The Thread

by Victoria Hislop

  It was clear that through Gourgouris’ tip-offs, all the men he had listed had been arrested. The first three might just have been imprisoned, but the others, Katerina knew without doubt, would then have been sent to Poland, or even murdered on the spot.

  Now she knew. The gratitude her husband had been shown by the German officer was for these acts of betrayal and collaboration.

  She closed the file, and for half an hour or more sat at the desk with her head in her hands, paralysed with shock and indecision. She could not reveal what she had found, and yet how could she live with the knowledge? How could she continue to live with this man?

  Replacing the file in the drawer, she got up and left the room. The terrible mistake she had made weighed heavily on her. No one had forced her to marry Grigoris Gourgouris and she would have to suffer the consequences of her own stupidity. There was no one else to blame.

  She went into the kitchen, closed all the windows and shutters and turned on the dim table lamp. As she mechanically began to prepare the evening meal, tears of anger and frustration poured down her face and she could scarcely see what she was doing.

  Thump-thump-thump-thump . . .

  The knife crashed down again and again onto the chopping board.

  Thump-thump-thump-thump . . .

  Through the mist of her tears all she could see was the flash of metal. For a mere fraction of a second, she pictured herself plunging the sharp blade into her chest. It seemed to her that it would provide instant relief from the self-loathing with which she had been seized. Never before had she felt this strange urge to punish herself. It lasted only a few seconds but she was amazed by how it had nearly seduced her. No, she told herself, you must face the consequences of what you have done.

  She continued to dice the vegetables, but inevitably, the combination of anger, lack of concentration and a sharp knife was a dangerous one. With some inevitability, she sliced through her finger.

  She dropped the knife and gripped her hand tightly, hoping to stem the copious bleeding. She had no idea there was so much blood in a finger. The pure white mound of chopped onions was now spotted with crimson.

  The pain and the shock of the cut triggered uncontrollable sobs and she did not hear the opening and closing of the front door. When Gourgouris walked in she was vainly attempting to bandage her finger in a cloth.

  ‘Ah, my dear. What on earth is wrong?’ he said, approaching with open arms in order to embrace her.

  Katerina ducked to avoid him. His vast bulk repelled her more than ever. Her crying stopped. She was determined to keep her dignity in front of this man.

  ‘I’ve cut myself,’ she said, concealing the wound ‘That’s all. It’s nothing.’

  ‘Well, I can see you won’t be able to make the dinner now,’ he said with mild disgust, seeing that blood was already soaking through the cloth. ‘Would you mind if I went straight out to eat? Grigoris is absolutely famished.’

  As he spoke, Gourgouris was rubbing his stomach. Referring to himself in the third person was one of his many annoying habits. He was like a vast, jovial child and yet, beneath this exterior, she now knew there was someone very different.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m feeling faint. I think I had better go upstairs.’

  She could not even look at Gourgouris and was relieved that he was leaving the house again. His absence would give her more time to think.

  When he returned late that night, Katerina lay still and feigned sleep until she heard the sound of his snoring. A gut full of rich food and brandy was guaranteed to keep him asleep until morning.

  The horrifying discovery of the afternoon went round and round again in her mind, as did the question of how she should respond. Did everyone at the workshop know that Gourgouris’ ‘acquisition’ was a reward for collaborating with the Nazis? Who could she tell and was there any point in revealing what she knew? She remembered that a few collaborators had been tried and almost immediately pardoned, or given perfunctory sentences. The crime of being a Communist was still considered a much more serious one than being a collaborator.

  The following morning she kept her eyes shut until Gourgouris had gone and then swiftly dressed and left for Irini Street. There was one person with whom she must share this terrible burden.

  Eugenia listened with dismay.

  ‘I am so sorry. I am so, so sorry,’ she kept repeating over and over again, shaking her head and full of pity for Katerina. ‘If I’d had any idea, I would have stopped you marrying him.’

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ said Katerina. ‘It’s nobody’s fault except mine. I made the decision and I’ve got to live with it.’

  ‘There must be something we can do,’ said Eugenia. ‘You could come and stay here for a while.’

  ‘He would find me,’ said Katerina. ‘And I would have to explain. I should never have opened the drawer.’

  ‘Well, you can’t turn back the clock,’ said Eugenia.

  ‘I know . . .’

  ‘You discovered something you would rather not have known,’ she said. ‘But that something was true. And perhaps it’s better that you know?’

  ‘I found him repulsive enough before. But now . . .’ Katerina’s elbows were on the table and her head rested in her hands as she cried. Her right hand was still crudely bandaged. ‘. . . now I know he’s a murderer.’

  ‘You must try not to think of him like that. There are collaborators all around us in this city.’

  ‘But I am actually married to one!’

  ‘Well, I don’t think you should do anything rash,’ advised Eugenia. ‘Unless you are going to leave him, which you can’t.’

  Katerina was now very sure of one thing. Anyone who had told her that there was a possibility of love developing for Gourgouris had been wrong. In its place, hatred had grown instead.

  ‘Let me look at your finger. Come on, take off that bandage.’

  The wound was still raw and open, and Katerina winced as Eugenia bathed it.

  ‘Are you sure you shouldn’t have this seen to by a doctor?’ she asked.

  ‘No, I am sure it will heal up. And as soon as it does, I am going to tell Gourgouris that I want to go back to the workshop. At least for a few hours every afternoon. It will drive me mad being in that house all day. Locked up in there, with all those thoughts.’

  Katerina left Irini Street, determined to ask her husband that evening about returning to work.

  ‘Well, you can come in for a few hours a day as long as you can manage the house properly,’ he said, with some reluctance. ‘That’s your priority, and looking after your Kyrios Gourgouris.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘We’ve had plenty of applications for the maid’s position, so that will be one worry out of the way,’ he said.

  ‘Good,’ Katerina replied.

  She kept her conversations with this despicable man as brief as possible and when he asked her what was wrong, she told him that her hand was bothering her.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Gourgouris, ‘You’d better not come back to the workshop until it’s healed. It’s not really the right time to start a fashion for red bridal gowns.’

  He followed this with a toothy grin, amused by his joke, and did not seem to notice that she did not smile back.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  MANY KILOMETRES AWAY, in the mountains outside Ioannina, Dimitri was now in charge of a constantly overstretched medical team. He had heard that Thessaloniki was being shelled by the Democratic Army and though he yearned to be there, for once he was glad to be far away. He would find it hard to attack his own city, the place inhabited by the people he loved most in the world.

  Within the city itself, these attacks were not disrupting life unduly, and the workshop was carrying on as normal. Katerina began her morning shifts at the workshop and the women in the finishing room seemed pleased by her return. For a few days, she wondered if any of them knew the circumstances of Gourgouris’ purchase of the business, but she did not ask.
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br />   Each day, at eight o’clock sharp, she began work in the finishing room and left at midday so that she would have plenty of time to make dinner. Gourgouris’ interest in food bordered on addiction and it was the main task he expected her to fulfil.

  A few weeks after her return to work she was asked to visit Kyria Komninos. Olga still wore black, but she had regained a little weight since Katerina had last seen her and, as a consequence, required some new outfits.

  The two women had not seen each other since Katerina had got married and Olga was full of questions.

  ‘Pavlina told me you had a lovely dress, Katerina. And did you enjoy your wedding day?’

  Katerina tried not to think about the ceremony and the words she had spoken before God that committed her, for life, to Gourgouris.

  ‘It was fine,’ she said, noncommittally.

  ‘And tell me about your house, Katerina. It’s one of the villas in Sokratous Street, Pavlina tells me. Have you learned to cook?’

  ‘I have,’ replied Katerina. ‘The kitchen has all modern conveniences, even one of those new electric cookers.’

  ‘But it doesn’t do the cooking for you, does it? You still have to do all the hard work, I suspect.’

  ‘Yes, I do. And Kyrios Gourgouris is quite keen on his food.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ said Olga. She smiled at Katerina but noticed that not even a flicker of a smile came back.

  She mentioned her observations to Pavlina later that day.

  ‘She wasn’t quite how I would expect a newlywed to be,’ she commented.

  ‘I agree. She seemed glum,’ said Pavlina. ‘But she wasn’t madly in love to start with, was she?’

  ‘No, but I hoped she would grow to like Kyrios Gourgouris a little more as time went on,’ replied Olga.

  ‘Well, it’s still early days,’ said Pavlina.

  ‘I suppose she might not be feeling well,’ ventured Olga.

  ‘You mean, she could be having a baby? That would be quick!’

  ‘It’s not impossible, is it?’

  ‘No, but I think she would have mentioned it to me, that’s all,’ replied Pavlina, with a slightly proprietorial tone.

  ‘Well, I have asked her to come back again next week, so let’s hope she seems a bit better then.’

  When Katerina returned, Pavlina noticed that she looked even more lacklustre than on the previous visit. Pavlina looked for obvious signs of pregnancy but there were none to be seen. The spark had simply gone out of the seamstress. She recalled so clearly seeing Katerina for the first time. It was the day when Eugenia and the girls arrived in Irini Street and even then the six-year-old child, with her open, innocent face, had seemed luminescent. When everyone around her was fearful or suspicious, the girl in the pale, smocked dress somehow shone. All these years later a light had been turned out. The child who had always skipped rather than walked had turned into a woman who seemed to drag her feet. The sparkle in her eye and the readiness of her smile had vanished, as if all the energy had been sapped out of her.

  It was mid-August and the hottest day yet that summer. The sea was flat and silvery, reflecting a colourless hazy sky. Having welcomed Katerina in, Pavlina offered her a cold drink at the kitchen table.

  ‘Are you all right, Katerina? You seem quiet.’

  ‘I’m fine, Pavlina. It’s just so humid today.’

  ‘Are you sure that’s all it is? I thought there might be something wrong. Is everything all right with Kyrios Gourgouris?’

  ‘Yes,’ Katerina answered abruptly. She did not want to break the promise she had made to herself: to endure without complaint. ‘Everything is fine.’

  Katerina got up, wanting to escape from Pavlina’s interrogation.

  ‘Can I go and see Kyria Komninos?’

  She went upstairs with the two dresses over her arm and met Olga on the landing.

  ‘Hello, Kyria Komninos,’ she said, consciously trying to inject some enthusiasm into her greeting.

  ‘Good morning, Katerina. Shall we go into my dressing room?’

  Katerina followed her and soon was pinning the darts and measuring for the length of sleeves and hem. Normally they would have chatted during these sessions, but Katerina’s furrowed brow deterred Olga from striking up conversation.

  Olga did not want to pry, but it was obvious that something was wrong. It did not need to be articulated: Katerina was unhappy and she knew instinctively that it was something to do with Grigoris Gourgouris. The smug, self-satisfied man who had sat at her dining table on several occasions laughing at his own dreadful jokes must have something to do with this sadness that hovered over her like a cloud. Olga knew about unhappy marriage and recognised the air of muted resignation. Silently, she felt a bond with the young woman. Both of them had made the same mistake and now had to live out their life sentences.

  Katerina looked up from her work and noticed a framed photograph of Dimitri on the chest of drawers. It was the same as the one that Pavlina had given her and was the only one of him in the Niki Street mansion.

  Olga saw Katerina looking at it.

  ‘He was so handsome, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Katerina tentatively. ‘Very. And brave too.’

  There were tears in her eyes as she spoke. She was looking at the face of someone who had courageously fought to get the Germans out of Greece, and that night she would be sharing a bed with someone who would happily have had them stay. A collaborator. She was almost choked with shame.

  Katerina came and went from the Komninos house a few times over the following few weeks. Pavlina always tried to give her a chance to tell her why she was unhappy, but the modistra did not want to confide.

  It was over two years now since Dimitri’s death and Olga was coming out of mourning. Katerina was there one day pressing a new skirt in pale blue with white polka dots.

  ‘Won’t it be nice to wear some colour?’ asked Katerina.

  ‘I’m not so sure,’ Olga replied. ‘It’s going to feel strange.’

  Pavlina appeared at the door of the bedroom, flushed. She had run up the stairs and was breathless, with emotion as well as exertion.

  ‘Kyria Komninos . . . I have to speak to you. Something has happened.’

  ‘Pavlina! What? What’s wrong?’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong. But it’s such a shock. It’s such a shock.’

  ‘Pavlina, tell me what’s the matter!’ There was a note of rising irritation in her mistress’s voice.

  Katerina stood, slightly awkwardly, holding the skirt. Pavlina was standing in the doorway, so she could not just slip out.

  ‘I don’t know how to tell you this . . . b-but . . .’

  ‘Pavlina, what is it?’ Olga was running out of patience.

  The housekeeper was behaving very strangely indeed, and was now crying uncontrollably. It was hard to tell whether they were tears of joy or grief.

  ‘I know he’s dead. But . . .’

  Katerina saw there was someone now standing behind Paulina. A man.

  Olga fainted. It was Katerina who spoke his name.

  ‘Dimitri?’ she said with tears streaming down her face.

  ‘Yes, it’s me.’

  When Olga came to, her son was sitting beside her on the bed.

  ‘I’m sorry it was such a surprise,’ he said. ‘I was going to write first but that seemed too dangerous. So, I just came . . .’

  Mother and son held each other in a long embrace. Then he turned and took Katerina’s hands to his lips and kissed them.

  ‘Katerina mou,’ he said. ‘My Katerina.’

  ‘You gave us all such a shock,’ she said. ‘But I’m so happy to see you.’

  Pavlina had gone downstairs to bring water for Olga and now returned with four glasses.

  Olga lay propped up on pillows and the others sat on low upholstered chairs around the bed.

  ‘But we had a letter . . . from the Communist headquarters,’ Olga said. ‘How could they make such a mistake?’


  ‘Perhaps they didn’t, Mother,’ he said cautiously.

  After a moment’s pause he asked when his father would be home.

  ‘He is away. There is a silk factory in Turkey he is trying to buy,’ answered Olga.

  Over the course of the next few hours, he broke the other side of the story to his mother. Though she was fragile he could not protect her from this truth.

  He revealed where he had been since the Democratic Army had been formed and told them things that the newspapers did not report about the continually raging civil war. There was much that he was selective about revealing but he did admit that there had been unnecessary brutality and that he often found himself trying to patch up the victims, whichever side they were on. When someone was sick or dying he tried not to differentiate. Pain was pain, whoever was suffering it.

  ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen,’ he said. ‘Things are going well for us at the moment. I just do my best out there. There are people dying on both sides and it’s hateful and pointless – but I can’t walk away from it now. I still believe that those on the Right should be sharing power with the Left.’

  ‘And what about the children we have read about – the ones who are being taken from their parents and sent to Communist countries?’ asked Pavlina. ‘Is it true?’

  ‘Some of that is propaganda, but there is some truth in it,’ replied Dimitri. ‘It’s meant to keep children safe, not to indoctrinate them.’

  ‘Your father was convinced that you were a Communist,’ said Olga. ‘And for him, communism is the great evil that wants to take over this country.’

  ‘There are plenty who are committed Communists, but I’m not one of them, Mother,’ he said gently. ‘And I have no intention of going to live in a Communist country. Greece is my patrida and it’s for Greece that I have been fighting for all this time.’

  The afternoon wore on and the four of them stayed in the bedroom. Pavlina came and went with plates of food and nothing could have seemed more natural than for Katerina to be there with them. Olga could not help noticing that the modistra had regained her lost smile. When she looked at Dimitri her eyes shone.