‘There’s something else at the bottom,’ said Mitsos, reaching in and lifting out a frayed piece of rather stained cotton. ‘This doesn’t look like “treasure” – unless this button is real silver!’
‘Well, I think it might be,’ said Katerina. ‘But that’s not why it’s valuable to me. It’s because I feel that piece of sleeve saved my life, and reminds me of the greatest kindness that’s probably ever been shown to me.’
Almost unconsciously, she touched her arm. Most of the time, Mitsos forgot that his grandmother’s arm was badly scarred as she usually wore a cardigan to cover it up, but tonight in the heat of the room, it was partly exposed.
‘Most importantly, I promised to look after it in case I could ever return it to the soldier that saved me.’
They all smiled.
It was around 11.30 p.m. now, but still hot in the apartment. Mitsos’ sweet grandmother poured him a glass of water and he looked at her, imagining her as a small girl setting off on her journey from Smyrna. His need to understand why they stayed here in this city was entirely fulfilled. But a question remained. He looked at the precious collection laid out on the table and then at his frail grandparents. Who would take care of these treasures when they were gone? What would happen if their owners returned?
‘Shall we go for a stroll, Mitsos?’ asked his grandfather. There was nothing he liked more than to take his grandson out for a late night beer in one of the bars on the waterfront, in the hope that some of his friends might be there so that he could show off this fine young man to them.
And Mitsos loved to go out at this time of night too. The streets were still buzzing. The air still balmy. He thought of the area in which he had grown up in Highgate, where homes were lined up like matches in a box behind their neatly trimmed privet hedges, and there was one pub that threw you out on the stroke of eleven.
They found a table outside on the harbour’s edge and a waiter greeted them and brought them chilled beers. Pleasure boats took people on night cruises and their white lights moved about on the ebony sea. The blackness of the water seemed fathomless, the stars infinite. Every few moments, one of them fell.
There was a beauty in the stillness and the darkness that he had never seen before and it almost overcame him with its power. For the first time in his life, he had begun to understand what lay beneath these pavements and behind the façades of these buildings.
He looked over at his grandfather, whom he loved so deeply, and knew with aching certainty that he would not always be there.
What would it be like to make Thessaloniki his permanent home? It was a place where people thronged the streets from dawn till dawn, where every paving stone, ancient, modern, polished or broken, was dense with history, and where people greeted one another with such warmth. He suspected that the city would forever be challenged by adversity but there was something else he was sure of: it would continue to be rich and full, of music and stories.
Suddenly he knew he would stay. To listen and to feel.
Victoria Hislop, The Thread
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