The Goodtime Girl

by Tess Fragoulis

  Kyra Xanthi threw her arms around Kivelli and kissed her cheeks. “You don’t come see us in Piraeus anymore, so we thought we’d bring Piraeus to you.” The old woman’s hair smelled of the frankincense she was always burning. Alekos nodded and smiled, then grabbed Kivelli’s hand and kissed it, blushing as if he’d mistakenly touched her breast. Aspasia was dumbstruck by the grandeur of the foyer and stood dangerously close to the inside door. Every time it opened, she jinked a few centimetres to the left and giggled as if it were the funniest thing on earth.

  “Does your mother know you’re here?” Kivelli asked, wondering whether the transgression would be worth the punishment. The girl tittered and sputtered until Kyra Xanthi pulled her away from the swinging door and answered for her.

  “I told Margarita I was going to visit some nuns from up North, and that I’d received a divine message to bring a virgin with me,” she snickered. Aspasia laughed out loud for a minute, then managed to find her tongue.

  “It’s so sad in the house without you, Kivelli. I’m happy to have my room back, but I’m also very sad.” She reached into a cloth handbag that was obviously her own handiwork and pulled out a small, black satin wallet embroidered with two silver parakeets touching beaks. Kivelli recognized the design from a magazine pattern she’d given her. “I made it for you so you won’t ever forget me.” She shed a few tears and didn’t bother to wipe them away.

  “You’ve done a lovely job, Aspasia.” When they hugged, Kivelli caught a trace of lavender.

  Crazy Manos seemed agitated, whispering furiously to Narella, who slung something back at him, after which he stepped into the club alone. His truculent voice was still audible through the closed door as he repeated his name for the doorman and demanded a table in the front.

  “So what kind of trouble is he going to make for us tonight?” Kivelli asked.

  Narella shrugged. “Who knows, but I don’t think it’ll be too bad. He’s in a good mood. His father decided to give him the butcher shop right away, so now he’s both a mangha and a valued member of society, as he likes to remind everyone.” She smirked and rolled her eyes.

  “And you?”

  “I’m still the same — Effie’s best girl. But soon I’ll be out of there and getting fat on red meat, just like I told you.” She held out her arm. “Do you like my dress? Manos bought it for me.”

  Kivelli touched the raw silk, felt the plumpness of the arm inside it. The dress was certainly second-hand, but it was of fine quality and almost turned Narella into a lady. “One thing you can’t fault him for is good taste in clothes.”

  “And women,” Alekos interjected, and his cousin slapped him playfully.

  “Let’s go inside and see how the other half lives,” Kyra Xanthi said to Narella, taking her arm and leading her towards the door. Alekos and Aspasia linked arms and followed suit. Kivelli never thought to ask how they’d all found each other, or how they’d agreed to come to the Bella Vista as a group. As far as she knew, she was the only thing they had in common, and she’d never introduced them. Manos had managed to get the biggest and best table at the front and, at Kivelli’s request, a waiter brought over red wine and a platter of mezzedes. It was the least she could do for these disparate travellers, who had wandered so far from home to find her.

  The first half of the evening flew by. Narella sang along to all the songs she knew, both from Smyrna and from what she’d heard at Kyria Effie’s. Aspasia clapped stiffly, looking over her shoulder as if she expected Margarita to run in and catch her by the ear that had managed to peek out of the curtain of loose, long hair. Alekos was so happy that he was in tears the whole time. And Kyra Xanthi smiled contentedly, as if everything taking place was her doing. Although his bullying of the doorman got him the best table in the house, Manos stood in the back by the bar, having a drink, scoping the place, looking much more like the mangha he was than a valued member of society. But no one was going to pick a fight with him here, and if he picked one he’d be out on his tail before he had a chance to reach for his knife. Tough as he played it on his own turf, Kivelli doubted he was going to start anything so far from home. She hoped, however, that he might dance; it was the only time she found him attractive. Since the Smyrna-influenced songs at the Bella Vista were too tame to inspire him, she requested “Hey Mangha With Your Knife,” but the Smyrniot refused. “Forget those idiocies. This is not a tekke in Drapetsona.” For the first time in months, she found herself missing Barba Yannis’s.

  During the break, Kivelli did not retreat to her dressing room but sat with her old friends, who toasted her success, her transformation.

  “I almost didn’t recognize you,” Aspasia sputtered, running her fingers down the bodice of Kivelli’s silver gown, then along the strands of crystal beads wrapped around her neck. “You’re like one of those pretty drawings in the magazines.” She paused, her forehead cramped with thought. “But alive.” When the others laughed, Aspasia buried her face in her hands.

  “I always knew you were a coquetta from Smyrna. Even when we were on the ship …” Narella began, but Kivelli didn’t let her finish.

  “Did you know that I’m sailing to Egypt soon?” She filled them in on the details but left Diamantis out of it. What people knew in Athens was one thing; what she sent back to Piraeus where it could reach Marianthi directly was another.

  “But you’ll come back,” Xanthi pronounced portentously, swirling the dregs in her glass of wine as if they were coffee grounds.

  “Will I?”

  “Without a doubt,” she replied, and emptied her glass. “And you’ll bring me back some Egyptian tricks.” Kivelli wasn’t certain what she meant but agreed anyway.

  Narella was staring past her, and Kivelli turned to look at what was absorbing her attention so fully. Crazy Manos was talking to the Smyrniot, gesticulating wildly. The Smyrniot’s hands were shoved in his jacket pockets, and he was staring at the floor. She wasn’t sure who to sympathize with more.

  “What’s that about?” Kivelli asked, wary of the answer.

  “Manos has written a couple of songs. One’s about me. It’s called The Cat.” She meowed and clawed the air with her fingernails, and Aspasia finally pulled her hands from her face to see what was going on. She laughed because everyone else was laughing. “He thought the Smyrniot might be interested in one of them,” Narella continued. “Manos can be very convincing.” Kivelli looked at the odd pair again. Manos was reaching into his jacket, but neither knife nor gun emerged from his pocket. He waved a few wrinkled sheets of paper at the Smyrniot, who said something that made the young mangha put them back in his pocket. The two men then shook hands, and the Smyrniot walked away and sat by himself at his usual table where wine and a plate of food had already been laid out for him. A few moments later, Manos joined them. He looked pleased with himself, though the glow might have come from the whisky he reeked of.

  “Not a bad little place the Smyrniot has here. I could get used to it if the music wasn’t so sugary.” He reached into his pocket again and laid out his obsidian worry beads, his polished knife and the same sheets of paper he’d been waving at the Smyrniot only a few moments ago. “But I’ll take care of that.”

  Kivelli was tempted to reach across the table, pick up the knife by its deer stag handle, run her finger along the double-edged blade, then use it to slit open the blue envelope in her bag like a vein. But touching a mangha’s knife was equivalent to fondling him, and for both her sake and Narella’s, she resisted.

  “You didn’t give him the songs?” Narella asked, incredulous. This was apparently the reason he had come to begin with. It certainly wasn’t in Kivelli’s honour. “How am I going to be the talk of the town if that song stays in your pocket with your stupid knife?” Her hand moved towards it, but he grabbed her wrist.

  “You liked my knife just fine this morning.” His smile carried a threat. It was amazing how ugly someone so handsome could be. “And everyone’s already talking about you, baby, because you walk
ed in with me.”

  She waved him off, bored and impatient. “Show them to Kivelli at least. She’ll tell you if they’re any good.” Before she had a chance to demur, excuse herself to the dressing room, the powder room or anywhere else as far from Manos’s ego as possible, she was dismissed by the crazy butcher himself.

  “What do women know about these things? The Smyrniot told me to drop by his office during the week, and he’d try some out. He needs some new songs, he said, so they’ll be talking about you very soon, my doll.” He leaned in to kiss Narella’s cheek, and she beamed as if he’d just asked for her hand in marriage.

  “Maybe you’ll get to sing it here, Kivelli, and I’ll come up on stage and do a little dance.” Narella raised her arms above her head, turning her wrists and snapping her fingers.

  “It’s for a man to sing, not a cunt,” Manos growled. “Maybe her friend can sing it. Now there’s a voice.” He began to hum one of Diamantis’s songs, but so out of tune Kivelli barely recognized it.

  If gossip about her relationship with Diamantis was making the rounds in Drapetsona, it had surely crossed the bridge and slipped under Marianthi’s door in an unmarked envelope. The letter in Kivelli’s purse was no doubt her reply. But the next set was about to start, and she had no time to rip the thing open, to see what

  Marianthi wanted. A catfight? A reconciliation? It would have to wait until the night was done and everyone had gone home. She wasn’t expecting Diamantis, who was at Argiropoulos’s until closing, and then would be making trouble with his friends — who knew where, until who knew when. She’d been tempted to ask, but stopped herself. Whatever little she knew, he had volunteered himself.

  Much to her surprise, the Smyrniot decided to play “Hey Mangha with Your Knife,” though the violins and clarinets made it prettier and more melodic, almost a completely different song. Kivelli wondered whether the audience knew the rawer version or caught the lyrics hidden behind the perfumey instrumentation.

  Hey, mangha, if you wanna carry a knife,

  You need the soul, the heart to pull it out

  Go somewhere else show-off

  To do your bragging

  ’Cause I’ve been smoking up too

  And I’ve got a crazy high

  The women were clapping enthusiastically, and a man got up to dance, though it wasn’t Crazy Manos, who looked pleased, nonetheless, despite the travesty of a cunt singing his favourite song.

  You’d better calm down, show-off

  ’Cause I’m going to smash you

  I’ll pull out my pistol, show-off

  And I’m going to blast you

  He threw money when the song was over. Not to Kivelli, but to the Smyrniot.

  That her boss had invited Crazy Manos to drop by the office during the week was one thing — she assumed he was just trying to avoid a scene and would find a way to put him off later. But doing him the honour of playing “Hey Mangha” told Kivelli that something was afoot. She didn’t doubt that the Smyrniot was still impotent — he’d almost admitted that the offensive song she’d refused to sing had not been written by him, but caught himself. Whatever he lacked in couplets and refrains, however, he made up for with music. The instrumental interludes at the Bella Vista were getting longer and longer, providing much needed breaks for her voice. And the music on its own was beautiful: now sophisticated, now melancholy, now cheerful, sometimes all in one piece. But without lyrics and a human voice, it was incomplete and lonely, too easily forgotten. The Smyrniot craved lyrics like others craved hashish and heroin, and he was obviously desperate if he would even consider dealing with Manos. Perhaps Marianthi had stopped writing and had taken up needlepoint again, or was finally refusing to give her songs to him, which had been Kivelli’s advice all along. If she were following it now, it was as much a slap in her face as it was in the Smyrniot’s. Was this was how she’d chosen to end their relationship?

  At the end of the final set, she joined her odd assortment of Piraeus friends, the temporary family she’d left behind. She thanked them for their company and said she hoped they would all find each other again soon, though she didn’t say when. She distributed kisses, and even gave Manos a peck on the cheek, which gave him the excuse to squeeze her thigh, though Narella was sitting right next to him. Ignoring him, Kivelli turned her attention to Kyra Xanthi, hugging her and bidding her farewell as if they’d never see each other again. She was anxious to retreat to her dressing room, to find what secret message or condemnation the envelope in her purse contained. But the old woman grabbed her hand and brought it very close to her over-rouged face.

  “Too dark in here,” she mumbled, and picked up a candle from the table, its flame licking Kivelli’s skin. She tried to pull away, but the old woman had a firm grip, and the few drops of wax that fell into her palm stung pleasantly. Kyra Xanthi blew on the dollops of wax then peeled them away, making noises of surprise and understanding every time one was lifted. She didn’t bother enlightening Kivelli at all, but stared at her with ambivalent eyes — one showing compassion, the other reprimand.

  “Is there something I need to know?” Kivelli rubbed her palm hard to erase its secrets.

  “You’ll know very soon,” she replied conspiratorially. “But if you need any hints or help, come see me in Piraeus. It’s too far for me to travel here to tell you things you maybe don’t want to hear.” And with that she turned her palm over and kissed her knuckles, then left without another word.

  Kivelli sat at the table for a little while, put the last dolma into her mouth and emptied the dregs of red wine into a glass that no one had touched. For all of his tightfistedness, Manos had forgotten the sheets of paper he’d brought for the Smyrniot. She glanced at the neat, childish script and wondered if he’d written the words himself. Maybe Narella was more than the muse, and Manos and the Smyrniot would become the best of friends. The lyrics themselves weren’t so bad, simple but sweet in a rough way, and nowhere near as vulgar as she’d expected. She smoothed out the papers, then folded them and put them into her handbag next to Marianthi’s letter.

  Once in her dressing room, with the door locked behind her and her new fancy frocks as witnesses, she tore open the blue envelope with the nail of her index finger and suffered a deep and painful cut that spotted the first page with blood.

  34

  Marjori has taken flight

  Beat it in the dead of night

  Oh, oh, Barba Nikoli

  Oh, oh, where is Marjori?

  My dear Kivelli,

  By the time this letter reaches you, I will have left Piraeus forever. I was going to disappear without telling anyone, let the Smyrniot discover my absence through the dust on the furniture and the silence in the house. After all I have given him, I don’t feel I owe him any explanations. But I couldn’t convince myself to leave without a final word to you. For many weeks after our trip to the hammam, I waited for you in vain, perched on the edge of my seat, dressed as if I were expecting a guest. I went through the motions, believing the effort would produce you like magic. It took me a long time to accept you were not coming. When I finally did, I was as heartbroken as if a baby had died in my belly, and I stopped hearing your voice in my head. To stay on in Piraeus with my husband now seemed entirely pointless.

  The greatest mistake of my life other than marrying Panayotis was introducing you to Diamantis. Of course, you could have met him anywhere, a hundred times before, a thousand times after, but I still can’t forgive myself for lighting the fire. Let me clarify something about that fateful afternoon in the square. It was never my intention to hand you my beautiful mangha on a silver platter like the rose pastries you always refused to eat, no matter how good they looked and smelled. Despite what you tell yourself to justify your actions, I was not looking for a substitute: this was a song I could sing if I chose to. What I wanted was to prove you wrong, to puncture your smugness, your airs of superiority (it is the only thing you Smyrneans haven’t lost), and to put an end to your mockery
of my visits with Kyra Xanthi. You would see that I was not just some foolish village girl who believed in fairy tales and superstitions, who craved the leftovers you so easily shunned. What a luxury to have had everything in the world and to want it no more — dresses made of silk fine enough for an empress, leisurely afternoons sipping lemonade at the Jardin des Fleurs. You told me some of it in your sleep, and I read the rest in your haughty gaze. When I saw Diamantis sitting by himself in the square, I thought I’d show you up, but that’s not exactly how it worked out.

  I can’t really blame you. In your shoes I might have done the same thing: chosen the man over everything and everyone else, and damn the consequences. It is a thing that women do all the time, and not just in stories and songs. Though if I’d won his heart, you surely would have found a reason to pronounce him unappealing, second rate, like my furniture and my dresses that always gave you a headache. Don’t think too hard about how many times I almost risked everything for Diamantis, especially after you claimed him and banished me. I wrote dozens of letters that began, “My dear Diamantis, I can stand it no longer,” or “My love, I throw myself at your mercy,” or “I will be waiting for you at such and such address. Come to me, come to me lover, see what I have for your hunger …” My words in your mouth, so I signed your name at the bottom of the last one and resolved to confess everything when he got there. Given my circumstances, I never dared send it. But today, with nothing more to lose, I almost delivered one to his mother’s house, asking him to meet me down at the docks. I could have said it was from the Smyrniot, and the old lady would have handed it to Diamantis the moment he walked in. But I’ve waited too long, and it is too late for me now. So I choose instead to vanish, to leave nothing behind but wonder and regret.