The Goodtime Girl

by Tess Fragoulis

  Progress towards the gangway was so slow that Kivelli, her string-bound leather suitcase clutched to her breast, hardly moved at all, whereas the giant black-hulled ship seemed to be gradually retreating from the thickening crowd on the ever-lengthening quay. This slowness, however, had little to do with the obstacle course of bodies and luggage. Every detail, every gesture was being recorded by her senses: The smells of coal and fish, perfume and sweat. The taste of the black plumes of smoke flowing from the ship’s three striped funnels and clouding the sky. The sight of young women with tear-stained cheeks saying farewell to sweethearts or husbands who promised to send for them after money was made and lodgings acquired. “How long, how long will I wait,” they begged. “Not long, I swear,” was the wholehearted reply, though it did nothing to comfort the abandoned wives. Friends hugged and laughed and slapped backs as they said goodbye, good luck, safe travels. All the while aggravated porters ran over feet, using the nose of their carts to nudge aside anyone who wouldn’t move so they could unload their cargo onto pallets and go back for more.

  Kivelli threaded her way through the throng, holding her breath and using her suitcase as a shield against the flesh of ragged strangers. She closed her eyes for a moment and prayed not to God but to Papa to deliver her safely to the ship. Her heart lurched at the sound of an explosion, and a whiff of black powder peppered her nostrils. Her eyes swept through the crowd for mountain men on horseback brandishing rifles and swords above their heads. But it was only overexcited boys setting off firecrackers. Then someone called out her name, once, twice. She didn’t dare turn around, even though the voice was that of a little boy calling for his sister or cousin, who waved a rag doll above her head and yelled back, “I’m here Christos, I’m here.” Even if Diamantis were to come looking for her, to find out where she was going and why she hadn’t sailed to Egypt with the Smyrniot, there was little chance he’d find her in the crush. To be certain, she took off her violet hat with the red silk flower attached to the band and dropped it on the ground to be trampled. She would buy another in America, one nobody else had ever worn, with no memories or outlived thoughts circulating within its brim. A new hat for the new world; it would be her first act.

  The closer Kivelli got to the ship, the lighter she felt, like she could float above the crowd, use heads and shoulders as stepping stones and alight on the top deck. Though half-empty, her suitcase now seemed heavier than she was, the only thing keeping her on the ground as she shed the carapace that had protected her during her time in Piraeus. Preserved underneath was the girl she was before the Catastrophe: pink-cheeked and high-spirited and dying to go to the America she’d built from her fantasies.

  If Diamantis could see her now, he probably wouldn’t recognize her, though Papa and Constantine and Aunt Penelope might — had they survived, which she doubted. Wouldn’t they have come looking for her by now? Her name had been on the list of refugees from Smyrna, though theirs had disappeared as if they’d never existed. Once the ship sailed, she too would cease to exist.

  At the embarkation point she showed her ticket to an officer in a white uniform with brass buttons lining his chest. He thanked her in English, though she could tell from his accent he was Greek. She smiled and nodded but didn’t open her mouth, not wanting to spoil the illusion that perhaps she was an American on her way home, and Piraeus was nothing more than a place where she’d come to leave.

  Kivelli’s third class cabin was slightly larger than the broom closet at Kyria Effie’s, and she’d be sharing it with three other women whose luggage was already piled in a corner. It was all she could afford since Terzakis wouldn’t take the gold bracelet in payment for her ticket, despite her flirting and fawning. At least she wouldn’t be sleeping out in the open like the villagers from another century who were busy spreading out bedding, marking their territory with blankets and bundles piled at their heads like grave markers. Here lies Angelos, who left for America to find a better life, but froze to death on the way. Kivelli threw her suitcase on one of the top bunks to claim it before the other women arrived, then went back outside.

  Many of the deck dwellers were already stretched out on straw mats and woollen rugs, allowing themselves to be rocked by the ship. They smoked cigarettes and narghiles and exchanged stories about village life, trying to turn strangers into temporary friends. “I’ve never been to Loutro, but I have a third cousin in the next village — maybe you know him?” Others were on their knees praying for safe passage, intermittently snapping at passengers who trod on their property as they stumbled towards the railing to wave goodbye to loved ones, to Piraeus — which stood in for all of Greece — to whatever and whomever they were leaving behind.

  Apart from these minor eruptions, the general mood on deck was jovial. Children played hide and seek and tag, giggling, shouting and singing rhymes. An accordion player squeezed out an old song, and two village girls in headscarves and long embroidered skirts waltzed with each other. It was as lively as the start of a ball on a grand ship, when the first strains of the orchestra made everyone rush to the dance floor. Kivelli remembered twirling beneath a canopy of stars with a handsome swell who insisted he’d die if he didn’t see her again.

  I don’t want you, you’re no good

  I don’t care how much you cry

  And if you can’t live without me

  The only choice is suicide

  She didn’t know that song then, and now it seemed far too presumptuous. Would Diamantis die without her? She doubted it. Theirs was not that type of relationship, nor had any promises been made. He was not the marrying kind — he’d made that perfectly clear. If anything, he would be grateful she’d spared him the tears and hysterics of her departure. And if he hated her or missed her, he could write a song, though she would never hear it.

  Young women sailing towards husbands they did or didn’t know posed coquettishly for an entrepreneurial photographer. When he approached Kivelli with his offer, she shooed him away. Even if she believed that he was doing something other than ogling women from under the black sleeve of his camera, she had no desire to commemorate this moment. He was bound to have a counterpart in the new world who could capture her arrival.

  Where she would go other than a milliner’s once she landed was as unknown to her as it had been when another ship dumped her in Piraeus, half-alive. There would be no Refugee Relief Society in America to clothe or feed her until she found her bearings. On the application for her visa she’d listed her profession as singer, and Columbia Phonograph in New York as her destination. The address was in a catalogue in the Smyrniot’s office, and one afternoon while she waited for him, she’d copied it into her notebook. The officials at the American Consul either did not check their facts thoroughly or her luck had returned. She might indeed march into Columbia, introduce herself and sing love songs for them in French, English and Greek. Or she could once again become something and someone else entirely, maybe change her name: “Hello, I’m Persephone Watts,” she would say, then offer her hand, not for a kiss but to shake, like a modern woman, like an equal. Kivelli no longer feared the future; if it were to saunter up to her in its white tuxedo and top hat, she would embrace it like a lover, kiss it on the mouth and invite it into her cabin when the other women weren’t there.

  A purser walked through the crowd on deck, announcing there would be a short delay in their departure. Most of the passengers took the news well, though one of the better dressed men, an older version of the Smyrniot, berated the purser as if the delay were his fault. Kivelli held back tears of frustration; she needed the ship to leave immediately because every unrecoverable minute wasted in Piraeus was keeping her from beginning her new life in America. She sat on a bench and rested her head against a wall. It was a shame that in her haste she’d forgotten to bring something to read, a book or magazine to distract herself from her thoughts and her fellow passengers.

  A young woman sat beside her, blubbering that she did not want to go to a country where no
one knew or loved her. The woman’s companion crouched before her, promising she would make new friends in America, and that he loved her more than all of Piraeus, but she was inconsolable. Kivelli walked away before the woman’s sadness infected her, and sat with two flirtatious brothers who had already emptied three quarters of a bottle of tsipouro. They offered her a swig, which she gladly accepted, toasting their journey and filling her mouth with the clear, fiery liquid. One of the boys began to sing a song she knew because it was written by Diamantis. It was the one about the Cucumber and Rubini, warning men not to get involved with ignorant women. The brothers laughed as they sang, forgetting half the lyrics and starting over repeatedly as if the phonograph’s needle was stuck, like the ship, like her heart. Had it been one of Marianthi’s songs, Kivelli would have taken it as a good omen. She might have even told the drunken brothers her friend’s secret just to relieve herself of it, though it would have meant nothing to them. They would be more impressed by the fact she’d known Diamantis, but that wasn’t a story she was ready to tell. Maybe once the ship sailed and there was no chance of changing her mind. She took another drink and wished them a good trip before they started singing another song that tested her resolve.

  Three blasts of the ship’s deep-throated horn sent the wellwishing, lovelorn and bag-carrying interlopers scrambling down the stairs as others, late and frazzled, pushed their way up. In the flurry it was certain that someone with no plan to go to America would find himself sailing away to an unknown fate, taking the

  place of another who was not quick or adamant enough and was left behind. Kivelli made her way to the railing for one last look, and a few passengers greeted her as if they knew her, though they didn’t look familiar. Was this just camaraderie amongst voyagers or had they seen her at the Bella Vista or Barba Yannis’s or even in Smyrna? She glanced around the deck to see if she recognized anyone, but she didn’t.

  When the ship shuddered and finally began pulling away from the quay, she looked at the receding city and at the upturned faces seeing them off. Not a Diamantis among them, though she didn’t look too hard. Many of her fellow passengers tossed balls of yarn into the crowd below, winding the loose end around a finger. As distance opened up between ship and shore, the unfurled yarn became taut as the strings of a white and blue harp. Kivelli half-expected a drunken angel to descend from the cloudless sky and play a song, melancholy and celebratory at the same time: a rebetiko tune stripped of its roughness, whose words she knew and could sing along to for the last time. She had no ball of yarn of her own, nor did she wish for anyone to hold onto the other end or try to pull her back. Not even Diamantis, who already seemed part of someone else’s past, a character from a novel she’d lost before she finished. The yarn eventually ran out, forcing the passengers to let go of their ends, the strings dropping into the water — white and blue tendrils undulating in the waves before sinking irretrievably into the darkness beneath.

  Back in her cabin, she met her shipmates for the first time: three sisters from Crete, each a year apart in age, but almost identical with their curly hair, black eyes and plump cheeks. They were sweet girls, who shared their homemade cookies with Kivelli — raisin-filled and sprinkled with sesame seeds — and showed off the embroidered linens from their trousseaus as if they were in a competition. Kivelli liked Anezini, the youngest, best because she reminded her of a scrubbed-down Narella — quick-witted and playful, but still a virgin. Like her former “sister,” all three girls were so absorbed in their own concerns that questions about Kivelli’s life and her prospects in America were easily deflected back onto them. One began, the second interrupted, the third finished the thought and immediately launched into a new anecdote. They were harmless and amusing, though they chattered like a radio she could not turn off, even in their sleep, where the truth came out about boys in their village they’d loved but left behind for three brothers in America they’d never met. Anezini whimpered like a puppy a few times, her fears and homesickness seizing her in her dreams.

  Kivelli couldn’t fall asleep in the hot, airless room, and the chronic pain inside her ribcage was so ferocious it nearly made her scream. She paced the upper deck, gulping lungfuls of sea air, careful not to trip over the villagers who snored or whispered or made love under the rising moon, oblivious to her agony. She felt an urge to unburden herself, to relinquish whatever she still carried, bury it at sea as others left their most precious and troublesome objects with Kyra Xanthi in exchange for lightness and hope. She wanted to empty herself of everything and everyone that threatened her survival. She would need all her strength in America, to find her place, to recreate herself again. But who could she tell? The brothers drunk on tsipouro who wouldn’t remember her by morning? The three sisters planning their weddings and reading each other’s palms to determine how many children they would have? They’d never understand where she’d come from, who she’d been or what lay before her, and she didn’t want her story repeated or corrupted, turned into a tragedy or melodrama by silly, sheltered girls. Since she could neither speak nor sing it, she would have to write it down. Not in the secret language she’d once written to her cousin Amalia, but in the voice she’d wished to reply to Marianthi’s letter, although she’d failed.

  For the duration of the voyage, Kivelli slept all day and stayed up all night. In the dead silence between past and future, between Greece and America, she retraced her steps. It was shocking how quickly the pages of her notebook filled, how furiously the words came. She began with things already half-decomposed and formless: scenes from her life in Smyrna and its end, which she reconstructed and embellished, filling in the blanks in her memory, writing them as if they’d happened to someone else. Of her arrival in Piraeus, her time at Kyria Effie’s and her first encounter with Spiros, she wrote whatever she fancied, raising the dead, the troublesome and the vain, putting words in their mouths, thoughts in their heads as if she were an artist like Colette. Perhaps Spiros had redeeming qualities that his mother could enumerate, or Crazy Manos moments of gentleness and humility that he didn’t dare show for fear of being ridiculed. But those things were not part of her story.

  By the time she arrived at the more recent episodes, they too had faded enough for her to tell as she pleased. Yet as she wrote, she could not help but wonder about her own role: If she had been warmer to the Smyrniot, might he have turned into an ally, taking her further than Egypt, to Paris and Rome, and even to America? And if she’d told both Diamantis and Marianthi the truth from the beginning, allowed nature to take its course, what might have transpired differently? Would she be on this ship alone? She’d put her desires, her suspicions first, and for that she was sorry. But it was too late to change anything now, so she wrote it as she recalled it, without trying to make herself seem blameless.

  Nonetheless, it hurt to describe the betrayed look on Marianthi’s face the night at the Bella Vista when she confessed that Diamantis was her lover, and the drumming of his heart as he pressed his body against hers for the last time, the question in his eyes he’d assume her flight was the answer to. He would understand her departure as an unexpected, perhaps regrettable turn in his story, just as she took his actions and inactions as instrumental to hers, though neither version was the truth. Without Marianthi, there was nothing left to hold them together — they were both her creation and their song had come to an end. The greatest relief, however, came from revealing Marianthi’s secret, giving her the credit her husband denied her, and finally setting her free. As for Kyra Xanthi’s winding tale about the Cucumber and the nunnery, she told it as the old woman hoped she would — fully and in her own words, even though no one would ever read it.

  Every morning as the sun rose, turning the water orange as fire, Kivelli tore out the pages she’d composed overnight and gave them a solemn and dignified burial at sea. She shed no tears as she watched the sheets covered in her tiny, wild script float, then sink. Instead, she imagined luminous fish carrying her memories down into weed-filled
caves where they’d rest among shipwrecks, lost cities and fortunes, and the bones of the loved and the unloved, until the saltwater erased the ink, then dissolved the paper.

  GLOSSARY

  aman: mercy, pity or alas in Turkish

  asteri: star

  baglamas: small stringed instrument

  Barba: uncle

  behleri: single string worry beads

  bouzouki: Greek musical instrument of the lute family, with a pear-shaped body and long neck

  briki: small pot for brewing coffee

  fafouti: toothless man

  fassaria: trouble, commotion

  hammam: public baths

  Kyr: Mr.

  Kyra: Mrs. (informal, slang)

  Kyria: Mrs.

  kafenion: coffee shop

  kseri: card game

  laterna: barrel organ

  loukoumades: small round donuts with honey and walnuts