The Thread

by Victoria Hislop

  ‘Well, you and I might, but most of the visitors to this house don’t see it that way,’ responded Pavlina.

  Olga had come into the kitchen, where the two women were sitting at the big central table. Pavlina was polishing the silver cutlery, while Katerina meticulously finished a French seam, and both women automatically sprang to their feet when they saw her.

  The door had been half open and what she said confirmed that she had overheard the last few words.

  ‘Not everyone sees ELAS as the saviour of Greece,’ she said. ‘Some people are so anti-Communist that they take the Germans’ side against them.’

  Katerina and Pavlina glanced at each other and then at Olga.

  ‘Could you bring some mint tea upstairs, Pavlina?’

  ‘Of course,’ responded Pavlina. ‘The water has just this minute boiled.’

  Katerina waited until Olga’s footsteps had retreated up the stairs before speaking again.

  ‘It must be so strange to listen to stories about the Communists,’ she said. ‘When you know your son is with them.’

  ‘I think Kyrios Komninos has denied so completely to himself that his son is fighting with ELAS,’ said Pavlina, ‘that it’s not in the least bit strange for him. And Olga is so quiet anyway. People don’t really notice her discomfort.’

  ‘Anything could have happened to them, up in the mountains,’ Katerina reflected.

  ‘Lord only knows,’ answered Pavlina. ‘I just pray that Dimitri is safe. That’s all any of us can do.’

  ‘Can you pray for Elias too?’

  The months passed and Konstantinos Komninos continued to invite his fellow businessmen for regular dinners. They needed each other’s support. Those who were doing well during the occupation were only doing so because of their collaboration with the occupying force, and now they began to give financial support to the Greek security battalions who helped prevent the resistance from coming into the towns.

  Occasionally some gendarmes or policemen were killed in Thessaloniki, and efforts to hunt out Communist elements were stepped up. With a combined force of occupying troops, the security battalions and the gendarmes, they were usually successful.

  The regularity of Konstantinos’ orders for his wife’s dresses during this period meant that Katerina was a frequent visitor, and Olga often invited the seamstress to sit with her in the drawing room. She enjoyed watching Katerina sew and sometimes the modistra asked her how she would like a gown finished. Olga was so used to accepting whatever she was given that she sometimes had difficulty giving a view.

  ‘You always seem to know best,’ she said, smiling at Katerina.

  Occasionally, Olga attempted some embroidery herself, but it was purely an exercise to kill time. She had no gift for it. Each stitch passed another second and took her a moment closer to her son’s return. At least this was what she hoped.

  On her way out, Katerina always went into the kitchen to see Pavlina.

  ‘I actually don’t think I can cook for these people any more,’ said the elderly housekeeper one day. ‘I am serving them and listening to their views and they disgust me. They seem to enjoy the fact that Greeks are beginning to fight Greeks.’

  ‘You are exaggerating, aren’t you?’ questioned Katerina.

  ‘No, I’m not. They’re the kind of people who would go to a bear fight.’

  ‘I’m not sure any of us have a choice, Pavlina. If we make a living it’s usually because we’re being paid with tainted money. My wages are coming from the rich. And at the moment, it doesn’t seem as though you can be honest and rich. The option is to starve.’

  Pavlina bustled about the kitchen, red in the face from the heat and irritation.

  ‘I have to go home now,’ said Katerina. ‘I have to do some machine-stitching on this dress. Kyria Komninos has lost even more weight and she wants two of her gowns taken in before the weekend.’

  The situation in Europe was beginning to change. That summer, Germany had begun to lose its grip on its occupied territories and in June the Allies had landed in Normandy. Paris was liberated in August and the Germans withdrew from France. With the Red Army on the march and heading for Bulgaria, the Germans knew there was a danger of being cut off in Greece, and within days they made the decision to begin moving out.

  What had seemed an impossibility in Greece was now happening. The Nazis were defeated and liberation was in sight.

  One day, just before the Germans left Thessaloniki, Katerina was in Olga’s dressing room, carefully pinning a hem. Fashions had changed during the war, which meant that most of Olga’s clothes needed remodelling. She slipped off the gown that Katerina had pinned, put on a day dress and went back into her bedroom. Katerina stayed in the dressing room to fold the dress, ready to take home for sewing.

  Almost immediately, she heard Olga scream.

  She ran out into the bedroom and to her astonishment saw Olga being embraced by a man. If it had been her husband this would have been surprising enough. But it was not even him.

  For a moment, Katerina was frozen to the spot. She did not know what to do and her indecision left her standing there, eyes wide, mouth gaping.

  With their faces buried into one another’s shoulder, the embrace shut out the world and their stillness and entanglement reminded her of the classical sculpture in the hallway below.

  The obvious thing was to run back into the dressing room but, before she turned round to go, she saw the couple move apart. Katerina’s embarrassment was all the greater now.

  In the next one and a half seconds, she took in the incongruity of Olga’s pale elegance and the man’s grubbiness. Even from a distance of a few metres, she could smell the unfamiliar odour he had brought into the room. It was like an animal’s.

  Suddenly Olga remembered that Katerina was there and turned round. She was smiling in a way that the modistra had never seen, her face almost transfigured with joy.

  ‘Look!’ she said, gripping the man’s left hand, as if unable to let it go. ‘He’s come back!’

  Katerina felt herself go crimson. She was obliged to look at the stranger whom she had caught embracing a married woman. He was bearded, dark-skinned and had cropped hair, and he was much younger than Kyria Komninos.

  She realised then that she was looking into a pair of familiar brown eyes.

  ‘Katerina!’ he said.

  It was a voice she knew. Dimitri’s.

  Katerina almost choked.

  ‘Panagia mou! Dimitri!’

  In a gesture of unconscious spontaneity, Katerina reached out and touched his face. She wanted reassurance that he was not an apparition.

  His response was to take her hand and, for a moment, the three of them stood, hands joined.

  Katerina’s smile was broader even than his mother’s. ‘I can’t believe you’re here,’ she said. ‘It is so wonderful to see you.’ He smiled at her and looked into her glistening eyes. ‘It’s wonderful to see you too, Katerina. I have missed you so much.’

  His gaze held hers.

  ‘Dimitri,’ said Olga, ‘you know we have to be careful. Your father might come home . . .’

  ‘And I know he wouldn’t be happy to see me,’ said Dimitri. ‘How long have I got? Can I have something to eat before I go?’

  ‘Let’s go down to the kitchen,’ Olga said, with more energy in her voice than Katerina had ever heard. ‘Your father doesn’t usually come in until late, but we should listen out. And does Pavlina know you are here?’

  ‘Yes, she opened the door to me. You should have seen her face, Mother. She was more astonished even than you!’

  They were all laughing together as they went downstairs to the kitchen. Dimitri was in the middle and Katerina was surprised to find that he still held her hand as they descended.

  Katerina made her excuses to leave, but Olga was insistent that she should stay. She needed no persuasion.

  While Dimitri made his way through plate after plate of meatballs, peppers, baked aubergines, stuffed vine l
eaves, potatoes and finally a whole dish of sweet pastries, the three women sat and gazed at him admiringly.

  Then they began to ask questions.

  Were he and Elias still together? Where had they been? What activities had they been involved in? What was expected to happen next?

  ‘Elias and I are in different units, now,’ Dimitri answered. ‘So I haven’t seen him for a long time. To be honest, I have no idea where he is.’

  ‘You know that the Jews have all gone?’

  ‘I heard,’ said Dimitri regretfully. ‘If he comes back here and realises they’ve left, he might go and join them, I suppose.’

  ‘We often go into the house,’ said Katerina. ‘We tidied it up after it was looted and try to keep it dusted. Eugenia and I have left him a note, just in case he turns up and we aren’t at home. It would be a bit of a shock to see it.’

  ‘Are they planning to come back, do you think?’

  ‘Hard to say,’ said Katerina. ‘Their business is still standing there empty. But it probably won’t be like that for long.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘One of your father’s business associates has got his eye on it,’ said Olga. ‘He was one of the people who came here for dinner the other night.’

  ‘But supposing the Morenos decide to come back?’ asked Katerina, slightly indignantly.

  ‘Then they’d be compensated, I expect,’ chipped in Pavlina.

  ‘Anyway, this man has tailoring businesses here and in Veria and Larissa,’ Olga continued. ‘And he’s looking to expand in Thessaloniki when the war ends. But tell us what you have been doing all this time, Dimitri—’

  ‘I know one thing about your time in the mountains,’ interrupted Pavlina gaily. ‘There wasn’t much to eat!’

  She was overjoyed to have Dimitri sitting at her table and eating her cooking.

  Dimitri smiled to please her, but soon his smile faded. ‘To be truthful, it was really terrible up there,’ he said. ‘More awful than I can begin to tell you.’

  All three women were silent. Pavlina had stopped bustling about for once and even she sat still and listened.

  ‘At the beginning we were distributing supplies to people who had nothing, robbing the Germans of food that they had stolen from us in the first place and giving it out to people in need. We were all working together at that stage, ELAS with EDES and the British. All co-operating. We all had a common enemy. They spoke German. It seemed simple.’

  They were all quiet while Dimitri gathered his thoughts.

  ‘It was strange being loathed when we believed we were doing the right thing,’ he said. ‘And some people hated us even more than they hated the Germans because the Germans were using us as an excuse to brutalise people. They massacred whole villages if they suspected them of giving food or shelter to any andarte. There were even people up in the mountain with German weapons and they used them against us!’

  ‘The world’s gone mad!’ said Pavlina, shaking her head.

  ‘I have done everything I can to keep my hands clean,’ he continued. ‘But it wasn’t always possible. There’s blood up there; the rivers are running with it.’

  ‘Try not to think about it now,’ Olga said, gently stroking his arm.

  ‘People like my father regard ELAS as a bunch of bandits, but I hope one day they’ll understand our ideals.’

  ‘I hope so too,’ responded Olga.

  He was exhausted. They could see it on his sunken face and hear it in his weary voice. At times there were tears in his eyes as he recalled some of the things he had witnessed.

  ‘There’s been an order to go to Athens so I’m on my way there now,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ cried his mother. ‘You can’t go yet!’

  ‘You need a good rest,’ added Pavlina.

  Katerina sat quietly. Pavlina was right.

  ‘But there’s something else to do now. Something just as important,’ he said.

  The three women listened to his explanation. ELAS’s primary goal to rid their country of Axis troops had virtually been achieved. Now they had another task: to make sure that the Left was fairly represented in a new government.

  ‘Why should people who collaborated with the Germans now rule the country?’ he asked.

  Olga shook her head. ‘It’s wrong, I can see that.’

  ‘So I have to go. When the job is finished I’ll come back home, I promise.’

  He was looking at Katerina as he said this.

  Dimitri left well before his father returned. Though the three of them were sad to see him go, they were greatly cheered by the thought that he might soon be back.

  It may have been nothing more than a gesture of brotherly love, but Katerina endlessly replayed the memory of Dimitri holding her hand. The feeling of his rough fingers stroking her palm may have lasted only a few moments but she could not forget the sensation of his affection. It was the first time she had known such an experience. His touch had made her feel simultaneously both weak and strong, and though this puzzled her, there was something she was sure of: knowing he was alive made her heart soar.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  THE MUCH-HOPED-FOR WITHDRAWAL of the Germans became a reality for Thessaloniki at the end of October. People on both the Left and Right were glad to see the back of them but liberation proved hard to celebrate. On their way out of Greece, the Germans had created havoc and, by the time they were over the border, few roads, bridges or railway lines remained useable.

  In the three years of occupation, the entire country had been stripped of fuel, food, livestock, medical supplies and building materials. Greece was in a state of total destitution and its infrastructure destroyed. Only those who had meticulously protected their own interests or had devised ways of profiteering from the poverty of others had any hope for the future, but for everyone else, even the bare necessities were beyond reach. Hyperinflation had struck the economy that autumn and bread that had cost ten drachmas for a kilo just before the war, now cost thirty-four million. The Germans had lost the war, but the Greeks had lost almost everything they had.

  On a cool autumnal day, when the last German had left Thessaloniki, Eugenia and Katerina took themselves out for a volta around the streets.

  ‘We may as well mark the moment of our freedom,’ said Eugenia. ‘It’s a long time since we’ve been for a stroll.’

  From Irini Street they walked down to the seafront. The prows of half-sunken ships stuck out of the water like shark fins. Many of them had been there for nearly two years now and were rapidly rusting, the sad corpses of a once-strong merchant navy. There was no activity at the port and the vast expanse of dockyard, once so alive with movement and noise, was eerily silent.

  ‘I don’t suppose you remember . . .’

  They were standing in the open space next to the customs house and the building stirred a distant memory for Katerina. It had not been whitewashed in decades, and the same huge clock on the outside miraculously still told the time.

  ‘I think I do remember something. Were we standing for ages over by that building . . . and queuing for something?’

  ‘Yes, we were,’ Eugenia smiled.

  ‘And there were lots and lots of people. That’s what really sticks in my mind. And a woman wearing white.’

  The emptiness of the space now contrasted so completely with that first memory that they both turned away. Eugenia shuddered. A breeze was blowing in across the sea and over the empty cobbled space. A few pieces of litter danced.

  ‘You’re thinking of the woman from the Refugee Commission,’ said Eugenia. ‘She found us our home.’

  ‘We were all so dirty, and she was so clean! I remember that so clearly. I thought she must be a fairy.’

  They continued walking, unrelaxed, finding it hard to forget the constant fear of a sudden tap on the shoulder and the demand for identity papers. Even though the Germans were no longer there, nervousness and a sense of ill ease remained.

  They took a circuitous rout
e around the town, walking eastwards towards the White Tower. A glimpse of the Arch of Galerius and the ancient Rotunda reminded them that the historic monuments of the city were intact, as though they had enjoyed the Germans’ special respect. The more workaday places, on the other hand, had been badly bruised by the occupation. The little streets of boarded-up shops, gutted buildings and vandalised synagogues were all its victims. Although some areas still bore the scars of the 1917 fire, more of the city than ever was in a state of dereliction. In some neighbourhoods, there was a sense of ghostly vacancy and their footsteps echoed eerily back at them.

  Even in the still inhabited areas, people had got into the habit of staying inside their homes, and the coolness of autumn did not encourage the old habit of bringing a chair onto the doorstep.

  They kept walking and talking, occasionally seeing a kafenion where men sat drinking and playing tavli, just as they had done in the days before the war, and such glimpses of normality reassured them.

  Eventually, they reached a street that was as familiar to Katerina as Irini Street: Filipou Street, where Moreno & Sons was situated.

  Eugenia felt Katerina’s grip on her arm tighten. The hoarding that had been placed over the doors and windows had been taken down and all the graffiti and crudely scrawled Stars of David that had been daubed over the walls had been scrubbed off. There were men walking in and out carrying boxes, and sounds of activity came from inside.

  Katerina had noticed something else as well. There was no longer a sign over the premises and the door had been repainted. The emerald green that Kyrios Moreno had always favoured (to match the delivery van of which he had been so proud) had been replaced by a deep ox-blood red.

  They stood and watched for a few minutes.

  ‘It’s going to be reopened,’ said Katerina with a note of dismay.

  It was unbearable to see it and they hastened back to Irini Street in silence.

  The following day, the entire population of the city descended on Aristotelous Square for the official celebration of the liberation from the Germans. The cafés where enemy soldiers had lounged in the sun for four whole summers were once again full of Greeks.