The Thread

by Victoria Hislop

  Although it had become clear that this fire was turning into a disaster for the city, he still believed it would not be a catastrophe for him, Konstantinos Komninos. While the cheap wooden-framed buildings in the rest of the city might be flattened, the massive warehouse that he had built with steel and bricks would survive.

  Konstantinos grabbed his brother’s arm. They needed to get to the villa, and quickly. When they reached the house, Olga was sitting in the hallway, pale and dark-eyed, with the tiny baby clutched to her chest. Pavlina stood next to her, a bag in each hand. The two of them were in tears but relief poured over their faces when Konstantinos and Leonidas appeared.

  ‘We need to go, immediately!’ said Konstantinos roughly, and without any delay ushered them into the street.

  They hastened as fast as they could along the promenade, the newborn aware of nothing but the warmth of his mother’s arms and the strong beat of her heart. The sea, only a few inches to the right of them, gave them small comfort.

  The Greek army was using a few fire engines to try to hose down some of the flames, but it was futile, like throwing a bucket of water at a forest fire. The priority now was to get the inhabitants of Thessaloniki to safety.

  People from every race had gathered in an area just east of the White Tower, and dozens of vehicles were ferrying them away from the flames and out of the city. Others were escaping by boat. Destinations were unfixed; flight was all that mattered. The whole of the seafront was now ablaze and falling buildings presented new dangers as iron balustrades began to melt and walls collapsed thunderously into the street. Even with the Babel’s Tower of languages, bonds were briefly formed between those who rescued and those who were saved.

  An orange glow had spread over the sky, as though the sun had set and risen again within a few hours. The whole city was alight.

  Leonidas helped Olga, the baby and Pavlina into an army vehicle. Olga was clearly very weak but Leonidas reassured Konstantinos that she was in good hands and would be well-looked after. The cloth merchant had pressed a handful of notes into the army officer’s hand, with a promise of many more should all go well, and told the driver to take them to Perea, where one of his best customers lived.

  In spite of the little love lost between the brothers, Leonidas felt obliged to stay with Konstantinos. They walked eastwards, then sat all night and much of the following day at a safe distance along the waterfront, watching the cremation of their beloved city.

  That day, many were convinced that a miracle took place.

  The fire had cared little for any religion. There were a few minarets still standing, like tree trunks in a burned out wood, but almost every synagogue had been razed. Dozens of churches had been lost as well, but when the fire reached the ancient basilica of Agia Sofia, it mysteriously stopped. Some saw it as an answer to their prayers.

  Whether through God’s intervention or not, the fire no longer had the wind behind it. The flames needed its power to help it leap to the next area of the city and without this, the conflagration could not continue. Even though the city would continue to smoulder for some days, the fire had run its course.

  By Monday morning, Konstantinos was eager to get back to the city. From where they stood, it was impossible to make out the extent of the destruction, and he was still certain that his main warehouse by the port would have survived

  ‘I need to inspect the damage,’ said Konstantinos.

  With growing trepidation, the brothers walked in silence towards their devastated city, the blackened silhouettes of the gutted buildings becoming ever more apocalyptic, the closer they came to the centre. There was a palpable sadness in the air. The city was in mourning, its blackened remains its own widow’s weeds.

  A man in rags stood with Bible in hand raging to an imaginary congregation. He was reading from the Book of Revelation.

  ‘Alas, alas, for the great city that was clothed in fine linen, in purple and scarlet, adorned with gold, with jewels, and with pearls. For in a single hour all this wealth has been laid waste.

  ‘And all shipmasters and seafaring men, sailors and all whose trade is on the sea, stood far off and cried out as they saw the smoke of her burning, “What city was like the great city?” And they threw dust on their heads, as they wept and mourned, crying out: “Alas, alas, for the great city where all who had ships at sea grew rich by her wealth”.’

  ‘That seems to fit . . .’ said Leonidas.

  ‘Don’t be so superstitious,’ said his older brother angrily. ‘Some idiot started a fire. It’s as simple as that.’

  All along the water’s edge towards the city they noticed submerged remains of burned-out fishing boats. Against all odds, they had been caught by sparks from the flaming seafront buildings.

  Many others were making the same silent pilgrimage to inspect the devastation, and the spectacle they faced was worse than any of them had imagined. Hotels, restaurants, shops, theatres, banks, mosques, churches, synagogues, schools, libraries – all were gutted, as were the houses. Thousands upon thousands had been destroyed.

  A stillness hung over the city. The brothers saw many people picking over the ashes of their homes, unable to believe that nothing remained of their lives but the smouldering embers that might once have been furniture, clothing, icons or books. Everything was reduced to the same.

  Close to the Komninos home, two women walked towards the brothers arm in arm. They looked so incongruously elegant and at ease, protecting their heads from falling ash with a parasol, like ladies taking an afternoon stroll, but as they passed, the brothers saw that both women wept, unashamedly.

  When they arrived at their family home, they completely understood the women’s grief. For a few minutes, they simply stood and looked, unable to believe that this vast, smouldering space had once been the magnificent house that their father had built with such pride.

  A strong memory of his childhood bedroom overlooking the sea swept over Leonidas and he recalled how he had woken every morning to the dancing patterns of the sea on his ceiling. Although he had moved out many years ago, every memory returned in a single flash of compressed recollection, as swift and unchronological as a dream. His eyes were stinging from the acrid fumes that hung in the air, but now his tears flowed.

  Konstantinos immediately thought of the desk in his study, his personal papers, his priceless collection of clocks, his paintings, the magnificent drapes that had swept so elegantly from ceiling to floor. It had all gone, and all of it was irreplaceable. Fury swept through him like a flame.

  ‘Come on Leonidas,’ he snapped, taking his brother’s arm. ‘There’s nothing we can do. I need to see the showroom and then the warehouse.’

  ‘It’ll be the same story,’ Leonidas replied, bleakly. ‘Do you really need to see?’

  ‘The showroom might have withstood the fire,’ said Konstantinos optimistically. ‘We won’t know until we go there.’

  They walked together along the devastated streets, with purposeful pace. Konstantinos was determined not to lose hope, but arrival at their destination only confirmed that Leonidas was right. The showroom had vanished. There was not a trace of the rainbow of which he had been so proud: red, blue, green and yellow, all were now reduced to shades of grey. They did not venture inside. Metal girders swung dangerously from the ceiling and who knew how sound the remains of the brick walls really were?

  ‘The warehouse is of a much more modern construction,’ he said. ‘And that’s where the bulk of the stock is kept, so let’s not waste time here.’

  Konstantinos Komninos turned away. The sight of these ruins was unbearable and he did not want his brother to see how their loss affected him.

  Leonidas was still taking in this spectacle, when he realised that Konstantinos was already at the end of the street. He hastened after him.

  They took a circuitous route as some of the roads were impassable, walking street after deserted street. Sometimes, as though the fire had not liked the taste, part of a building had surviv
ed. One of the big department stores still had a legible sign: ‘Vêtements, Chaussures, Bonneterie’. It seemed so cheerful but so untrue. No such things remained. In the same street, a twisted metal sign, ‘Cinema Pathé’ still hung from a beam. They already looked like words from another era.

  Eventually they saw a sight that would have saddened the hardest of hearts: the burned out church of Agios Dimitri, the city’s patron saint. The flames had consumed it. Both the brothers had memories of their parents’ funeral services being held there, and it was where Konstantinos and Olga had been married. Now it was just an open space, a courtyard, its floor piled high with bricks, its painted apse exposed to light and air for the first time in its hundreds of years of history. It was naked, undignified. They saw a lone priest walk among its ruins. He wept. Another crazed individual called out the words that St Paul had written to the people of this very city. They had never had more resonance.

  ‘“When the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, he shall inflict vengeance upon those who do not know God and upon those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus”,’ he cried.

  As well as churches, Konstantinos and Leonidas saw the ruins of synagogues and mosques, and it seemed people still found comfort in their places of worship. Where walls had survived people camped in their shadows; laundry was strung up between their pillars, kitchens had already been improvised in synagogue doorways and blankets were neatly arranged dormitory-style inside burned-out mosques.

  The sight of two banks, the Banque Salonique and the Banque d’Athènes, almost undamaged gave Konstantinos a moment of optimism, as did a grand marble-fronted department store, but these buildings were miraculous exceptions.

  The Hotel Splendide, where people had dined on the night of the eighteenth of August, totally confident that the flames would never reach them, was gutted. Leonidas’ favourite haunt, a seafront café on the edge of Eleftheria Square, had met the same fate. The square, which had been the heart of the city’s social life, was now silent.

  The two men finally reached the area just north of the port where the main Komninos warehouse was situated.

  Both stood and stared at what remained of the vast apothiki. It was completely gutted.

  ‘My beautiful warehouse,’ whispered Konstantinos after a few moments. ‘My beautiful, beautiful warehouse.’

  His younger brother looked at him and realised he was weeping copiously.

  It was as if he was lamenting the loss of a lover, Leonidas reflected, shocked to see his older brother display such emotion. Even when their mother had died unexpectedly, his brother had not shed this quantity of tears.

  As they stood surveying the devastation, a German aeroplane flew over. The pilot would report back to his superiors that Thessaloniki had made a good job of destroying itself. They could not have done it better themselves.

  Meanwhile, a local, French language newspaper was preparing its first edition following the fire. Its stark headline said it all:

  LA MORT D’UNE VILLE

  DEATH OF A CITY

  Chapter Four

  FOR FIVE DAYS, Olga heard nothing from her husband but she was so preoccupied with her baby that she hardly gave him a thought. Night and day blended into each other, all of them wakeful, all of them sleepless. Sometimes she managed to rock little Dimitri off to sleep, but usually it was only for half an hour or so.

  Pavlina shared Olga’s room in the grand home in Perea that belonged to Konstantinos’ old friend, a wealthy shipper who imported many of his consignments of fabric. From their window ten kilometres away around the coast, they could see the pall of smoke still sitting above the city.

  The devastation of Thessaloniki seemed distant to Olga but on Thursday she received the news from Konstantinos that virtually all he owned had been destroyed.

  ‘I am so sorry,’ said her hostess, with tears in her eyes. ‘How awful for you . . . to lose everything!’

  Olga appreciated her concern but could not respond to this with the emotion required. Yes, it would be terrible to lose everything, but she did not feel it was true. She held ‘everything’ in her arms. This baby was now the centre of her world and nothing else mattered.

  The following day Konstantinos, who was staying in a hotel in an undamaged quarter of the city, went to visit his wife and baby. He was already salvaging what remained of the warehouse. The entire stock had been destroyed but the foundations of the walls were still solid and he was already starting to rebuild. He had sent out orders so that he could build up his inventory again and was going to need somewhere for storage as soon as the new fabric arrived. Within a few days of filing his insurance claim, Konstantinos had put his emotions to one side.

  ‘I will build an even better, stronger business than before,’ he assured Olga.

  Work would not begin for many months on their home. It was not Konstantinos’ priority. Meanwhile, Olga knew that the kind hospitality she was receiving in Perea could not be for ever. It was an arrangement that was meant to last only a few days and by then they had been there for two weeks.

  Although the seafront, and most of the city north-west of it, had been destroyed, the section of the upper town where Olga had grown up remained undamaged.

  The small house at 3 Irini Street that she and her sister had jointly inherited from their parents was currently empty and Olga thought it would be the ideal place to stay while repairs were being made. Her sister had moved to Volos two years earlier to live with her son.

  The next time that Konstantinos came out of the city to visit them, she tentatively suggested that they move there until the villa could be rebuilt.

  ‘It’s small, I know, but there will be enough space . . .’

  Her voice tailed off. She could already sense Konstantinos’ resistance to the idea.

  The entire house would have fitted into the drawing room of their old home; for a man who had never lived anywhere but on the affluent seafront, the thought of dwelling in an area where you rubbed shoulders, quite literally, with the poorest of Muslims and Jews was slightly abhorrent. He found it amazing that such pure beauty and pale skin as Olga’s could have originated in the squalor and filth of the city’s upper town.

  But Olga was determined.

  ‘Please, Konstantinos . . . Pavlina can sleep in the attic room. She doesn’t mind,’ appealed Olga. ‘And it won’t be for ever.’

  It seemed there was no better solution. Any house that might have been available for rent had been razed to the ground. With some reluctance and many reservations, he agreed.

  Later that week, Olga and the baby returned to the city. Pavlina had gone a few days in advance to clean the place up and Konstantinos would arrive that evening.

  Although the driver approached the city along a route that avoided the most badly affected areas, the extent of the devastation was obvious. A month after the conflagration had destroyed almost the entire city, the unmistakable stench of fire-damage still hung in the air.

  Olga caught a glimpse of the haunted shells of the city’s great buildings, their blank windows looking out blindly towards the sea, and saw the remains of the Komninos villa.

  She arrived in Irini Street with the baby at around midday. It was halfway through September but the sun was as strong as it had been in August.

  When she got out of the carriage at the end of the narrow street, she saw that Pavlina was talking to someone she recognised. It was Roza Moreno, her neighbour.

  Roza was overjoyed to see Olga and leaned in close to admire the baby.

  ‘My dear, I am so happy to see you, and congratulations!’ she said. ‘What a time for the little man to be born! But what a joy to have you back here again.’

  ‘Thank you, Roza. I’m very happy to be here again,’ said Olga.

  Almost automatically, as a gesture of trust and affection, she handed her baby to Kyria Moreno, who held him close to enjoy the sweet baby smell. Her two sons were still small, but the unique scent of the new
born quickly disappears.

  Although they had not seen each other for more than two years, they quickly exchanged pleasantries and caught up with the major events of their lives

  ‘You’ll find the street hasn’t changed very much,’ said Roza. ‘We were so lucky that the fire didn’t come this way. We lost our synagogue, but to be honest, we’d rather that than lose our home – but don’t tell anyone I said that!’

  ‘And the workshop?’ enquired Olga, as Roza handed back the baby.

  ‘Badly damaged, but not beyond repair!’

  The Morenos, who lived at number 7, were a Jewish family who ran one of the busiest tailoring and dressmaking business in the city and were customers of Konstantinos Komninos. Roza’s husband, Saul, had inherited the workshop from his father and one day he would pass it on to his sons, Elias and Isaac. Even though they were only one and four years old respectively, his plan was already made.

  Within hours of the fire, Saul Moreno had started cutting new patterns to replace those he had lost and had a few suits tacked together ready for fitting. Many people had lost everything apart from what they stood up in, so he foresaw a boom ahead and was industrious enough to find a way to take advantage of it. A merchant in Veria had given him six months’ credit on some rolls of reasonable wool and he immediately got to work again, visiting some of his clients in their homes to take measurements.

  ‘I think we’ll manage here, Olga, won’t we?’ Pavlina said as they stepped over the threshold.

  ‘Yes, I think we will,’ replied Olga. ‘It’s more like home than home . . .’

  The few possessions they had, most of them blankets, sheets, nappies and other baby paraphernalia, were carried into the house. Kyria Moreno then arrived with an adapted fruit crate that would do for a makeshift crib. She had padded it comfortably on the inside and embroidered sheets and a quilt with Dimitri’s name.

  At number 5, between Olga and the Morenos, lived the Ekrems, a Muslim family with three daughters. Mrs Ekrem called in that same afternoon with gifts for the baby and some sweetmeats for Olga. She was a very good-hearted woman and mostly communicated through smiles and gestures with her neighbours, so limited was her Greek.