The Thread

  ‘That’s the thing, Mother, I don’t have plenty of time.’

  ‘What do you mean, darling?’ she said, her voice full of disappointment. ‘You’ve only just got here. And the war is over now.’

  ‘Oh, mana mou, you know that’s not true,’ he responded gently. ‘The war is far from over.’

  ‘As far as your father is concerned, it is.’

  ‘Well, that might be where we differ. The fight continues. Thousands of us haven’t given up. The Germans and Italians are still our enemies and while they remain on our soil, we will keep attacking them.’

  Olga looked at her son with a mixture of love and pure dismay. He had been brought back to her and yet she could sense he was about to be taken away once again.

  ‘And who are “we”?’ Olga asked.

  ‘ELAS,’ he replied.

  ‘ELAS?’ she repeated in a whisper. ‘You’ve joined the Communists?’

  ‘I have joined the organisation that is putting up a fight against the Germans,’ he answered defensively.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, going visibly pale.

  ‘We’re fighting for people who are not able to defend themselves, Mother,’ he continued.

  Then she saw a movement out of the corner of her eye. Neither of them had noticed the slight breeze of the opening door.

  ‘Konstantinos!’ she exclaimed, surprised to see him back so early. ‘Look! Look who’s come home!’

  Dimitri got up, and father and son faced each other. Dimitri was the first to speak.

  ‘I’m back.’ He could think of nothing else to say.

  Konstantinos cleared his throat. The tension was palpable. Dimitri could already feel his father’s simmering anger. In spite of his time away, nothing seemed to have changed and he knew that the conversation would now take a polite course before the inevitable explosion.

  ‘Yes, so I see. And where have you been?’

  Komninos’ tone of voice was the one that you might use when someone had returned after a week of absence. Dimitri had been away for eighty-four weeks and four days precisely. Olga had counted.

  ‘In the mountains, mostly,’ Dimitri answered with honesty.

  ‘We were expecting you back some months ago . . . the war finished last April,’ he said in a clipped tone. ‘You could have let us know where you were.’

  ‘I explained to Mother that it wasn’t possible to send any mail,’ he answered in his own defence.

  ‘So what exactly have you been doing in the mountains?’

  His father’s questions were both persistent and disingenuous. Olga had already deduced that her husband had been in the room before they noticed him.

  Dimitri looked down at the floor. He saw his boots, white with dust, their cracked leather almost split to reveal his feet. They had taken him an incalculable number of kilometres. His eyes strayed to his father’s pristine brogues, so shiny they reflected the pattern of the rug on which both men stood.

  He was proud of how he had spent the past months since he had joined ELAS.

  ‘Olga. Please would you leave the room now.’

  Dimitri had spent many nights half frozen to death in mountain caves, watching icicles form on the ceiling, but nothing had chilled him as much as his father’s voice at this moment.

  It froze Olga’s heart too. She left the room and retreated to her bedroom, fearful for her son.

  Dimitri remained standing. He was the same height as his father, to the millimetre, and tonight he wanted to look him in the eye. He inwardly castigated himself for feeling such fear. After some of the situations he had faced during his time as a soldier, it was absurd to find himself trembling. And yet he could feel his heart almost bursting through the walls of his chest.

  As soon as Olga had left the room, Konstantinos spoke again.

  ‘You are a disgrace to this family,’ he said calmly. ‘I overheard what you told your mother. When I have said what I wish to say, you will leave this house. And for as long as you are still fighting with ELAS you will not return. No one with such beliefs is entitled to be a son of mine. No one with such beliefs is permitted within these four walls. You are to go straight from this room and out of this house. I don’t care where you go as long as it is out of this city.’

  Konstantinos’ voice rose ever higher as he spoke. Dimitri looked blankly at him. There was no more he wished to say to this man with whom he shared nothing but a name.

  ‘If I did not want to bring this family’s name into disrepute, I would report you this very minute to the authorities.’

  Komninos wanted a response from his son and left a moment’s pause. His son’s silence infuriated him.

  ‘Why don’t you see sense, Dimitri, and admit that fighting is not the way forward for this country?’

  ‘And what is the future?’ Dimitri finally responded. ‘Collaboration.’

  There were no raised voices in this encounter between father and son, but the suppressed anger was palpable. Konstantinos Komninos had the final word.

  ‘Get out of my sight, Dimitri,’ he said.

  Walking past the closed door of his mother’s room, Dimitri felt a terrible grief. How could his mother, whom he loved so much and missed each day, be married to this monstrous ego, this Fascist? With this question and the terrible guilt at the sadness he must be causing her, he went slowly down the stairs. Pavlina was standing in the hallway.

  ‘Goodbye,’ he said, kissing her. ‘Say sorry to my mother . . .’

  Before she had time to tell him that dinner was nearly ready, he was gone. She touched her cheek and realised that it was wet with tears that were not her own.

  Once in the street, Dimitri was not sure what to do. He was not scheduled to meet up with Elias again until the next day, but there was only one place where he would feel safe. Irini Street.

  He was there in twenty minutes, nervously ducking in and out of doorways, carefully avoiding the attention of the gendarmes. Irini Street was quiet, apart from two women sitting outside at the top of the street. Pushing aside the curtain that hung in the doorway, Dimitri slipped into the Morenos’ house. Although it was dusk, it was even darker inside than it was in the street.

  ‘Dimitri!’

  It was a familiar voice. After a moment, his eyes became accustomed to the darkness and he could make out the silhouettes of four people sitting around the table. They all rose from their seats and came towards him.

  ‘Dimitri! What are you doing here?’ Elias asked.

  ‘But what a nice surprise,’ said Saul Moreno. ‘We’re so happy to see you!’

  ‘Come! Come and sit down. You must eat! You must eat!’

  Roza Moreno was guiding him towards the table where Isaac had already pulled up another chair.

  Soon he was eating. It was the first wholesome meal he had eaten in many, many months. The normality of it was joyful.

  ‘So, tell me. Did you see your father?’ asked Elias.

  ‘Yes,’ said Dimitri, his mouth full. ‘I should have known what he would be like.’

  The whole family understood without needing any more information. There was a pause.

  ‘So tell us. Tell us everything,’ Saul Moreno urged. ‘We want to know everything.’

  Kyria Moreno went tirelessly to and fro keeping their plates filled with her special quieftes and fijón and their minds with questions. Until the early hours of the morning, the two weary men told them where they had been, of their campaigns, of their encounters, of how Dimitri had stitched wounds, applied tourniquets and learned how to extract shrapnel from wounds. Kyria Moreno wanted details of what they had eaten and she was shocked at their answers.

  Dimitri and Elias not only talked, they also listened and asked questions. There had also been huge changes in the Morenos’ lives in the past eighteen months. What was it like to live in an occupied city? How did the Germans behave? How were they treating the Jews?

  Kyria Moreno painted a positive picture of it all, but Isaac was more honest.

  ‘We
have to sew suits for Germans,’ he said sulkily. ‘We would like to put razor blades into the seams, but that would be bad for business.’

  ‘But we’ve been so fortunate,’ said Saul. ‘So many Jewish businesses have been taken away. At least we still have ours. And believe me, we’re busier than ever.’

  ‘But not with the business we would like to have . . .’

  ‘Isaac!’ said his father. ‘Please stop. People died of starvation in this city last winter. Did we ever go hungry?’

  ‘Let’s not argue,’ said Kyria Moreno, who was thrilled to see her youngest son and did not want this brief family reunion to be blighted by angry words.

  ‘Mother’s right, Isaac,’ said Elias. ‘We have so little time to together.’

  Kyria Moreno went to the sink and began to wash the stack of plates. Saul Moreno went upstairs, to sleep under the sacred quilt. As his mother clattered crockery at the sink, Elias had the chance to ask his older brother a question.

  ‘Look, we’re leaving again tomorrow. Why don’t you come with us?’ he asked in a low voice. ‘We’ve lost a few men in our unit, and we could do with some more.’

  ‘No more making suits for the Hun,’ whispered Dimitri, encouragingly.

  Isaac looked from one to the other. ‘Let me sleep on it,’ he replied.

  Kyria Moreno looked over her shoulder. She saw her two sons and Dimitri leaning forward, heads almost touching. They looked as though they were engaged in some kind of conspiracy.

  ‘Boys,’ she said, smiling, ‘don’t you think it’s time for bed?’

  ‘Yes,’ her sons said, in unison, and laughed.

  ‘Elias, why don’t you stay a little longer?’ she asked. ‘It’s so wonderful having you back. And Dimitri can stay as long as he likes too.’

  ‘We wish we could, Mother. But we only have seven days’ leave, and it took us four of them to get here . . .’

  That night Dimitri slept soundly on the stone-built couch in the living room. A bed had never felt softer and he was soon enveloped in vivid dreams that kept him asleep until well after twelve the following day. He then had a thorough wash outside in the courtyard, scrubbing the ingrained dirt from around his neck and bathing the sores that had been left by lice. Kyria Moreno had left fresh, clean clothes for him (he was exactly the same size as Elias) and the slightly starched cotton rustled as he put it on, its coolness soothing his skin. Standing in these laundered clothes, he felt reborn.

  Elias had left a note for Dimitri on the table. He would be back at the end of the afternoon, in good time for them to leave for their return journey, but meanwhile had gone to the workshop to try to persuade Isaac to join them.

  Dimitri felt a stab of jealousy. He could not pretend to himself that it was anything else: Elias would see Katerina.

  In the past months, he had tried not to think of her. There had seemed little point. Up in the mountains, away from everything that was civilised and kind, it had seemed almost wrong to carry his thoughts of her, but now that he knew where Elias was, he wanted to run to the workshop himself.

  It was not the right thing to do. He knew that. Instead, he went out into the street, suddenly desperate for fresh air, and began walking in the direction of the sea. Emboldened by his clean clothes, he went inside a kafenion he had never been to before and ordered. He could feel strange eyes on him, and looked up into the face of a gendarme who was staring at him with some interest.

  ‘Konstantinos’ son?’ he asked.

  Dimitri did not know how to react. To deny such a thing might seem ridiculous if this man knew his father. To admit it, might have different repercussions.

  ‘You are! Aren’t you?’ persisted the man, who was with a group of half a dozen colleagues.

  Dimitri felt his face flush. Perhaps his father had already reported him as a Communist. He went rigid with fear. In the mountains there had always been somewhere to run if you were face to face with an enemy. He glanced past the gendarmes to the door behind them and realised there would be no escape.

  ‘You must be Dimitri. You look so alike. Do give my regards to your father!’

  He hated the idea that he resembled his father, but for now he felt a surge of relief.

  ‘Yes . . . of course,’ he said forcing a smile to his lips.

  He tipped back the coffee cup, swallowed some of the bitter grounds, got up and left. What a disgusting thought that his father was on first-name terms with a gendarme, he thought, but how predictable.

  Dimitri hastened back to Irini Street. Elias was due back soon. Would Isaac be with him?

  He had to wait only ten minutes for the answer to that question. Elias returned alone.

  ‘He won’t come,’ said Elias with a note of disappointment. ‘He says that someone needs to stay here with Mother and Father. He is probably right, you know.’

  ‘Pity,’ responded Dimitri. ‘We could do with him.’

  Elias had run upstairs to get a spare shirt and they both picked up the packets of bread and cheese that Kyria Moreno had left for their journey.

  ‘Having just said goodbye to Mother, I doubt she would survive if we were both going. It would break her heart,’ added Elias.

  ‘Well, he knows what’s right for him,’ said Dimitri. ‘Let’s get going.’

  He could not bring himself to ask Elias whether he had seen Katerina.

  By nightfall, Thessaloniki was not even a speck on the horizon. Within two and a half days the two men were back with their unit in the mountains.

  In Thessaloniki, two women cried themselves to sleep that night. The fleeting encounters with their sons had left them feeling almost more bereft than before. Olga could not even discuss her son’s visit with Konstantinos. Dimitri’s name was not to be mentioned. At least Roza Moreno had had the opportunity to kiss her son goodbye.

  For the fourteen months since the invasion, apart from seizing synagogue treasures, businesses and homes, the Germans had done little to harm the Jews themselves. In mid-July, this changed. They suddenly announced that Jewish men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five must present themselves for registration. They were to be used as civilian labour in building roads and airstrips.

  Kyrios Moreno tried to cheer Isaac up.

  ‘Well, they need someone to do their hard work for them,’ he said. ‘And it’s not only the Jews. They’ve got Greek men doing heavy building work as well.’

  ‘But why can’t the Germans do it themselves?’ protested Isaac. ‘I’m a tailor, not a builder.’

  ‘It’s just the way it is,’ said his mother. ‘I’m sure it won’t be for long, agapi mou.’

  Temperatures had risen that week to the hottest of the year and, that Saturday morning, nine thousand of them were made to stand in rows in Plateia Eleftheria. Its name seemed ironic that day: Freedom Square. The midday sun beat down on their heads and there was not a breath of sea breeze to cool them.

  ‘I thought we were going off to start building roads,’ one of the other tailors said to Isaac. ‘Why are we all standing here?’

  ‘I think we are about to find out,’ he answered.

  Orders were being barked from across the square. If the Jews were too slow to understand what they were being told to do, the German soldiers helped them out with the use of sticks. It seemed they were being told to perform a series of keep-fit exercises.

  Isaac and eight others from the workshop tried to remain close to one another. Had it been a few months later, Jacob, the oldest of their group at forty-four years old, would not have been obliged to register. He was small, with a portly figure, and found the exercises more difficult than Isaac and the younger ones. The Germans noticed this and he was picked on and made to do a somersault, not once but five times in a row, so that he could be photographed.

  One of the city’s newspapers had been stirring up anti-Semitic sentiments during the previous few weeks and a crowd, including respectable citizens of Thessaloniki, had gathered to watch the spectacle of these young men being forced to
do ridiculous exercises in the midday heat. There were encouraging claps and mocking catcalls to add to their humiliation.

  For several hours, they were made to perform for the assembled mass, without water, shade or rest. After four hours, his bald head exposed to the fierce sun, Jacob vomited and collapsed. He was still unconscious an hour later, but none of his friends was allowed to come to his aid. Eventually, he was unceremoniously dragged away by the feet by two German soldiers, and when Isaac tried to protest, dogs were set loose on him. The crowd seemed to like this. The more terror and humiliation they witnessed, the louder they cheered. Christians being fed to lions had never pleased the braying horde like this. Eventually, the novelty wore off, even for the tormentors, and at this point the Jews were herded together, most of them in a state of collapse, and loaded onto trucks.

  The following morning, Isaac and his group, who had managed to stay together, found themselves outside Larissa, south-west of Thessaloniki. Jacob was not with them. He had died without regaining consciousness.

  This was where their torture really began. Thereafter, for ten hours each day, they laboured without a break, exposed to the unforgiving sun and the relentless interest of the mosquitoes. At night, while they slept, the vicious insects continued their work and within a fortnight many of them showed the symptoms of malaria. Even then, there was no respite and the soldiers in charge drove them from their beds each morning and forced them back to work. Once or twice, local villagers took the risk of bringing them additional food or a change of clothing, but this was the only kindness they ever received. Many collapsed in front of the guards, who prodded their emaciated bodies with rifle butts to see if they could get another hour of labour out of them. Only death gave them an excuse to stop working.

  When the fourth of their close-knit group from the workshop had died as a result of the Germans’ bestial cruelty, two in the group began talking of escape.

  ‘We’re going to perish here, so we might as well give ourselves a chance!’

  ‘You don’t know they aren’t planning to let us go when the job is done,’ said Isaac. ‘And anyway, they’ll shoot you if you try to get away.’