Читать книгу Ekaterini - Marija Knezevic - Страница 7

My Grandmother

‘Where is he? Why is he late? All right, I always come a little early just in case, but he should have passed by already, like every other day. How do I look? Is he going to come? Is he going to give me a piece of chocolate today too?’

* * *

Although that war brought with it the dangerous competition of other events and impressions, for little Ekaterini, my grandmother, it was and remained about the pilot whom she sat and waited for in the same place every day. She sat there on a step, unconvincingly pretending not to be waiting there on purpose; and then he’d come along, tall and smiling, in the most beautiful uniform, even from a distance dispelling everything else she longed for and even overcoming the longing itself. She watched him walk up; he stopped and offered her a piece of chocolate, without a word but always with a smile. She saw her hand and the shame on her impish face. That was her first and, as she said, greatest love. Not even ninety years from the day the pilot stopped coming could anyone make her stop believing in it, nor did anyone try. She had got to know love. Love is a secret we cannot convey even if we want to. Everyone receives this gift and cultivates it or does with it what they wish. Love is only inside you – indivisible, incommunicable, and thus inherently shielded from all the perplexities which tend to accompany other feelings: is it real or am I imagining it? Concerns of quantity and quality. But love is one word. It exists only because people need speech. Love has it all.

Ekaterini always thought of her mother, Maria, as a proper lady who wore elegant dresses, just as she remembered her from when she was a very little girl, from the time before the wars. Her ‘real’ mother wasn’t this woman without an apron, or wearing that apron constantly over her only dressing gown – the ‘uniform’ she didn’t managed to change between the Second Balkan War of 1913 and the First World War. This woman didn’t tie her hair up into a bun; her dangling locks were like a raucous voice vying with the clamour of war. The world Ekaterini wanted to live in could be found in only two places – mothballed up in the attic, and absorbed in the infinity of a gaze devoted to the sea. We can only devote ourselves to the sea completely, although, or rather because, it demands nothing of us. It accepts us imperceptibly with its mute plenty, open for us to read all our thoughts into it. The sea – and peace and drama and pure beauty and blue and grey and green and solace and promise and just that gaze. A world in itself -independent, self-sufficient -and the never-ending call for us to abandon ourselves to it.

I want to be like the sea, Ekaterini often thought when she heard the explosions of war. But she also felt this in the years of peace, the good life, poverty, love and loneliness. She remained constant as far as the sea was concerned, equally devoted – both as a girl of seven who stole out of the house to go down to the water by herself for the first time, and as an old lady of ninety eight, captive in continental Europe and so far from the sea.

The attic was locked. Her brothers and sisters came to accept this as a fact and soon forgot about it, caught up as they were in everything that was happening in the rest of the house, in the street and the world. For Ekaterini, the attic presented a challenge, first and foremost. She was allured by exactly that declaration of impossibility, of the place being inaccessible, and also by the desire to defy the will of her parents, which her brothers and sisters considered indisputable. She couldn’t stand anyone else making decisions for her; any at all, even if it was something as simple as the choice of nightie before bed. Dead-ends made her laugh – human stupidity, the need for mystification, any kind of weakness. There’s always a path, you just need to find it. And indeed, in the courtyard there was a pine tree, unusual for that clime, and therefore probably forgotten in the company of fig and almond trees, lemon and olive frees, vegetable patches and the ubiquitous chickens. She raised her eyes, calmly and searchingly, and noticed that the pine tree’s branches were leaning on the house, and then she saw the open attic window.

Out of breath from climbing and cautious lest her steps on the decrepit parquetry gave her away, Ekaterini knew she wouldn’t have long for the marvels she felt a premonition of, even before she set eyes on the ‘enchanted room’. Amidst the order of neatly stacked boxes and other stored objects, which her mother Maria had managed to create here too, stood a large seaman’s trunk which dominated the attic. It wasn’t locked, which calmed the girl’s racing breath, because it meant that no one expected her there. To her surprise, she found she could raise the heavy lid. And from that moment on, she felt she had been literally transported to a different world. How divine! Such dresses, their collars adorned with imitation feathers of various colours, sashes, lace, garters, stockings... What designs, what colours! She chose a colour, managed to wriggle into the dress, wound a matching sash around her neck and adroitly threw the end over her shoulder. She slipped her feet into her mother’s shoes with particular relish. They immediately enchanted her more than everything else. She admired her new appearance for a few moments in the large antique mirror with the carved frame, and then used the rest of the time to walk in the shoes, which were at least five sizes too big for her.

Although she had to be doubly careful now, due to the size of her feet, she herself was surprised how much she enjoyed it. More than trying on the dresses, which she had longed to do since first seeing them, and more than the shoes themselves – it was the act of walking that thrilled her. Those unexpected steps made her laugh and at the same time gave her the indescribable satisfaction of a completely new feeling. She was important. But no longer just to herself: it was as if she had entered the world of importance. For the first time she looked grown up and ladylike. She couldn’t have imagined just how much this experience would put her in touch with her true desires and stimulate them to become clearer, more pronounced and far from the daily humdrum of waiting for the pilot and his chocolate. In her mind, she heard a question she had never imagined before: what would she like to be when she grew up, in other words soon, when all this was over. I’m a proper lady! she thought, and it stuck. From that day on, the whole world just looked like an introduction, something preparatory, a boring interim she had to go through to get to the proper life.

* * *

My grandmother could easily have become a Chavela Vargas or an even more famous singer-songwriter. Refractory as she always was, Ekaterini wisely kept quiet about her aspiration to play the guitar and sing, knowing that the mere mention of such an idea would cause a scene, at the very least: ‘Our daughter become a Gypsy?! We’d rather die than allow that!’

Hard times came and even harder ones followed. Her father finally gave up his vain attempts to maintain the family. Her mother continued to do the washing for the rich, be they the new ones, the war profiteers, or those who had been cunning enough to protect their property at a time when no stretch of the imagination could have aided that intention. Some of them managed to, at least. And there was washing to be done – it assumed preparedness for everything. In times of war, morals and everything else recedes before the invasion of thoughts about survival. And so, Maria decided that her eldest child should learn a trade in order to contribute to the household budget as soon as possible; she only barely kept the finances afloat, working as a laundry lady, and had higher hopes for her daughter.

Madam Atina’s fashion salon was the first address in Thessaloniki. If you’re setting your sights on something, aim for the bull’s-eye. Maria was overjoyed when the senior associate listened to her story and accepted her request that she take on the ten-year-old girl as an apprentice. ‘The starting pay is modest, but money is money and every penny is needed. Besides, after learning the trade at Madam Atina’s – gosh – she could even sew for a king!’ Maria euphorically repeated this time and again to her husband, who looked melancholically first at her, then at the apprentice-to-be, mischievous Ekaterini, the eldest child of their pure and undying love.

She was quick to learn and really took to sewing. She surprised herself with her newly acquired skill which she had never imagined she possessed. Her mother assured herself that Madam Atina’s salon was a ‘respectable house’ and soon stopped picking her up after work. Ekaterini came back by herself, always along Paralia, Thessaloniki’s seaside promenade. At that time, she let her thoughts float free, not ever suspecting that in ten years time she would have to use very different names for seafronts and piers. She felt calm and ease in those moments. Her step was free, light and gracious. This bodily grace came from the awareness that she was earning her own money and that she could almost pay for the upkeep of a family of seven by herself; she assured herself that she was capable, competent and independent. Down by the waterfront, she also reflected on her new friends and replayed their secret conversations about the young gentlemen who often looked in at the salon to buy dresses for their wives, daughters or mistresses. Those walks home were the high point of every day: the sunset, her thoughts about the future, the dream of becoming a celebrated dressmaker and being able to choose between Paris and London... But unlike most people’s arduous ‘making plans for the future’, these were buoyant thoughts – pleasant like the mistral, the murmur of waves or the rustle of fig trees in the breeze, both soothing and encouraging. Somewhere in the panorama of those walks, she could make out that stretch of Paralia were the Free Trade Zone was situated. She had heard of the Yugoslavs who earned very good pay there because their currency was stronger than the dollar. ‘Quite incredible!’ she thought in passing. ‘Can there be anything stronger than America?’

But Madam Atina’s salon would soon become just another peacetime fairy tale. The very day Maria decided to discreetly shadow her daughter, following her to work at a safe distance to have a look at the salon and observe the situation as best she could from outside, an order came in from one of the most famous Thessaloniki courtesans of the time, the celebrated Miss Carmen. Maria immediately noticed something suspicious: the carriage which pulled up outside the salon was just too gaudy, in a cheap and nasty sort of way. The excessive luxury emanated by the young woman who entered the salon was suggestive of only one thing. Maria watched tensely. The woman stayed no longer than half an hour; the carriage left and went back the way it had come. Hours passed. Then the carriage returned and the same young woman, this time in a different dress, went into the salon. Soon she came out again, accompanied this time by Madam Atina and – lo and behold – Maria’s twelve-year-old daughter Ekaterini! ‘There’s something fishy going on!’ Maria thought and decided not to lose sight of the carriage at any cost. She paid the coachman a few drachmas extra so he’d follow the gaudy carriage surreptitiously. The trip took some time. Maria gazed in disbelief as they crossed into an ill-reputed part of the city. She thought she was dreaming when she saw her tender-aged daughter carrying a pile of boxes wrapped in golden paper with a ribbon on top and entering Miss Carmen’s villa.

‘This is impossible!’ she exclaimed.

‘What?’ the coachman asked, but she didn’t hear his question.

Fifteen minutes later, Madam Atina and Ekaterini came out again and the gaudy carriage headed back to the salon. Already she felt less bewildered and was filled with a growing rage. She was furious but still calm, now that she realised this was a real drama with a climax still to come.

Back at the salon, Maria faced her daughter’s employer.

‘Oh, what are you doing here, Madam Maria?’

‘Don’t give me that “what are you doing here?”!’ she railed at Madam Atina after grabbing Ekaterini, and holding her tightly by the hand. ‘I thought this was a respectable house! I entrusted you my daughter to teach her a trade! Respectably!’

‘What appears to be the problem?’

‘And you even have the cheek to ask what the problem is! Do you think that because we’re penniless we’re also blind? That we’ll go along with anything?! Well, you’re vastly mistaken, madam!

‘Please don’t shout. I still don’t understand what the trouble is. If it’s a simple disagreement, I’m sure everything can be smoothed out in a normal conversation.’

‘What are you calling normal? Is it normal for you to be taking a child of twelve –twelve – with you to a brothel? Well it isn’t for me! Here’s what my daughter earned here this month, we don’t need a penny from you. One day God will make you pay for your deeds. Shame on you!’

‘Pardon?’

‘What do you mean “Pardon?”, you wretch of a woman? We may be poor, but you are outright pitiable even if you do own this salon! I hope I never set eyes on you again, and don’t you dare say another word because I can barely restrain myself, I feel my hands on your throat already! Out of my sight, foul bitch!’

A door which is slammed shut stays closed forever. At least that’s how it was in Ekaterini’s life: even before she began to earn her own money, and when she had to stay at home under supervision, up to her ears in household chores, and when she got married, and afterwards too. Doors are doors: sometimes an entrance, but sometimes a walled-up opening that separates us from what lies on the other side.