The Thread

by Victoria Hislop

  ‘Think of this place,’ he used to say to the five-year-old Konstantinos, ‘as the Alpha and the Omega of our lives.’

  Then he would point out the cutting shears neatly left at the centre of each of the polished cutting tables.

  ‘There is the Alpha,’ he would say, tracing the ‘A’ shape of the scissors. ‘And here is the Omega.’ He would point at the roll-ends made of perfect ‘O’s. ‘In this family, those are the only letters you need to know.’

  Each day, Konstantinos thought of his father’s words, and now he was able to look forward to the time when he could repeat them to his own son.

  On Saturdays he could enjoy being there without feeling the eyes of his employees on him. He was a man who knew he was not well-liked. It was not as though he cared, but it still made him feel uncomfortable. He was aware of the way in which people stopped speaking to each other when he walked by and could feel the heat between his shoulder blades as they observed his retreating back.

  His office was raised, with windows on three sides and a clear view of the whole width and length of the enormous room. It was hard for his employees to see him through the blinds, but from his watchtower he could see everything that went on. Important customers were always invited up there and coffee was sent out for. Komninos would pull up the blinds on those occasions, knowing that the view of his vast rainbow never failed to impress. Customers came from every town and city in Greece to purchase, and few of them left without buying in bulk. There was no other cloth wholesaler with such a range, even in Athens, and he could hardly keep up with demand.

  In addition, he was the sole supplier of wool cloth for most of the army regiments that had been mobilised in northern Greece at a time when, with thousands of Allied forces camped outside the city, the price of everything on the commodities market, from wheat to wool, had gone up. For the wealthy, there was money to be made. Komninos had always read figures better than letters, and had a nose for wise investments.

  The business had been left equally to him and his brother, Leonidas, who was his junior by eight years, but the younger man had little interest in spending his days in this barn of a showroom, and even less in the complexities of speculation on the price of wool on the commodities market. Leonidas was an army officer and a life of action suited him much more than a life of commerce. These brothers had absolutely nothing in common except their parents, and now that the latter had gone there was more antipathy than love between them. Even when they were small it was hard to believe they were from the same family. Leonidas, tall, with fair hair and blue eyes, was Apollo to his brother’s Hephaestus.

  As Konstantinos sat in his office, studying his ledger and doing mental calculations of current weekly income versus interest rates and rising expenses, offset against a new order for fifteen thousand metres of wool for army greatcoats (which could be supplied from material he had had in stock for two years, but which he would sell at this year’s price), his brother was running like a madman down the empty street.

  Tasos was roused from his siesta by the sound of Leonidas bursting into the building.

  ‘Tasos . . .’ breathless, hardly able to speak, ‘. . . we’ve got to get hold of Kosta!’

  ‘He’s here. In his office,’ answered the caretaker. ‘What on earth is the matter? Don’t normally see you in a hurry!’

  Leonidas ran past him into the showroom and took the steps of the spiral staircase up to the office two at a time.

  ‘Kosta, the city is burning! We’ve got to get some of this stock out!’

  ‘Tasos told me you had gone off to look at some fire or other,’ answered the older brother, without raising his eyes from his columns of figures. His sense of position and dignity would not allow him to react. ‘Hasn’t it been put out yet?’

  ‘No! It’s raging, Kosta! It’s out of control! Come down into the street now and smell it! It’s coming this way! For God’s sake, I’m not making it up!’

  Konstantinos could hear the fear in his brother’s voice. It was not the voice he used when he played practical jokes.

  Leonidas took him by the arm and led him down the stairs and out into the street.

  ‘You can’t see anything yet, but don’t you smell it? And look at the sky! It’s nowhere near sunset and it’s getting dark!’

  Leonidas was right. The reek of burning was palpable, and the clarity of the afternoon sky had been replaced by a haze.

  ‘I want to see where it is, Leonidas. I don’t want us to panic if there’s no need.’

  ‘Well, where it was ten minutes ago might be different from where it is now . . . All right, let’s go and see if they’ve started to get it under control.’

  While they hurried along, Konstantinos told his brother about his new nephew. It was an incongruous moment to deliver such news, but it gave Komninos great satisfaction to announce that there was now an heir for the business.

  Leonidas was very fond of his sister-in-law and it was to see Olga rather than his brother that he made a visit to Niki Street a priority whenever he was on leave. If he ever settled down, he wanted to find a woman who was as beautiful and serene as she. Sometimes he wondered if such a cold character as Konstantinos deserved such a fine woman and tried to dismiss the question of what would have happened if he had met Olga first.

  ‘That’s wonderful,’ he said. ‘Are you sure you shouldn’t be with her?’

  ‘All in good time,’ answered Konstantinos.

  Leonidas shook his head with disbelief, thinking not just of Olga and the baby, but the wonderful Pavlina, of whom he was very fond.

  The smoke thickened as they hastened northwards and Konstantinos stopped to tie his silk handkerchief around his face to protect himself from the particles of ash that swirled around them. When they turned into a main street, they were met by a crowd of people coming towards them. Konstantinos had seen plenty of mobs during the political upheavals of the past few years, but these people wore a different expression.

  Many of them were struggling beneath the weight of their possessions – bulky items for which they had scrimped and saved – cupboards, mirrors, even mattresses. These were far too precious to leave behind. Every porter in the city had been attracted to the business potential of the disaster, and their handcarts, spilling over with people’s motley collections of objects, now blocked the streets.

  On the horizon, still some distance away, Konstantinos saw the unmistakably fierce glow of fire licking upwards into the sky.

  ‘Do you believe me now?’ demanded Leonidas, stopping to cough and catch his breath.

  ‘We need to get back to the showroom,’ said Konstantinos, his voice weak with fear. ‘And we need as many porters as we can find.’

  They were already too late for such a thought. All the able-bodied men who might sell their services had been hired out. Observing the mêlée, the two brothers realised that they were on their own. Tasos was the only one who could help them. As they turned back towards the showroom, their pace quickened to a jog.

  ‘I reckon we’ve got no more than a couple of hours, unless they get it under control soon,’ said Leonidas over his shoulder.

  Konstantinos was trying to keep up with his brother, who was a head taller than he, and much more athletic. He responded with a grunt. It was at least twenty years since he had run anywhere and his chest burned. The thought of losing any of his stock spurred him on, however, and within ten minutes they were both through the door and explaining to Tasos what had to be done.

  ‘I’ll identify the most precious fabrics,’ said the older brother, ‘so that you and Leonidas can make them a priority for removal! Pile them up by the door and we’ll take them a cartload at a time across Egnatia Street. We should be able to fit thirty in each load.’

  Egnatia Street was the wide boulevard that ran west to east across the city.

  ‘There’s no chance of the fire crossing over it so anything we can get on to the south side will be safe,’ said Leonidas.

  The three m
en got to work. For the first time in a decade, Konstantinos ran up and down the ladders, pulling out bolts of fabrics and letting them drop to the floor. They were picked up by Leonidas and carried out of the building, where Tasos piled them on his cart. The first cartload was ready and together Tasos and Leonidas trundled it down the street. Five minutes later they deposited the rolls outside a customer’s shop.

  ‘Just keep an eye on these for us, would you?’ Leonidas asked the tailor. ‘We’ll be back.’

  There was no need to explain. Dozens of other merchants and traders were dumping their goods on the other side of the street. Everyone had the same thought: the fire would never cross it.

  The streets were full of shouting and the suffocating smell of a smoke on an already airless day.

  By the time Leonidas and Tasos were back in the showroom, another hundred or so rolls lay ready for collection in the aisles.

  ‘Take the purple silks first, followed by the red velvets. The wool should go last, but get all the crêpe de Chine on to the next load – whatever the colour – and try and make sure the creams don’t get too soiled . . .’

  As soon as he was handling the fabrics, Konstantinos’ passion for them took over. His orders for their preservation and protection spilled out, one after the other, like silk coming off the roll.

  In the past hour, since he had broken the news of the baby to his brother, he had not given a thought to his new son or his wife, nor to their safety. As long as they were on the same side of the road as his precious wools and silks, he assumed they were safe.

  Tasos and Leonidas had returned for their fourth load of fabric. By the time they were preparing the fifth, both of them had removed their shirts and were mopping their faces.

  ‘Try to keep the pale ones clean, won’t you?’

  The lighter coloured fabrics were getting soiled with the men’s sweat. It was one instruction too many for Leonidas.

  ‘Look, Konstantinos, it’s only a speck of dirt . . .’

  ‘If we’re going to save the bridal fabrics, they have to be usable and that one is worth thousands of drachmas a metre!’

  ‘For God’s sake, what does it matter? Personally I can’t understand why you aren’t at home with your wife and child!’

  ‘Because I know they are safe. And this showroom may not be. I’ve worked seven days a week on this business, for the best part of my life. Even if you don’t, Leonidas, I understand the value of what we have here. And so did our father.’

  ‘None of them will be worth anything at all if we don’t get them out of here,’ interrupted the old man.

  He had just been out into the street where the smell was now stronger, the crowds seemed larger and, unless it was his imagination, even the heat in the air seemed greater.

  ‘I don’t think we’ve got much time.’

  The two brothers faced each other, each still enraged by the attitude of the other.

  Leonidas picked up a roll of dark velvet from the floor and went out onto the street. Tasos was right. They all had to get out of there.

  He dropped the fabric on the cart, raced back inside and grabbed Konstantinos by the arm.

  ‘We’re going, now.’

  Leonidas could feel his brother’s resistance to his touch.

  He pulled him towards the entrance and even then Konstantinos took a moment to triple-lock the doors. By this time, Tasos had struggled to the end of the street with the handcart and turned right towards Egnatia Street. The air was now thick with smoke and the sound of crackling fire was audible.

  Within a few moments they had caught up with the old man and saw the pyramid of fabrics on the pavement. Passers-by steered themselves politely around the obstacle, preoccupied with their own journeys away from danger.

  ‘We need to get everything inside,’ urged Konstantinos.

  ‘And who exactly is going to steal a piece of velvet?’ snapped Leonidas.

  The tailor was already helping Tasos to move the material inside his shop, and soon there was a solid stack of nearly two hundred rolls in the middle of his floor. Konstantinos stubbornly ignored his brother’s question. He had plenty of people around him now who would carry out his instructions without challenge.

  Suddenly the ground beneath them rocked and the tailor’s shop was shaken to its foundations. A moment ago it had seemed a safe haven, but now everyone – the tailor, his family, the Komninos brothers and Tasos – rushed back out into the street. There had been an explosion somewhere in the city and, amidst mounting chaos and fear, there was another, and then a third.

  People hastening away from the fire seemed to quicken their pace.

  ‘It’s foreign soldiers,’ one man told them as he passed. ‘They’ve started blowing up buildings.’

  It was not an act of insanity, but the only possibility of halting the fire. With the dire shortage of water in the city, the creation of a firebreak was the only solution anyone could think of and Allied soldiers had come into the city to help.

  ‘Hopefully that will do the trick then,’ Konstantinos said. ‘I think we should be going now. My wife had a baby a few hours ago.’

  ‘Congratulations, Kyrios Komninos! What a day to remember!’ said the tailor.

  ‘Well, it has been so far!’ he replied with a small smile. ‘God willing, we’ll be back tomorrow to get all this stock out of your way.’

  Finally, he turned to Tasos.

  ‘Will you check up on the showroom and bring me a report?’

  Tasos nodded.

  ‘I think we should be going now,’ urged Leonidas, perplexed by his brother’s certainty that all would be well. ‘Don’t you want to go and reassure Olga?’

  ‘I am sure she will be fine. She has Pavlina there. And don’t babies sleep for a while after they’re born?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ answered Leonidas. ‘I have no experience of them. But I’m sure everyone is aware of the fire by now.’

  In the past hour or so, Leonidas had grown increasingly concerned about Olga. He had observed his brother’s preoccupation with the business with incredulity. How could he be so neglectful of his beautiful wife and their newborn son? Were he married to someone like Olga, she would be at the centre of his life.

  They headed towards the sea and walked along the front. Everything looked just as it always did, with the elegant villas on the esplanade and the ships in the bay silently watching each other.

  A pungent odour hung in the atmosphere, but now that the sun had set, the sootiness of the air blended in with the night sky. Incongruously, a hotel was still serving dinner to its guests, and café tables were still occupied by people sipping their drinks. Thessaloniki seemed to have divided itself into two unrelated worlds. Those south of Egnatia Street knew of the fire, but were certain of their own safety. There was nothing they could do to help, and it was their duty to be calm.

  Tasos was now making his way back northwards. When he smelled the strong aroma of roasting lamb, he knew the meat market must have gone up in flames and the sight of a few crazed sheep cantering through the streets confirmed it.

  To see livestock running free was strange enough, but then he saw a giant bird flying through the air towards him. When it landed, only centimetres in front of him, he realised it was, in fact, a chair. Three of its legs were broken by the fall. The street was littered with abandoned possessions and even now, those escaping were tossing things out of their windows: sewing machines, tables, cabinets . . . People had accepted that they would never again be returning to their homes and desperation had set in.

  With the blind obedience of a man who had owed his living to one family for more than half a century, Tasos was resolved to carry out his boss’s request. When the volume of people coming in the other direction blocked his route, he retreated into a doorway, but eventually he reached the end of the long street where the business was situated. He could see the flames through an upper window but the front of the building was still intact.

  ‘It won’t take long,�
� he thought to himself, ‘just to run in and grab the order book.’

  He knew that this would be one of Kyrios Komninos’ main concerns and he put his key in the door.

  Inside, like a monster in need of a meal, the fire had been greedily devouring rolls of tulle and taffeta, before taking its time over a satisfying main course of wool and heavy linen. Bolt after bolt of fabric was reduced to ashes. Like matches in a box, they burned and each one became a taper that lit the next.

  Observers saw the windows suddenly blown outwards by the great pressure of heat from the back-draught within. If sticks of gelignite had been stored in the building it could not have caused a greater explosion. Shards of glass were blasted into the air and came down in a lethal shower of splinters. The building and everything in it was utterly destroyed.

  At the same moment that Tasos was consumed by the inferno, the brothers were almost at Niki Street.

  They were only a few villas away from their destination when Konstantinos glanced to his left up a dark side street and saw a glow at the end of it. To his horror, he saw that the fire had done what nobody believed possible. It had crossed Egnatia Street. Everything was different now.

  The wind had changed direction and was vigorously fanning the fire southwards towards the massive section of the city that housed most of the commercial buildings and the grandest homes of Thessaloniki. Nothing could stop it. Not only was his home threatened, but more seriously for him, he realised that his warehouse, the biggest storehouse of fabric in Greece, was in the path of the flames.