The Goodtime Girl (22 page)

30

During the weeks that followed, Diamantis became more and more necessary to Kivelli's well-being, while Marianthi's face began fading from her memory. Then one day she appeared at the singer's door as if nothing had changed, inviting her to spend the afternoon at a fancy hammam in Kokkinia. “It has Armenian attendants, marble basins and a depilatory room,” she said, trying to sound enthused.

Kivelli had never acquired the habit of bathing in public, taking care of her personal hygiene with others in attendance. In Smyrna they'd had a large bathroom with a marble tub long and deep enough to drown in. There was no need to travel for the luxury of cleanliness, no need to show other girls what was hiding under her ruffles. She knew how they talked: any perceived defect spread so quickly through the town that the matchmaker was making excuses for it before the girl's hair had a chance to dry. It wasn't so different at Kyria Effie's. Kivelli had never understood why women were so vicious to each other, but she did now. It was the comparisons they feared, the desire they could imagine when they saw their rival's body.

She accepted the invitation for two reasons: the first was that the perennial water shortage in Piraeus was still forcing her to wash in her shallow bath or daub herself with a sponge, which didn't leave her feeling particularly clean; the second and perhaps more pressing reason was that Marianthi wanted it, and given their current malaise, it was the least she could do for their friendship. They didn't say much on the ride to Kokkinia. Marianthi told her the baths were built over a large well and that Wednesdays were reserved for women, and Kivelli made idle conversation about the weather.

The hamman's foyer was decorated with marble statues and a small fountain with a naked nymph pouring a stream of water from a jug. When Kivelli tried to pay the woman who sat behind the reception desk, Marianthi intervened, handing over a blue envelope and requesting the full treatment. Two female attendants were promptly summoned — young women, a little prune-faced from spending so much time in the damp — who led them to separate changing rooms. Kivelli was handed a white towel and told to undress and wait. After the girl left, she took off her dress and her underclothes and wrapped the towel around her torso, then lay down on a cot with white cotton sheets and closed her eyes. She pictured Marianthi in her changing room, and suddenly found herself deeply curious about her friend's breasts, buttocks, and the thatch of hair between her legs — the colour, the way the hairs curled and how high up they spread. To see her naked was to know her completely, this woman she loved like a sister and who now considered her an enemy. When the attendant tapped on the door, Kivelli wrapped the towel tighter around her body and followed her through a narrow corridor into the steam-filled world of women where Marianthi waited.

She was already stretched out on the marble bed in the centre of the main bathing room, resting on her stomach and free of her towel. Her skin seemed malleable under the hands of her attendant, who lathered her up and scrubbed her vigourously. Beams of pale sunlight from the domed roof opened paths in the misty air and fell on her like spotlights, illuminating small segments of her body — the space between her shoulder blades, her right buttock, the crease behind her knee. The room was silent except for the thin trickle of water coming from copper faucets placed in even intervals around the room, and the sound of the straw-coloured cloth rasping against Marianthi's skin. It took Kivelli's eyes a few minutes to adjust to the hot watery air before she noticed the other women sitting on the low marble benches next to running faucets. Some washed themselves slowly and sensuously as a caress, others were attended to by young, topless women who poured water out of ceramic urns and lifted their clients' arms above their heads in order to wash the soft insides of their arms, the crease under the pillows of their breasts.

Trying to remain discreet, Kivelli studied her fellow bathers, the ones with the folds of belly pouring into their laps, the ones with nipples large as sand dollars or pink and pointed as baby's tongues, the ones whose sex was hairless. The old women sat with an ease that made them seem like permanent fixtures sprung from the marble benches. The young women cleaned themselves with a certain urgency, turning their backs to the centre of the room when they scrubbed between their legs, then splashing the contents of the urn onto themselves over and over again, as if they would never come clean. She watched them and she could feel them watching her, their cat's eyes peering through the steam, until her attendant indicated with a wave of her hand that it was time for her to surrender her towel so that she could begin her work. Marianthi, in a trance on the marble bed, her eyes closed, her face turned away, had not yet noticed her friend's presence.

Kivelli closed her eyes as warm water poured over her head, and when she opened them again, Marianthi was staring at her intensely, studying her body, her nakedness as if assessing it, weighing out its worth and its weaknesses. This was also what Kivelli was doing to her, the woman who had given her friendship, her songs and the man of her dreams. She searched for something that would make her love Marianthi less so she would not be forced to feel grateful, and she imagined her friend doing the same to stop herself from feeling so betrayed. As she lay there stripped of all pretence, Kivelli saw what a formidable woman Marianthi was, a woman who in her own way got everything she wanted. She had already conquered the Smyrniot, she'd acquired both Kivelli's voice and her friendship because she'd decided she required both, and it was only circumstance that kept her at arm's length from Diamantis, though circumstances changed, and in the interim she had sent in an understudy. While the attendant massaged her scalp, it struck Kivelli that she had more to fear from Marianthi than the other way around. She was like a land mine with her most potent stores buried far below the surface; if she was stepped upon too hard, she would take all of them with her — including Diamantis, who suspected nothing, or at least had not yet understood his suspicions, her desires. The attendant poured cool water over Kivelli's head just as Marianthi stood up, naked and glowing, a sly grin on her face as if she'd heard her friend's thoughts. “It is not my beauty that is a danger to you,” the smile said. Marianthi was neither more nor less beautiful, but differently attractive, dark where Kivelli was pale, luxurious where she was spare. Another species entirely. Kivelli was glad to be cloaked in silence, in steam, for if she had to respond to that smile she would not know what to say besides “I surrender.”

It was Kivelli's turn on the marble bed, and Marianthi took her place on the warmed stone bench. They did not take their eyes off each other, afraid of what the other might do, what they might miss if their attention was diverted for even an instant. Kivelli looked at her friend's breasts, large as a pregnant woman's, then at her round and smooth belly which would never bear children. She knew this hurt Marianthi, yet while she felt sympathy for her, she also felt a malicious glee. Kivelli was perfectly equipped for childbirth, with everything in working order but her interest. Despite her small breasts and narrow hips, for the first time in Marianthi's presence, she felt like the larger woman. These were ridiculous thoughts, irrelevant and shallow, but she allowed herself to indulge in them, and now it was her smile that was tinged with cunning, though Marianthi didn't see it because her eyes were closed, her hair full of suds. By the time she opened them again, Kivelli had recovered and felt slightly contrite. She knew that if she were to get pregnant, Marianthi would be the first person to help her get rid of it or offer to raise it as her own. She would accept, as long as the child's father wasn't Diamantis.

The attendant turned her onto her side, placing her arm up over her head, then rolled her onto her stomach to wash her back. With the rough little cloth she removed layers of dead skin that curled off into tiny grey scrolls, scrubbing Kivelli's breasts and thighs with equal force until she was flayed. Her cheek resting on the warm, wet marble, she drifted off and dreamt it was Marianthi who was washing her, manipulating her body as if she were her child and her lover at the same time. A splash of cold water brought her out of this reverie, and it took a few seconds to recover her bearings in the womb-like room.

She sat next to Marianthi on the bench, the faucet between them, their shoulders almost touching, the down of their upper arms reaching out like the antennae of tiny, mating insects. They both stared straight ahead, their bodies drained of life, waiting for the next stage in their journey — out of this watery underworld or deeper into it. It was a very peaceful and empty state, free of anguish or expectation. Kivelli had stopped looking at the other women, but out of the corner of her eye watched Marianthi's chest rise and fall, and all she heard was her friend's steady breath and the trickle of water. Her hands rested in her lap, cupped as if holding something small and fragile, a baby bird that had fallen from its nest, its heart beating frantically against her palms.

Marianthi reached over and covered her hands, and Kivelli looked at her, longing to say something, to apologize for all she had thought and done that had hurt her. At the same time, Marianthi turned towards her, eyes glimmering, cheeks moist and shiny, lips slightly parted as if she too were ready to speak. But instead of speaking, corrupting the damp silence, she kissed her mouth, lightly and briefly, before the other cats hidden inside the clouds of steam could determine what they saw. The kiss spread through Kivelli's body like fire. She picked up the ceramic urn and dumped cold water over her head, screaming out in shock, which made Marianthi and all the other women in the room laugh. The attendant handed her a towel, and she wrapped it around her body and left the bathing room without looking back.

Back in the changing room, Kivelli stretched out on the cot while the attendant rubbed her with oils that smelled of burnt spices and flowers. Fingertips fluttered over her temple, kneaded and dug into her muscles and underneath her shoulder blades. All at once Kivelli was overcome by sadness, as if the ball of coagulated anguish hidden behind her ribcage had been dispersed by the attendant's touch. The sadness turned into a searing, blinding pain that inflamed her whole chest, and a sob escaped from her mouth and nostrils. “Stop!” she shrieked, and the girl backed away, apologizing. “We all have one of those spots somewhere in our body,” she said before closing the door, “where our sorrow draws together so we can go on living.” But Kivelli wasn't listening. She lay on her stomach and cried for a very long time, without a clear idea of what she was crying about. Smyrna? Papa? Constantine? Marianthi? There was so much pain she knew she could cry for the rest of her life. When she finally calmed down enough to leave the room, she discovered her friend had not waited for her. She'd gone ages ago, the receptionist said, but had left a note. With an equal dose of excitement and trepidation, Kivelli tore open the small blue envelope. The large piece of paper it contained had only three little words written upon it in Marianthi's careful script: “I love you.”

For a few moments Kivelli stared at the paper, as if more words would magically appear to devour the three, then crumpled it and let it fall to the floor. She left the hammam swearing to herself that she would never set foot there again. She was, however, extremely clean, perhaps cleaner than she'd been since leaving Smyrna. She wandered the streets, slightly dazed, searching not for Marianthi, but for Diamantis, who would help her get dirty enough for Piraeus again.

HE WAS SITTING IN THE square with a group of friends, stoned and watching a play performed on a balcony by a troupe of fools for more fools. Kivelli was in no mood for the crude humour or the vulgar banter of the actors and the spectators, who taunted each other equally. “Your mother has a face like the devil's ass,” an actor in a baggy dress and head scarf called out to a man in the square who was throwing garbage and fish heads up at him. When a fish head smacked the actor on the forehead, the audience went wild, and in response, he pulled up his skirts and urinated on everyone below. This started a riot of hurled obscenities and smashed chairs, which the police didn't even try to break up. Diamantis was too busy laughing to notice that things had turned ugly.

“Come, I need to talk to you,” Kivelli begged, without really knowing what she wanted to say or how to say it. “I'm giving you up for Marianthi,” or “I'm giving you to Marianthi,” or “Let's get hitched and leave Piraeus,” though she didn't have a destination in mind. One of these statements was as likely to come out of her mouth as another. But Diamantis wouldn't talk to her and wasn't going anywhere until he was good and ready. When she tried to pull him by his arm, he shook her off and told her to go home. She asked him to meet her at her room later, but she knew his nod meant nothing, especially since the newspaper on his table was covered in wild squiggles and snakes. Having no other choice, she left him in the melee of the square and made her way back to Margarita's.

Behind closed shutters, Kivelli waited for Diamantis to show up while trying to convince herself she was not waiting. She smoked his leftover cigarettes, trimmed the ends of her hair, painted her nails — because she felt like it, not because she was trying to fill up the hours until sundown when it would be time for her to go to work. How she missed Marianthi and her regular, cheerful company. Apart from filling her with melancholy, their impasse had left her with too much time to herself. Kivelli knew at this crossroads that she should turn towards her friend and patch things up but, at the same time, knew she wouldn't.

She tried to pass the time by practising some new songs, but it was no use; she could clear her mind of neither her friend nor her lover. Marianthi still wrote most of the words she sang, after all, and lately Kivelli had begun to see how they were directed at Diamantis, and that she was merely the scorned woman's mouthpiece. This made her feel used and angry, and if one of them was so good as to occupy her during these empty hours between waking up and going to work, she wouldn't have time for such revelations and dilemmas. Kivelli knew she was partly to blame for this mess because she'd become lazy in her forgetting, unwilling to let go of lovely moments with Diamantis, while hoarding little resentments against Marianthi, both real and imagined, in order to throw the game in Diamantis's favour. In a perfect world, instead of this flawed and conniving one, she would also collect moments of aggravation with Diamantis — the square, the fish head and his vulgar laughter — as well as saving all the tenderness from Marianthi, including the kiss at the hammam and the note. How was it that she forgave him everything and her nothing?

In the mirror she applied rouge to her face, drew thick black lines around her eyes. She painted a face over her face to hide the sadness and went to the Bella Vista early because Diamantis had not shown up, and she couldn't bear to be cooped up in her room alone for another minute. She sat at table with men she didn't know, flirting and pretending Diamantis didn't exist. This was, at best, temporary amnesia. When Marianthi and the Smyrniot came in later, Kivelli turned her false face from her friend. She could not bear to look her in the eye, to show her that despite her love for her, despite her best intentions, she had chosen Diamantis. On stage Kivelli closed her eyes and sang Marianthi's words back to her as tears seeped through her lashes. When she opened them again, the Smyrniot's wife was gone.