The Thread (28 page)

Tears of sadness coursed down his face at the funeral, but inside a fury was raging. Beyond any doubt, the authorities were responsible for Vassili’s death and Dimitri promised himself that he would never take the side of a government who encouraged such action. Surely Greece deserved something better.

On the surface, life in the city remained unchanged. Dimitri continued to attend classes at university and businesses such as the Morenos’ carried on as normal. From time to time Katerina joined Elias and Dimitri for a coffee but the tone of their conversation had changed. They were in mourning for Vassili and all three knew that beneath the normality of the city, anxiety was festering.

These days, Dimitri did his best to avoid his father. Even the occasional meal with him was more than he wanted. He was full of fear when his father was around, not because he was afraid of Konstantinos Komninos, but because he was afraid of what he might say to this man whom he now despised.

His mother seemed to understand everything without discussion. Never once did she question Dimitri when he left the house only moments before his father was due to return, or when he ate meals at strange times.

Olga understood Dimitri’s feelings for his father, and Konstantinos’ feelings for his son. From the day he was born, there had been no hint of love. She remembered how her husband had looked down at the sleeping child as though he were a specimen rather than his own flesh and blood. Then there had been the fire, and their circumstances had changed so drastically. The moment when a father first holds his son, looks into his eyes and sees a reflection of himself had been missed.

During those first two decades of Dimitri’s life, she often raised the same question with Pavlina.

‘Did I do something wrong?’ she would ask her, wringing her slender hands.

Pavlina had her own ideas about Komninos but her instinct was to protect Olga.

‘I think it just happens sometimes,’ she would say. ‘There are lots of men who don’t find their children interesting. They think they’re woman’s work.’

‘Perhaps you’re right, Pavlina …’

‘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 were 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.’