The Daughter

by Pavlos Matesis

  In my considered opinion patient has been apprehended and incarcerated due to ignorance and excessive zeal of the arresting officer. According to his report, patient was detained ‘while impeding circulation of traffic on a central thoroughfare.’ Though reclining on the paved surface at risk of serious bodily injury to herself, she was not engaged in indecent behaviour; patient was simply summoning a person named ‘Roubini’ to come to her assistance. As you will certainly appreciate, she was calling upon herself.

  I recommend that the Police Department no longer concern itself in the event similar behavioural patterns on the part of the above-mentioned patient be repeated. Patient is entirely harmless, well-intentioned and simple of mind.

  I must further report that following gynaecological examination as required by the Morality Division, and ordered by myself so as to allay certain suspicions, the above-mentioned Meskaris Roubini was certified to be a virgin.

  Signature

  SEAL

  And generally speaking, there’s only one thing concerns me now, what with Mum gone and all. I keep seeing sort of like TV shows in front of my eyes, they come and then they go away. Or I never see them again, maybe I’m only dreaming. I don’t know. Take that funeral, the one with the old hags, for instance.

  I dream I’m at the fish-market, at the crack of dawn. The same place where the fishmongers sell their spoiled fish half price to the cheap restaurants, and whatever the cheap restaurants don’t take, they throw to the beggars. What I’m doing in such a place I don’t have the faintest idea, but it’s six o’clock in the morning and it’s about to rain. Me, I never get up so early, what am I anyway, some kind of worker, or cleaning lady? Anyway, it’s just after six, and you still can’t see the Acropolis there above the fish-market; the Acropolis comes back to earth around half past seven. And over there, the spot where the Parthenon touches down, there’s only a dark cloud. I’m thinking, shame on me, the Acropolis was always my dream as a little girl in the provinces, and now, here I am today, a sixty-year-old woman, and I never had the chance to climb up to the top. Make that over sixty. The fish-market, it’s dead still, nothing moving, just like in a photograph, not a customer in sight, nothing but a fine layer of broad fish scales the colour of mallow even if the sun isn’t shining, it’s too early for the sun. And the breeze hasn’t even begun to blow.

  What’s got into me, coming out at this hour of the morning, fortunately the panhandlers haven’t showed up yet, imagine if one of my fellow actors, or one of my admirers were to think that it was me, Raraou in person, begging for spoiled fish.

  Just at that moment a funeral procession comes through a neoclassical archway. The four of them, silent women, slipping and sliding on the precious scales which shine like Byzantine mosaics. The women are prostitutes, not low-class streetwalkers though. High-priced call girls. August women, women of stature. They look like a three-piece folding screen, each panel loaded down with necklaces, beads, glasses, hanging like votive offerings. Decorated like triangular church candlesticks; like holy icons in elaborate frames; like saints coming to sin.

  The four are carrying a wide board high above their heads, an open casket, without a lid is what they’re carrying. But the casket is encrusted with sequins and flower petals and gold threads and strings of beads reaching down to the ground, swinging to and fro. Not a voice, not a sound. The beads are touching the fish scales which are the colour of violets.

  The dead woman is invisible, completely covered, she too is a prostitute. Her beads are like a suit of armour. But the woman is my mother, I know it from the dream, there beneath the beads my mother’s face is hiding. Her body does not exist. Nobody’s ever given me the assurance, but in the dream it’s clear that they’re transferring her, taking her away for reburial in a children’s cemetery, something more in keeping with her life. Among the little children they’ll lay her to rest. That means problems for me, seeing as how they don’t put crosses on the graves and now I’ll have to put a little chocolate candy on every grave and sprinkle a few drops of cologne on every grave, just in case I miss Mother’s.

  The four prostitutes carrying the casket are smoking cigarettes, dressed up like Byzantine icons painted in brilliant colours, colours straight out of a cheap musical comedy, bright and sassy colours, and they wear those colours with such serious expressions on their faces, no objections allowed, no comments. Their faces look more like masks. They’re smoking cigarettes.

  Something is missing from the picture. That’s it: the funeral is ending, and there’s not a clergyman to be seen. And instead of the mourning relatives there’s a bear, without costume or makeup. And the bear showers the casket with confetti, and beside it stands another prostitute – a young apprentice, also without makeup. She is the bear’s servant, and stares at it in admiration, but she walks along stiffly, like a hanged woman.

  They march past me without a greeting, without a glance. Maybe they don’t even see me. Then they vanish into the neoclassical fish-market. Meanwhile, I’m standing there holding a tambourine in my hand, but I’m not allowed to follow along behind; that’s understood too. Even if wanted to, I couldn’t. Because all of a sudden the funeral turns off and ventures out across the surface of the sea, the calm, motionless sea of dreams. And there the heads of eels stick out of the water and watch the bear as it passes, without sinking.

  I lower my eyes with respect, as one must at funerals, and there, beneath the surface of the water swims the blue corpse of a woman, staring at me with boundless blue eyes. Just a minute, I say to myself, those aren’t eyes, they’re eye-sockets full of water, I was always crazy about blue eyes, me with my eyes black as a cast-iron frying-pan. The blue corpse is flat, as if it was made of cardboard. I lift my head, walk out over the surface of the water, and unlock the door to my apartment. What was I doing in the fish-market at the crack of dawn anyhow? Got out of there before the panhandlers showed up. Fortunately. But the doubt still gnaws away at me: the animal, was it a bear or a monkey? And the apprentice whore, how come she was its servant? That’s all.

  I don’t know.

  Me? My mind? Never had a care in the world; why, it’s just about as down-to-earth and rock-steady as you could hope to find. Let them talk, all those theatre people, let them think I got nothing but a hole in the head where my brain ought to be, why do you think I spend all my time at the hairdresser, hiding it with my coiffure. These days, of course, they’ve all forgotten the whole thing. They all greet me, Hi there Raraou, you old hole in the head, just as familiar as you please, just proves how young and vibrant I am.

  Right here, in Athens for the most part. Don’t get all that many calls for tours these days, that kind of stuff’s for beginners, second-raters. Still, I could go for a tour or two, you get respect from the small town public. Not like my baker, I walk into his shop and the guy doesn’t bat an eye-lid.

  Not that I wasn’t a bit of a sensation with the Athenian public. They made me what I am today, in fact. I remember how jealous fat little Mitzi used to be; good actress she was, all the talent in the world, but when it came to slender waists and sex appeal, she just couldn’t keep up with me, but the public just wouldn’t warm to her. Got so bad she up and married this shoemaker in Patras, right in the middle of a tour. Got a couple of kids and a boat. Send’s me a box of Turkish delight every so often, but how am I supposed to eat it, I’ve got to mind my silhouette, plus my diabetes you know. So I pass it around wherever I’ve got an obligation, mostly to Doc Manolaras, still alive, he is.

  One year we were playing in Athens and Mitzi comes backstage after the curtain, and says to me – she’s laughing her head off – Raraou, there’s this admirer of yours waiting outside, hurry up, you’re in luck, and it’s about time.

  Me, I overlook the snide remark; what’s his name? I ask.

  ‘He’ll be waiting for you outside,’ she goes, oozing that sarcasm of hers. ‘Looks harmless. An old country yokel’.

  Took my own sweet time taking off my makeup, an
old politician’s trick, that, I always slow down when people are waiting for me, why I just about missed Mum’s funeral, thought it was a performance. So, like I was saying, I take off my makeup and go out the stage door into the street. Not a soul in sight. Fat-face was putting me on. Just then an old man steps out from behind a newsstand. Not dressed all that bad, but still small town.

  ‘Is that you, Roubini?’ he asks.

  I’m startled. Who’s this guy that knows my past? I take another look at him. Then I recognize him, from the wedding photo: it was my father.

  ‘Daddy, how are you?’ I ask. Without emotion. Hadn’t seen him for forty-seven years, since back then at the railway station the day he left for Albania, with the twenty-drachma coin.

  My first thought was, O my Lord, now what do I do? He’s alive. There goes my pension.

  ‘I’ve been following you for a long time. I heard you were in show business, saw some photos of you years ago in Arta. Outside a coffee house.’

  ‘How is your mother?’ he says.

  ‘Died year before last,’ I retort with a little lie. Didn’t know what his intentions were.

  He asked me about the boys. He didn’t know Sotiris left home during the Occupation. I told him; told him our Fanis has a good life, but I didn’t say where.

  ‘I heard about you in Arta, years ago, saw your photos,’ he said, repeating himself. ‘Always wanted to come and see you, kept putting it off, waiting for something to turn up. Finally I had some business in Athens, so I decided to come and get to know you.’

  He didn’t have much else to say, kept talking about my photos back in Arta. After, he invited me to dinner in this little taverna. I accepted just in case he wanted me to invite him to my place, but all I could think about was the pension, better kiss your pension goodbye I said to myself, it’s a goner for certain.

  Over the food we had a couple or three glasses of wine, the two of us, and we got more into things.

  ‘So your mother’s dead,’ he says. Me, all this time, I’m touching wood and nibbling fried eggplant, even if it gives me indigestion.

  ‘Never could stand her, poor woman,’ he says. ‘Well, may she rest in peace.’

  Me, I didn’t say a word about Mum’s past; he told me about his. Lasted two and a half months on the Albanian front, he said. One night he says to himself, What am I doing here, what am I fighting for? What country? What did my country ever do for me? Guts to wash, that’s all I got, my country never even set that up for me.

  ‘So I decided to turn back,’ he says. ‘I play dead in an attack, they leave me lying there, I get up and start walking, nobody says a thing, they’ve got a whole war to fight, me they’re going to worry about? I said to myself. So I end up in this little village not far from Arta to get me some rest, so this widow with some land gives me work and before too long she says, If you’re unattached I’ll marry you. I thought it over real hard, what’s the point of going back, all that slogging just to wash tripe, to go back to Asimina, never could stand the poor woman; all that way, and for what? So I told the widow, Yes, had ourselves a pair of kids. Gave a fake name, Arnokouris Diomedes from Sarande, Greek from Albania. Had a good life. And I’m still alive.’

  No sooner had he finished his story than I breathed a sigh of relief. Almost felt sorry I told him Mum was dead.

  ‘Daddy’, I say, ‘everything came out just fine in the end, for all of us, the whole family. Fanis is taken care of, you’re doing fine there in the village. And I’m living the good life here in Athens. I’m drawing a pension, on account of you’re dead on the battlefield. So don’t come here again. You’re doing fine, so what do you want with me?’

  ‘Nothing, Roubini my child,’ he says. ‘Just curious, that’s all.’

  I was terrified how he would take it. What’s this stranger want from me? I kept saying to myself as he chewed his food and stared at me as I spoke. The father I knew was a twenty-five-year-old leaving for the Albanian war with a twenty-drachma piece who made me feel good back then when I saw him naked as he was changing clothes. But this man here, he was the same age as me. All the time we were eating I tried my best to love him as a father, to feel even a little warmth. I couldn’t. I was more interested in the life of our cashier at the theatre.

  I told him so. He gave his word to keep out of my life. You’re right, he said. We’re all getting on fine.

  He paid for the meal, and we said goodnight at the entrance to the taverna, and he was gone; I never saw him again. But the fear was there, gnawing away at me.

  Since then, whenever I sign anything, I always add ‘fatherless orphan’. Like an alibi. And after my encounter with my father, when even I go to the bank to collect my pension I wear grey, with a black armband to make my claim even stronger, and hold my passbook in my hand. There are three queues, and I know which window is mine. But I stop right in the middle of the bank and call out:

  ‘Which is the queue for orphans?’

  And every first of the month when I go for my pension I put on the mourning, on my arm or my lapel, either one, and always ask where the orphans are supposed to queue. At any rate. I don’t care whether that twerp of a teller who waits on me laughs or not, Henry is his name. He’s always whispering something to the woman next to him, I picked it up, they’re talking about me, even though that Henry’s always making eyes at me. Well, good for him; he’s got cute eyes. Still, better I should really make sure of my pension.

  Doc Manolaras’s office I dropped by too, pretending to ask after my brother Fanis, and he greeted me in person. Fortunately my Dad kept his word and didn’t give a sign of life. I was terrified he might have gone and told Doc Manolaras.

  But still, I couldn’t put it out of my mind. What if he gets it into his head to show up, then what? For years I was on pins and needles. Till last year an envelope comes to our association, from some clergyman. I open it, and there’s a clipping from a provincial newspaper, the ‘Obituaries’ page.

  Diomedes Arnokouris, loving father and husband, passed away on etc., etc. … his wife Ioanna, his children so and so and so and so. And after their names it said: Sotirios, Roubini, Theofanis.

  Must’ve confessed to the priest.

  I didn’t know what to do next. Of course, it was one big load off my back, for sure. Imagine, losing my pension and being exposed as a parasite living off the public purse. You can be sure I never breathed a word to our Fanis. First I thought I’d send a condolence note (I have cards of my own printed up, with my name and profession in decorative characters), but then I say to myself, sit tight my little Roubini, you never know these days, what if some new brother or sister pops up and claims the apartment. So I never sent the note, he never did a thing for me anyway, apart from the meal he stood me in the taverna. Just let him rest right where he is, I thought.

  But I had this funny feeling inside. I’m the adventurous type, you know, emotionally speaking, is what I mean to say. And I like observing the niceties. I just love to send out cards. Always send out cards on the occasion of the New Year to my impresario Kozylis Konstantinos and best wishes to his wife Eugenia, her name day is Christmas eve. I always send him a card because of when his mother left us the walnuts on our windowsill. May be of course I’ve got a bit of an ulterior motive, after all, maybe he’ll take me on. What I mean to say is, he did hire me one time, a couple of years back, just after the incidents at the Polytechnic. A left-wing play unfortunately, but it was a job. I didn’t have a lot of work back then, as I recall, so I say to myself, Why not give it a try, that pipsqueak Kostas, he’ll recognize me and give me a half-decent part. I call him pipsqueak because back in Rampartville, when we used to play in the drainage ditches down near his place, he was short with a big head, and I was taller than him and I kept on smacking him on the head or beating him up and he went and splashed water all over my drawers.

  So I showed up and they gave me a part. I played a dead Communist. She’s dead at any rate, I said to myself. But he didn’t hire me on as an ol
d friend. He saw me, looked me over, said to a helper I can use that face there. Didn’t even remember who I was. At which point I say to myself, don’t bother to let on you know him. When I start up my own troupe, then we’ll see. That was always my dream. Of course, I had well-founded suspicions that his leading lady, who happened to be his wife Eugenia, was jealous of me. She’s got the most gorgeous eyes in the capital, I’ve got to admit it, still, she was jealous of me but I wasn’t jealous of her, why should I be jealous? It’s all fate. Not that I want to run down the girl, far from it, still, if I’d been born twenty-five years later and if fate had given me eyes like hers and talent too, well, we’d just see. Furthermore, there’s one thing I had her beat at hands down: me, I’ve performed in 1,860 small towns. Her, she’s only played in a couple of capitals.

  But that little runt Kostis didn’t recognize me. Better that way, I said. Didn’t want him asking after Mum, after all. So I played the dead communist part and he wished me a pleasant good night after every show, just like he did the rest of the cast. Right up until the end of our run, he didn’t recognize me. There, that’s what being far-sighted will do to you, I said to myself. Because I haven’t changed a bit in forty years, physically speaking. There were times ofcourse when I wanted to ask after his parents, to see if they still had that tangerine tree in their yard in Rampartville, the one I used to scale the wall to pick tangerines off and one time my drawers got caught on the rock and ripped. But I never did. Don’t bother, I said.

  Still, I kept on sending them cards every New Year’s day, even after. Only forgot it this year, slipped my mind completely.

  One time, in fact, I took Mrs Kanello to one of his shows. Her he remembered, the ingrate. I ran into her at a meeting, at the office of the new MP for Rampartville, right here in Athens. Journalists all over the place. Mrs Kanello got up and praised the politician, but she put her foot in it, as usual; she’ll never be a diplomat, the poor woman, and not an ounce of femininity. The politician, a certain Mr George, he’s from one of the best families, I can’t mention his name so as not to compromise him. So, as I was saying, this Mr George is from Rampartville too, from a good family, and people in polite and not-so-polite society talked about him for two main reasons: because he had a talent for languages, because he went with men, even though he was a nationalist. Because he was plump and inexperienced, anybody who wanted to could do it to him, and out of politeness he wouldn’t say no. The high-school student who taught him English taught him other things, disgusting things. The high-school student who gave him French lessons gave George lessons in doing dirty things. His mother used to say, There’s nothing we can do, our little boy has an anomaly. Am I supposed to kill him, or what? Even took the kid to a fortune-teller, but nothing came of it. Then she sent little George off to a priest to say prayers for him in the hope he would cut out the men, but they say the priest did it to him, so we heard from this other priest George confessed to before communion. So his mother accepted it, it’s God’s will, she said, he’ll only stop when he gets married.