The Thread (24 page)

The incident shocked Jews and Greeks alike. There was a trial of some of the perpetrators, including the editor of
Makedonia
, who had whipped up so much ill will against the Jews. Many Jews made plans to emigrate, even one of the Moreno tailors. If he could no longer feel secure in his own bed, he was leaving. The following month, with a few dozen other families, he departed for Palestine.

Saul Moreno was determined not to allow these events to affect his business. He took out full-page advertisements in some of the most right-wing newspapers and, with their permission, reproduced testimonials from some of his wealthy and high-profile clients.

Each of the advertisements ran the line: ‘Let us dress you top to toe.’ They used an illustration of an elegant couple, the man in evening dress and the woman in a long, beaded gown. The woman in the picture bore an uncanny resemblance to Olga Komninos.

At the foot of the page, in large, confident letters were the words: ‘M
ORENO &
S
ONS, THE TOP TAILORS IN
T
HESSALONIKI
.’

The advertisements were a display of confidence, a gesture of defiance directed against those who wished them ill.

There were other ways in which Saul Moreno kept the morale of his workers high. He bought a gramophone player. It was played for an hour at the end of each afternoon, and the women loved the moment when he came in to wind it up. From the second the needle landed with a ‘crump’ on the record and the sound crackled into the room, the atmosphere lightened.

The collection of recordings was limited, but they usually began with one of Haim Effendi’s Sephardic songs from Turkey and always ended with their favourite, Roza Eskenazi. Their busy hands worked in time to the rhythms of this music.

Over the clatter of their sewing machines, the workers in the adjacent room smiled when they heard the women singing at full volume.

Esther Moreno disapproved of the music and the holiday atmosphere it created, convinced that productivity slackened off when it was playing. She was wrong. If anything it made the women in less of a hurry to pack up and go home. Katerina was among those who particularly loved the music and became word-perfect in every song. There was no gramophone at home.

Katerina’s slim fingers were becoming increasingly nimble and her execution of some of the most difficult techniques improved. Sometimes, on the finer fabrics, there were seams that could not be adequately done by machine and she would do them by hand. The handiwork on her gowns became the most sought after in the city.

‘You can wear her dresses inside out,’ her wealthy customers boasted.

It was true. Her seams were perfect, and even the pattern on the reverse of her beading was sometimes more beautiful than the beading itself.

One day she was asked to finish a pale yellow crêpe dress. It had been tailored for someone with the narrowest waist and Katerina had been asked to sew on the twenty-five or so self-covered buttons that ran down the front, and to make the looped buttonholes. The challenge would not have been so great if they were not the size of glove buttons.

‘It’s for Kyria Komninos,’ Saul Moreno told her.

Katerina knew she was not meant to make personal comments about clients or their choices. Discretion and tact were prerequisites of the job, but Katerina could not help making a comment.

‘She is so slim! Slimmer than ever!’

It shocked her to imagine how thin Olga had become. In her mind, such slimness was usually associated with illness or starvation, but she knew the latter could not be the cause. Even if there were thousands of people without enough to eat in this city, everyone knew that the Komninos business was going from strength to strength.

‘Is she …?’

‘What?’

‘In good health?’

‘One of the fitters went to her house to measure her, and didn’t mention anything about her being ill. In fact, when you’ve finished, would you mind delivering it for me?’

‘Of course,’ said Katerina, trying not to look overeager.

‘Kyrios Komninos wants her to have it by Saturday.’

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 cheerily. ‘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.