A GIRL CALLED FINI – Dimitris Mamaloukas
In some indefinite time, sometime in the future, or perhaps the distant past, or even in the present, or perhaps never
… and in an indeterminate place, a no-man’s land, a “wasteland”, lies a factory-prison surrounded by a terrible, gray
landscape, a vast desert haunted at night by “demons”.
Thousands of souls are imprisoned here, condemned to forced labor without hope of escape. One of these souls
is Fini, a young girl who has been there since she was nine, when she lost her father. She works at the “lathes” and
has only one dream: to escape from this nightmarish place and be free. In the meantime, she struggles tooth and nail
to survive the hardships: the cold, “so cold that it crushes the soul and weakens the conscience” and the gangs of
rapists and murderers who, overwhelmed by the impasse at which they find themselves, have degenerated into
subhuman beasts.
Through the tight lips of these unfortunate inmates, there has circulated a myth about an old man who had once
succeeded in escaping, who had crossed the gray terrain and reached the last frontier of freedom, a swiftly moving
river. But he was caught just before crossing it. This old man still lives amongst them, knowing the secret that could
lead to freedom.
Fini lives in this nightmarish everydayness until one night a gang kills her only friend and then turns to attack her.
She is gang-raped but manages to survive.
She awakens the next morning with a broken hand in the prison’s infirmary. While recovering, she is forced to
submit to the advances of the brutal nurse Meki. There, she also meets Kowalski, an old man lying on his deathbed
who reveals to her that it was he who succeeded in escaping and reaching the banks of the river of freedom. He
failed only because his companion betrayed him the night before. Kowalski reveals the secret of escape to Fini and
tells her that there must be two who will make the attempt to leave, a pair, not one or three, so that one can help the
other. And this is because:
“The gray terrain is the last hope of escape. As far as the eye can see, it is nothing but hundreds of kilometers of
barren and completely inhospitable land, covered in gravel and brutally sharp rocks. But even in this hostile
environment there is life. The dark side of this gray land. That which reigns as soon as night falls.
The demons and the beasts are not a prison myth. I wish it were. But even until winter, when we are crammed into
these icy cold, subterranean rooms, we can hear their piercing howls and our blood curdles. They are so loud and
horrifying that I can’t even begin to describe it”.
Kowalski suggests Gon, a young orderly who appears to be slightly retarded, and who, upon meeting Fini, calls
her “the girl called Fini”. Only he, because of his size and strength, can help her escape from the prison. Indeed,
because he is simple-minded, it is not difficult to persuade him. But first, they must do away with the she-beast,
Meki. Fini doesn’t hesitate; she knows very well what she has to do because her salvation, the purpose of her life, is
at stake.
Fini and Gon succeed in escaping to the “gray terrain”. But the road to freedom is filled with obstacles and
adventures: external but also internal demons. Their struggle brings them closer and Fini will come to love this crazy
young man. They become lovers. At the end of the gray terrain there is a mountain covered in tall trees; they must
climb to its peak and then take the road downhill to the river and to freedom - but also to the dangerous border
guards.
But on the last night of their adventure a reversal of events takes place, that is also the underlying theme of the
story. As soon as dawn breaks, Gon crosses the river of freedom alone and betrays Fini, telling her that in reality he
is not retarded and that he is the son of Kowalski. Moreover, the companion that had betrayed Kowalski in the past,
on that same riverbank, was none other than Fini’s father. The whole plan revolved around revenge: Kowalski
wanted to save his son and at the same time leave Fini behind, where the border guards could capture her.
Fini collapses, crushed by this unbelievable betrayal. When the border guards fall upon her, she calls upon God
asking Him, if He exists, to kill her as soon as possible.
***
An existential thriller, a road novel, a science-fiction chase adventure: all these descriptions cross one’s mind
while reading this imaginative piece of work which is, at overs, as harsh as a punch in the stomach and at times
tender and deeply humane, but above all, true and honest.
The language, terse and frantic, matches completely the pace of the story and Fini is a character that comes
straight from the paintings of Futurist artists, or Chaplin’s “Modern Times”. The atmosphere, dull and gray, is
dominated by the motif of enclosure and the anguish of humanity. People are prisoners: in the bowels of the earth,
the gray terrain, the forest, the city where they dream, within their past.
The writer’s frenetic pace “submerges” the reader in an adventure that leads him on a journey into the depths of
hell, in a nightmarish, cinematic and multi-layered work of fiction.
But perhaps the greatest impact of this book is the one that begins when one has finished reading the last page.
Fini doesn’ t go away. On the contrary, the reader feels her constantly by his or her side, in the quiet of the night, in
the thoughts constantly churning in one’s mind.
***