He drank his coffee in a single sip and rose to go. Each day he experienced a profound sense of satisfaction from having been awake and working since seven in the morning. Today he enjoyed the idea that he still had another eight hours in his office before leaving for Constantinople. He had important paperwork to do before his departure.
That afternoon his wife, Olga Komninos, looked out from their mansion in Niki Street and gazed at Mount Olympus, just visible through a haze. The heat had been building up and she opened one of the floor-to-ceiling windows to let in some air. There was not a breath of wind, and sounds carried easily. She heard calls to prayer mixing with the clatter of hoofs and carriage wheels in the street below, and a ship sounding its horn to signal its approach.
Olga sat down again and put her feet up on a chaise longue, which had been moved closer to the window to catch the breeze. Since they had never been worn outside, there was no need for her to remove her dainty, low-heeled shoes. Being an almost identical match, her silk dress seemed to vanish into the pale green of the upholstery, and the blue-black of her braided hair accentuated the pallor of her skin. She could not get herself comfortable on this languid day, and drank glass after glass of lemonade, poured from a jug that her devoted housekeeper regularly appeared to replenish.
‘Can I bring you anything else, Kyria Olga? Perhaps something to eat? You haven’t had anything at all today,’ she said, with gentle concern.
‘Thank you, Pavlina, but I just don’t feel like eating. I know I should, but today I simply . . . can’t.’
‘Are you sure I shouldn’t fetch the doctor?’
‘It’s just the heat, I think.’
Olga sank back onto the cushions, her temples beaded with sweat. Her head throbbed and she held the icy glass against it to try to relieve the pain.
‘Well, if you still haven’t eaten anything later, I will have to tell Kyrios Konstantinos.’
‘There’s no need to do that, Pavlina. And besides, he is going away this evening. I don’t want to worry him.’
‘They say the weather is going to turn this evening. It’s going to get a bit cooler. So that should help you a little.’
‘I hope they are right,’ Olga replied. ‘It feels as though there might be a storm.’
Both of them heard something like a clap of thunder, but then realised it was the sound of the front door banging shut. It was followed by the rhythmic beat of footsteps on the broad wooden staircase. Olga recognised her husband’s business-like pace and counted the standard twenty crochet beats before the door swung open.
‘Hello, dearest. How are you today?’ he asked briskly, walking over to where she lay, and addressing her as though he was a doctor speaking to a simple-minded patient. ‘You’re not finding it too hot, are you?’
Komninos now removed his jacket and carefully hung it over the back of a chair. His shirt was transparent with sweat.
‘I’ve just come back to pack a suitcase. Then I’ll be going back to the showroom for a few hours before the ship leaves. The doctor will come if you need him. Is Pavlina looking after you? Have you eaten anything since last night?’ Komninos’ statements and questions blended together without pause.
‘Make sure you take good care of her while I am away,’ he said, directing a final comment at the housekeeper.
He smiled at his resting wife but she had looked away. Her eyes rested on the sparkling sea, which she could see through the open window. Both sea and sky had now darkened and one of the French windows was banging against the frame. The wind had changed, and she sighed with relief as a breeze caressed her face.
She put down her glass on the side-table and rested both hands on her swollen belly. The dress had been perfectly tailored to conceal her pregnancy but, in the final few months, the darts would be pulled to straining point.
‘I’ll be back in a fortnight,’ Komninos said, kissing her lightly on the top of her head. ‘You’ll look after yourself, won’t you? And the baby.’
They both looked in the same direction, out of the window towards the sea, where the rain now lashed in against the curtain. A streak of lightning cut across the sky.
‘Send me a telegram if you need me desperately. But I’m sure you won’t.’
She said nothing. Nor did she get up.
‘I will bring some lovely things back for you,’ he finished, as though he was talking to a child.
As well as a ship full of silk, he planned to return with jewellery for his wife, something even better than the emerald necklace and matching earrings that he had brought last time. With her jet black hair, he preferred her in red and would probably buy rubies. Just as with tailored clothes, gems were a way of showing your status, and his wife had always been a perfect model for everything he wanted to display.
As far as he was concerned, life had never been so good. He left the room with a lightness of step.
Olga stared out at the rain. Finally the intense humidity had given way to a storm. The darkened sky now crackled with lightning, and in the slate-grey sea a frenzy of white horses reared and fought and fell into the foam. The street below the Komninos house was soon submerged. Every few minutes a great arc of water curled over the edge of the promenade. It was a tempest of exceptional fury, and the sight of the boats rolling up and down in the bay was enough to bring back to Olga the terrible nausea that had blighted these past few months.
She got up to secure the window but, catching the strange but pleasing odour of rain on damp cobbles, decided to leave it open. The air seemed almost fresh after the stifling heat of the afternoon, and she lay down again, closed her eyes and enjoyed the gentle breaths of salty air on her cheeks. Within a moment, she was asleep.
Now she was the lone sailor in a fishing vessel struggling with the rage of the waves. With her dress billowing around her, her loosened hair stuck to her cheeks and the briny water stinging her eyes, the sunless sky and the landless horizon gave her no indication of the direction she was going. The sails were filled by a powerful southwesterly wind that carried the boat along at alarming speed, its steep pitch allowing the water to lap over its sides. When the wind suddenly dropped, the sails were left empty and flapping.
Olga clung on, one hand on the boat’s smooth gunwale and another on the oarlock, desperately trying to keep her head clear of the swinging boom. She did not know if she was safer in or out of the boat as she had never been in one before. The water was already beginning to soak her dress, and the spray on her face and inside her throat was beginning to make her choke. Water continued to gush into the boat and, as the wind picked up again and filled the mainsail, a gust caused its fatal capsize.
Perhaps death by drowning would be painless, she thought, giving herself up to the weight of her clothes, which began to pull her down. As she and the boat began to slip steadily beneath the waves, she saw the pale shape of a baby swimming towards her and reached out for him.
Then there was an almighty crash as if the boat had hit a rock. The naked infant had vanished and now Olga’s gasps for breath were replaced by sobs.
‘Kyria Olga! Kyria Olga!’
Olga could hear a faraway voice, breathless and distraught.
‘Are you all right? Are you all right?’
Olga knew the voice. Perhaps rescue was at hand.
‘I thought you had fainted!’ Pavlina exclaimed. ‘I thought you had taken a tumble! Panagia mou! I thought you had fallen! It was ever such a loud crash downstairs.’
Covered in confusion and somewhere between the state of dreaming and waking, Olga opened her eyes and saw her housekeeper’s face close to hers. Pavlina was kneeling right beside her, looking anxiously into her eyes. Behind her, she could see the huge floor-to-ceiling curtain furling and unfurling like a great sail, and even now the force of the wind was lifting the heavy satin drape and blowing it horizontally across the room. Its edge licked at a small circular table and swept across its empty surface.
Disoriented, almost giddy, Olga began to realise what
had created the crashing noise that had woken her and brought Pavlina rushing into the room. She brushed away the strand of hair that had fallen across her face and slowly manoeuvred herself into a sitting position.
She saw the fragments of two porcelain figures scattered across the room, heads severed from bodies, hands separated from arms, thousands of drachmas’ worth of objets d’art literally reduced to dust. The weight of the damask and the force of the wind had swept them to the unforgiving floor.
She wiped her damp face with the back of her hand and realised that she had not left her tears behind in the nightmare. As she struggled to catch her breath she heard herself cry out: ‘Pavlina!’
‘What is it, Kyria Olga?’
‘My baby!’
Pavlina reached out and touched her mistress’s stomach and then her forehead.
‘He hasn’t gone anywhere! No doubt about that!’ she concluded cheerfully. ‘But you’re a bit on the warm side . . . and you seem rather damp too!’
‘I think I had a bad dream . . .’ whispered Olga. ‘It seemed so real.’
‘Perhaps I’ll send for the doctor . . .?’
‘There’s no need for that. I’m sure everything is fine.’
Pavlina was already kneeling on the floor gathering up pieces of china into her apron. Mending a single ornament in this state would have tested an expert, but the combined ingredients of the two together meant it would be an impossibility.
‘It’s only some porcelain,’ Olga reassured her, seeing how upset she was.
‘Well . . . I suppose it could have been worse. I really thought you had fallen.’
‘I am fine, Pavlina, you can see I am.’
‘And I’m the one supposed to be looking after you, while Kyrios Konstantinos is away.’
‘Well, you are. And you are doing a really fine job. And please don’t worry about those figurines. I am sure Konstantinos won’t even notice.’
Pavlina had been part of the Komninos family for many years longer than Olga, and knew the high value placed on such collector’s items. She hastened over to the French windows and began to close them. The rain had made a patch on the carpet and she could see that the edge of Olga’s fine silk dress was soaked.
‘Oh my goodness,’ she fussed, ‘I should have come up before. We’re in a terrible mess up here, aren’t we?’
‘Don’t shut them,’ appealed Olga, standing at her side, feeling the spray on her face. ‘It’s so cooling. The carpet will dry out as soon as it stops. It’s still so warm.’
Pavlina was used to Olga’s occasional eccentricity. It made a change from the rigidity with which her late mother-in-law, the older Kyria Komninos, had ruled the house for so many years.
‘Well, as long as you don’t get too wet,’ she said, giving her an indulgent smile. ‘You don’t want to be catching a chill, not in your state.’
Olga lowered herself into another chair further from the window, and watched Pavlina meticulously picking up the pieces of porcelain. Even if she had been able to bend, Pavlina would not have allowed Olga to help.
Beyond the bulky figure of the kneeling housekeeper, Olga could see the wild sea. A few ships were out there, just about visible through the storm, occasionally illuminated by a flash of lightning.
The ornate clock on the mantelpiece struck seven. She realised that Konstantinos would have been at sea for an hour or more by now. Such weather conditions rarely held up the bigger ships.
‘If the wind is in the right direction, then I suppose it might even speed up Kyrios Konstantinos’ journey,’ Pavlina reflected.
‘I suppose it might,’ answered Olga absent-mindedly, now only aware of the gentle stirring inside her womb. She wondered if her baby had heard the storm and felt himself tossed by the sea. She loved her unborn child beyond all measure and pictured him swimming effortlessly around in the clear liquid of her womb. Tears and sea spray rolled down her face in equal measure.
Chapter Two
ONCE THE FEVERISH temperatures of August came, the citizens of Thessaloniki looked back with wistfulness to the warmth of May. It was now forty degrees in the shade and people closed their windows and shutters to keep the fearsome heat outside.
There was a breeze of sorts, but even this provided no relief: the westerly Vardaris blew its hot breath over the city, bringing layers of fine, dark dust into people’s homes. Streets were deserted in the hottest hours of the day and a traveller might mistakenly have imagined that these houses had been abandoned. Inside, it was equally silent as people lay in the darkness, their breathing shallow and inaudible as they tried not to take in the fetid air.
Air and sea alike were thick and still. When children dived into the sea, the ripples spread a hundred metres across the bay. As they pulled themselves out of the water they dried in an instant, leaving a stinging residue of salt. There was little variation at night and the air remained as motionless as the reading on the barometer.
Konstantinos Komninos had been delayed in his return from Turkey, but finally arrived home at the beginning of the month. By that time, Olga felt as though her pregnancy had lasted a lifetime. Her fine ankles had puffed up and her once neat breasts had swelled beyond the capacity of every dress that had been sewn for her confinement. Konstantinos discouraged her from having anything new made at this stage, so she wore a capacious white cotton nightdress, which would give her ample space even if she continued to expand in the final weeks of pregnancy.
A few days after his return, Konstantinos moved into another bedroom.
‘You need more room,’ he said to Olga. ‘You won’t be comfortable if I am taking up half the bed.’
Olga did not object. Every night was more restless than the previous one, and most nights she managed only an hour of sleep. For long periods she would lie on her back in the darkness staring into the inky void of her shuttered bedroom, feeling the strong kicks of the baby inside her womb. They were vigorous, regular movements. Sometimes all the child’s limbs seemed to move at once and she formed a picture in her mind of what he would be like, how strong, how restless, how energetic. She never allowed herself to imagine the child as a girl. Konstantinos’ reaction might be more than one of disappointment. Olga already knew she had not fulfilled expectations because of the length of time it had taken her to conceive, and her husband had not concealed his impatience. She had been in her mid-twenties when they married and more than a decade had gone by before the doctor had confirmed that four months of pregnancy had passed and all seemed stable. During the intervening decade, there had been many occasions when she experienced a heart-leaping moment of certainty but, time after time, had grieved over the telltale spill of blood that followed after a month or two.
Her hand rested on the protruding bump and she felt her fingers shift as the kicks came, one after the other. If only this baby would arrive, she thought, and sang as if to calm him, all the while giving herself more peace.
A clock ticked on the mantelpiece in her bedroom, another in the hallway, and on the quarter-hour the chimes of the clock in the drawing room told her how much time was passing, helping her to count the hours until she could get up. She wished each one away.
It was true that Olga needed more space in the bed, but for Konstantinos a more significant factor was his mild revulsion at her altered body. He scarcely recognised the woman she had become. How had the mannequin he had married, with her slim hips and a waist that he could enclose within his own two hands, have transformed into someone he found almost untouchable? He was repulsed by the spherical belly with its stretched skin and her huge dark nipples.
During these last few weeks, while she lay sleepless, counting the discordant chimes of the various clocks, she often heard the quiet padding of footsteps up the staircase and the almost inaudible closing of a door at the end of the corridor. She suspected that Konstantinos slipped out after she had gone to bed and discreetly visited one of the city’s smarter brothels. Not even for a moment did she feel she had a right to prot
est. Perhaps she would win his attention back one day.
Olga knew that Konstantinos had married her for her beauty. She was under no illusions, and had been picked as if from a beauty parade of girls working as mannequins for one of the city’s best tailors. Without a dowry – both her parents had died before she was ten years old – she felt herself in some ways fortunate. Many models who worked in Thessaloniki ended up in the burgeoning red light area of the city.
She did wonder, however, what it would have been like to marry for love, and realised that the possession of beauty had both saved and condemned her. Olga knew how it felt to be a commodity, like a roll of silk or a gilded statue, purchased and displayed.
As she grew older, she had begun to see how physical perfection could be a burden, but at the same time she was seized with anxiety when she lost it. Over the past months she had watched the expansion of her body with growing alarm: the engorgement of her veins, the protrusion of her navel and the bulging of her stomach until the skin was so stretched beyond its limits that the outer layer appeared to split apart, leaving dozens of pale streaks, like raindrops running down a windowpane.
Though the nausea she experienced meant that she ate almost nothing, her body continued to expand. Each morning, as Pavlina braided her mistress’s ebony hair and wound it around her head, the women talked to each other’s reflection.
‘You are still as beautiful as you ever were,’ Pavlina reassured her. ‘You’re just a little plumper round the middle.’
‘I feel swollen, Pavlina. Not at all beautiful. And I know Konstantinos can’t bear me any more.’
Pavlina’s met Olga’s glance in the mirror and saw her sadness. Olga looked almost more beautiful when she was unhappy. When they were moist, her molasses-dark eyes gained even greater depth.
‘He’ll come back to you,’ said Pavlina. ‘As soon as the baby has been born, everything will be back in place. You’ll see.’