The Thread (45 page)

‘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.

M
ANY 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.

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.

The chimes of the clock had been drowned out by their conversation, but then Pavlina had gone downstairs and left the door open. Katerina counted the hour.

‘I have to go,’ she gasped.

‘Why so suddenly?’ asked Dimitri. ‘I will be going soon too.’

‘Because I have to get home and make dinner,’ she said. ‘And I haven’t even been to buy the meat.’

‘Eugenia won’t mind, will she?’

‘It’s not Eugenia,’ Katerina said, almost inaudibly. ‘I’m married now.’

‘Married!’ he exclaimed, and the word hung there for a moment. There was an unmistakable note of dismay in his voice.

Katerina noticed Dimitri glance down at her hands, where her wedding ring glinted on the third finger of her right hand, as if to check that she was telling the truth. If she could have torn it from her hand and hurled it through the open window, she would have done so. There was no point now.

‘So,’ she said abruptly, ‘I had better be going. I hope you’ll be able to come back soon.’

She left the house quietly and almost ran home, stopping briefly at the butcher. Her emotions were now at war within her.

Gourgouris was there when she arrived.

‘So, my sweet,’ he said, with quiet sarcasm, ‘Kyria Komninos needed you to sew some curtains as well, did she?’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Katerina. ‘We were talking. And suddenly it was late.’

‘And dinner? Did you think of dinner?’ he shouted. ‘I come home after a long day to an empty house. And no dinner!’

‘I did say I was sorry,’ Katerina said meekly.

‘I hope your talking was worthwhile,’ he spat, ‘because Grigoris doesn’t really enjoy peeling and slicing.’