The Thread (35 page)

‘Isaac,’ said his father, ‘we don’t have a choice.’

‘Who exactly has instructed us to wear them? And how can they make us?’

‘Rabbi Koretz has told us to wear them,’ said his mother quietly.

‘The Rabbi!’

‘He hasn’t made the rule up, Isaac,’ appealed his father. ‘He is simply the intermediary.’

‘And what else has he been told to tell us?’

Isaac’s hatred of the Germans was much deeper than his parents’. He had been on the receiving end of their cruelty for many months and had known the extremes to which they could go. He had kept most of the details from them.

He saw his parents exchange glances.

‘It looks,’ said his father, ‘as though we have to move house.’

‘From Irini Street?’ said Katerina, aghast.

‘We think so,’ said Kyria Moreno, in tears. ‘We don’t really know the details yet.’

‘But why would the Germans want you to move? Are you sure it isn’t just a rumour?’

Isaac had left the room, unable to conceal his anger, and Katerina and Roza continued to sew the stars in silence.

Within a few days, the news had been confirmed. The Moreno family, along with every single one of their employees, apart from Katerina, would be moving to an area near the railway station.

‘Well, I’m sure they have their reasons,’ said Saul Moreno. ‘And I expect they will explain it all to us in due course.’

Kyrios Moreno’s blind faith in those who guided his life, particularly the chief rabbi, was unwavering. He believed in good sense and was quite certain that at the heart of this new directive, there would be an explanation.

The Jews had been instructed to make a list of their possessions and most of them began, dutifully, to carry this out.

‘It’s for some kind of tax they’re going to impose on us,’ muttered Kyrios Moreno. He was beginning to have his suspicions, but still hid them from his wife.

None of his employees came into the workshop the next day. They were all at home, gathering their possessions, surveying their valuables and wondering what to take with them to their new homes. They had been told that the accommodation was likely to be more limited than where they currently lived.

Katerina and Eugenia had visits from several of the Moreno employees that night.

‘Can you keep this safe for us?’

‘Will you look after this for me, just until we’re back in our homes?’

‘Would you mind hiding something? Not for long, I hope!’

There was false cheer and a level of light-heartedness in their requests. Katerina and Eugenia found themselves the guardians of brooches, rings and pendants. They had nowhere safe to put such valuables themselves, but would sew them inside cushions where nobody would ever find them. Each one was embroidered with an elaborate cipher, formed of their owner’s initials.

The following day, Saul and Roza visited their neighbours. Katerina was expecting them. In his arms, like a baby, Kyrios Moreno carried something that she recognised. It was the quilt within which the ancient
parochet
was concealed. She took it from him without saying anything and went upstairs to spread it over her bed. Kyria Moreno handed Eugenia the two embroidered ‘samplers’.

‘Would you mind putting them on your wall?’ she asked.

‘Of course not,’ said Eugenia.

The other items they put in a trunk. Even if someone had been spying on Irini Street, nothing would have aroused their suspicions. The Morenos were moving house, and could not take everything with them. In fact, they had been obliged to leave many of their possessions behind. Several rugs, a bed, some chairs and a whole chest of linen were left inside number 7.

‘We’ll leave these for Elias,’ said Roza to her husband. ‘Perhaps he’ll be back before we are.’

Over the next few days, the streets around them were jammed with the chaos of moving wagons. House contents were piled vertically: chests, chairs, pots and pans, and often a table, balanced on top of everything else like a dead animal in a state of rigor mortis.

Sadness and despair filled the streets. The cascades of rain did not help. Everyone was bent double under their possessions and even the young looked old, reduced to a uniform herd with their matching yellow stars.

Mothers held on tightly to the hands of small children. With tens of thousands on the streets they could easily lose sight of them, and the unstable towers of possessions made everyone vulnerable to falling objects.

Since the departure of the Muslims, Irini Street had been a mixture of Christian and Jew, and the Christians did everything they could to help their departing friends, just as had been done for the Muslims twenty years before. There were embraces and sincere promises to visit.

‘I shall still see you tomorrow,’ said Katerina to a tearful Kyria Moreno. ‘Work carries on as normal, doesn’t it?’

‘Yes, my dear, I suppose it does,’ she replied wearily. She seemed to have aged by a decade overnight.

As Katerina watched the retreating figures of the Moreno family, one thought went through her mind. How would Elias know where to find his family when he returned? She hoped she would be there to tell him. There was never more than a day when her thoughts did not take her to the mountains.

On the surface of it, the following day was strangely calm in the Moreno workshop. Everyone arrived as normal. There was not much work to do, so Kyrios Moreno set the task of making an inventory of everything that still remained, down to the last pin, button and scrap of lace. It kept everyone busy and resulted in meticulously clean and tidy premises. For several years they had all been much too busy to undertake such a task. Kyrios Moreno would almost have considered it an indulgence.

The day after, Katerina arrived at the workshop punctually as usual. It was strange walking there alone.

When she turned the corner, she knew immediately that something was wrong. All her colleagues were standing in the street. Although none of them could translate it, they were gathered around staring at a large notice, in German, which had been pinned to the door. A heavy padlock had been crudely screwed into the doorframe.

Katerina shared their utter dismay. The workshop had been seized by the Germans. Even without being able to read a word of the language, there was no mistaking what had happened.

For some of them there was a sense of great indignation, even of anger. Isaac was pulling at the padlock.

‘How dare they?’ he screamed. ‘Let’s just rip this thing off!’

‘Calm yourself, Isaac,’ said his father, gently touching his arm. ‘I think we should go home.’

‘Home!’ he screamed.

The word rang out around the street. It was loaded with yearning and grief. For the first time in her life, Katerina saw a man break down in uncontrollable tears. It was a shocking sight.

Everyone began to disperse, back to the area that had been established for the Jews, their new ghetto.

‘Come and see us soon, Katerina,’ said Kyria Moreno, trying to sound normal. ‘I think we should all leave here now.’

Katerina nodded, silently. She needed to be brave for her friends.

When they were first ghettoised, the Jews were obliged to return to their new accommodation before sunset. Within a short time, the rules changed. Wooden fences were erected around the entire area and the exits were guarded. They were no longer allowed to leave at all. Barbed wire over the fencing made sure of it.

The effect on Thessaloniki was immediate. Without the daytime circulation of fifty thousand of its inhabitants, whole areas had become ghost towns. Katerina was bereft.

One night at the beginning of March, Eugenia and Katerina were sitting close to the hearth eating dinner. It was about nine in the evening. They heard a quiet knock at the door. It was late for anyone to call and they looked at each other with trepidation.

The only people on the streets at this time tended to be soldiers or gendarmes. Eugenia shook her head and put a finger in front of her lips.

The knocking became more insistent. Whoever was outside was now banging hard on their door. They were not fooled by the silence within.

‘Kyria Eugenia!’

It was a familiar voice.

‘It’s Isaac!’ whispered Katerina, leaping up. ‘Quickly! We have to let him in.’

She ran over to the door and opened it. Isaac slipped into the room.

‘Isaac!’

His appearance was shocking. He had been thin when he went into the ghetto, but now his bones seemed about to break through his skin.

‘Come in, come in,’ said Eugenia.

He was shaking violently.

‘Are you hungry?’

He nodded and she ladled out a bowl of lentils for him.

For a few minutes, Isaac did not speak. He put the bowl up close to his face and drank the lentil stew straight down, like soup. He had not eaten for days and his desperation for food did not leave time for manners.

‘Give him some more,’ said Eugenia to Katerina. ‘Tell us what’s happened …’

Isaac told them that their rabbi, Rabbi Koretz, had appeared in the ghetto and announced that they were all to be taken to a new life. Trains were already leaving.

‘But where to?’ cried Katerina with disbelief.

‘Poland. Krakow.’

‘But why there? It’s so cold!’ said Katerina.

‘He says there’s work for us there. My parents were even allowed out to go to the bank. We’ve been told to exchange all our drachma for zlotys. And we’ve been given instruction on what to take on the journey.’

Eugenia and Katerina sat quietly, their brows knitted in concentration and concern.

‘Koretz is telling people it’s no different from the last time.’

‘What does he mean – “the last time”?’ asked Katerina.

‘He means that we were all moved in a huge mass once before, when our ancestors came here from Spain. And now it’s time to move on again. So it’s not really any different.’

‘I suppose there might be some truth in that,’ reflected Eugenia. She was mindful of her own enforced exile. She had made a new life, eventually.

‘So some of us decided to break out,’ said Isaac, defiantly. ‘The men I was with are planning to join the resistance.’

‘But won’t they get caught first?’ asked Eugenia. ‘Won’t your accents give you away?’

‘And what about the gendarmes? They are always stopping people for identification,’ added Katerina.

‘There are people selling false papers,’ answered Isaac.

It occurred to Eugenia why he had come. Fake identity was expensive and he would need his mother’s jewellery to pay for it. It was concealed inside the pillow that lay upstairs on her bed.

‘So do you need some money?’

‘No, that’s not what I’ve come for.’

Both women sat and looked at Isaac. He looked so frail and vulnerable. It was almost impossible to imagine how he had had the strength to climb the ghetto fence. Desperation must have urged him on.

‘I’ve decided to go back. The moment I was over the fence and in the street, I realised I had to return. I can’t let my parents go to Poland on their own. They’ll need me to look after them.’

Katerina knew Kyria Moreno so well now and could picture her anxiety.

‘I can imagine how worried your mother will be right at this moment,’ she said. ‘She’ll be so happy when you reappear.’

‘I just hope they won’t have left by the time I get back,’ he said. ‘People have started getting on the trains.’

‘If you’re going somewhere so cold, don’t you want to take some extra blankets or clothes? Your parents left plenty behind in the house.’

‘That’s really why I came back here,’ he said.

Eugenia and Katerina accompanied him into his family home. After only ten days, it had the air of somewhere already abandoned for a decade. Cobwebs that Kyria Moreno would have flicked away in a moment had appeared on the ceiling and there was an unmistakable smell of damp.

Isaac made straight for the wooden chest where he knew his parents had left some linen and bedclothes.

‘I’m going to stay here tonight,’ he said. ‘I’ve worked out that it would be much harder to get back in while it’s dark. One small noise and they’d have you. Once it’s daytime, there are plenty of other distractions for the guards, with people moving around and queuing up for food and trains.’

‘You can’t sleep in here,’ said Eugenia, with concern. ‘So why don’t you come and spend the night in our house?’

Isaac did not protest and within a moment they were back next door.

Eugenia noticed Isaac looking at the saucepan.

‘Please,’ she said, ‘help yourself. Finish it off. And then go and get some sleep.’

Like a man used to obeying orders, Isaac did as he was told and wearily climbed the narrow stairs.

Even while she had been watching Isaac lifting blankets out of the chest, Katerina’s imagination had been at work and as soon as she heard the sound of the door closing upstairs, she started cutting. One of the soft woollen rugs would make an ideal coat, and she had even planned how she would trim it and what sort of buttons she would use. She had twelve hours, and even with Eugenia’s help, time was of the essence.

When Isaac woke up, there was a coat on the end of his bed for his mother, a jacket for Esther and a warm padded waistcoat for his father. They were beautiful too. Both coats had quilted linings and were carefully edged. For the first time in months, something lifted his spirits. He could imagine the pleasure on their faces when they saw their names embroidered into the lining and the pomegranate motif that appeared on the collars. Their main worry in the past few days had been the climate they were going to encounter in their new home, and now they had the solution.

‘Perhaps I’ll be sending you orders from Poland!’ said Isaac smiling. ‘Thank you, thank you …’

Eugenia wrapped the folded garments in brown paper and, clutching the package under his arm, Isaac sauntered off down the street, back to the ghetto.

The two women watched him. They were tired after their long night of sewing. Katerina could have a sleep now as she no longer had a job to go to, but Eugenia must leave for the rug factory.

That evening they both agreed to walk down to the railway station. There was even a chance that they might be able to say goodbye to their friends. When they arrived they could see immediately that this would not be possible. The Germans were keeping everyone well away. From behind the fencing they could hear crying, the grating sound of train carriages being coupled and expulsions of steam into the air.