The Goodtime Girl (18 page)

“There you are,” he said, looking past her as if he were addressing someone behind her and she was merely an impediment.

“Yes, here I am,” she replied, “But why?” He was still looking beyond her, smiling now. Kivelli glanced over her shoulder. What she saw froze her heart for a few seconds, though she did her best to remain composed.

“Go back to your table, Kivelli. I'll be by to talk to you before I go on again.” But she couldn't move. Trapped between the Smyrniot's disregard and the quickly approaching man, she had no choice but to face him. She braced herself, then swung around to take him by surprise. But he too was looking through her and at the Smyrniot, who was holding out his hand.

“Diamantis, my friend, I'm so happy you could make it. I've reserved a table for you near the singers.” The Smyrniot was positively animated. Kivelli thought all this enthusiasm might break something, like an old man who suddenly decided to walk without his cane. He introduced them quickly, and she couldn't tell whether Diamantis recognized her. She doubted it, since the condition he was in the first time they met could be best described as smashed.

“Is that little witch Adriana on tonight?” he asked in good spirits. “She's gone to the devil.” One corner of the Smyrniot's mouth crooked towards his chin.

“Another devil, you mean.” Diamantis laughed and the Smyrniot laughed too, though it sounded like it choked him a little. The men walked towards the table, their arms resting on each other's shoulders. Kivelli thought this might be a good moment to escape, until Diamantis looked back at her and tossed out his bait. “Are you joining us, Miss?” he asked, pouring himself a glass of wine before sitting down.

“I was already sitting there,” she replied, sounding more offended than she'd intended. “You are joining me.” She took her seat again and pushed her glass towards him. He filled it up halfway, but when she didn't pull it back immediately, he topped it up.

“I hope you don't mind the intrusion, then,” he said, turning his chair to face the stage.

“Be my guest,” she replied, and turned her chair as well. “Or the Smyrniot's.” She lifted her glass in a half-hearted toast. He responded in kind, then emptied it like a man dying of thirst. They sat in silence, strangers on a train forced to share a compartment, coincidental passengers unwilling to engage in small talk, which suited her just fine.

Their host had disappeared again, rounding up his musicians from the various corners and tables where they had scattered during the intermission. They were slowly taking their places on stage, plucking a few strings, tuning their instruments and talking in lowered voices so as not to be heard by the audience. Kivelli knew these discussions were of no importance; they were as likely to be about what they would eat, or where they would go after they were done for the night, as they were about what songs came in what order. The oud player pointed to her table, said something to Kosmas, and they both nodded. Maybe they recognized her after all. Or maybe they were just talking about her ridiculous hat. She took it off and placed it on an empty chair. The Smyrniot wasn't likely to sit with them, not until the end of the set anyway, and by then she would be gone. The musicians were all on stage now, sitting quietly and waiting for their leader, who stopped by the table before taking his place at the helm.

“Would you be interested in singing a song or two,” he asked Diamantis, pressing his hands together in supplication.

“You should have forewarned me, Panayotis. You know I don't like to appear without my bouzouki. She gets jealous and then plays tricks on me.”

Another bouzouki player — that figured. Kivelli refrained from making a bored face, but was unable to stifle the yawn that took its place.

“Please, Diamantis. Do it as a favour to me. My singers abandoned me tonight, and the people want to hear a song. Nikos the oud player brought his bouzouki. He said you could use it.”

Diamantis looked towards Nikos and waved two fingers at him in acknowledgement and thanks. He then clasped the Smyrniot's hands. “How can I refuse, my friend. You've done me enough favours already. But next time, give us a warning.”

“Marvellous, Diamantis. And we're squared up now.” He then turned to Kivelli, his tone somewhat less flattering. “And how about you — can you sing ‘The Goodtime Girl'?” The Smyrniot's eyes demanded her compliance, and she was aware that she now had Diamantis's full attention.

“Why not,” she began, “but only if …”

“Fine then. I'll call you when it's time. And don't drink too much of that wine. I need you to remember all the words. This isn't Barba Yannis's.” And with that he bounded up the two steps to the stage, introduced himself and the orchestra, and underwent the transformation that changed him into someone she didn't want to kill — not while he was playing, anyway.

“You spent some time at Barba Yannis's? Nice guy, but not too lucky. I hear he's learning to play the baglama in jail.” He reached over and grabbed an olive from her selection of mezzedes, popped it into his mouth and spat the pit into his palm. Kivelli pushed the platter towards him, trying to decide whether a lie or the truth would be more efficient in ending the conversation.

“I know the place.” She fixed her gaze on the stage, on the three empty seats. Where had to singers gone, she wondered, and why? If the Smyrniot treated them the way he treated her, she could well imagine that they'd walked out on him without looking back. It had probably happened last night, which would explain the sudden invitation. Diamantis's too, she guessed. In this the Smyrniot was no different than Barba Yannis.

“Don't remember seeing you there.” He spat another olive pit into his hand, then dropped both into the ashtray where they lay like the plucked, sightless eyes of a small, dead animal. He filled his glass again and studied her as if she were a species he was encountering for the first time, his eyes grazing her skin like hands with uncut nails. “But you do look a little familiar. Do you live in Piraeus?”

There were a hundred responses at the tip of her tongue, none of them polite. Kivelli didn't know which was the bigger insult. That the Smyrniot had insinuated she might forget a lyric in front of this infuriating bouzouki player, or that Diamantis did not recognize her at all.

“We've met before, Mr. Skarlatos. At the square in Drapetsona. I was with the Smyrniot's wife, and you were communing with the gods of hashish, which is why I suppose you don't remember me from Barba Yannis's. You'll forgive me if I don't remember ever seeing you there either. You've seen one bouzouki player, you've seen them all.”

“I could say the same about women singers.”

“Not if you'd actually heard me sing.” She crossed her arms over her chest to stop herself from throwing something at him — the knife, the fork, the empty carafe of wine. But another part of her was on the verge of tears. The men at Barba Yannis's loved her; here, she was nobody. “Please don't talk to me anymore. You're upsetting me,” she wanted to say, but the words caught in her throat like slivers of glass, and all that came out was an exasperated gasp. She turned her face towards the stage again. If Diamantis had anything else to say or laugh at, he could do it by himself, like the madmen in the square whom everyone pitied but avoided. When she peeked at him out of the corner of her eye, she saw that he too was watching the orchestra, listening intently and keeping rhythm with his fingers on his thigh.

The Smyrniot's introduction was kinder, more complimentary, than she'd expected. Until he actually said her name and called her a compatriotissa, she hadn't been certain he was talking about her. As Kivelli left her seat, she made sure not to cast a glance or bat an eyelash in Diamantis's direction. He was the stranger in the compartment again, and she had thankfully reached her stop. There was no need to say goodbye. It was time to forget everyone and everything except for the music, to reach deep down into herself and retrieve her voice and Marianthi's words, with which she was determined to slay everyone. Diamantis especially, but also the Smyrniot. Whoever else got wounded in the crossfire was not her concern. They were ghosts from a time and place that no longer existed, no matter how hard they tried to recreate it. What of Smyrna could survive here, where there was nothing but misery and pettiness? There could be no Smyrneans without Smyrna, plain and simple. They were all Misereans now. Since her arrival in Piraeus, she had tried as much as possible to avoid her compatriots because she found no comfort in comparing tribulations or wallowing in her losses. The Bella Vista was not her future but some corrupted version of her past. Tomorrow she would take the train to Thessaloniki.

The moment she stepped onto the stage, a smattering of applause sounded from various tables, and the anger and bitterness in her chest was replaced with warmth. The music began and Marianthi's words slithered out of her mouth like charmed snakes, wrapping themselves around waists and necks, slinking down women's dresses. By the time Kivelli arrived at the final couplet, they had squeezed, tickled and teased everyone in the room to their feet. Except for Diamantis, who remained seated, though he was clapping enthusiastically and yelling “Bravo!” and “Encore!” with all the rest. As much as she wanted to continue, to sing at this station where she might never stop again, she couldn't stay for a second song, nor was she asked to. So she nodded at the Smyrniot, blew a kiss to the audience and went back to her table. Diamantis jumped out of his seat and held out her chair, then tipped his hat. Kivelli looked at his dark wavy hair and imagined running her fingers through it, yanking it gently but firmly.

“I must have been completely out of my head not to have remembered that. You will forgive me, I hope.” His eyes, wide and excited, penetrated Kivelli's, and his smile was making her tremble. Or maybe it was just relief to be finished and the rush of nerves that always followed. If he'd asked her why her hands were shaking, why the wine in her glass was a miniature storm, that's what she would have said. The orchestra started up again, but people at the closest tables were still congratulating her. Someone sent over another carafe of wine and a plate heaped with pastries — high, light and rich as a wedding cake. Kivelli ran her little finger through the cream and tasted it, then risked smiling back at Diamantis. It didn't hurt at all, and it dissolved the last knot of tension in her belly. For the first time since she'd walked through the doors, she breathed deeply and freely. She smiled again, with more certainty, but resisted leaning in to kiss his mouth, or lightly run her fingernails down his cheek, or take a long and deep whiff of his neck. He reached towards the plate of pastries, but she pulled it away. “Let's see what you're made of, Mr. Skarlatos, then we'll discuss forgiveness and whether you can taste any of my pastries.” Her heart was pounding, her hands and feet were freezing, tingling at their edges. She felt so alive that a gunshot through the chest might not kill her, and the Smyrniot's ill humour could not even leave a scratch. She finally sat down, to keep herself from floating up through the cloud of smoke and into the constellation of glass moons. Still grinning, Diamantis watched her take a huge bite out of the top pastry.

“I'll save my appetite,” he said, “if you save me a bite.”

The orchestra struck up again, and they sat in silence, listening. Kivelli knew all the words to the old Smyrnean songs, and although she resisted singing along, she'd stopped wondering about the tribulations of the absent singers and was already picturing herself permanently in their place. Wasn't that why the Smyrniot had summoned her? It certainly wasn't because they were friends.

When Diamantis's name was called, the applause was louder and more excited than it had been for her. How was it that all these people in Athens knew him but to her he was just the madman from the square? She'd never heard any of the boys at Barba Yannis's talking about him. Nor had she seen him in any of the other clubs she frequented, passing her empty nights watching the musicians play, their fingers plucking the strings of the baglama and bouzouki, their rough palms slapping the skin of the toumbeleki. Kivelli loved hearing men spit out lyrics like polished stones, which the audience collected and carried home in their pockets. She put them in her mouth and sucked off the salt until her lips and eyes burned. It was much safer to sing than to be sung to. When she sang, she was inside the song, embodied by it, and it could not wound her. When she listened, she was at its mercy, she became its devastation.

Diamantis, sitting centre stage and improvising on another man's bouzouki, having his way with it, was devastating. Each note pierced through her like a long, thin needle, and euphoria and bitterness poured out of the puncture wounds in equal measure, blending into something more potent than either. She brought her hands to her face and realized she was crying, but she was also laughing and singing along with him, to him, and he was looking back at her, or at least that's how it seemed. The manghes at Barba Yannis's always thought she was singing exclusively to them too. But then Diamantis winked at her. In response, Kivelli blew him a kiss and tossed the flowers that were on the table at his feet, their wet stems spattering dark spots on his perfect grey trousers. If she'd had a little more wine, she might have danced, though the song Diamantis sang was meant for a man to get lost in. It wouldn't have mattered at Barba Yannis's or anywhere else in Piraeus. Here she settled for moving her feet under the table, clapping her hands above her head.

After he had taken his bows and picked up the flowers he'd been showered with, he walked towards her. He offered her the bouquet, and she took a bite out of a pastry and placed the other half in his mouth before he could say a word. His mouth opened readily, accepting it as naturally as her mouth might have swallowed his tongue if he had bent down to proffer it. They clinked wine glasses, emptying the carafe quickly and ordering another.