The Daughter

by Pavlos Matesis

  ‘The food market’s just ahead,’ says the cripple, ‘there’s got to be a café open somewhere.’

  At the corner a gypsy gives them water. His dancing bear is exhausted from the heat, sitting under a mulberry tree without its chain. But the gypsy’s not worried the bear will run away. Where would it run to?

  A little under-age whore, bedraggled and miserable, is standing in front of the bear. Business stinks, she tells the deaf-mute, even the Allies can’t stand the heat. Still, she’s good-hearted and high-spirited. There she stands, right in front of the bear, trying to catch its eye, to make it get up and dance, finally she ends up dancing by herself, the whore does, legs spread apart like she was pissing and the bear just sits there clumsily. After, she reaches into her handbag and hands something to the cripple, here, poor guy, she says.

  Thanks so much, says Raraou, and the cripple nudges her to move on; how low can you get, taking charity from whores!

  The sun burns down from on high, hotter than ever; it’s nearly four o’clock but instead of lessening, the sunlight is becoming more intense. Let’s try the fish-market, says the cripple; come on, let’s get this show on the road, you’re worse than useless, the both of you; for nothing I put the bread on your table. Since the day Raraou threatened him with the cement, the insults flew more thick and fast than ever, but they hardly noticed, let him get it off his chest, she told her ma, all men are the same, let him yell, and let off steam. And the insults poured out, thanks to me you’ve got food to eat, freeloaders!

  Freeloaders he called them, but he feared them too; at night when they chained him before they went off to bed, he didn’t utter a peep. Only one time he asked Raraou, Hey, you, why don’t you take me to see that MP of yours, maybe he can fix me up with a disabled veteran’s pension. But the cripple didn’t have any papers, couldn’t afford a fake army discharge certificate. Besides, who would believe a man of forty-five had fought in the Albanian campaign? He didn’t even have an ID card, in fact, he gave the police a wide berth, because he was mixed up in dynamite smuggling.

  Raraou had never even considered saying a word to Doc Manolaras about the cripple, firstly, because she would have admitted to being a beggar, and mainly because she wasn’t concerned about the cripple’s welfare. In fact, she hated him, mostly because of the way he talked to her mum, calling her dummy like he did. But she didn’t show her hatred, just let him talk until we’re out of this thing, she reasoned.

  And she towed the cart at a steady pace in the direction of the fish market. The bear had fallen asleep, soon the young whore gave up and lay down beside it.

  It was roughly the time they always hit the fish market, because most of the fishmongers didn’t have refrigerators, they kept their fish on ice in fish-crates. Come midday when the ice melted, poor housewives would flock to the market looking for half-spoiled fish at half price. When they couldn’t sell everything, the fishmongers gave the leftovers to impromptu outdoor food stands which would fry them on the spot. Sometimes the odd rotten fish would be left over; those times the cripple would have priority over the other beggars who had their two legs, and those nights they’d have fish to eat; fry it enough and you hardly noticed the stink.

  As they approached the cook stands, Hey, you two, the cripple tells his two women, get a load of that bloke with the gal on his back.

  The sight piqued Raraou’s curiosity. But when they got closer, they saw he was only a porter, a young man, and the woman on his back was a full-size plaster statue, probably a caryatid from some demolition site somewhere.

  ‘Get yourself a little cart like mine, mate,’ the cripple joked. ‘Set her up in the market like these here women of mine do for me, and you’ll be raking in the dough.’

  The porter was wearing a woollen vest; he smiled at them, amused at the joke, and walked on by. The caryatid was lashed carefully to the young porter’s back; her back was damp from his sweat-soaked vest. Raraou watched the caryatid bobbing along, face towards the sky with empty eyes, indifferent, what did she care, thought Raraou as she knotted the rope around her waist, they had begun to climb again.

  She never could accept it, the cripple calling them ‘these women of mine’; it was a little as though they were engaged, gave the impression he was the one who decided when they would go out together, but Raraou knew their cooperation was only temporary, before they fell asleep she would tell her mother, Don’t let it worry you, we’re only working with a cripple for the time being, us, our future is ahead of us.

  Raraou tried to avoid the fish-market; they didn’t have much water at the blockhouse, and what they did have they had to haul from far away, even though it was easier of late, they could use the cart to haul the can and the jug, instead of carrying them by hand; first they would leave off the cripple, then run off for water. Still, those half-rotten fish the fishmongers threw their way needed one hell of a washing. Plus, Mum’s hands would stink of rotten fish for days afterwards, and there was Raraou, dreaming of a life of perfume, just as soon as the pension came through, imagine all the bottles and flasks she would accumulate when she became an actress.

  And so she towed the cart along with a gleam of triumph, but deep down, unwillingly. Fortunately there were no fish today, and the cripple was cursing, Double-dealing bastard fishmongers, sell everybody and his brother rotten fish and for me, nothing, can’t you see my wife is sick, and he pointed to her mum and Raraou picked up the pace, no sir, she didn’t want anybody thinking a fine lady like her mum had a cripple for a husband. Just then a little boy appeared, timidly dropped two little bags into the cart and rushed off.

  Raraou stopped; behind her the cripple was laughing and wheezing. She turns, looks at him; he’d opened one of the bags.

  ‘Confetti! Nothing but confetti! Instead of charity we get confetti!’ says the cripple incredulously, throwing a fistful into the air.

  ‘Don’t waste it like that,’ says Raraou.

  ‘Don’t you worry, carnival’s a long way off.’ But he’s afraid of her, doesn’t throw another shred. Several pieces of confetti are stuck to his forehead. Her mother goes over to him, wipes it off with a handkerchief.

  ‘Nice tidy little wife I’ve got here,’ he calls out to the public, but nobody’s there, and when he turns to Raraou his laughter stops abruptly.

  ‘What are you looking at?’ he goes. ‘Come on, put some shoulder into it, let’s head for home, can’t you see there’s something wrong with your mum? I’ll throw in the rest of the day’s take,’ he says, pointing to Raraou’s mom. ‘For her. Something’s wrong with her; must be the heat.’

  Raraou looks at her mother. Something had come over her again, but she wasn’t fainting, she was coming around, walking.

  ‘I’m putting my mum in the cart,’ Raraou tells the cripple. Not asking, telling him. But he erupts.

  ‘You nuts? There’s no room, the cart can’t take the weight, you want to wreck my cart, is that it? Besides, you couldn’t possibly tow the both of us.’

  ‘I could so, I could so,’ says Raraou; but now her mum runs on ahead; she doesn’t want a seat in the cart.

  ‘We’re taking a short cut,’ the cripple decides, pointing in the direction. ‘Only it’ll be tougher, climbing the hill, and you’re worn out; can you do it?’

  ‘Don’t you worry about me, I can do it,’ says Raraou.

  And they turn off on to the short cut back to the blockhouse. Raraou with the rope wrapped around her breast is trying to calm her mother. And as her mother walks on, she turns first yellow, then goes white as a sheet. Every so often she takes a swig of water from her bottle, they’d stopped at a café, bought a bottle of soda pop and filled up their bottle with water. Raraou bought the soda for her mum, but Mum won’t touch it, and the cripple sips away at it as they make their way up the hill. Now there are no houses to be seen, only red earth and the newly paved street. Got a real future, this place does, says the cripple, won’t be long before it’s full of apartment buildings, tell that MP of yours t
o buy a lot or two.

  In front of them lay the hill.

  Now they struggle past a cement factory. All around are walled-in lots with red earth, right next to the cement factory is a garden full of stark white statues. All for rich peoples’ villas, says the cripple. Statues and fountains, a whole garden in marble. Maybe the garden’s too small, maybe there are too many pieces, but the place looks congested, Raraou thinks to herself as they pass. Now she’s learned to use Athenian expressions, provincial turns of phrase would be the kiss of death for her theatrical career, suddenly the statues became whiter, Venuses, nymphs with dolphins, and Christs with lambs, even some elaborately sculpted crosses draped with ornamental vine-leaves, the Christs must be for a children’s graveyard, mused Raraou. As they go by her Mum slows to look at the profusion of statues: got to remember to bring her by this way another time, Raraou says to herself. Now they’re making their way uphill. The landscape is nothing but hills, and a lone tree, not one of the decorative kind; a homeless tree, unwatered.

  Her mother is trudging up the slope bent forward, as if walking into the wind. The incline is steeper now, but they’ve almost reached the blockhouse, See what I mean, how much quicker it is this way? the cripple tells Raraou. Sure you get a bit tired but we’ll get there quicker and your mum can lie down. Remind her to drink the rest of the medicine. Or did she take it all?

  Raraou said nothing, she wanted to save her strength. All along the way she did her best to conceal it, but now they could hear her breath coming in gasps, her mum turns to look, Raraou can’t stop, the gasping was coming on its own, You sound like a donkey in heat, says the cripple. He says it to perk her up, to encourage her, he wants to help. Raraou understands, wants to thank him. They’re just like partners, the two of them. Instead of saying it in words, she pulls the cart along faster. Her breath sounds like braying, she can hear it herself, yes, sounds funny, she thinks. Imagine what my public would say if they could hear me braying like a donkey on heat, she thinks. Fortunately I’m not on stage right this minute. And her little partner the cripple is urging her on, just a little further, he says, it’s almost half past six, we’re almost there. Let them have it, Raraou. Raraou, you’re tough as nails.

  Raraou wants to respond, say something nice but she can’t go on, something’s wrong with her knees, her knees start to wobble. She stops, doesn’t fall, calls her mother to set the chocks under the wheels to keep the cart from rolling back down the hill.

  ‘Just a little minute,’ she begs.

  ‘Take your time, partner,’ says the cripple, ‘take a breather’. And he looks at her with pride.

  ‘I don’t need a rest,’ she pleads. Not angrily, but as if she’s afraid of losing the race, today a prize awaits her, a crown of glory, what exactly she doesn’t know, but today she’s a star. She jumps across the drainage ditch, slices off a mulberry branch with her pen-knife, comes back, hands it to the cripple, and wraps the rope around her again.

  ‘Here, take this switch,’ she says.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Take it, help me,’ she answers. And she leaps forward. But she can’t go on; her knees are about to desert her.

  ‘Come on, Raraou, you flea-bitten nag,’ the cripple urges her. He wants to help. Go to it! One more turn and we’ll be there.

  But Raraou is about ready to black out. She turns to him and says:

  ‘Give me a hand if I can’t move. Help me. If you see me stopping, whip me. With the switch. If you see me falling, whip me.’

  And she throws herself forward with a fresh surge of enthusiasm. And the cripple flicks the switch through the air, shouting Giddyup, giddyup! Raraou’s knees desert her, the cripple brings the switch down on her back shouting with elation, Raraou struggles forward groaning, Whip me, whip me hard!

  As the cripple whips her, Raraou forgets to look off to the side at her mother, now the cripple is whipping her and Raraou is pulling more smoothly, if only my public could see me now, she thinks triumphantly. The cripple is shouting, but he eases off with the whip, and starts to sprinkle her with confetti, Raraou wants to take a bow, to say, Thank you, thank you so much, the confetti is sticking in her hair, her mum tries to shake it loose but Raraou shoves her aside, now she is a star, now there is no stopping her, and behind her comes the cripple shouting at the top of his voice, singing her praises, whipping her across the back, pelting her with confetti …

  NOW WE’RE THROUGH the Pearly Gates, said Raraou, when they were safe inside the blockhouse. She helped her mum lie down, used up all their water with nary a second thought, gave the cripple a couple of swallows even. Him, he didn’t want to go inside, Leave me here for a while, he told Raraou, I want to get myself some air, have me a good look at the city. So Raraou left him there, just as he desired, didn’t even prop him up, Watch out you don’t fall was all she said and went off to fetch Mrs Fanny. At the same time she took the jug to fill with water on her way back.

  The legless man put on his glasses, a pair of cast-off sunglasses he wore when he was in a festive mood, and rested, gazing off into the distance towards the capital faraway. He never even realized he was dreaming; he was certain he was awake, participating in his life.

  He dreamed he was seated upright in his cart outside the door to their refuge but the sun was not sinking; no, it hung there in the sky motionless, mocking him. He had his jacket on and scorn welled up in his chest, scorn for those people there in the capital, the people and those handouts of theirs, I’m worth more than any of them, he mused, as he scratched his throat, he felt an itching, a soft tickling sliding down inside his collar. He closed his eyes to scratch with greater abandon and once again brought his hand to his neck. The feel of living matter. He opened his eyes and pulled his hand away and looked down: through the opening of his collar an eel came slithering. A shiny grey-green eel, stretching slippery as it slithered down his chest. Now it had reached his stomach. The cripple raises his hand to grab the eel which had almost completely emerged from his shirt, but it has begun to wriggle through the buttons of his fly. On the floor of the cart he sees two more eels slithering towards his belly. He wants to call for help, turns towards the blockhouse door, and through the door a huge, rusty ship is bearing down on him moving sinuously like an eel, but how could a whole ocean liner fit into their tiny blockhouse? and the ocean liner bears down on him like an invading army, the legless man’s only line of retreat is to awaken. He snaps awake.

  Scared the hell out of me, can you beat that, he thinks, and calls out to the dummy. How’s everything, he calls loudly, feeling better? Come on outside and keep me company, he says. Asimina comes out, sits down beside him on a low bench, now he’s chattering away contentedly, You’ll see, he says, a couple of years from now and all this here empty land will be part of town. More and more people are coming to Athens, no, you can’t stand in the way of civilization: just a couple of years – I told you first, don’t you forget it – and main street will go right by our front door and there’ll be shops and a market and customers, lots of them, and us, we can do our begging and we won’t even have to move from beside our doorstep, we won’t have to slog hours just for some of their lousy crumbs, no, they’ll come right to our door, we’ll be living the good life, give them seven, eight years at the outside; you listen to me, I know what I’m talking about.

  He chattered on until Raraou came back with Mrs Fanny and the water jug: she also had a thermometer.

  ‘Heat stroke,’ says Mrs Fanny. ‘Fortunately. She’s not feverish, no fainting spells, just doesn’t want to eat. Still, you ought to get her to a doctor.’

  She helped them move the cripple inside, and asked Raraou privately, How old is your mum?

  ‘Thirty-four,’ says Raraou.

  ‘So young! So it’s impossible,’ she mutters to herself. ‘But take her to the doctor all the same. And if you need me at night, just drop by and call.’

  Next day the cripple stayed home while Raraou and her mother took the bus to Doc Manolaras’
office.

  ‘Here’s Mum to see you, doctor,’ says Raraou. She always called him doctor even though he was a politician now; shut down his doctor’s office years ago. But he gave her a quick onceover while voters lined up to pay their bribes in the waiting room.

  ‘Nothing wrong with you, Asimina, you’re looking fine’, says Doc Manolaras. ‘She may be presenting minor indications of hysteria.’

  He wrote them out a note, then sent them off for a free examination by some doctor political cronies of his, one of whom happened to be a gynaecologist. Two days they spent running from one doctor’s office to another, the legless man was grumbling, but who cared about him. Could her mother hear? the gynaecologist asked Raraou.

  ‘Of course she can. She’s only dumb.’

  ‘In any event,’ says the gynaecologist, ‘there’s nothing to worry about, my child. Your mother has stopped having her period, for good. An unusual occurrence in such a young woman, but certainly not dangerous.’

  ‘That’s just what I suspected all along,’ said Mrs Fanny that evening, ‘but I didn’t want to say a word till a doctor got a look at her’.

  And so on the third morning they went off to work again, the three of them; the cripple was in a rush, two days alone in the shelter and he was just about dead with boredom, he wanted noise and crowds, so he claimed.

  ‘Don’t you worry, Asimina,’ shouted Mrs Fanny as they passed her blockhouse on their way down the hill. ‘So I’ve still got my periods, even if I’m fifteen years older than you. Look all the good it’s done me.’

  ‘Don’t you worry Mum, said Raraou as they made their way towards the fish-market. ‘You should be happy; it’s all one big bother, month in month out, nothing but trouble. What’s a period good for anyway? I still can’t figure it out, all the fuss! Wish mine would just dry up, you and me we’re real sticklers for cleanliness the both of us, all these necessities of nature, well, we just don’t approve, do we?’