl,” she said as she placed the glass on the table. She then reached into the china cabinet without opening the doors, pulled out a pair of lilac suede shoes with an ornate silver buckle near the toe and set them next to the glass.

  “Yes, it’s probably too late for that,” Kivelli replied absent-mindedly, inspecting the soles, running her fingertip against the nap. The shoes looked almost new, saved from a trunk floating on the sea, someone’s hope chest perhaps, pilfered by strangers. She could tell by looking at them that they were her size, and reached under the table to untie her laces.

  “I’ve developed a sense about these things,” Xanthi continued, as if she’d read Kivelli’s mind. “And if my cousin hadn’t already given them to you for free, I might have. So it seems they were meant to be yours one way or another.”

  “Did you see that in the cards?” she asked playfully, but when she slipped her foot into the dainty lilac shoe, her face became twisted and wet with tears. Instead of trying to stop herself as she had so many times before, or running out of the old woman’s hut, she allowed herself to sob openly. Inside the dark cramped room, surrounded by other people’s abandoned dreams and memories, it felt safe to release hers. Though maybe what was coming out was not Kivelli’s sadness at all, but that of the young woman for whom the pretty shoes were made.

  Kyra Xanthi said nothing during her outburst, but watched sympathetically without trying to comfort or stop her. When Kivelli drew in a final gasp, swallowed and digested it, the old woman sat next to her, patted her hand and smoothed the hair on her forehead. “Do you feel better now, my sweet girl?” Kivelli nodded, wiping the wetness from her cheeks.

  “Forgive me,” Kivelli sputtered, and took off the lilac shoe.“That usually comes out in my singing, hidden behind the words, so no one knows it’s mine.” She put on her own shoe and got up, took a step towards the sliver of light.

  “Sit back down, silly thing. And don’t think you’re not taking those shoes. I’d never hear the end of it from Alekos if he saw them on someone else’s feet.” Kivelli did as directed, interlaced her fingers and placed her hands over her forehead and eyes like a cold compress.

  “I’m exhausted,” she said. “Emotions exhaust me. I’m always fighting against them, but somehow they always win.”

  “They have to win. Without emotions, Kivelli, you would be dead. They are trying to show you that you are alive, or that it’s time to start living, no matter what happened to you on the other side.”

  “How do you know what happened to me?” She peeked through her fingers at Xanthi. “And don’t tell me you saw it in your crystal ball.”

  “What happened to you happened to all of us. For some a little more, for others a little less. Whether we were close up to it or faraway does not matter. It all depends on the soul. I’ve met people who watched the Metropolitan slaughtered, saw his beard ripped out in clumps, his eyes plucked, and yet seem as happy as if such a thing never occurred. And then there are others who knew nobody there, but who will never get over it because what they imagine is more painful than the experience itself — it is bottomless. We are all carrying the dead on our backs, but every so often we must put them down and dance a little. Why don’t you tell me your story, Kivelli, so you can put on those pretty shoes and dance?”

  She swallowed hard, folded her hands in her lap and looked into the bright and friendly blue of Kyra Xanthi’s eyes. After a few deep breaths, she spoke. “Please don’t tell Marianthi I came here. Can we keep all this between us?”

  “I’m better than a priest, Miss Kivelli. You could tell me you murdered someone in a fit of passion, and all I would do is tell you if you were going to be caught. Have you murdered anyone?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Good. I’m happy to hear it. It would haunt you. That’s why the manghes need to be stoned all the time.” Kyra Xanthi then brewed two cups of coffee, black and strong, and settled on the divan next to Kivelli, ready to receive her confession.

  24

  “Papa was in Constantinople when the fires started,” Kivelli began in a quiet steady voice, “buying bolts of silk for his shop on rue Franque. He’d left at the end of August, a few days after my birthday. His business associates had tried to dissuade him from going, and the newspapers were reporting trouble in the regions, but Papa couldn’t imagine any real danger because the British were on our side and against the Turkish rebels. Nothing was going to happen to his Smyrna while he was away.” Kivelli stared into some middle distance where the drama unfolded again, and Kyra Xanthi offered her a cotton hanky, though the young woman’s eyes were dry.

  “Our neighbours were less confident. Most had already locked up their homes and sailed away to the safety of their summer retreats on Lesvos or Chios; others had gone farther, to Athens or abroad. For weeks they had been bidding Smyrna farewell, asking if I shouldn’t be doing the same. Our housemaid Vasso had already left to be with her family, but where could we go without Papa? His last telegram said he was on his way and that Aunt Penelope should pack up the necessities. There were many bitter arguments about what this constituted as we anxiously awaited his arrival. After a few interminable days I couldn’t bear to sit still or listen to my aunt’s complaints and laments any longer, so I snuck out through the emergency exit to look for him myself. Before I left, I told Constantine to hide in the pantry until I got back and not make a peep. He was a brave boy but he cried a bit, so I gave him a jar of honey to sweeten his sorrow.” Here Kivelli’s face crumpled a little, but she kept speaking despite her dismay.

  Outside, the sky was already grey with smoke, and she could hear the distant thunder of collapsing buildings, see the orange glow of fire, bright and sinister as a fallen sun. “It was as if Smyrna had been drained of all its colour, and I was wandering through a silent picture of a place that no longer existed.
The shops on rue Franque were boarded up, the gypsy market was abandoned, desolate, and most of the lively cafés had vanished. I pressed my forehead to the window of Papa’s shop. Through the darkness I could see it had already been stripped — of furniture, of silks — and that no one was left to tell me where Papa was or when he might come home.”

  When she got back to her street, it was deserted, eerily quiet. Not one window was open, not one curtain fluttered in the somnolent breeze. She eased open her front door and stepped into the foyer where antique kilims hung and three massive trunks sat packed and ready to go. “I could tell from the stillness that the house was now empty. Even the old grandfather clock in the hallway had given up counting the minutes. I searched for my aunt in the kitchen, dining room and salon, then ran to the pantry, but Constantine was also gone. I looked for him in his favourite hiding places: the space under the staircase, the armoire in my bedroom. His grubby hands had left smudges on the mirror inside the door, but when I whispered his name there was no reply.” Papa must have come home, she decided, and for some reason they had to leave without her. Kivelli looked around her room, wondering what she could save, what could be easily carried. She riffled through the fancy dresses in the armoire, considered the ivory combs and brushes, the Egyptian perfume bottles on her vanity. “I did not yet know that saving myself would be difficult enough.”

  From the top of the dresser she took her silver opera glasses and the birthday photograph of herself and Papa, and put them into her purse. From the bottom drawer she retrieved four gold coins she was saving to buy exquisite things for her trousseau. They clinked against the opera glasses and the photograph’s frame. “I changed into my newest dress, which I had not yet found the occasion to wear. It was made of the softest white chiffon in the latest style, with a hemline that was shorter in the front than in the back. Then I slipped on a pair of white leather shoes that had carried me to balls and weddings, away from suitors and admirers. I applied rouge to my mouth and cheeks, lines of brown to my eyes to elongate them, to make them Oriental and sly. If I was beautiful and elegant, I would be safe no matter whose path I crossed — so I imagined.” The mirror inside the armoire was skeptical: more frightened than beautiful, despite the finery, it declared. Her eyes were wide and restless, her lips so tight that, like Smyrna, they’d lost their colour. With a small push, the armoire’s door clicked shut and she took one final look around the room, then picked up her purse and walked down the stairs as slowly as possible. “I would go to the Quai, to the haven of the Grand Hotel. My family would know to look for me there, and from the roof garden I could search for them with my opera glasses. It was the best plan I could come up with under the circumstances.”

  Once outside again, she immediately lost her bearings. The explosions were much closer now, the smoke so thick her eyes burned with tears. Church bells pealed in supplication, in terror. “I felt dizzy, faint, and the bottoms of my feet started to tingle, my shoes to pinch. A hollow ringing in my ears drowned out the noise, and when I opened my mouth to scream for help, nothing came out.” People pushed past her as if she were already a ghost, liquid in their smoke-watering eyes. “I followed them in the direction I hoped led to the Quai. I don’t know what force kept me moving forward,” through the eclipse-dark streets, where small fires sprouted around her ankles like intense orange flowers, past the butcher shop where a naked man and two boys swung from hooks. Bodies littered the street in increasing numbers — men, women and children burst out of their clothing as they swelled in the heat of the fires. She stepped around them gingerly in her fine white shoes. “I wished at that moment for blindness, and in a sense it was granted. After a few more blocks I no longer saw what lay before me, I became incapable of absorbing it.”

  “Then a shiny black sedan drove past me, and I waved an embroidered white hanky at the driver. How comfortable, cool and safe it would be behind the window of the fancy car, I thought. It halted abruptly a few metres ahead of me, and the driver along with a man in a black fez got out. They picked up two bodies that were lying in their path, hauled them to the side of the road like dead dogs.” Kivelli ran towards these two men, begging them to take her along; surely there was extra room in such a big and luxurious car. She tried speaking to them in French, in English, in Turkish, but they did not seem to hear or understand her. They did not even look her way. “They got back into their fancy car and drove a few more metres, until another road block of bodies forced them to stop.”

  Despondent, Kivelli kept walking, following the tracks of the car like lines on a map. It had to be heading towards the Quai since there was nothing left behind her and nowhere to go but the water. She passed a large church she might have recognized as Agios Ioannis had it not been for the priest crucified on its wooden doors with horseshoes nailed to his palms and tops of his feet. “Out of habit I crossed myself, though I knew all at once that there was no God to save me, and from this point on my prayers would go unanswered.”

  “Then I turned onto a small sidestreet swarming with people. Whole families were crawling along the ground, erasing the tracks the car had left for me to follow. They moved quickly, like large rats, towards the tall iron gates of the Greek cemetery.” Kivelli did not hear the report of gunshots, though she felt the small breeze of bullets flying past her bare arms, her rouged cheeks. “That all of them missed me was perhaps proof that I was already dead. I walked through the iron gates as if I had reached home.”

  The crawlers scattered before her, disappearing into the shadows of steles, entering mausoleums that bore the names of their ancestors who had lived and died in Smyrna. Kivelli touched a cool marble wall, ran her fingers over the carved Greek letters and plucked a red flower from a recently tended grave, which she slipped behind her ear. “I then walked back towards the gate, stepping over inert bodies that might as well have been dead.”

  A few men in Greek military uniform drifted by her, and she trailed them towards the Quai, where she hoped their ships were waiting. They did not notice her, and she did not notice that some of them had no arms. This didn’t strike her until much later when the sights she’d collected on her endless walk towards the water came back, unbidden, her only souvenirs of Smyrna, which no one wanted: The bloated bodies. The carcasses in the butcher shop. The priest. The soldiers with their arms ripped off like the wings of flies. “And that was only the beginning. There would be much more to see once I reached the waterfront, a journey which normally took no more than ten minutes from my house but was now the distance between Smyrna and the moon.”

  FROM THE ROOF GARDEN OF the Grand Hotel, where she’d spent so many lovely and ordinary afternoons floating above the masses, Kivelli watched hundreds of ragged, dusty villagers settle the Quai as if it were the end of the world. “I studied them through my opera glasses, which until then I had used to spy on handsome men, pretty dresses and indiscretions. Now I was looking for more practical things: for a familiar face — my brother’s, my father’s, my aunt’s. But these people colonizing the Quai were not from the Smyrna I knew.” The old women and men, with their wailing daughters carrying dirty, screaming children, were from somewhere else, another century. There were no young men in sight, just little boys and grandfathers. No one to fall in love with, even for a second, as compensation for the disruption, the chaos. “I felt contempt towards these ragged people who were making such a spectacle of themselves, who were making so much noise.”

  Around her, foreigners giddy with excitement were exchanging newspaper headlines with a kind of morbid glee, speaking of the spectacle on the Quai as if it were being staged for their amusement. The women laughed at the sight of the peasants crushed together down below, and a few of the men laid wagers. Swept up in this atmosphere of anticipation, for a short interval while waiting for something to happen, Kivelli forgot that she could not go home.

  “I focused all my attention on an old woman by the water’s edge who had rolled out a red kilim with swirls of pink and yellow flowers sprouti
ng from dark green vines. She was padding around the rug barefoot, pacing its edges as if marking her territory, waving her arms and barking at anyone who dared tread on even the outer edge of its fringe.” Her equally old husband, his face rough and grey as granite, sat cross-legged in the centre of the rug, staring blankly, neither asleep nor awake, neither alive nor dead. His wife handed him a small, tulip-shaped glass, too delicate for his big hands. How did such a glass survive the journey from the village? She carefully poured some dark liquid out of a burnished samovar, but the next moment she was hysterical, screaming and pointing at the rug where the old man had perhaps spilled a few drops of liquid. No doubt she had other, more compelling reasons for hysteria than spilled tea. Who knew what she’d seen on her way from the village to the Quai, where this rug had become her home. Or how she felt, at this late age, to be turned into a gypsy. “The old woman resumed pacing the edges of the rug as if she were going somewhere important, and when I widened my view, I saw dozens of other old women performing an identical choreography: around rugs, some bigger or smaller, around aluminum pots, one around a tin cup, another around a thimble.”

  “Then someone tapped my shoulder — a Turkish official who asked for my papers. I explained to him in my most charming and refined voice that my papers were unfortunately at home, and he accepted my gold coins and silver opera glasses instead.” She tried not to show dismay as she handed them over and smiled brightly as he walked away, as if she’d given him a birthday gift. She hoped this sacrifice was noted by someone, somewhere, but none of the foreigners even looked her way when the head waiter escorted her to the door for their safety.

  NOW TEARS BEGAN TO ROLL down Kivelli’s cheeks, landing on her thigh as indifferently as drops from a melting icicle. But she did not reach for Kyra Xanthi’s hanky nor did her voice quaver, as if the person reporting the terrible events refused to acknowledge the one who was crying over them.