The Thread (48 page)

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘But I won’t be needing that. How long am I permitted to stay in the house?’

‘One month from your late husband’s death,’ he replied, glancing down at the document.

‘That’s fine,’ she said. ‘I shall be out before the end of the week.’

He was intrigued that this woman had been so shoddily treated, and yet she did not seem to care.

‘I think I must have been a very unsatisfactory wife,’ she said, sensing his curiosity. ‘But he was a very unsatisfactory husband too.’

With that, she got up and left the room. By the end of the day, her suitcase was packed and the house in Sokratous Street was locked up. As well as a few dresses, she had taken the quilt and her Singer sewing machine. That was all she would need. With a lightness of step, she walked up to the main road and found a taxi to take her to Irini Street. Eugenia was there to welcome her.

Although her pregnancy was now beginning to show, her nausea had passed and she had never felt happier or more full of life.

‘I wish I could put on something brighter to wear,’ she said to Eugenia. Her widow’s weeds felt rough and lifeless against her skin.

‘I think you should wear black for a while longer,’ advised Eugenia. ‘It will seem hasty otherwise.’

Eugenia’s advice was sound. In such a conservative city, it was important that Katerina was identified as a widow. In that way there would be no questions raised surrounding the paternity of her baby.

Katerina filled the final few months of her confinement sewing for her soon-to-be born: bonnets, bibs, vests, gowns, jackets, blankets. Everything was sewn by hand and personalised.

When she was alone, she sang to her unborn child. Perhaps a thousand times the words of her favourite song drifted out across the air, given new meaning by her condition:

‘Wake up, my little one, and hear

The minor key of dawning day.

For you this music has been made

From someone’s cry, from someone’s soul.’

As soon as people noticed her changing shape, their sympathy and concern for her increased.

‘What a tragedy,’ they said, ‘to be a pregnant widow.’

In the final few weeks of pregnancy, she spent many hours sitting on the doorstep with Eugenia, enjoying the gentle warmth of the early autumn in the quiet cobbled street. At their feet was a basket of different coloured cottons, packets of needles and some snippets of ribbon and lace. Both of them were intent on getting everything ready in time.

Eugenia had woven a blanket in pale colours and was now crocheting a decorative edge.

‘All done,’ she said. ‘That should keep him snug. You know how damp these winters can be.’

The younger woman put down her embroidery, closed her eyes and turned her face to the sun.

In spite of her smooth, unlined skin, Katerina had shadows beneath her eyes that were as black as the widow’s weeds that shrouded her from head to foot. She picked up the little gown that was resting on her lap and resumed her task. With a length of blue thread she added the final touch to the motif on the yoke. It was a tiny butterfly, and all that remained to be done were his antennae. Then he would be perfect.

‘There,’ she said, with a note of finality. ‘I’m going in to have a rest now.’

She gave Eugenia a knowing smile, one that overflowed with joy and anticipation.

‘Something tells me it won’t be long,’ she added.

The following day, 5 September 1950, her baby was born. She named him Theodoris – ‘Gift from God’.

K
ATERINA REJOICED, KNOWING
that this beautiful, silky-haired boy belonged to the man she loved. Pavlina gasped when she first saw him.

‘He’s the image of his father,’ she said. ‘Exactly what Dimitri looked like when he was born!’

During the statutory forty days she spent at home with her newborn, some of the
modistras
from the Gourgouris workshop called in to Irini Street to admire him and to bring gifts that they had sewn.

‘It’s such a shame,’ they said, ‘that his father isn’t here to see him.’

‘Yes,’ said Katerina, with a smile as mysterious as the Mona Lisa’s.

Pavlina came too and brought gifts from Olga.

‘Isn’t even the birth of a grandson enough to bring her out of the house?’ asked Eugenia.

‘Sadly not,’ replied Pavlina dourly. ‘If you ask me, there will only ever be one reason for her to leave that house and it’ll be in her own coffin. But she sends her love, along with these gifts. And I know she is hoping that you will call on her as soon as you can.’

Katerina enjoyed every moment of these days, when she had little to do but attend to the needs of her newborn. Whole days passed by during which she did nothing but feed and hold him, and when he slept, she sewed for him, embroidering his name on every garment. Eugenia, who still wove on her loom at home, was always there to help and provide company.

They were together in Irini Street when Dimitri’s letter came. It had been written some while back and, as before, was addressed to Katerina, but this time without any spelling error in the surname. When she saw the address at the top, her heart froze.

Makronisos
.

This was the barren island off the coast of Attica used as a giant prison camp by the government for Communist captives. It had a fearsome reputation for cruelty, and stories surrounding the barbaric treatment suffered by its inmates had been circulating for some time.

Dear Katerina,

I am so sorry not to have written before to let you know where I am. As you will see from the address on this letter, I was arrested some months ago. I have nothing to tell you except that I love and miss you and the image I carry of you in my mind is all that sustains me.

Please can you break this news gently to my mother and give her and Pavlina kisses from me?

Dimitri

There was a tone of sad resignation in the letter. Everyone knew of Makronisos and the conditions that prevailed there. The government made no secret of how the island was used, because they wanted to make an example of the Communist ‘traitors’ who were sent there. They did not, however, publicise the lengths to which they went to extort confessions from its prisoners. Such details were only revealed by those who agreed to renounce their Communist beliefs and were therefore released.

When lovers and romantics went to watch the sunset at Sounion, the most inspiring and dramatic temple of their homeland, they found themselves looking across at a stretch of water towards a grey and rocky island, where nothing appeared to live or stir. This was the island of Makronisos.

The landscape itself was almost enough to break the spirit of anyone sent there, many of them teachers, lawyers and journalists, who were unused to such conditions. Although the government claimed it was a correction camp for the misguided, it was a place synonymous with violence and torture. As well as hard labour, when the prisoners were made to undertake pointless and gruelling tasks such as building roads that would never be used, there was also systematised physical and psychological torture, from beating with iron bars and sleep deprivation to solitary confinement.

The goal for the government in all cases was the extraction of a
dilosei
, a renunciation of belief, and to get what they wanted, they would use any technique of brainwashing or torture. It was no secret that the island was one huge rehabilitation centre with up to ten thousand former soldiers detained there.

Sometimes people did not even last long enough to ‘repent’. With thousands of them living in makeshift tents, hungry to the point of insanity and with insufficient water, disease and illness often wiped them out first.

The guarded tone of Dimitri’s letter was enough to indicate that it had been censored, but it told Katerina enough.

‘I must go and see Olga,’ she said. It was time to take Theodoris for his first outing into the outside world, and who more appropriate to visit than his grandmother. ‘Will you come with me, Eugenia? I might need someone else there when I break the news.’

‘Of course, my dear. Shall we go this afternoon?’

At three o’clock they called at Niki Street.

Pavlina was thrilled to have them there and cooed and fussed over the baby as though it was the first time she had seen him. The bulky perambulator was left in the hall and Theodoris was carried up the stairs with great ceremony to meet his grandmother.

Olga clasped her hands together with sheer joy and held the sleeping baby in her arms for an hour, gazing at him and exclaiming at the family likeness.

‘Pavlina, fetch some pictures of Dimitri when he was a baby!’

Although they were studio pictures taken when he was at least one and sitting upright, there was a clear likeness between Dimitri and the infant who slept in her arms.

‘He is so beautiful,’ Olga said, smiling at Katerina. ‘I wish we knew where Dimitri was. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to tell him?’

Katerina exchanged glances with Eugenia, who was sitting opposite them slightly stiffly on an upright chair. She could procrastinate no longer.

‘I’ve had a letter,’ said Katerina, taking the envelope out of her pocket. ‘I’m afraid he’s been arrested.’

‘Arrested!’ exclaimed Olga. ‘And where have they sent him?’

Katerina handed her the letter to read.

‘You know what they do there, don’t you?’ she said faintly. ‘They try to break them and make them renounce their beliefs.’

‘I know,’ said Katerina. ‘But at least we know he is alive.’

‘They’ll never succeed in making Dimitri sign a
dilosei
,’ she said firmly. ‘Even if he is there for the rest of his life, he’ll refuse. He’s the most stubborn person in the world. And he would see it as a victory for his father.’

‘He must do what he thinks is right,’ said Katerina.

Pavlina had come into the room to bring them some mint tea and had listened in horror to the conversation.

‘There’s one thing that could change his mind, though,’ she suggested.

The three other women looked up at her and Pavlina looked down at the baby.

‘No!’ said Katerina. ‘I don’t want him to know about Theodoris.’

‘I agree with you,’ said Olga. ‘Imagine the dilemma he would face. It would tear him in two.’

‘And these men who come home having renounced what they believe – they’re empty. The husband of a woman I used to know at the factory signed one and was released,’ Eugenia said. ‘But his wife says he’s not the same man. And he can’t get a job or anything, and sits around at home, angry at what he was made to do.’

‘I can’t bear to think of Dimitri like that,’ commented Katerina.

‘Who would Dimitri be if he was stripped of his beliefs? I’m not sure he would be able to live with himself,’ mused Pavlina.

‘You must write and tell him that Gourgouris has died,’ said Olga. ‘At least that will give him something to hope for.’

‘Yes, I will do that straight away,’ Katerina said.

Months later Dimitri received Katerina’s letter and he wrote back freely declaring his love for her. The censors allowed such letters, believing that relationships outside the prison might hasten the writing of a
dilosei
.

He also described how he was working on the building of a miniature version of the Parthenon on Makronisos. ‘It represents the spirit of joy and adoration for the
patrida
which we all feel so strongly here,’ he wrote.

Katerina always shared his letters with Eugenia, and they both winced at his sarcasm. They had read that the inhabitants of Makronisos were obliged to work on such reproductions of classical monuments as part of their rehabilitation. They knew that such activity would only make Dimitri despise the authorities even more.

The exchange of letters was slow, but since neither of them could tell the truth they had little to say. A few months later, Dimitri’s letters ceased to come from Makronisos.

We have been transferred to Giaros, a smaller island a few kilometres from Makronisos. There is little else to say. The conditions are the same as on the previous island. Prisoners and guards are the only inhabitants.

When Theodoris was nearly two, Katerina resumed her career as a
modistra
, visiting her customers for dress fittings in the afternoon while Eugenia cared for Theodoris. One small advertisement had been enough to bring her old customers flooding back to her and, once again, her reputation as the best seamstress in Thessaloniki soared.

‘Why don’t you use my old house as your workroom?’ suggested Olga, whose home in Irini Street had been empty for some years. ‘There isn’t the space even for cutting fabric in yours.’

Olga was right. With Theodoris to take care of, and Eugenia’s loom, the little house was very overcrowded. There was hardly enough room for Katerina’s Singer sewing machine on the kitchen table.

On a warm, late summer’s day in 1952, Pavlina arrived in Irini Street with the key to number 3. Together they cleaned and dusted the little house, and moved furniture around to prepare Katerina’s workspace.

‘How is Kyria Komninos?’ Katerina asked as they worked.

‘She’s well, thank you,’ responded Pavlina. ‘But Kyrios Komninos is under the weather.’

Katerina could not feign concern. It seemed hypocritical.

‘Kyria Komninos says it’s ridiculous for someone of his age to be working like he is. I heard her telling him last week. He’s eighty, you know, but he looks a hundred! “Well, it’s not my fault there’s nobody to take over, is there?” says Kyrios Komninos. And I wanted to say, “Yes, it is actually! It’s your fault that Dimitri isn’t here now.” But anyway. I didn’t. I kept quiet. But that man, he’s overworking, running himself ragged. He looks awful too. Pale as pale, thin as a pin. You wouldn’t even recognise him.’

Katerina said nothing.

T
WO WEEKS LATER
Konstantinos Komninos had a stroke at his desk and died instantly.

There was a huge funeral, for which instructions had been left in his will. Fifty
stefania
, huge wreaths of white carnations, stood propped against the outside of the church of Agios Dimitri with messages of condolence from the Mayor, the senior members of the City Council, Thessaloniki’s chief business leaders and many other city grandees. After a service executed with much pomp and ceremony he was buried in the municipal cemetery between his father and brother.