The Daughter

by Pavlos Matesis

  As soon as I got back home from Kozylis’s show where the ingrate remembered Mrs Kanello but didn’t know me from a hole in the ground, there was a lovely little consolation waiting for me, a surprise: a letter saying my Actor’s Fund pension had come through. Now, I said to myself, they can all eat my shorts, all of them, calling me extra and fink for all these years. Money-wise I don’t really need their pension, but artistically, it’s recognition of my contribution. I’ve still got my main pension, the one from Albania, that’s why I never married, so I wouldn’t lose it. You can count on your pension better than on any husband. It’s warmer, too. So maybe I’m cheating the nation but I don’t regret it for a minute. How come they sheared off my mum’s hair, just tell me that? I accept this pension mainly as if it was the nation begging for pardon from Mother, for the disgrace they made her suffer back then.

  Years ago I used to have this nightmare: that somehow they never paraded Mum through the streets and humiliated her, and that Daddy came back from Albania thirty years later, and I had to pay back the pension to the government. Now I’m used to the nightmare. And when it comes I just dismiss it, it’s only a bad dream I say; they pilloried Mum and Daddy is dead and buried, no worry about the pension. I’ve got no regrets; when you get right down to it, all Greece is on a pension. I know what you’ll say, you’ll say What’s wrong with her, I’m not Greece, I’m Raraou, artiste, and my country is my two pensions. How come I’m always feeling so sad? My future’s all looked after, my health couldn’t be better, I look just like I did forty years ago, so eat, drink and be merry, Raraou, Mum’s gone to her reward and socially rehabilitated, what’s there to worry about?

  So a couple of days ago I made up my mind. Since the year before last I’ve been thinking about my father. Me, I’m the adventuresome type, emotional-wise, I mean to say. Poor Daddy, I say. So, I kind of sum up my life: so far my career really hasn’t exactly taken off, and I’m over sixty. For a dowry all I’ve got is a couple of corpses. Buried in different places. My little pullet back in Rampartville. By big brother Sotiris buried God only knows where. Unless maybe he’s still alive. Mum here in Athens, in Athenian earth. Recently I’ve been thinking about her a lot at one point in particular; standing there in the truck with her hair sheared off, pointing at me and saying, Why is that dog barking at me, get that dog away from me!

  So one Sunday I get this flash. I’ll make a pilgrimage to my Daddy’s grave, I decide. Sure it’s a bit risky for the pension but then, you only live once, right?

  I took the bus and a real uncomfortable trip it was, the passengers weren’t really my class of people. At Arta it was all I could do to find out where his village was, finally I locate it, go to the cemetery, me wearing dark glasses – I didn’t want my admirers recognizing me – and I find the grave. Here lies Arnokouris Diomedes. Him too, with a stage name. I think to myself. Here he lies, artistic-wise. I left him a bit of earth from Mum’s grave. You never did become of one flesh but at least you’ll end up of one earth, so just try and work things out between yourselves from now on because me. I’m a big girl now.

  I get home and I’m worn to a frazzle, home at last, home sweet home … no more wild goose chases for me, that’s it, finished.

  So that’s how I remarried my parents, and now, what’ve I got left to my name? I say to myself. A couple of graves. Each one all by its lonesome. But isn’t that how it’s supposed to be? Who am I to complain? Because I’m going to die? Alexander the Great died didn’t he? Marilyn Monroe too; who am I to say I shouldn’t die? Whatever I need, I’ve got it. Mum all fixed up in her own plot, the fridge full of eggs, remember back in the Occupation how you couldn’t find an egg? Back then for an egg you’d have to put out, for the older girls I mean. And now all I have to do is open the fridge and count my eggs and my heart soars, believe you me. Got my cassettes, lots of left-wing songs, and that’s just fine with me, they’ve got the pizazz. And at election time when we stay home, I put on my tapes with the left-wing song at full volume so my left-wing neighbours will think I’m on their side, being on the winning side is the best idea, the sidelines never did suit me.

  Of course, maybe some of those snot-nosed little creeps from down the street make rude remarks when I go by, but I don’t care, only thing wrong with kids today is they want to live. Then too, I go to church a lot. Not that I’m religious, but I do light the odd candle now and then, besides, if members of parliament from our party can go to church every day, why can’t I? Of course, what they’re lighting is the big tapers, not the little oil candles. But my pension’s one thing, their’s is another. When I light a little candle it’s to say a big ‘merci’ to heaven, you never know what happens to us after death. But when it comes to prayers, I never say the ‘Our Father’. Me, I’ve got no Father in heaven, I mean, you think I’m stupid or something? I just make out I do, that’s call. There’s no such thing as God, I know it, you think he’s so stupid, to exist? All I know for sure is my mum exists. And my little pullet. They may be under the ground, but at least they exist.

  Still, better to be on good terms with everybody, now that I’m a bit over sixty. Never said so much as a bad word about a soul, not once in my life, well, at least not to his face. Because, I said to myself, tomorrow I might need the rotten bastard. Can’t bring myself to use rough language; my femininity forbids it, you see.

  Movies I get into free, thanks to my special pass. Not to mention all the theatres, go on in Raraou you old wheezebag they say, and I walk in proud as you please. Raraou, the extras all tell me, you’re just like Greece, you never die.

  Frankly I couldn’t care less if Greece lives or dies, one way or the other. What did Greece ever do for me? I’m supposed to care if she lives on dies? Greece, she’s like the Holy Virgin: nobody ever saw her. Only nut cases and con men. Me, I can see my eggs in the fridge. My pension, I can see that. I’m a success. I’ll slip into my mustard-coloured outfit, the one I had seized from this actress back when we had the colonels, the rotten slut wouldn’t pay me on account of her son was getting it on with an army officer, so I’ll slip into my mustard-coloured outfit like I say, and go out for a French pastry and let the men fight over me. Anything wrong with that?

  What’s all this fuss about evil, anyway?

  I spend a lot of time thinking things over lately, unemployment you know. How come what they all ‘evil’ should be forbidden, and even worse, condemned? First of all, we like it. You know how it is when when you think of a lemon and your mouth starts watering, well, that’s how my hands get, hungry for murder, as if they’re starving to wrap themselves around a man’s thighs. How come I can’t just go and murder somebody? Wouldn’t bother me a bit, just so they don’t catch me.

  Lots of times, coming back from my nighttime stroll, I go down a little street behind our place, right past a basement apartment with the lights on and the windows open. Looks like a working-class family living there, happy and contented; a drooling baby, a daddy with striped pyjamas and a young mum wearing an apron. They’re so happy and smiling it makes me furious. I walk right by their place on purpose, so I can get good and mad. Maybe I’ll think of some way to ruin that mindless pleasure of theirs. Maybe take a can of petrol one night, splash it all over them and light it with a match? Because mindless pleasure isn’t allowed. I don’t allow it. Plus there’s a button missing from his pyjama bottoms. I’ll douse them with petrol and light a match and walk away just as happy as you please. And nobody will ever know who did it.

  Never did get around to it; the fire, I mean. I’ll leave it for later, to have something to look forward to. The petrol and the matches I’ve got; just about broke my back hauling the jerry can home with me. And the more exhausted I got all because of that guy with the missing pyjama button, the more I was steaming and burning with rage.

  Lately I’ve taken to studying at the sky a lot. I look up and I say to myself, all that sky! All that sky, for nothing. Fortunately I got my two pensions. Only just now I figured out what the sky
is. The sky is the ceiling of an ocean. We live and walk around in the ocean, just as normal as can be and we look up at the ceiling over our heads and we call it sky. We look at it while we’re eating our pastry and then we head back home to sing our mother to sleep.

  My mum I treat like a queen. With two pensions even. Wherever I go, to the dairy or the bakery, everybody says Mademoiselle Raraou, those are really classy clothes Mrs Mina wears, right out of the fashion magazines. And in the living room there’s this big gilded crown made of plywood hanging on the wall. Stole it from a stage set back when I was working in this patriotic review. Back then I wasn’t really getting out much, seeing as how Mum was under the weather. But I never expected she’d just die on me. I was basting a roast when I hear my old name: Roubini! Roubini! Must be hearing things, I say to myself, nobody here knows me by Roubini. I open the oven door and I hear it again, Roubini, my child, I’m dying. It was the voice of an old woman. I close the oven, go into the bedroom, Mum, I say, you hear anything? As if she could answer me. Never crossed my mind the voice could have been Mum’s. It was an old woman’s voice, I remember Mum’s voice when she was young, even back then on the truck when she was shouting, Get that dog away from me.

  ‘Roubini, my child, I called you’ and I see it’s Mum speaking to me, with an old woman’s voice.

  ‘Mum! You spoke!’

  I didn’t want to admit that old voice had anything to do with my own mother. I was almost insulted that she suddenly found her voice.

  ‘Come close to me, Roubini my child.’

  Mother never did accept ‘Raraou’.

  ‘Mum, your voice, it came back?’

  ‘Come close to me; I’m going to die. I never lost my voice. I just didn’t want it no more. From back then. Don’t cry.’

  I wasn’t saying a word. I was paying attention to her voice; it came out twisted, with effort.

  ‘Yesterday when you were out, Roubini my child, something happened to me. It was serious. I knew it, but I didn’t call for help. If it comes again, I might die … or lose my mind. Come close, I want to give you my blessing; and to say thank you. For everything. For all these wonderful things and for then. For the water you gave me, back then … there on the truck. You did the right thing, not to get married.’

  She caressed me, then drifted off.

  ‘Mum, I ask her, all these years you could talk and you didn’t?’

  She stared at me, then looked at the wall.

  ‘What for? It wasn’t worth it,’ she says. And fell silent again.

  ‘Do you want anything, Mother. Water? Shall I call the doctor?’

  ‘I want, Roubini my child. My little Roubini, when I die I want something special: bury me here. Don’t send me back. (She didn’t say the word Rampartville.) I don’t care how you do it, but get me a lifetime grave.’

  ‘It’s bought and paid for, Mother. A two-placer. And it’s ours, for all eternity Mother. So don’t worry.’

  ‘I never made you do anything else. Don’t you ever let them take me back, not even my bones.’

  Then she fell silent.

  A few days later she had her second stroke and she was gone.

  After they buried her there was only quiet to keep me company. Only then did I figure it out: death isn’t the big thing; the big thing is the dead.

  God bless and keep her.

  Every Holy Week I go and visit Mum, on Easter Sunday, in the afternoon. All around are mourners, a lower class of people for the most part, decorating graves with plastic flowers and washing and scrubbing the gravestones. Makes you feel good, mourning gives you a good feeling, like drinking a glass of wine to the health of the dear departed. I strike up a conversation with the ladies even though they are from a lower class of people and I don’t feel like quite such an orphan.

  Everything’s so nice and quiet. So lovely, I say to myself. Death comes and goes, only the dead remain.

  When I do a little meditating or watching the sky I think how I’ll be heading for paradise, and how nice I’ve arranged everything, just so, my conscience is clear, no doubts in my mind, nothing. Only one thing that bothers me: what’s God’s name? Mine is Raraou, the other guy’s name is Harry, let’s say, but what’s God’s name? That’s what I wanted to get straight in my mind the other night when I didn’t feel like going straight home.

  Because the other night on my way back home, after a delightful little get-together with some other pensioners from the theatre it was, I didn’t really feel like unlocking the door. Come on, Mademoiselle Raraou, put your key in the lock, I say to myself. But I stand there in front of the keyhole and I can’t move. And then it hits me like a bolt out of the blue, there’s nobody waiting for me in my apartment. And I didn’t want anybody waiting for me, now that Mum was gone all these years. Still, I was frightened. A big fright. I pull the key out of the keyhole, almost creep across the street, and I stay right there in a kind of fenced-in vacant lot and I won’t leave before the light comes on in my apartment. Right away I make up my mind: you’re not going to put anything over on me, no way. I’m not setting foot in there unless you open the door. No, I’ve got conditions, I said: somebody’s got to be there to greet me.

  And so I went off for a little stroll; it was quarter past two, on the dot. A little stroll. Give them some extra time to open the door for me. The officer who escorted me back home at twenty-five after four treated me properly, said he wouldn’t run me in for disturbing the peace, he recognized me, for sure.

  ‘Merci,’ I tell him. And ring my doorbell. Off he went. But they just ignored me, wouldn’t open the door. So that’s when I go and ring all the bells in the apartment building and it was only later in the ambulance when I finally realized the truth about the sky. The sky is alive. A living beast. Never could figure it out before, seeing as it’s blue beast and it never moves during the day. Never moving. Lying in wait for us. But when night comes and we aren’t watching the Sky beast starts crawling towards me. Like a lily. Far as I’m concerned, I say, well, it’s an honour, still all these Lilies and Annunciations? Me, a grown woman, with two pensions at that? Now that I can’t conceive any more?

  I’m in the ambulance, does that mean I’ll pull through like everybody else? Every night when it gets dark, Sky beast comes to life and starts moving, just imagine what it’s doing to us and us, we don’t even realize we’re defenceless.

  That’s why I avoid going out after dark. Who needs the lily, anyway? So I sit and watch television, bought a colour TV with easy payments; paid it off last spring.

  Nowadays I go out mornings mostly. Call on actor friends of mine, look at the posters, visit Aphrodite’s mum, Mrs Fanny. Still doesn’t have a phone. One day I ran into Mary, Thanassakis’s sister from Vounaxos village, the son of Anagnos the schoolmaster. Recognized me right away, Roubini, you still look as spry as ever, she said. She’s looking well, not like me of course, but then, what can you do? She told me about her brother who’s getting ahead in Boston, he’s got a university of his own over there, why he’s even been honoured by our government, kind of a half-national benefactor is what they’ll declare him, seeing as he brought civilization to our country.

  ‘See Mary,’ I say to her, ‘when you come right down to it, we all succeeded, all made it in Athens, all us kids from Rampartville. Kostis the pipsqueak as a stage director, our own little Thanassakis in book-learning, me on the stage, all us poor kids from Rampartville, we all got our heart’s desire. Me, for instance, I’ve got my apartment, my stereo and my record collection, free medical care, pensions, recognition. Why should we complain? We’ve all arrived.’

  She had to admit it.

  Just what Mrs Kanello and I were talking about a couple of days ago. All her kids are doing fine, and now Mrs Kanello is a happy granny. As provincial as ever and proud of it, but then, who doesn’t have their little shortcomings. She keeps me up to date. Rampartville isn’t what it used to be, of course. Before the war there were four elementary schools and a municipal brass b
and and now only two of the schools are open. Not enough kids for the other two. Even the graveyard where we kids used to play hide and seek, it’s gone to seed. Most of the graves have been forgotten and the statues have lost their paint. Only Mrs Chrysafis, the dead partisan gendarme’s mother, she’s still a regular. Didn’t they call him Valiant? His ma still visits his grave but not so much as she used to. Only on Saturdays, nibbles a bit of earth and lights a candle, she’s got to be very old now, but she keeps on begging, God Let me live so I can come to my little one, because if I die I’ll forget him.

  Well, that’s progress for you. Most of the inhabitants of Rampartville moved up to Athens. And they’re all doing just fine. Lottery sellers, doormen, Aphrodite’s mother in her blockhouse, you should see how she’s fixed up the place, a dream. All she does is crochet. Must be close to eighty, and she’s still bringing in the money, what good is it to her, at her age, God forgive me!