The Thread (27 page)

‘As far as I’m concerned, the tougher the measures, the better!’

He directed this comment straight at Dimitri, certain that he would get a reaction.

For Olga’s sake, Dimitri did not respond to this provocation. He was afraid of saying something regrettable that he might not wish his mother to hear but he knew his father was testing him, pushing him to the limit. While Olga was there, Konstantinos Komninos knew he was safe.

Dimitri cut into his meat, fantasising that its glinting blade was being driven into his father’s flesh. Still chewing, he got up.

‘I must go,’ he said.

‘Where are you going on a Sunday afternoon?’ asked his father aggressively. ‘Won’t the library be shut?’

‘I’m meeting some friends.’

‘What a shame,
agapi mou
!’ Olga said, ‘Pavlina has made your favourite
glyko
.’

‘Will you save me a piece,
mana mou
?’ he said, leaning down to kiss the top of her head. ‘I’m sorry I have to go.’

He was out on the street within a second and was soon hastening towards the kafenion where he had agreed to meet Elias and Vassili. As he passed the window he could see there was someone else with them. Katerina.

Dimitri had been walking fast but his heart was beating more furiously than normal as he opened the door.

It was not so common to see women in this kafenion, so Katerina hastily explained why she was there.

‘I had to do a dress-fitting at a customer’s house,’ she told him, ‘just one street from here, and Elias persuaded me to come here for a coffee afterwards.’

‘On a Sunday? Isn’t that a day of rest?’

‘Not always, when you’re working for Kyrios Moreno,’ she said laughingly, picking up her bag. ‘Anyway, I hope to see you again soon, Dimitri.’

‘Shall I walk you home?’

The words came with complete spontaneity and Dimitri was immediately embarrassed by his offer. It was obvious that Elias should accompany her. He lived in the same street.

‘No, but thanks,’ she laughed. ‘It’s still light. I am fine on my own.’

‘Are you sure?’ he said.

Much to his surprise, she changed her mind.

‘Well, actually, it would be nice. You aren’t coming home yet, are you, Elias?’

Elias shook his head.

It was not far to Irini Street, and Dimitri found himself trying to slow the pace.

As they walked, Katerina talked of the Moreno family. Kyria Moreno had taught her almost every technique she knew now, and each day she was given new opportunities to extend her skills. She spoke about her craft with passion.

‘I think of those girls in the tobacco factories, doing the same thing day in, day out and I know I would die if I had to do it,’ she said. ‘Every single hour is different in my work. There are dozens of different kinds of stitch and every time I do one of them it’s in a different colour, on a new fabric, in a new combination. The result is never the same twice.’

‘A bit like music?’ reflected Dimitri.

‘Yes! I suppose it’s just like that,’ she laughed.

‘There are only eight notes, but they can be put together in thousands of different ways! So you’re like Mozart, but with threads rather than notes?’ Dimitri smiled at this image of Katerina. ‘Elias says you were a child prodigy too, just like Mozart.’

Katerina blushed. Perhaps because of the mention of Elias. Dimitri was not sure and tried not to think about the amount of time they spent together.

‘I don’t know very much about Mozart, but I think he might be exaggerating.’

Their walk home was over all too quickly. Katerina’s lively, unselfconscious conversation had charmed him. It seemed to him that something lit her up from inside. Her eyes smiled as much as her mouth and even the way she walked seemed to suggest happiness.

During the following days, he realised he was thinking of Katerina and hoping to see her. An image of her sat in the back of his mind and he did not push it away. Katerina exemplified something to him that he probably already knew: that there was not always a link between happiness and wealth. His own ill ease and the knowledge of the fortune that waited for him was proof in itself of that.

There was, however, a link between starvation and unrest. In Thessaloniki, many were on the breadline and trouble was inevitably brewing.

Vassili was bringing daily updates via his father. Temperatures in the street were rising as they moved into the month of May; the sweetness of spring was turning into the sizzling heat of summer and with that, the population was losing its patience and making demands. There was talk of a widespread strike.

‘Thessaloniki is on the edge of revolution,’ reported Vassili to his
parea
, in a state of high excitement. ‘The tobacco workers are going out on strike! Tomorrow! We have to be there to support them.’

They had no choice. They had to support the exploited, the underdog, the people who were being paid less for a week’s work than the wealthy were paying for a meal in the city’s expensive hotels. Vassili had taken Dimitri around plenty of the areas where they lived and now it was time to show some solidarity.

They met the next day at the university and then set off in a group towards the town hall. Within minutes they found themselves in the flow of a mighty human river. There was a sense of excitement: a sunny day in the country that had invented democracy, an open protest on the street. It seemed right.

‘This is how we show them what we feel!’ said Vassili. ‘The government can’t ignore this, can they?’ He had to shout above the noise of the crowd to be heard by his friends.

Word was going round that they had been joined by workers from the trams and railways as well as dock and electricity workers. The desire to protest had spread like an epidemic and there were more than twenty thousand people on the streets.

Vassili was euphoric. ‘This could work, you know,’ he said. ‘This is people power!’

Eventually, the demonstrators went their separate ways.

In an untimely encounter with his father that evening, Dimitri heard something unwelcome.

‘Well,’ he said handing his hat to Pavlina, but looking directly at his son. ‘You’ll be pleased to know that Metaxas has given the police freedom of action!’

Dimitri tried not to react. He did not want his father to know that he had been out on the street that day.

‘That seems excessive,’ he replied.

‘Not in my view, Dimitri, not in my view.’

Dimitri said nothing.

‘Even better, he has imposed martial law. It’s the only way, with those sort of people.’

Even the way his father said ‘those sort of people’ made Dimitri want to spit, but his strength was in being able to restrain himself. He always allowed his father the final word. It was almost a joke with himself that he permitted it.

‘Stay off the streets, tomorrow, won’t you?’

Konstantinos knew that he had demonstrated that day. Some spectator had spotted Dimitri and reported it to him.

The following day began in the same way. A group of students, Dimitri included, gathered and set off towards the centre of Thessaloniki to join various other groups.

The atmosphere was very different. In the centre of the city, protesters shouting ‘Long Live the Strike’ stood in a phalanx opposite police and soldiers. For a while they just looked at each other. The atmosphere was strangely still, but full of aggression.

Vassili, eager to be at the centre of the action, slithered his way into the heart of the crowd. Dimitri tried to follow but his way was blocked by the sudden surging density of protesters. There was a roar as they moved forward in one concerted action.

Then, as if to acknowledge that they might be losing control, the police opened fire.

From where he stood, Dimitri did not see anything but the reverse motion of the crowd as they moved backwards, some of them turning round in an attempt to escape. There was chaos, panic, utter confusion, total disbelief. The police had opened fire on an unarmed crowd.

People fled in every direction, screaming, punching out with their arms to escape, Dimitri’s student friends among them. There was no time to look out for each other.

No one knew what was happening, nor what was going to happen, but they had an animal instinct for self-preservation and one or two people got knocked down in the stampede. Dimitri found himself in an alleyway. All the nearby shops and cafés were shuttered so there was nowhere to retreat to. He ran blindly and kept on running. The police would be arresting demonstrators and he knew they would behave brutally to their prisoners.

With his legs almost buckling beneath him from exertion and fear, he noticed he was close to Irini Street. He knocked on Kyria Moreno’s door.

There he stayed for a few hours, feeling safe but all the while anxious for the friends he had been with. Eventually, when he thought that the police would have given up trying to find perpetrators, he got up to leave. He took a glance up and down the street to check it was safe, but also, as he admitted to himself, to see if Katerina might be there, and then walked briskly back to Niki Street.

His mother was overjoyed to see him.

‘Dimitri!’ she said, hugging him. He could feel her warm tears dripping down her face and on to his shirt. ‘You were there, weren’t you?’

‘I’m sorry, Mother, I’m really sorry. You must have been so worried.’

‘All I know is that people were killed,’ she said. ‘Pavlina just came in with the news … I thought one of them might be you.’

‘Oh my God!’ said Dimitri, pulling away from his mother. ‘None of us had weapons.’

‘And lots of others were badly wounded,’ she added. ‘I’m just so glad you are here.’

‘Vassili was at the front of the crowd. I need to see if I can find him.’

Dimitri bolted from the house and ran through the streets towards the hospital. There was debris everywhere, evidence of the panic that had ensued after the police had turned their guns on the demonstrators.

A search through the wards told him that his friend was not among the wounded and, in trepidation, he went to the nearby morgue. A doctor at the hospital told him that this was where the dead had been taken.

As he approached the building, he saw a familiar, haggard face. It was Vassili’s father.

‘He’s not there!’ he cried, hugging Dimitri and weeping with relief. ‘He’s not there!’

‘And he’s not in the hospital, either!’ said Dimitri.

‘He’s not? I was just about to go there.’

‘You don’t need to. And he hasn’t been home?’

‘No,’ said Vassili’s father. ‘There’s only one other place I can think of.’

They realised that Vassili must have been arrested.

‘I shall go to the gaol,’ said the older man. ‘But you mustn’t come. It’s an unnecessary risk.’

The following day saw an outpouring of grief for the dead. Thousands came to mourn. Twelve flower-strewn corpses were carried on open biers through the streets and people wept copiously for the martyrs and for the dozens of wounded who lay in the hospital. Those who were in the funeral procession came to lament the demise of their freedom, as well as the death of their friends. Petals carpeted the place where the protesters had been mown down.

When further strikes were scheduled, it was the excuse that Metaxas had been waiting for. He informed the King that the country was facing a Communist plot. On 4 August, he was given permission to declare martial law. Greece was now a dictatorship.

The heat was oppressive and that evening the mercury had still not fallen below thirty-five degrees. Olga had retired to bed early.

Dimitri found his place at the dinner table had been moved round so that he was opposite his father. Pavlina was yet to serve the first course but the wine had already been poured.

Konstantinos Komninos picked up his glass.

‘I would like to raise a toast,’ he said.

For once, Dimitri met his father’s look.

Stubbornly, he did not reach for his glass but continued to stare into the cold eyes that were locked onto his.

‘To law and order,’ said Komninos. ‘To the dictatorship.’

He was not smiling, but there was a triumphal glint in his eye.

Was it self-control or cowardice, wondered Dimitri, that prevented him from smashing the decanter into his father’s face?

Come on! Do it!
Komninos’ expression seemed to taunt.

Wordlessly, carefully, Dimitri got up and left the room. Although flames of pure hatred licked at his heart, he would not allow his father the satisfaction of a reaction.

Konstantinos Komninos heard the distant slam of the front door and continued to eat his dinner, alone. Out in the street, Dimitri vomited into the gutter.

E
XACTLY AS DIMITRI
feared and precisely as his father hoped, Metaxas introduced further suppression of the unions and gave the police additional powers. Communists and left-wing activists were rounded up and put into prisons camps. Torture was used to extract confessions or to make prisoners name other Communists.

For several months, Vassili remained in prison. No one had been allowed to see him, and Dimitri and his friends met up with his father on many occasions to discuss what they could do. His warning was always stark.

‘I know you aren’t party members,’ he said, ‘but if you go to visit they’ll still mark you down as Communists. Keep away – that’s the best thing to do.’

One of the law professors campaigned for his release, even testifying that his student had been on the way to his class when he was caught up in the demonstration. Six weeks after his arrest, Vassili’s father received a letter. He opened it with excitement, expecting it to contain news of his son’s release.

‘Dear Kyrios Filipidis,’ it said. ‘We wish to inform you that your son passed away on 14 June. Cause of death: tuberculosis. If you wish to collect his personal effects, you may do so by the 18th of this month.’

He received the letter on that date.

Vassili’s father was too stricken by grief to visit the gaol, so Dimitri and his friend Lefteris went on his behalf. Dimitri knew that to sign his name on the form incriminated him, but he was proud to be the friend of such a martyr.