The Thread

by Victoria Hislop

  This gave Katerina less than two working days to complete the task.

  She began straight away, and in time to the music of Markos Vamvakaris, the last button was sewn on at three o’clock on Friday afternoon. The dress had its final inspection from Kyrios Moreno and was then wrapped up in several layers of tissue and carefully laid in a large flat box that was tied firmly with yellow ribbon.

  With the package tucked under her arm, Katerina put on her hat and coat and nervously set off for the Komninos house, a place she had seen and thought of so many times, without ever once going over its threshold.

  It was already drizzling when she left the workshop, and by the time she reached the sea, there were waves crashing over onto the esplanade. As a tram passed, she felt the splash of water round her ankles and quickened her step. The rain was getting heavier now and, knowing that the dress must be worth more than half her year’s salary, she fretted that the contents of the unwieldy box might get damp. She grasped it with both arms.

  The streets were quiet that afternoon, as most people were waiting until the rain stopped before venturing out, but through the drizzle she saw a solitary figure coming in the other direction. He carried a leather briefcase like a businessman and she wondered which of them would step aside to allow the other to avoid the puddle that lay across the pavement.

  She then realised that they were both turning into the same entranceway.

  In the past year or so, she had only ever seen Dimitri in the distance and it was strange to see him now so close up. Though he dressed like a man, in a smart suit, he still looked just as he had done since boyhood. Age sixteen seemed young to start emulating your father, was the first thought that went through her head.

  Dimitri did not, at first, recognise Katerina. He had been looking down at the pavement, his vision partly obscured by his hat, but, when she spoke, his response was immediate.

  ‘Dimitri . . . hello. How are you?’ she said, her heart hammering.

  ‘Katerina! What a surprise! What are you doing here?’

  Before she had time to answer, Pavlina had opened the door.

  ‘Come on in,’ she said. ‘Quickly. It’s horrid out there!’

  ‘I’m delivering a dress for Kyria Komninos,’ Katerina explained, handing the box over to Pavlina.

  ‘You must give it to her yourself!’ Pavlina exclaimed. ‘Take off your wet things and come upstairs. She’s in the drawing room.’

  Dimitri and Katerina took off their damp coats and followed Pavlina up the broad staircase. Katerina tried not to gawp at the grandeur of the house, the scale of the rooms and the lavishness of the drapes. She had never seen anywhere like it. There were huge oil paintings in gilt frames on the walls and most of the highly polished European furniture seemed to have a touch of gold.

  Dimitri tapped on the double doors at the top of the stairs. They heard a quiet ‘come in’.

  Olga was sitting by the fireplace on a big chair, with her feet up on another. She was reading. She looked up, surprised and slightly quizzical to see her son with a young woman whom she did not at first recognise.

  ‘Mother, it’s Katerina! She’s come with a package from Moreno.’

  ‘Katerina! I almost didn’t recognise you.’

  The roundness of her face and eyes were unchanged, as were the openness of her expression and the broadness of her smile, but her hair, which she had once worn in plaits that reached her waist, had been cut into a bob.

  Olga looked just the same, if a little thinner.

  Perhaps she has been ill, thought Katerina, which would explain why she never comes to Moreno & Sons herself.

  She put the box down on a chair next to Olga and was surprised by her lack of interest in opening it.

  ‘Would you like me to take it out? I think it needs hanging up.’

  ‘Don’t worry. Pavlina can do that in a minute. I want to know what you have been doing. How is Eugenia? And the twins?’

  Despite her understated manner and her quiet voice, Olga Komninos seemed thirsty for information. Katerina began to tell her about all the evenings she had spent with Roza Moreno and how she had been invited to work in the business.

  ‘Every single day, when I wake up it’s as though the sun is coming up right inside me,’ she enthused. ‘And each morning I walk to the workshop with Isaac and Elias. Their father generally goes much earlier than we do . . .’

  For ten or fifteen minutes she continued without a pause, describing how she spent each day, the people she worked with, what they listened to on the gramophone and so on. Her excitement and enthusiasm for her life and work were enviable. She even managed to provoke sympathy for the lugubrious Esther Moreno, who wore her sourness like a dowdy dress.

  By the time she had finished, Olga had a full picture of Katerina’s working life, as did Dimitri, who had been standing in the doorway for some time, listening, mesmerised, to every word. He could not help comparing Katerina’s pageant of colleagues with the staff of the private college he attended. It was usually with weariness that he got out of bed, put on his formal clothes and picked up his bag of books to walk eastwards in time for lessons. He woke up already tired, having worked until late the night before, so the feeling of joy that Katerina experienced when her alarm clock went off was entirely unknown to him.

  When Pavlina appeared behind Dimitri with a tray of coffee, he knew he could no longer linger in the doorway.

  Katerina stopped talking when he entered, suddenly self-conscious.

  ‘It sounds as if you like your work,’ said Dimitri.

  ‘Yes, I do,’ she replied.

  Both of them were almost overcome with shyness.

  ‘Coffee, Katerina?’ Pavlina asked.

  ‘No, thank you,’ she said. ‘Just some water, please. And then I must go.’

  ‘That’s such a shame, Katerina,’ said Olga. ‘I was so enjoying hearing about what you are doing. And you haven’t even told me about Irini Street yet. Please stay a little longer.’

  For a while, Olga had felt stirred to life, as though someone had fanned the dying embers of a fire. Although the idea of the outside world was terrifying and the thought of going there almost paralysed her, she still yearned to be part of the normal day-to-day life that went on in the streets, in the cafés, in the workplaces. Her husband did not bring that to her, and nor did the people he invited to the house, whose politeness and formality only increased her sense of loneliness and isolation.

  Katerina had altered the room. If someone had lifted the formal arrangement of roses and chrysanthemums from the vase and replaced it with a bunch of freshly cut wildflowers, with the bees still buzzing round the blooms, it would have made a similar transformation.

  Dimitri crossed the room and sat down next to Olga. Mother and son continued to be charmed by the young woman’s tales and anecdotes, and the good humour with which she told them.

  When he arrived home, Konstantinos Komninos was greeted with a sound that was unusual in this house: gales of laughter coming from the first floor. His cough and the thump of his ascending footsteps silenced them, and by the time he walked into the drawing room Katerina had already stood up to go.

  ‘This is Katerina, from Moreno and Sons,’ said Dimitri hurriedly, as if to excuse her presence. ‘She was delivering something.’

  ‘I know who she is,’ he said rudely. ‘And where is it? Where is the dress?’

  He saw the box still lying on the chair. Pavlina had not returned to hang it up and as Komninos took it out of its wrapping and held it up, they could all see there was a crease down the front.

  ‘But you’re meant to be wearing this tonight!’ he exclaimed, not hiding his annoyance. Holding the dress with one hand, he strode over to the little table next to Olga’s chair, picked up the bell and rang it angrily. Seconds later, Pavlina was in the room.

  She did not need instructions and silently took the dress out of his hands.

  ‘I’ll make sure it’s perfect for tonight,’ she said cheer
ily. ‘It just needs to be steamed.’

  Katerina was covered in shame. She was supposed to make sure the garment was taken out of its box as soon as she arrived. That had been Kyrios Moreno’s precise instruction and unfortunately it would get back to him that she had failed.

  The atmosphere in the room had changed completely. Katerina glanced through the big French windows and noticed that the sea and sky were both still a threatening grey. In spite of that, the atmosphere out there looked more inviting than the one she found herself in.

  ‘Dimitri,’ said Olga with artificial good cheer, ‘show Katerina out, would you?’

  ‘Of course,’ he replied.

  ‘And thank you so much for delivering the dress, Katerina. It was very good of you to finish it on time.’

  ‘Goodbye, Kyria Komninos.’

  Katerina followed Dimitri downstairs. He was embarrassed at the way in which his father had demonstrated his anger in front of the young woman. He and his mother had enjoyed seeing her again, he said, and hoped she would come again. Katerina smiled and said she very much hoped so too. He let Katerina out of the front door, then went straight up to his bedroom on the second floor.

  Some hours later, he heard his father’s guests arrive. He pictured his mother, her pale skin skilfully brought to life with some rouge and her dark hair piled elegantly high to accentuate her long slender neck. The pale yellow silk crêpe of her dress would be skimming her body and swaying perfectly as she walked. She outshone all the other wives and soon the affluent invitees, who were from Athens on that occasion, would have made the decision to purchase all their fabrics in the future from Komninos. They would be particularly impressed by Olga’s outfit. Five years earlier, Konstantinos had purchased 20,000 stremmata of land in the agricultural area north of the city and planted it with mulbery trees. The silk worms had been doing their work and Komninos was now producing his own silk. The quality of it was going to push his business into a new sphere.

  All evening, Dimitri’s head remained bent over his books. If he passed his forthcoming school exams he would be guaranteed a place at medical school and although his father was against it, he was determined to stand his ground.

  It was not only the constant hum of human voices and endless clattering of plates and crockery that disturbed his concentration. As the words of his textbook swam in front of him, he thought of the stories that Katerina had told and remembered her childlike voice, ringing like a bell across the room. It had been so long since he had heard such care-free laughter from his mother. Even if she did not want or need them, he hoped very much that Katerina would be coming to deliver more dresses.

  As he struggled to memorise the periodic table, the only thing that seemed to have lodged in his memory was the image of Katerina’s smile.

  Chapter Sixteen

  WITHIN THE YEAR, Dimitri passed his exams and joined the medical faculty at the university. His father was furious. Business these days seemed increasingly to involve contracts and written documentation, so Dimitri’s expertise and qualification in law would have strengthened the business even further. His son’s knowledge of medicine would contribute nothing.

  Konstantinos swept his son’s disobedience aside, just as he did most obstacles that came in his path. His great pleasure in life was to overcome challenge, whether in the form of competitors, suppliers or, nowadays, his factory labourers.

  He had come through the financial slump of the early thirties, when most of his competitors had disappeared beneath the weight of their own debts, and was stronger than ever before. If he was enjoying such financial success during times of political and economic uncertainty in this city, it was almost unimaginable how much he would be able to achieve in future years.

  He greeted each morning with expectation and confidence. Everything seemed to be going his way. He was a giant in his hand-made size five and a half shoes.

  Dimitri, meanwhile, was meeting a new world, a place of ideas and views based on other principles than economic necessity. Unlike the teachers at his school, who had been paid by the parents to hold certain opinions and to instil particular principles and beliefs into their pupils, the university professors who taught Dimitri were more independently minded. As well as his anatomy and pharmacology classes, he began to attend a philosophy class and was soon engaged in debates on the nature of right and wrong, the exploration of belief versus knowledge, wisdom versus truth, and so on. Political theory classes soon followed and his own views on society swiftly began to develop.

  He had never been oblivious to what he saw around him, and his early days in Irini Street had given him more experience of the tattier parts of Thessaloniki than most of his fellow students had ever had. Even so, he had not seen for himself the true depth of poverty that existed in his city. He had supposed that the street traders who peddled cigarettes and combs probably lived in the shanty settlements near the railway station or in Toumba, but now he knew there were places considerably worse than those. He had to confront the fact that he had been brought up in a way that bore no relationship to the lives of the majority.

  It was perhaps a good thing that he did not see very much of his father during those times. They would have come to blows. Dimitri was being exposed to every kind of new political idea and soon realised that his father did not live by any definable ideology, either political or spiritual. Konstantinos’ true God was money. He believed in the Greek Orthodox Church as an institution and as a cornerstone of the nation, but only worshipped when it suited him. He did not have any real ‘faith’ and merely observed the rituals because they defined him as a Greek citizen. His one true ‘belief’ was in his own ability to expand the profits of his business empire.

  Nor did Konstantinos Komninos have a firm affiliation with any political party. He was a natural conservative. He had been nervous about the influx of refugees that had spilled into his city in the previous decade and resentful of what it had cost the city as much as the impact it had on the streets. He had had few friends among the departing Muslims, so he was quite happy to see them disappear. In some respects he had approved of the veteran statesman, Eleftherios Venizelos, because he had made Greece more Greek. In other respects, he was pro-Monarchy. He voted pragmatically but was a conservative with a small ‘c’ and a royalist with a small ‘r’, and had never hung a portrait of either the exiled King or Venizelos. Law, order and control of the working classes were good for business, and he had fully supported some purges that had taken place in the army and the university after a recent, failed, military coup.

  For Dimitri a rapid sense of unease was developing. He lived in a luxurious mansion and yet instinctively sympathised with the majority who were poor. It was a conundrum that was hard to solve but he hoped his medical training would at least give him the opportunity to help some of the city’s less fortunate inhabitants.

  ‘Just try to live the best life you can,’ Olga said simply to Dimitri. She had been listening to her son’s dilemma, knowing that she must keep it from her husband.

  Dimitri assiduously avoided his father. It was not difficult as Konstantinos was rarely at home.

  Early one morning in his second term at the university, he saw Katerina and Elias on their way to work. When he spotted them coming towards him down the street they seemed self-contained in a world of shared laughter and contentment. They did not even notice him until they were only a few feet away.

  ‘Dimitri!’ exclaimed Katerina. ‘Ti kaneis? How are you?’

  Within a few minutes they had exchanged dozens of life’s details, interrupting each other with questions, exclamations and answers.

  ‘How is Eugenia?’

  ‘Weaving in a workshop now. It’s hard work but more sociable.’

  ‘And the twins?’

  ‘Maria is married now and has moved to Trikala with their baby.’

  ‘A baby! So young!’

  ‘And Sofia is supposed to be getting married too . . .’

  ‘“Supposed”?’
>
  ‘Well . . . They’ve already been engaged for two years. It seems a long time to me . . . And Kyria Komninos?’

  Katerina was finishing some beading on a new gown for her, so she had been on her mind.

  ‘She is well,’ answered Dimitri, knowing that this was the expected answer. ‘Perhaps you’ll be asked to deliver the dress?’

  ‘I would love to. But do you remember last time? I got into such trouble over that yellow dress. In any case, we’re so busy now that there is a special delivery service. Kyrios Moreno even has his own van now!’

  What a pity, reflected Dimitri. He remembered the afternoon, two years earlier, when Katerina had delivered the yellow dress and how much gaiety she had brought into the house. He was not sure that he had seen his mother smile since then. He watched her every day, pale and beautiful, and knew that she never left the Niki Street mansion. Her only conversation was with Pavlina and himself, and he was certain that his parents rarely spoke. His father came in when she had already gone to bed and left before she was up, and Olga’s only contact with the outside world was to watch, from the safe distance of the drawing room, the comings and goings along the esplanade. She was always eager to hear about the university, hungry for the details of Dimitri’s day: where his discussions had led him, who his friends were. She lived her life through him, because she had no other.

  ‘Let’s go for coffee some time!’ enthused Elias. ‘We have unfinished business, don’t we?’

  Dimitri laughed. Elias was referring to the tavli tournament they had begun over half a life-time earlier. They had played countless games and neither had ever been ahead by more than one win. It had been obsessional. Both of them had improved since that time and added new versions of the game to their repertoire.

  Sending warm regards to their respective families, they agreed to meet again the following weekend.

  Dimitri could not resist a glance over his shoulder. With a pang of envy, he noticed that Katerina’s head was inclined towards Elias’. Hardly a breath of air came between them.