“Can you believe she still has fantasies of turning her doghouse into a high class bordello, a place where gentlemen stop by for evening drinks under the lemon tree before waltzing up to the second floor with the fanciest ladies in Piraeus?” Narella put on an air she assumed was sophisticated: lips pursed, chin pushed out, nose upturned. But with her left elbow balanced on her hip, her hand open as if testing for rain, she looked more like a shiny orange teapot. “She wants you to kick things off.” Both the prospect and its absolute impossibility made Kivelli wince.
“The longer Kyria Effie holds on to her dream, the better for me,” she replied, trying to hide her agitation.
“Don’t count on it, Kivelli. That hag sleeps with one eye open, so all her dreams are spoiled by her filthy room.”
The state of Kyria Effie’s quarters was indeed abysmal. The old Turkish carpet was ripped and so filthy that its floral pattern was barely visible in its black and flattened pile. It was also infested with mites that jumped and nipped at Kivelli’s ankles when she walked across it. A patched gold coverlet that smelled as sour as the odours trapped in the folds of the madam’s loose flesh was spread over a lumpy bed with a headboard so scratched and warped it might have been fished out of the sea after a shipwreck. There was a large tarnished candelabrum on the nightstand that looked like it belonged in a church, trapped in an overflow of wax so thick and recalcitrant it would never escape. The floor was littered with heaps of dirty clothes, some Kyria Effie’s, others hand-me-downs bought from the ragman to outfit the girls who arrived with nothing. But out of a grudging respect, Kivelli bit her tongue.
As reluctant as she was to admit it, life at Kyria Effie’s was a vast improvement on the limbo of the Attikon Theatre, which was a nightmare whether her eyes were opened or closed. The sight of the cracked red door, however, still made Kivelli shudder.
It was locked when they arrived. Kyria Effie trusted no one and did not provide her girls with keys. This was how she controlled their comings and goings, and if someone displeased her, she didn’t let the offender back in. The ruckus this created was a constant source of excitement for the neighbours. The turned-out girl would shriek, cry and curse as Kyria Effie threw her belongings out onto the street, cursing right back, while the neighbours yelled their own threats from darkened windows and doorways. Kivelli put her ear to the door and heard music and faint laughter.
“Are you sleepy?” she asked Narella. “Because even if we get in, I don’t think you’re going to be able to sleep.” She would have liked to keep walking arm in arm, to avoid putting this night to bed. Why go in now when they could stroll along the waterfront as if they had just left the Ciné Pathé in Smyrna and were taking in the air? Her mood had shifted again, and she felt light as a cloud with no rain or thunder in its belly. It was the last thing she’d expected when Kyria Effie sent her off with sweaty Barba Yannis. Through the closed doors of the second floor, she’d heard how some of the men treated the girls they had paid for — like buckets to be filled and then kicked. That bandleader with the foul smell and lecherous mouth was certainly one of them, but Barba Yannis had behaved like a gentleman when it wasn’t required, and had turned her into a character from a novel she’d forgotten.
“I’m exhausted,” Narella replied, resting her head on Kivelli’s shoulder. “I can sleep through a war when I get like this.” Could she sleep through the thunder of collapsing buildings and the cries of people trying to escape walls of fire? Kivelli did not ask. She pushed away the memory as quickly as it had appeared, though it took much of her gaiety with it. Narella pulled off her shoe and began banging on the door with the heel. After a few minutes, Kyria Effie opened up, holding a candle by her face. Her hair was dishevelled, her cheeks flushed, and her body reeked of ouzo and peach liqueur. Drink was the only desire she had left other than money; her mite-ridden room was empty every night.
“Come and join the party, my girls. There are more men than we know what to do with, and they’re trying to bargain two for one. One malaka shoved his hand up my skirts, and the crocodile that lives there nearly bit it off!” Kyria Effie cackled, spraying Kivelli and Narella’s cheeks with spittle, which they left to dry in the slight breeze. Neither wanted to offend the gatekeeper since she hadn’t asked for any money, her authority dulled by her drunkenness and replaced by a slippery kindness that couldn’t be trusted. They quickly excused themselves and blew kisses to each other before retiring to their rooms.
The few things Kivelli owned were not where she’d left them before going out: a wooden comb, her only change of underclothes, a cotton nightdress and a notebook she’d found wedged beneath the mattress that contained nothing but a few childlike drawings. In it she’d begun several letters to Papa and to her cousin Amalia she knew she’d never send. Not that it mattered; Kyria Effie couldn’t read anything but the guilt and fear in her girls’ eyes. She could count on her fingers, but all her calculations on paper were in symbols of her own devising. Before getting into bed, Kivelli set two coins on the wooden chair, slid one under the mattress with the notebook, placed another in the bowl under the clay pitcher to sate the madam’s morning avarice and indulge her pleasure in the hunt. The two coins in the hem of her dress would be saved for a bath, or maybe even a book. Curled up under the blankets, Kivelli tallied the other things she had earned at Barba Yannis’s — the exhilaration, the freedom, the unexpected happiness — then threw them away before they turned into hope.
5
Every night after the first, Kyria Effie collected all of Kivelli’s earnings the moment she returned from Barba Yannis’s. It took the young woman only a week to devise a subterfuge. A quarter of what she made was wrapped in a handkerchief and hidden in an empty wine cask that was used as a table in the taverna’s storeroom. She hoped to buy herself out, though there was no telling how long this would take. Despite the fact that her nights at the taverna earned her what five run-of-the-mill customers would have paid for half an hour in the broom closet, her debt was steadily mounting as Kyria Effie waited for that golden goose who would lay some bullion right into her greedy palms.
Manghes who had no luck with her at the taverna often showed up at the house afterwards, hoping to strike a deal with the madam. They offered their pocket watches, their wedding bands and whatever they had in their wallets. They promised to pay for her pleasures in weekly instalments out of their salaries as butchers or stevedores or tram conductors. The unemployed offered to paint the house or shingle the roof or lop off a finger to prove their dire need, but Kyria Effie would have none of it.
“You could pay me your entire salary for a whole year and cut off your head and it still wouldn’t be enough. Kivelli is not for you.” Of course, she never sent any man away with coins jangling in his pockets and turmoil in his trousers. There were other girls in the house who cost less and had more experience, and even Kivelli’s most dedicated fans could not pass up this consolation. From behind the closed doors, she occasionally heard those other girls singing and her name being called out in vain.
Then a girl named Despo arrived from the countryside — an apple-cheeked runaway from a nearby village who had refused to marry the boy who disgraced her. Kyria Effie already had more girls under lock and key than she knew what to do with; every room in the house was occupied, with some girls doubling up. This complicated matters when roommates were both called upstairs during the busiest hours. The room of a third girl was borrowed, and if she subsequently found herself in need of a bed, Kyria Effie quickly lost track of who was where and with whom. This rattled the madam, who frantically paced the corridor until all the men were gone and all the girls and their money accounted for. The more popular girls like Narella and Sophia, a belly dancer from Cappadocia, refused to share their quarters with “the little chicken,” as they called Despo. They had been there the longest and felt they’d earned their privacy. The newer girls didn’t want any more competition and encouraged Kyria Effie to send her away: “There’s no rooms, and ther
e ain’t enough men to keep us on our backs as it is,” they protested. Kyria Effie, however, couldn’t risk Despo being snatched up by Kyria Georgia a few neighbourhoods over. With her long blond hair and pale skin, the little chicken was sure to earn her keep and more in no time at all. If only there was somewhere put her.
“Give her the broom closet,” Kivelli offered blandly, having learned that indifference was the only thing that didn’t make Kyria Effie suspicious. “She’ll put it to better use than I have.” There was a long silence, which she resisted filling with more reasons to set her free. Under different conditions, Kyria Effie would have never agreed to let her prime investment leave the house, take up lodgings elsewhere, out of her reach. But she couldn’t deny the logic or resist Kivelli’s promise: she would keep paying a percentage of her earnings from Barba Yannis’s until her debt, times two, was settled. And in the eventuality that Kyria Effie found her golden goose before that time, Kivelli would come back to the house and fulfill her obligations, after which all business between them would be concluded. The only question that remained was how much she owed. The time it took the madam to return with the ledger filled with her hieroglyphic calculations suggested that the total had all at once swollen like an appendix ready to burst. Kivelli copied the figure into her notebook and left before Kyria Effie changed her mind. At least nothing new could be added after she stepped out the door.
At Barba Yannis’s she retrieved her hidden treasure from the old wine cask. It wasn’t much, but she hoped it would be enough to rent a room somewhere in the neighbourhood. In truth, she had no idea what a room might cost or where she would find one, especially since the shortage of space at Kyria Effie’s was just a reflection of the general state of affairs since the Catastrophe. Piraeus was bursting at the seams. Besides the theatre and the shantytowns sprouting up near the docks, camps on the beach were overflowing with refugees, and even the Acropolis was fully occupied, laundry hanging between the columns of the Parthenon.
In the square Kivelli recognized an old cobbler who was a regular at the taverna, and asked him if he knew of anyone looking for a boarder. He peered at her through thick spectacles and scratched his grey scraggly beard a few times, then pointed to a lane on the opposite side of the square from Kyria Effie’s house. “Margarita the widow lives there with her ugly daughter,” he confided in a gossipy tone. “At least she calls herself a widow, though the whole neighbourhood knows that her husband ran away.” He sighed with relief, as if he himself had escaped such a terrible fate, then laughed. “Who could blame him?” The house would be easy to find, he assured, because the ugly daughter usually sat at the ground-floor window batting her lashes and waving at passersby.
As the cobbler predicted, a girl of about fifteen was resting her folded arms on the windowsill of a house no more or less rundown than any of the others in the neighbourhood. The widow’s daughter was unpleasantly fat, with kinky hair pulled back into a bun so tight that every unfortunate curve, pit and angle of her face was exposed. Her large ears stuck out like moth’s wings, and she did not look or smell particularly clean. She smiled when she saw Kivelli, as if she’d been waiting for her all day.
“I was told there might be a room to let,” Kivelli began, but the girl interrupted, nodding the whole time she spoke.
“It’s my room, but I sleep downstairs with Mama since Baba left. Mama snores and sometimes yells and kicks me in her sleep, but I’m used to it now so it doesn’t bother me too much.” She prattled like a happy child who didn’t understand what was or wasn’t appropriate to reveal. Who knows what else she might have said had her mother not come up behind her, ordering her into the kitchen. The girl ran off without another word.
“I was told you have a room,” Kivelli tried again. In contrast to her daughter, Margarita was small and scraggy and had the pinched face of an aggravated Harpy. She glared at Kivelli with the disdain of a hundred wronged wives and slammed the wooden shutters without replying. Although the prospect of sharing a house with this shrew and her half-witted daughter did not appeal to Kivelli in the least, she knocked on the door and Margarita reappeared on the stoop, a head shorter than her.
“Is the room for you?” she asked, her eyes squinted with mistrust as she looked past Kivelli to see where she was hiding her lover and five bastard children.
“Yes, for me. Just me.” Margarita inspected her, top to bottom, and grunted with contempt.
“Where’s your husband, Madame?”
“I don’t have one.” From inside, Kivelli could smell something cooking — oily, thick and unappetizing. “Same as you, Kyria Margarita.”
“And what do you know about my husband?” she snapped, her hands clenching and unclenching at her sides, her eyes throwing daggers.
“They told me you’re a widow.” Kivelli tried to look solicitous, but was already sympathizing with the husband, dead or gone.
“You don’t look like a widow to me, my girl, you look like a putana, and I won’t have your kind under my roof, so off with you.” She scowled ferociously and spat on the ground. Kivelli took a step back, but met her contemptuous stare.
“I’m not a widow, and I’m not a whore,” she replied, trying to keep her voice steady. She pulled a fistful of coins out of her handbag, everything she had managed to hide in the wine cask. “I sing to earn my living because I have no choice, and I was told that you needed the money…” The coins seemed to mesmerize Margarita. It wasn’t even that much money, but people were in desperate straits. “Would you prefer a family with three squalling brats running up and down your stairs, stealing your buttons and thread for games? I work all night and sleep most of the day, so we’ll never see each other except when I pay my rent.” She dropped the coins back into her handbag, one at a time.
Margarita grumbled to herself, sighed deeply a few times, as if weighing out the reasons to say no, to say yes. In the end she rattled off a list of rules: “No visitors, no cooking in your room or my kitchen, no talking to my daughter, and your rent is due every Friday. If you break any of these rules, I’ll toss you out on the street faster than you can blink. Understood?” Kivelli nodded, digging her fingernails into her palms to keep herself from retaliating. Margarita called out to her daughter. “Aspasia! Go clean out your room.” The girl, who’d been standing behind the half-closed door all along, flew up the stairs, a huge grin on her face and her moth’s ears flapping enthusiastically. “So what do they call you?” Margarita asked begrudgingly. Kivelli introduced herself, then without even looking at it, paid for Aspasia’s room — two weeks in advance.
At Kyria Effie’s, her few belongings were already on the floor outside the broom closet. From inside she could hear heavy breathing and a thumping noise, as if the crippled wooden chair were being kicked against the wall. She bundled up everything in the green dress she’d worn the first night at Barba Yannis’s, leaving behind only the ugly brown espadrilles, the patched skirt and yellowed cotton blouse the Refugee Relief Society had provided when she’d landed. Other than the chorus of groans and squeaking bedsprings from behind closed doors, the corridor, parlour and kitchen were deserted, and Kyria Effie was nowhere to be found. Perhaps she was in her room, napping under the frayed gold coverlet and dreaming of frolicking in lemonade pools with the mysterious man hidden in her locket. Kivelli left quickly, without saying goodbye to anyone, and sprinted across the square to Margarita’s house, where Aspasia’s small but spotless room awaited her.
The girl’s bed was narrow, short and too soft, and a wooden icon of a particularly sombre Virgin Mary stared from the opposite wall — the first face Aspasia saw in the morning, the last at night. Kivelli tried to take it down, but found it had been nailed permanently into place. The curtains were made of blue baize, and a series of overlapping, colourful rugs woven from rags covered the chipped stone floor. They were the handiwork of the girl, who could not resist Kivelli’s company, despite her mother’s threats. The single window looked out over the laneway, where women gossiped
, cats fought and a man bitten by love might stand in the moonlight to serenade his beloved, if such things ever happened in Piraeus.
6
SMYRNA, 1922
It was impossible for Kivelli to go anywhere alone at night unless there was an emergency: the need to fetch a doctor or one of the gendarmes who patrolled her street, tapping a club along the ground to reassure citizens and forewarn miscreants. Once the sun went down, young ladies in all quarters of the city were hidden behind the white lace curtains of fanciful, glassed-in balconies, or caged like pretty birds behind breast-shaped iron bars of groundfloor windows. There they leaned forward on tender elbows and provided passersby the chance to look but not touch.
During the day Kivelli was free to come and go as she pleased, and excuses for her frequent sorties were easy enough: she was going to buy a piece of lace at Giorgiadi’s, try on hats at Moutafi’s or browse at furniture for her dowry at Xenopoulos’s department store on rue Franque. These were all perfectly respectable reasons to be roaming the streets alone, and sometimes they were even true. Smyrna had so many exquisite shops abundant with all the finery of Europe and Asia that to keep up with the nouveautes would be a full-time job. And who would deny her a refreshment at the Café de Paris on the Quai after all that labour? There was no adequate excuse in the entire world, however, for an unchaperoned foray into night. For a girl who had never learned to deny herself anything she truly desired, this constituted an emergency and called for desperate measures.
Kivelli would escape her cage after night blanketed the city; after Aunt Penelope locked the front gate with a key worthy of Bluebeard and bid her good night (but never pleasant dreams); and after she kissed her little brother Constantine and put out his lamp. Kivelli was careful not to be overly pleasant to her aunt at dinner so as not to arouse her suspicions, which were sharp and easily provoked. She had never entered her niece’s room after the lights were out, not even when she was a little girl crying through a nightmare. But it wouldn’t surprise Kivelli if she appeared at the threshold tonight in her terrible black nightdress, her ash-grey hair hanging down to her ankles. The balled-up laundry under the bedclothes was not likely to fool her if she took two steps into the room holding the dimmest lamp. So she pinned a note to her pillow that said she’d eloped with Morfinis — the old hunchback bookseller who walked around Smyrna loaded down like a donkey, calling out passages from Les Miserables and from tear-jerking romance novels her girlfriends devoured like sugar cookies. He had other books that interested her more, collected from foreigners of culture and taste, full of deep and unsettling passions she would otherwise never have known existed.
The Goodtime Girl Page 3
