The Thread

by Victoria Hislop

  ‘And then when they reach a certain age, they realise they have turned into men and start talking to them. You’ll see.’

  In some ways, Pavlina’s theory was borne out by Konstantinos’ behaviour. He seemed only to be waiting for one thing: his son’s contribution to the growing business empire. He still believed he could force Dimitri to become the son he wanted, but Dimitri knew he would never do his father’s bidding.

  Though he despised the grandeur of the house itself and climbed the steps to the door in one bound, like a thief, not wanting to be seen, he looked forward to the moment when he stepped inside and his mother made her appearance at the top of the stairs. Dimitri never questioned the fact that Olga was there, every time, always waiting. It had been thus ever since they had moved back into Niki Street and he never wanted it to change. Her beauty and her quiet presence were the constants in the home. Dictatorship or republic, the political regime made no difference to the smiling embrace that Olga Komninos gave her son.

  In Irini Street, Katerina often came home to a similarly warm welcome. Eugenia, having worked all day at the factory, still returned home to her own loom and picked up the shuttle. When Katerina appeared at the door, she was invariably there to greet her. The little gas flame beneath the briki was then immediately lit and their home filled up with the aroma of coffee. The evening meal would come later. While there was still an hour of daylight, both of them wanted to exploit it, since working by the light of an oil lamp strained their eyes. They cherished every last second that the sun remained in the sky.

  Sometimes, while they sipped coffee, Katerina would stand behind her and massage Eugenia’s exhausted shoulders as they talked of their respective days.

  One day Eugenia received a letter from Maria asking her mother to go and live with her and her new family in Trikala. Sofia lived only a kilometre or so from them, in a nearby village.

  ‘I’ve moved once in my life,’ she said. ‘That was quite enough . . . though I do miss the twins so much.’

  ‘Of course you miss them!’ said Katerina.

  ‘It’s not right to be separated like this, is it?’

  ‘No, no! Of course, it’s not right to be apart.’

  The irony of their conversation struck them both, at the same moment. Eugenia turned to look at Katerina.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t really thinking . . .’

  In silence, Eugenia resumed her weaving and Katerina opened her embroidery box and took out a camisole she was edging.

  ‘Really, I didn’t mean to—’

  ‘It’s all right, Eugenia,’ said Katerina. ‘Sometimes whole months go by, and I realise I haven’t thought of my mother at all.’

  Katerina put her sewing down and leaned forward. Eugenia could see that her eyes glistened.

  ‘It’s a strange feeling. Deep down, I know I am separated from something. But I can’t really grasp what it is I am separated from any more. A place? A person? I can’t even find the words . . .’ Tears ran down her face as she tried to describe the almost indescribable. ‘Whereas, here . . .’

  Eugenia handed Katerina her handkerchief and the young woman dried her tears.

  ‘Here is . . . Eugenia, I don’t even know how to say it! You must know what I am talking about?’

  ‘Yes, of course I do, agapi mou. This is home, isn’t it? I feel just the same.’

  Katerina struggled. She was torn between feelings of loyalty and betrayal.

  ‘Thessaloniki is where I belong now,’ she said.

  ‘I feel just the same way as you,’ agreed Eugenia. ‘And I don’t intend to leave.’

  Letters from Zenia to her daughter had become less regular. She was now open with Katerina about the harsh reality of life with her new husband, and told her very frankly that she was better off staying where she was. Her last letter described the subdivision of her home. It was now shared with her two stepdaughters’ husbands, and their widowed mothers. There were twelve of them using one latrine. Their living conditions were squalid. Only Zenia had a job.

  Katerina had ceased to struggle with her conscience, and her sense of separation changed. It gave her a new feeling of loss, but a new sense of belonging too. As she still often did, Katerina subconsciously ran her hand along her left arm. The scar had not faded these past years.

  They sat quietly for a few moments before Eugenia broke the silence.

  ‘It’s getting harder to remember the old places. People still talk about them, but they are the past for us now, aren’t they? And Thessaloniki has been so kind.’

  ‘So kind,’ Katerina echoed. ‘I don’t really remember everything now, but did people welcome us when we came?’

  Eugenia threw back her head and laughed. Katerina had never really seen her react like this to anything. She rocked back and forth, almost incapable of answering.

  ‘Yes, my dear, they did welcome us. Not everyone in the whole city did, mind you. And lots of people had a very different experience. But the people of Irini Street. How they welcomed us!’

  Eugenia was smiling at the memory of it all.

  ‘I do remember coming into this house for the first time,’ said Katerina. ‘People were staring at us in the street.’

  ‘Ah, but they were so nice. The Moreno family brought us food and spare clothes. I don’t even know why they had little girls’ dresses as they only had sons. But now I think of it, Kyria Moreno must have made them specially for you all. I had never even thought of that before tonight . . . And Pavlina came in with honey and some vegetables. You remember that Olga and Dimitri were living there just while they were having that vast house rebuilt?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘And I bet Olga Komninos was much happier living here in this street than where she is now.’

  ‘I’ve heard Kyria Moreno say that she hasn’t been out of that house since the day she left Irini Street. She must be exaggerating, mustn’t she?’

  ‘Who’s to say?’ Eugenia shrugged. ‘But don’t they make all those fine clothes for her in the workshop? They aren’t only to decorate the wardrobe, are they?’

  ‘Elias says that they are just for Kyria Komninos to wear in the house. For when they have grand people to dinner.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know. None of us knows what happens behind the closed doors of those big houses and we never will.’

  It made Katerina smile. In streets where the houses were small, the doors were rarely shut, and on the occasions when they were, it merely took a gentle push to open them. In the mansion on Niki Street, no one knew what took place. Except for the owners. Katerina had never forgotten her visit there and could picture Olga alone in her high-ceilinged drawing room, with its elaborate architraves and cornicing. Their entire house in Irini Street would fit comfortably into the hallway.

  The two women chattered on in the darkness. Katerina’s sewing remained unfinished, and the shuttle lay idle.

  Their only tears now were those of laughter.

  Several times over the next few months, Katerina bumped into Dimitri and they developed a habit of going to the same pastry shop each time they met. It was close to the dazzling haberdashery shop, which she had been visiting on an almost weekly basis since her arrival in the city. She had become firm friends with old Kyrios Alatzas who owned it, though he no longer had to give her lengths of ribbon for her hair.

  While the weather had still been hot Dimitri and Katerina had drunk lemonade out on the pavement, but when the days shortened they went inside and Katerina would choose a pastry from the glass cabinet. Dimitri always ordered her an additional one, which she would take home, teasing her about her passion for sweet things. Their conversation was a strange mix.

  ‘I shouldn’t really tell you this, but . . .’ was usually how her anecdotes began.

  There were rich women in Thessaloniki, ‘of a certain age’, as she described them, who came in to be measured up for the latest fashions. They brought illustrations and photographs cut from magazines and wer
e convinced that they could be made to look the same as the women in the pictures.

  ‘It’s Kyrios Moreno’s job to break the news, without offending the customer, that the outfit in question might not be suitable. It always goes the same way. You have to find him and say: “Kyrios Moreno, could you come and speak to a customer about Chanel?” It’s something like a code. So, off he goes, and with the greatest tact you can imagine, he has to think of a way to adapt what the customer wants so that it will suit her. He’ll say anything to make them agree, pretending that there are already twenty similar dresses in production or that the style will age them – that usually works. And colours too. Sometimes there will be a vogue for canary yellow, and yellow just doesn’t work on everyone, does it? Most people look more dead than alive in it!

  ‘I’m lucky,’ she said, sighing. ‘I don’t have much to do with rich and difficult women, but sometimes I have to do some fittings, so I know what they can be like.’

  Dimitri smiled knowingly. Many of those rich and difficult women were probably regular guests at his parents’ dinner table. He listened, charmed by her gently satirical descriptions of them.

  Katerina did not realise that Dimitri went out of his way to meet her. It was never a coincidence. Once or twice, when he had seen her walking home with Elias, he had avoided them and taken another route, giving himself the excuse that he would not want to interrupt what seemed to be an intimate conversation.

  Katerina was equally keen to hear about the world that Dimitri lived in. She always listened eagerly when he told her of any rebetika musicians he had seen and sometimes she recognised their names. Dimitri had gone less frequently since the death of Vassili and the birth of the dictatorship, which had brought in new censorship laws. Rebetika was considered subversive and the police regularly raided the places where it was played.

  He talked a little about his studies and the professors who supervised him. He tried to add some amusing touches, but it was hard. There was little humour in a medical degree.

  Naturally, Katerina always asked after Olga.

  ‘I wish she sometimes went out,’ he said. ‘I don’t really understand it, but perhaps I will one day, if I study medicine hard enough.’

  ‘I might be asked to visit your house soon,’ Katerina told Dimitri one day.

  His eyes lit up. ‘Why’s that?’

  Kyrios Moreno had recently told her that, in due course, he would be asking her to do final fittings for Kyria Komninos. His oldest seamstress was about to retire after sixty years of working for the Moreno family and Kyrios Moreno saw Katerina as her successor. Martha Perez was renowned in the city. Her seams were invisible and her darts and tucks were more perfectly executed than by any modern machine. Her tailoring lay against the body like a second skin. She was his top modistra and, ever since he had married Olga, Konstantinos had insisted that her clothes were made by Martha. At the age of seventy-five, tiredness was beginning to get the better of her.

  Dimitri had sometimes seen Kyria Perez come and go, but he loved the thought that soon it would be Katerina instead.

  ‘I am sure my mother will look forward to seeing you,’ he said, smiling.

  Katerina’s world was a place of silks and satins, buttons and bows, embroidery and embellishment, a factory of beautiful things. Hers was a world of colour while Dimitri’s was in monochrome. The university environment had always been austere, but had become an even more sombre place under the dictatorship. A mixture of fear and defiance hung in the air, and sourness too, as students with different political affiliations mixed together, creating tensions and rivalries of their own. Leftist militancy and communism were forced deeper beneath the surface, but this only seemed to strengthen them.

  For a while, one aspect of life for the Morenos themselves seemed to improve. The dictatorship had suppressed the organisation that had encouraged the anti-Semitic attacks of the early part of the decade, so the Jews of the city felt a new sense of safety.

  ‘It’s been a whole six months now,’ reflected Saul Moreno to his sons, ‘since we’ve had graffiti on the walls. Not one word.’

  They were on their way to the workshop. Katerina was with them, as usual.

  ‘That’s just as well,’ said Elias. ‘Because sooner or later, we would have had to tell Mother why we were always buying paint.’

  Isaac, who was always less optimistic than his younger brother about things, and had seen for himself the destruction in the Campbell district only five years earlier, felt obliged to add his comment.

  ‘You can lock a few people up,’ he said, ‘but if there are people who hate us, believe me, they’ll find a way to show it.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Isaac, don’t be so pessimistic!’ said his father.

  ‘I want to be wrong, but those feelings don’t just come from the Left. Didn’t you see the paper yesterday?’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘There have been some attacks on Jews in Germany. Brutal ones. And not carried out by the Left.’

  ‘But how far away is Germany?’ scoffed his father. ‘Eh? It’s not Greece, is it?’

  ‘Father is right, Isaac! Who cares about Germany? Let’s at least stick to talking about Thessaloniki!’

  ‘You can stick to talking about anywhere you like,’ said Isaac, ‘but I think you’re being very naïve.’

  ‘Well, let’s not argue about nothing,’ said Saul Moreno. ‘Especially in front of your mother. You know how she hates to hear you two bickering.’

  ‘Do you really think people would come to us for all their lavish clothes if they hated us as you say they do?’ persisted Elias, wanting to disprove his brother’s theory.

  While his sons were still pursuing their argument, Saul Moreno had opened up the door to the workshop. Even if he had lost a handful of customers, his order books were full. As never before, people were waiting for baptism and bar mitzvah clothes, ball gowns and bridal gowns, and suits – always suits. Even if the fashion for width, turn-up or trouser-leg flare changed by a centimetre, there were plenty of men in this city who would immediately come for new measurements.

  Life in Thessaloniki carried on largely as before, with the rich continuing to be rich and the poor to be poor (but with fewer outlets to express their discontent). People were largely unaffected by the fact that life in other parts of Europe was changing dramatically. Then, in September 1939, Germany invaded Poland and another world war began.

  There was no shortage of news in Thessaloniki as the months passed. Though some of the left-wing titles had been closed under the dictatorship, there were still hundreds of newspapers and many different views on the war. The dictatorship’s position was ambivalent. It was politically aligned with France, commercially dependent on Germany and friendly with Mussolini, a position of uneasy neutrality that could probably not be sustained for long. The good relations between Greece and Italy, which Metaxas had managed to sustain, began to deteriorate when Italian planes began to fly over Greek territory.

  Dimitri and his friends constantly debated their positions.

  ‘What is Metaxas waiting for? Why doesn’t he think that we’ll go the way of the rest of Europe? I can’t stand his apathy!’

  ‘What do you want him to do?’

  ‘Get the country ready!’

  ‘Perhaps he knows what he’s doing,’ suggested Dimitri. ‘Maybe it’s a more complex game of diplomacy than we know.’

  ‘I don’t believe it. I think he’s just afraid to fight.’

  ‘An army general, afraid to fight! Whatever your politics, you’re a coward if you won’t fight for your country.’

  The students had been stretched intellectually but not physically, and they were ready for action. They knew that Greece was a sitting target.

  In the early hours of 28 October 1940, the Italian ambassador delivered a message to Metaxas at his home in Athens. Mussolini wanted to occupy certain strategic positions in northern Greece.

  The Greek Prime Minister responded with a resoundin
g ‘Ochi’ – ‘No!’

  Within hours, the Italians invaded through Albania.

  ‘IT IS WAR!’ stated the headlines, quoting Metaxas. Everyone knew that the Greek army was unprepared and ill-equipped.

  ‘I’m joining up,’ said Lefteris, one of Dimitri’s fellow students. ‘Our studies can wait. If we don’t get the Italians off our soil now, there might not even be a university soon.’

  ‘What? You, the archenemy of an army general, are going to join the army?’ Dimitri asked with incredulity.

  ‘We have a common enemy, don’t we? How else do we fight him? We wait until Mussolini turns up here on our doorstep and then hit him over the head with a book?’

  The others laughed, but it was not really a moment for humour.

  ‘Look, if we join up today, we’ll be on a train to Ioannina by tonight and in forty-eight hours we’ll be part of the action. We’ll be doing something, for God’s sake.’

  Whatever the political leanings of these students, ultimately they were all patriots at heart. They were determined to protect their patrida, despite the fact that not one of them had ever held a gun, and passion rather than good sense would lead them to the front.

  ‘I’m with you,’ said Dimitri. Everyone round the table concurred. ‘And I’ll let Elias know what we’re doing.’

  Everything moved quickly after that. On his way home to collect a few things, Dimitri stopped at the Moreno workshop. He had never been inside and Kyrios Moreno was surprised to see him.

  ‘Can I have a word with Elias?’ he asked with confidence, knowing that his appearance here in the middle of the day seemed strange.

  ‘I’ll send him out to see you in a moment,’ said Saul Moreno. ‘He’s with a customer at the moment. You’d think people might have other things on their minds than a new suit. But it’s business as usual, today. Perhaps they think that the invasion will push prices up.’

  As he went through the door that led from the reception area into the workshop he left it half open behind him. Dimitri was transfixed by what he saw. A girl in a long, cream dress, covered in sequins that glistened like fish-scales, was standing on a chair, while another girl pinned the hem. With her arms held upwards and outstretched inside the full sleeves, she looked like an angel or a dervish, but when she rotated to aid the pinning, Dimitri realised it was Katerina. Wisps of hair had fallen across her face. It seemed as though her thoughts were a million miles away.