The Thread

by Victoria Hislop

  Olga and Pavlina exchanged uneasy glances. There had been rumours about the fate of some of the Jews, but as yet no first-hand information.

  ‘And what about our house?’

  Half a decade of guerrilla warfare had toughened Elias almost to the point of brutality, but he was on the edge of breaking down. The plate of food that Pavlina had brought him lay untouched. It was hard to recognise him as the gentle young man who had been Dimitri’s closest friend.

  ‘What’s happened to our house?’ he demanded, almost aggressively, as though the two women were responsible. ‘Why are the windows all boarded up?’

  ‘I don’t know, Elias,’ said Pavlina, ‘but I think it might be to keep it safe.’

  She talked to him slowly and gently as though he were a simple child, and he responded with appropriate petulance.

  ‘I want to get in!’

  ‘Eugenia has a key. Wasn’t she there when you went?’

  ‘No. Her house was dark.’

  ‘She was probably asleep,’ said Pavlina gently. ‘She and Katerina tend to go to bed very early. Let’s go together first thing tomorrow.’

  ‘I have to get back to the dining room,’ said Olga. ‘But before I go, can I ask you something. Have you seen Dimitri?’

  ‘Not for a couple of years,’ he replied. ‘He was moved to a different unit. I thought he might be back here, with you.’

  Olga watched Elias. He was now devouring the food in front of him and she recalled how Dimitri had sat in the same chair the last time she had seen him, eating in the same ravenous way. She observed the movements of his jaw, the bone so close to the surface of the skin that she could see every muscle in his face moving up and down, side to side.

  Between mouthfuls, Elias told them more about the situation for the Left.

  ‘With everything that’s been going on, lots of the units have moved into the mountains. So it’s quite likely he’s up there.’

  The women watched him use a piece of bread to wipe every last trace of sauce from the plate. Pavlina already ladled him a second helping, but still he needed more. Then, as if to shock them, he looked up and made a gesture suggestive of throat-slitting.

  ‘They’re hunting us, Kyria Komninos,’ he said. ‘Like animals.’

  The emotion that he had shown a few moments earlier had vanished. In its place was something steel hard. He put down his fork and looked Olga straight in the eye.

  ‘I’ve heard stories, Kyria Komninos. I’ve heard that the Russians have found evidence that the Germans have killed thousands of Jews. Have you heard that?’

  Olga looked down at her feet before answering. ‘Yes, Elias, but we don’t know if it’s true. We hope it isn’t,’ she said. ‘Look, you should stay here tonight. But you will have to be careful. It will be difficult if Kyrios Komninos finds out that you are here.’

  Elias nodded and Olga left the room.

  ‘You can sleep on my sofa. It will seem like a feather bed after what you’ve been sleeping on!’ said Pavlina. ‘Kyrios Komninos leaves very early, so we’ll be safe to go after that.’

  ‘To my house?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Pavlina. ‘As I said, we’ll go first thing in the morning.’

  Elias slept fitfully, in spite of the relative comfort of Pavlina’s sofa. There was no depth to his slumber and his mind was active the entire night with images and visions without sequence or logic. The faces of his parents and brother appeared in bright flashes, laughing or screaming – he was not certain which – but the ill ease with which he awoke the following morning suggested that it had been the latter. These were nightmares, not dreams.

  As usual, Konstantinos Komninos left the house at six thirty. Elias heard the door slam and sprang out of bed. He had been awake for two hours. He shook Pavlina to wake her and within fifteen minutes they were on their way to Irini Street.

  It was a cold day so, before they left, Pavlina had run up to Dimitri’s room to find Elias a coat.

  ‘Two of you could fit into it,’ said Pavlina, ‘but at least it will keep you warm.’

  He looked ridiculous in the heavy cashmere coat with its big collar. Konstantinos Komninos had had it made for Dimitri at Moreno’s just before he began at university. He had hardly worn it, so it had the distinctive stiffness of an expensive but unworn garment.

  Katerina was leaving her house to take her brisk fifteen-minute walk to work when she saw Pavlina coming towards her, accompanied by a man. He looked strange, drowning inside a huge dark coat, but it took her only a second to recognise his features.

  ‘Elias! It’s me, Katerina.’

  ‘Hello, Katerina.’

  It was a strange encounter. Knowing where she was going, Katerina reddened with shame.

  ‘Pavlina says that Kyria Karayanidis might have a key to our house.’

  Katerina, who normally worried that she was going to be late, turned back into their house and called out for Eugenia.

  Eugenia was overjoyed to see Elias. With all the rumours that were circulating, she had resigned herself to the idea of never seeing any of the Morenos again.

  He was aware of being treated as though he had come back from the dead, but he did not dwell on it. He was impatient to see inside the house.

  ‘I’ve kept it as clean as I can,’ Eugenia explained. She was holding an oil lamp in an attempt to illuminate the almost empty room. The house no longer had electricity.

  Elias threw open the shutters but the dim dawn had brought little light.

  ‘But where is everything? Didn’t there used to be a big chair here? And where’s my mother’s linen trunk?’

  Eugenia remained silent. Elias did not seem to expect answers. He went upstairs and Eugenia remained below, listening to the sound of crisp, agitated footsteps marching from room to room. The bare floorboards magnified every sound.

  Soon he came running down again and his breath came out in a cloud of vapour in the chill of the room. Even in Dimitri’s coat, he shivered.

  ‘They’ve taken everything with them!’ he said indignantly. ‘Even my bed. Even the picture I had on my wall.’

  Eugenia was not going to disillusion him. It was better, in her view, that he should have an image of his parents carefully packing up their home to move to another country, rather than to know the truth: that the house had been pulled apart by looters when the Morenos had already left, almost empty-handed, for Poland.

  So she nodded. Katerina stood by her side, scarcely daring to breathe. Sooner or later, she knew, he would ask about the workshop.

  ‘Why don’t you come next door and I’ll make us some coffee?’ Eugenia said kindly.

  ‘Well, as far as I can see there’s nothing in here to make it with,’ he said sardonically.

  Eugenia remembered so clearly sweeping up the remnants of smashed cups on the morning after the house was broken into. Not even a fragment of Kyria Moreno’s china had survived.

  They followed her out and into the house next door. A wave of warmth from the stove enveloped them and soon the pan was boiling.

  ‘What are you planning to do, Elias?’

  ‘I may as well head north to find my parents,’ he said. ‘What else can I do? I’ve had it with fighting. I’ve really had it. I don’t like the people I am fighting for any more than the people I am fighting against.’

  His tone was of total disillusion.

  ‘Will you stay with us tonight?’ asked Eugenia, as she poured out the coffee. ‘Katerina and I can share a bed.’

  Elias was staring into his coffee grounds. He had almost forgotten Katerina was there.

  ‘I must be off now,’ she said. She almost confessed where she was going, but lost courage and slunk out of the house, sickened by guilt.

  For a few days and nights, Elias stayed in the house, eating, sleeping and sitting quietly by the stove. He had no desire to venture outside away from the warmth and security of the hearth. During those long hours he made the decision to go to Poland. He must find his family. All he req
uired was stamina and money, and Eugenia provided both. She fed him several times a day, as though he were a baby, and gave him the two gold brooches of Roza’s with which she had been entrusted. Elias would be able to sell them for his journey.

  He left the house for the first time in five days and walked with trepidation into the centre of the city, avoiding the empty Jewish areas and making sure that he did not pass the workshop.

  Katerina had confessed to him that she was working for the new ‘owner’ and he told her that he understood and accepted that life had to continue. If he said the words, he reasoned with himself, perhaps he would begin to believe them. He tried not to feel angry about what his parents had been obliged to leave behind. Bitterness was not a trait of either his father or mother, and he had a vision of them setting up a new tailoring business in Poland rather than dwelling on the injustice of their loss. They would be much too restless for retirement.

  Pavlina had smuggled some of Dimitri’s old clothes from Niki Street, and over a couple of evenings Katerina had adapted them to fit. By the time she had finished Elias looked quite respectable.

  As he strolled along, he felt strangely light-headed – invisible, even. He was almost entirely certain that he would not see anyone he knew and found great pleasure in blending into the crowd. It was a long time since he had walked a street without feeling the need to look over his shoulder.

  In one of the city’s thriving pawn shops, he waited patiently in a queue before exchanging the brooches for a pitiful sum, a tenth of what he knew they were worth. There was no point in arguing. The pawnbroker could sense how desperate he was for the money and might even lower his offer if the customer haggled. So many people used these shops as a conduit for stolen goods that their owners could generally get away with agreeing risibly small prices.

  Elias then went to make enquiries about his train journey and, strolling back towards Irini Street, he realised he was close to the kafenion he used to frequent with Dimitri. The comforting jangle of loose change in his trouser pocket spurred him to go in for a drink.

  Just for a moment, he felt his senses awaken to all the casual, taken-for-granted ingredients of normal life: the hiss of steam, the smell of a cigarette, the squeak and pop of a cork extracted from a cognac bottle, conversation, the scrape of a chair on the tiled floor. All these almost forgotten elements mingled together. He closed his eyes, this momentary reconnection with the past giving him hope for the future.

  It might be the last day he ever spent in Thessaloniki, but tomorrow he would be setting off for a new life. He sipped his cool beer. It was the best he had ever tasted.

  Elias had not noticed another man joining him at his table. The kafenion was crowded.

  ‘Jew?’ said the uniformed stranger.

  Memories of anti-Semitism stained Elias’ childhood memories and the man’s tone of voice brought back to him the hatred that he knew had always lurked beneath the civilised veneer of the city. His parents had done everything they could to protect him and Isaac, but on their way home from school they had often felt a vicious stare or occasionally the stinging blow of a well-directed stone.

  He was not going to deny his race now, though. Tomorrow he would be leaving Thessaloniki and he hoped this was the last time he would ever have to face such open dislike.

  ‘Yes, I’m Jewish,’ he answered defiantly.

  ‘S’pose you know all about it then?’

  Elias realised that he had misinterpreted the man’s tone. It had softened now.

  ‘All about what?’

  The gendarme scratched his head, slightly less sure of himself now. ‘You obviously don’t, then.’

  Elias shrugged, bemused but curious.

  ‘Well, you’re going to find out, so I might as well tell you.’ He leaned forward, conspiratorially. ‘Don’t know how you survived,’ he said, ‘because thousands didn’t.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  Elias could feel a slow wave of rising panic. It turned his stomach over before pausing at his chest, tightening it so that he could scarcely breathe.

  The man looked at him with alarm, realising the terrible obligation to continue.

  ‘I can’t believe you don’t know this,’ he began. ‘There was this bloke in here last night – it’s even been in the newspaper today.’

  Elias sat immobile, staring at the other man, who took a sip of his beer before continuing.

  ‘They gassed them. They took them on the trains and then when they got there they gassed them.’

  It was impossible for Elias to take this in. The words seemed to make no sense. He wanted them to change or to mean something else.

  ‘What do you mean? What do you mean?’

  ‘That’s what he said. This bloke who escaped. He says they gassed them and then they cremated them. In Poland.’

  The gendarme saw the young man, this frail young Jew, begin to rock back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, silently, his head buried in his hands.

  After what seemed an age, the rocking stopped and the gendarme put his arm around the stranger. He was as cold as the dead and, beneath his hand, he could feel the sharp edges of his shoulder blades. For thirty minutes they sat like this. People came and went and gave them curious stares of which they were unaware. The gendarme always came in for coffee at the end of his shift and people were vaguely curious about the young man whom he had befriended.

  Eventually, he felt Elias stir.

  ‘I’m going to take you home,’ said the man.

  The word was weighted with meaning. In this moment, Elias did not know who he was, where he was and, least of all, where his home was. It was as though he knew nothing at all. His rocking had taken him into a trance and he was numb in every cell and every sinew.

  ‘Let me take you home,’ urged the man.

  That word again. Home. What did it mean? How would he ever find it again?

  The name of the street where he had been born, whenever that was, wherever it was, he could not locate it. He knew there had been a room where he had slept with his brother, but beyond that there was no recall. The years of sleeping rough, mostly in the mountains, mostly feeling cold, those were still clear in his mind, but beyond that there was a black hole of amnesia.

  He tried to stand up but even his legs seemed unable to remember their function.

  ‘Look,’ said the man, ‘I’ll help you outside. I think you might need some fresh air.’

  Once outside, Elias’ head became clearer. He could see the sea and knew that he lived up the hill away from it.

  ‘I think it’s this way,’ he said, leaning heavily on the other man. As they walked he read the street signs, hoping that something might trigger a memory.

  Egnatia Street, Sofokleos Street, Ioulianou Street. He took in the signs.

  ‘Irini,’ he said dreamily. ‘Peace. That’s the name. Irini Street. Peace Street.’

  ‘I know it.’ said the man. ‘I’ll take you there. Don’t want you getting lost, do we?’

  When they got to Irini Street, the man asked which house was his.

  ‘That one,’ Elias muttered, pointing to number 7. ‘But I’m going to that one.’

  Still feeling that his mission was not yet accomplished, the stranger waited while Elias knocked on the door of Eugenia’s house.

  Within a second, both Eugenia and Katerina were standing at the open door. Having heard the reports about the fate of the Jews themselves, they had been anxiously awaiting Elias’ return. The news had spread fast and even though it was based on the evidence of a single person, no one doubted its veracity.

  Their ashen faces, frozen into an expression of pity, greeted him. It was almost more than he could stand and he pushed past them, almost rudely, into the house.

  Eugenia wanted to thank the man but he had already turned away by the time she called out. She looked at his retreating back and noticed his gendarme’s uniform. These were strange times, she reflected. Only a few months before and the same
man might have arrested Elias, but she could see from the brief glimpse she had got of his face that he had been moved by Elias’ plight.

  For a few weeks, more news began to drift back from Poland, verifying that the Jews had been exterminated on a massive scale. The handful of survivors who returned with first-hand information, the tell-tale tattooed number on their arms and horror stories of the fate of their fellow Jews, all reached the same conclusion: the city was not glad to have them back. Like Elias they returned to find their homes and businesses were no longer theirs and, whether, like Elias, they had been fighting as andartes during the occupation, or had been among the handful who survived the camps, Thessaloniki seemed to have no place for them.

  Katerina and Eugenia came and went to work. They crept about the house each evening, as though by being silent they could deny their existence. Elias was always asleep when they returned and the food that they had left for him in the morning was gone and the dishes he had used were washed and tidied away.

  For weeks, he had no desire to speak to his hosts. He knew that some Jews had been hidden throughout the occupation by Christian families. Elias felt betrayed by the world, but most of all let down by the neighbours who should have protected them.

  Eugenia and Katerina suspected that this was how he must feel and hoped that one day they might be able to explain. Their chance came one evening when they returned to find him sitting at the table, obviously waiting for them. He was clean-shaven and had a bag at his side.

  ‘I wanted to say goodbye,’ he said. ‘I’m leaving tonight.’

  ‘I’m sorry you’re going, Elias,’ said Eugenia.

  ‘You know you’re welcome to stay with us,’ said Katerina, ‘for as long as you like.’

  ‘There’s nothing to keep me here, Katerina. Only memories,’ he said, ‘and even the sweet ones have turned sour.’ His tone was accusatory.

  ‘Whatever you think,’ said Katerina, pleadingly, ‘your family went willingly. If they had asked us for help, we would have given it to them. I promise.’

  ‘The rabbi encouraged them, Elias. None of us had any idea what was going to happen.’ Eugenia was in tears.

  ‘So, where will you go?’ asked Katerina softly.