The Goodtime Girl (12 page)

19
SMYRNA, 1922

For her nineteenth birthday, Papa took Kivelli to the Theatre of Smyrna, where an Italian company was premiering Pagliacci: “the tragic tale of a troupe of vengeful clowns,” according to the advertisements posted all over the city. For weeks she had pestered Papa to reserve tickets, and she was beside herself with anticipation though, in truth, she did not like clowns, nor did she care that much for opera. Kivelli preferred the love songs of Smyrna's celebrated musicians, their merry accordions, mandolins and sweet voices serenading the dark-eyed flirts who cracked men's hearts into a million pieces with one saucy glance. It was the drama of going to the famous theatre, where the city's high society mingled, that had her spinning. What she would wear preoccupied her most, since she'd heard that what went on in the audience was watched more ardently than whatever was transpiring on stage. It was imperative that she be well prepared for her debut as bewitching ingenue, a role she hoped to repeat often.

With a little bit of cooing and cajoling, Papa was adequately convinced of her need for a new outfit for this momentous occasion. This fawning was purely a ritual that he enjoyed and encouraged. All she had to do was ask sweetly and give him a peck on the cheek. His daughter was the greatest treasure in his house, and nothing that made her happy was ever spared.

Kivelli toured the boutiques on rue Franque with Smaro, a young village woman with a golden touch who could look at a gown and reproduce it as if by magic. At Paradis des Dames she found exactly what she was looking for. Papa sent a bolt of his finest burgundy velvet to Smaro's house, and within a week she created a dress as fine as the one in the exclusive shop: its bodice was fitted, and the jet beads sewn around the neckline, hem and pointed edges of the long sleeves sparkled slightly but dangerously when Kivelli moved through the room. The finishing touch was a matching velvet headband, worn just above her brows, which made her look like she'd stepped out of the latest issue of
La Mode
. She admired herself in the gilt-framed mirror in her bedroom, and after a final pat of powder, blew a kiss at her reflection.

Papa beamed with pride as she walked into the salon, and tears filled his eyes. “When did you become this splendid young woman, the spitting image of your mother?” he wondered out loud. Moved by his emotion, Kivelli sat next to him and took his manicured hand in hers, sighing deeply for the mother she hardly remembered. Worried he'd upset her, he tickled her under the chin as if she were a little girl. “I have a surprise,” he announced, then called for the photographer who'd been waiting in the foyer. A nervous young man shuffled in with his camera and captured the moment, their emotions making both Kivelli and her father look vulnerable. After the young man left, Papa said he hoped the photograph would always remind her, wherever she might be, that he cherished her above all other people and things in his life. His face was very serious, too serious for a birthday celebration, Kivelli scolded, and with her gloved fingertip stanched a tear before it ruined her powder.

A hired car was idling outside, a black Bugatti convertible with a uniformed driver at the wheel. The interior was apple red, and Kivelli reclined luxuriously in the back seat, holding hands with Papa. But halfway to the theatre she yelped in distress. In the excitement of the photograph, of the departure, she'd forgotten the most crucial accessory for her evening at the opera. A neighbour had offered to lend her a pair of opera glasses if she stopped by on her way out to show off her new outfit. How would she be able to see who was watching her now? This was certainly a tragedy, a blight on what otherwise promised to be a perfect evening. She almost cursed, but bit her tongue just in time. Papa patted her gloved hand and smiled consolingly, then extracted a small, golden pouch from his jacket pocket and dropped it on her velvet lap. Kivelli took a moment to admire the contrast between the golden silk and the deep burgundy of her dress before dipping two fingers between the pouch's drawstrings.

It contained a pair of sterling silver opera glasses with her name engraved on the side. She immediately lifted them to her eyes and peered into passing windows, doorways and shops. Everything intimate and hidden was all at once at her discretion, hers to do with as she wished. Kivelli was fascinated by the details and secrets revealed by the glasses, and the notebook she once used to copy the trimmings of foreign women's dresses became the repository for all she spied, all the things that attracted and repulsed her. There was no greater plan yet for these notes; they would simply be a map of the realm she inhabited, a place both real and imaginary in which she was queen.

The performance on stage was not as interesting as the view of the audience the new opera glasses provided, though Kivelli was occasionally touched by the plaintive voice of the lovelorn hunchback whose heart was breaking. What impressed her most was the grandness of the theatre, modelled after
l'Opéra
in Paris, and the beauty of the patrons in their costumes and jewels. The atmosphere was festive, her fellow theatregoers chattering enthusiastically, exchanging glances more gripping and revealing than anything the Italian actors could muster. Those who sat quietly, their attention focused on the stage, were most suspect and out of place. They were either uncomfortable foreigners who had not yet acclimatized to the spirit of Smyrna, or illicit lovers who had schemed to sit next to each other in the dark theatre, the possibility of being caught adding to the thrill of their liaison. Kivelli trained her opera glasses on a dandy rubbing elbows with an icy blond woman, who closed her eyes and took a deep breath, the suggestion of a smile creasing her stiff upper lip. So preoccupied was she with the affairs of the audience that she'd lost the thread of the story unfolding on stage. Two of the clowns were now dead and the hunchback was declaring, “
la commedia e finita
.” Following Papa's lead, Kivelli stood up and applauded with gusto and felt completely satisfied.

Arm in arm, they walked along the Quai to the Sporting Club, where her father was a senior member. On the rooftop terrace the sea breeze washed away the dreaminess of the theatre, and the moonlight opened up a pathway on the water — an ephemeral road flanked by the silhouettes of ghostly ships that led to invisible worlds all in motion while Kivelli sat there, enjoying the view. Smyrna, she declared, was one of the most beautiful places on earth — at least as beautiful as Paris — and she was one of the luckiest girls in the world because the city had created her to adorn and enjoy it in a way that could never be fully understood by an outsider. They were inseparable — one could not exist without the other. No matter where she went, she knew she would always return. As these thoughts swirled around her moonlit head, Papa asked if she'd enjoyed her evening. “
Magnifique
,” she crooned, then gazed at the people still strolling the Quai on this enchanted night, the few whose eyes she met looking up at her with both envy and admiration.

20

Every Wednesday, Marianthi visited Kyra Xanthi, the neighbourhood fortune-teller. She claimed it was “just for fun,” though she seemed to take the old woman's advice very seriously, wearing yellow for one whole week to avert a stretch of stormy weather in the household, and putting out milk for stray cats to encourage fertility, though it hadn't helped in either case. She also insisted that it was because of Kyra Xanthi that she had found Kivelli, not the first time at Barba Yannis, but at Margarita's house.

“When I crossed the bridge into Drapetsona, I was accosted by a group of ruffians, so I ran up a side street. An old woman who looked like the widow of hope was sweeping her steps. She was small and wrinkled as a marionette, unlucky as a black cat, and she scowled at me as if I were a trespasser who should turn around and leave or suffer wicked and painful consequences.”

“Perhaps you should have worn a dress less gay and left the hat with the feathers and pompoms at home. Then you might still have it.” Margarita had tried to sell it to Kivelli, but it had ended up on Pandelis the hat seller's cart.

“But I'd left the house so quickly,” Marianthi replied with some lingering regret, “without thinking.”

Undeterred, she walked past the old woman and tried to look like she knew where she was going, all the while counting her footsteps and taking mental notes of street names and shop fronts. As she crossed the square, she hoped that somehow she would be able to find Kivelli without having to ask anyone. Maybe she would bump into her, or hear her voice through an open window. She didn't dare go to the taverna again where some acquaintance of her husband's might see her and report back to him. Then she'd have to explain her sneaking around, asking questions he insisted were none of her business.

“That's when Kyra Xanthi came out and saved me, invited me in for a coffee and a chat. ‘Come in sweetness,' she said, ‘I won't eat you. I've already had lunch. But some big bad wolf might decide you're tasty if you keep wandering around with that lost sheep look on your face. People are hungry around here, you know.' And then she told me how to find you, and I did.”

“Because of her cousin the cobbler, not through her amazing powers,” Kivelli reminded Marianthi, but she waved off her doubt. “You don't find it even a little impressive that Xanthi was the person who invited me in?”

“You're free to believe whatever suits you. And I'll do the same.”

On this particular Wednesday, Kivelli had reluctantly agreed to go along, despite her mistrust of such nonsense. How could the reading of coffee grounds or the random flipping of playing cards indicate anything meaningful about her life, her future? Even the lines on her palms could not to be trusted, for they were more likely a result of the number of dishes she'd washed at Kyria Effie's than a map of her destiny. None of the grannies or gypsies in Smyrna with their cards laid out on the ground could have ever predicted she would end up in Piraeus. Some things were beyond imagination. And even if Kivelli believed the future could be read, she wasn't sure she would want to hear the story. She preferred to approach each day as if it were her last; in this she found some solace.

The women turned down a street Kivelli had never been on before, identical to all the others that ran off the square. An old woman wearing a bright red kerchief with a black diamond pattern and a sack dress covered in large flowers waved at them. “Are you looking for me?” she called out and motioned them over. Marianthi waved back and pulled Kivelli towards her. “You've brought your friend today, I see, good, good.” The old woman's smile was so open and friendly that Kivelli could not help but return it. “Come in and we'll drink some coffee, then you'll tell me some stories, and I'll tell you some, and we'll see if they match.” She drew the beaded curtain that hung at the threshold, stepped in after the two women and closed the door.

Kyra Xanthi busied herself brewing coffee, her back to her guests. Everything she'd ever owned seemed to be crammed into the one, dark room that smelled like a church. There was a sunken divan pushed against the wall, a heavy wooden table with two mismatched chairs, a washbasin turned upside down on the floor and a china cabinet with its glass doors missing. On its shelves were stacks of plates, hundreds of wooden spools stripped of their thread, religious icons with candles burning before them and dozens of old shoes in all colours, shapes and sizes, piled one pair upon the other. The walls of the room were covered with pictures: old women and young women posed in fancy dress, men in uniforms, children in sailor suits and costumes for Carnival parades. There was a yellowing picture of Prime Minister Venizelos when he was still young, torn out of a newspaper and placed in a glassless frame, and so many others that Kivelli could have spent days studying them.

“Watch that your eyes don't fall out, Miss Kivelli.” Kyra Xanthi pulled the two chairs away from the table. “Sit down now, my girls, and I'll tell you everything you need to know.” Kivelli's chair had a big crack in its seat, and she worried it would snag her dress, tear it off if she tried to flee. She sat at the edge and stared at the beaded curtain, the wooden door behind it. Her breath was short and her nerves were rubbing against each other like the hind legs of crickets. Could the old woman hear their song? Kivelli swallowed hard and brought her hands over her ears to muffle the ringing, to suffocate it. It was perhaps the smallness of the room, overburdened with uncanny objects, combined with the strong odour of the brewing coffee and the persistent smell of frankincense coming from she was not sure where, that induced this sudden dizziness and languor. If she folded her arms on the table, put her head down, she might have fallen asleep. Instead, she forced herself to speak.

“You live here by yourself, Kyra Xanthi?”

“No, my loverboy is hiding under the bed.” She cackled and clapped her hands several times, and Kivelli half expected some dusty pirate with a patch over his eye to roll out from under the divan. This thought made her laugh, harder than she normally would have had she not felt so uneasy.

“Plain, medium, or sweet?” Kyra Xanthi asked as she heaped sugar into the briki before either woman could reply.

“However you're having it,” Marianthi replied and shrugged.

Xanthi carried over the coffee cups and sat on the divan, close to Marianthi's chair. From her apron pocket, she pulled out a deck of old red cards with a faded Persian rug design on their backs. She placed them on the table before Marianthi, who picked them up immediately and began to shuffle.

“Cut the cards, my girl, and we'll see what the future holds for my favourite married lady.”

Marianthi cut with her left hand, and Xanthi began to lay them out in three perfect piles. The washed-out cards revealed many things about Marianthi's near future, some of them obvious, some incomprehensible, others hopeful but unlikely. Marianthi did not utter a word through the stream of conjectures, predictions, warnings, and nodded whether what Kyra Xanthi said made sense or not. Kivelli could tell by the intensity of her friend's gaze that she believed every word offered in the cryptic monologue. The summation included calm waters, good harvest and health, and a strong recommendation for the colour blue.

When it was Kivelli's turn, she demurred. Kyra Xanthi was not pleased to have a doubter in her midst, but nor was she discouraged. “You may be the infamous Kivelli, but Pythia was my great, great grandmother,” she boasted and smiled, showing off her single gold tooth. She took Kivelli's ice-cold hand and rubbed it between hers. “You let me tell your fortune, Miss, and if it comes true, tomorrow, next week, next year, you can come back and give me something for my trouble — a picture, a bit of thread, whatever you think.” Kivelli looked around and wondered what on earth the old seer might need besides a bigger room.

“How could it hurt?” Marianthi piped in, seized by some vicarious thrill. Indeed, how could it hurt? But how could it help? Kivelli looked directly into Kyra Xanthi's clear blue eyes for the first time since she'd arrived. They were bright and inquisitive as a child's and already seemed to be looking deep inside her. “Kyra Xanthi, you tell me whatever you want about the future, but leave the past alone. And I'm not going to give you any hints. I'm just going to listen.”

The fortune-teller brought Kivelli's hand very close to her face, her thin, grey lashes tickling the younger woman's palm when she blinked. Nothing out of the ordinary was predicted. Long life, sunny skies, success and prosperity through her innate talents. Kyra Xanthi patted her palm and closed her fingers over it like the lid of a jewel box. “And don't wash dishes in cold water anymore,” she added and winked. “It will shrink your life line to nothing.” This made Kivelli laugh genuinely for the first time since she'd stepped through the beaded curtain.

“Now there's a piece of solid advice,” she said to Marianthi, who didn't look amused. “From here on I'll throw my dishes out the window after every meal, like a celebration.”

Marianthi furrowed her brow, crossed her arms over her chest. She glowered at Kyra Xanthi as if the old woman were cheating her. “What about a man? Isn't there a man hidden between any of those lines?” If she had not insisted on an addendum, perhaps he might have been reserved for some little widow who was looking for a new husband.

Kyra Xanthi pushed a shallow breath through her nostrils, and without even uncurling Kivelli's fingers pronounced: “Of course there's a man, silly. Tall, dark and handsome. I saw him sleeping in the crease between the head line and the heart line, but then I got distracted by a seagull flying across the sunny sky, and when I turned around he was gone.”

“Maybe the sound of all those dishes smashing against the road woke him up,” Kivelli offered, and Marianthi slapped her arm. Old Xanthi had to be given credit for not babbling on about wedding wreaths and white doves. If there was one thing Kivelli knew about her future, it was that she would not be marrying. Unfathomably, despite Papa's best-laid plans, she'd become the kind of girl men hid from their mothers. And if some mangha proposed, she would decline. She'd heard a story about a singer from Thessaloniki who went blind out of despair when her new husband refused to let her sing, even though that was why he'd fallen in love with her in the first place. He became jealous, as if her singing for the pleasure of other men was a betrayal. Kivelli could not afford a love like that.

Then there was Marianthi. Though she did not consider herself her husband's servant, their marriage was hardly inspiring. Kivelli kept quiet about the songs her friend wrote, which were making the Smyrniot more and more popular. Their arrangement suited her, she maintained, and quickly changed the subject. But despite her loyalty to the Smyrniot, Marianthi still craved drama and romance.

It was her nature. And since she couldn't live it fully herself, she believed she should be allowed to live it through Kivelli.

As the women prepared to leave, Marianthi placed two coins on the table, so shiny that they seemed to burn holes in the dark, battered surface. The fortune-teller gathered up her cards and slipped them into her apron pocket, but did not touch the coins. “I thank you for the company, ladies,” she said, and turned her own coffee cup onto its saucer, tapping its bottom. Kivelli's hand had already parted the beaded curtain and was gripping the door latch. The late afternoon light momentarily blinded her, and she tripped over a stone on the path, grasping Marianthi's arm to regain her balance. Kyra Xanthi followed them as far as the front stoop. “You come again, Miss Kivelli, anytime you want, and we'll talk some more.” Before she had a chance to reply, the fortune-teller stepped back through her beaded curtain, into the repository of old shoes and wonders on the other side.