The Thread (44 page)

Katerina began to unpack her few things, placing an icon, which Eugenia had given her as a wedding gift, on an empty shelf in the drawing room. It looked lonely and out of place in this characterless house. She decided not to put the photograph of Eugenia on the sideboard. Along with the treasured picture of Dimitri, she would keep it in a small box, tucked away in the bottom of her wardrobe.

The kitchen was well equipped with a new-style cooker, and when she looked in the cupboards she saw nests of aluminium pots and pans. It was very different from Irini Street.

With impeccable efficiency the shutters had kept the light out, but they had also kept the air in and in each of these gloomy interiors, there was the same suffocating smell of dust and must.

Katerina wanted to throw open every window and door, and fill vases with fresh flowers, but she assumed that the house must be like this because her husband wanted it this way.

The space should have been a luxury, but it seemed a waste for two people, and the clutter of colourful rugs, blankets and embroidered cushions that filled her old home felt a world away.

Up in the master bedroom, there was an enormous empty wardrobe where she hung a few dresses. Considering her occupation, she did not have many clothes, and her husband had already told her that he wanted her to spend the next few months making some outfits for herself.

‘My little lass must look lovely!’ he had said that morning, patting her bottom. ‘So you must get to work on making a few things for yourself. You have your sewing machine now, don’t you?’

The Singer that Konstantinos Komninos had given her a few years earlier had arrived from Irini Street the previous day and was sitting on the floor of the dining room.

That evening, Gourgouris brought home some lengths of fabric: pale pink gingham, yellow with sprigs of red roses, mint-green stripes. They were not to her taste, but she surmised this was part of the new ‘job’: to dress as her husband wished.

The maid, it seemed, no longer had a brief to cook. She still came in once a day to sweep and polish the already shiny surfaces, but Gourgouris wanted his wife to cook for him. With trepidation, Katerina began to use the cookery book that Eugenia had bought her for her wedding. In the past she had only ever used recipes handed down by word of mouth, modified according to taste by adjusting the amounts of herbs and spices, so it was strange trying to follow a written recipe.

She went out for a walk each afternoon, often visiting Eugenia, who had been weaving at home since the end of the war. Occasionally, Eugenia came to Sokratous Street, though she did once tactlessly admit that the big gloomy house gave her the shivers.

‘It does me, as well,’ sighed Katerina, ‘but I have to live here …’

They were sitting in Katerina’s kitchen at the enamel-topped table, and the ingredients for dinner were piled up at one end.

‘It’s nice and spacious, at least,’ said Eugenia hastily.

Katerina began to clear their cups. Her husband liked to have three courses each night and she needed to start the preparation.

‘How is married life?’ Eugenia asked teasingly.

‘I’m managing,’ came the answer, almost too quickly.

That was the truth of it. She was managing this new life as though it were a business. Tasks had to be performed each day in order to fulfil her role as a wife, cook and housekeeper.

Gourgouris had decided she should be at home full time. If there was something of particular importance or difficulty he would bring it to the house for her to finish, but he did not want her in the workshop.

Months passed quietly. Katerina began to make quilts for the bedrooms and began to add the feminine touches that the house seemed to lack. She learned to keep her mind away from past and future, and sewing, as ever, proved to be the way. Every stitch was done in the present, the here and now, and this was how she learned to survive. The past led her back to Dimitri, and the future took her forward to the daily dread of her husband’s return.

With visits to the Modiano market, cooking, sewing and visiting Eugenia, Katerina kept herself busy, but she was soon to take on another task. Six months after losing her supplementary role as cook, the cleaner had become dissatisfied and handed in her notice.

‘I shall place an advertisement in the newspaper tomorrow,’ Gourgouris said, and with every ‘s’ and ‘p’ and ‘t’ he sprayed her with more of the soup that she had made that afternoon. It was a
bisque de homard
and the russet-brown spots stood out on the pale pink of her dress.

Katerina nodded. With the huge numbers of people unemployed it should not be too long before someone applied, even if there were plenty of women who would rather beg than clean someone else’s home.

As she went round with a duster the following day, Katerina discovered that during all these months the cleaner had actually been very slapdash in her work. The surfaces had a superficial shine, but she had never gone underneath cupboards or round the back of furniture. Katerina happily threw open the shutters and began to spring clean. It was a satisfying enough job and the house looked much less forbidding with daylight streaming through the windows.

She began with the hallway and drawing room and then went into Gourgouris’ study. There were dozens of books but the spines were all unbroken. They were just for show.

All these will ever do, she thought to herself, regarding the books, is gather dust.

She did not touch the volume of Nietzsche.

She moved some papers to one side in order to polish the desk to a shine and then started work on its tarnished brass drawer handles. One of the drawers was half open and something caught her eye. There was a file with two names written in large, neat letters on the cover: ‘M
ORENO
– G
OURGOURIS
’.

The sight of her new name and the name of her old friends juxtaposed gave her a jolt. She thought of the Morenos often and, whenever she was with Eugenia, they remembered them with anger and sadness. They still wondered what had happened to Elias; they had not even heard if he had reached Palestine.

Katerina felt a momentary pang of guilt, knowing that she should not look through her husband’s papers, but nevertheless she found herself opening the drawer and removing the file. For a minute or so she sat at the desk looking at it. It was not too late to put it back but, like a demon, curiosity possessed her and a moment later she had opened it.

The first item was a single piece of paper with some figures, rather like an invoice, then there was a legal document with several stamps from the Municipality of Thessaloniki and, on thick parchment, the ‘Title Deeds’ of the property in Filipou Street. From what she could tell, the business had been sold to her husband for a very small sum, a fraction of the price that people would pay even for a house in Irini Street, and he had paid it in a single, lump sum. The business had virtually been given to him.

Then there was a sheaf of correspondence, all of it predating the sale, and she read the series of letters with increasing shock and disbelief.

Straight away, she recognised the signature on the first letter. It was the same name as the one that appeared inside the Nietzsche book. A few words of German had become familiar to her during those years of occupation when the officers had been frequent visitors to the workshop. Among them were ‘
guten Tag
’, ‘
bitte
’ and ‘
danke schön
’. It was those words that she saw repeated at the bottom of the letter: ‘
Danke schön
’ – ‘Thank you’.

Next there were several carbon copies of letters from her husband to ‘The Service for the Disposal of Jewish Property’ and their replies. She put them in date order and began to read. Her hands were trembling violently.

The first letter, from Gourgouris, was dated 21 February 1943 and was written from Larissa. Katerina calculated that this was even before the Morenos had left Thessaloniki. In the letter her husband outlined his request to take over the ‘lucrative and thriving business of Moreno & Sons’. He described his already well-established businesses in Veria and Larissa and his desire to expand into larger premises in Thessaloniki. The response to this application asked for evidence of his support for the government. Several letters followed and she felt increasingly nauseous as she read them. There were mentions of several donations of money to the government but in the final one, written in July 1943, there was a list of names. She found herself reading them aloud:

It was clear that through Gourgouris’ tip-offs, all the men he had listed had been arrested. The first three might just have been imprisoned, but the others, Katerina knew without doubt, would then have been sent to Poland, or even murdered on the spot.

Now she knew. The gratitude her husband had been shown by the German officer was for these acts of betrayal and collaboration.

She closed the file, and for half an hour or more sat at the desk with her head in her hands, paralysed with shock and indecision. She could not reveal what she had found, and yet how could she live with the knowledge? How could she continue to live with this man?

Replacing the file in the drawer, she got up and left the room. The terrible mistake she had made weighed heavily on her. No one had forced her to marry Grigoris Gourgouris and she would have to suffer the consequences of her own stupidity. There was no one else to blame.

She went into the kitchen, closed all the windows and shutters and turned on the dim table lamp. As she mechanically began to prepare the evening meal, tears of anger and frustration poured down her face and she could scarcely see what she was doing.

Thump-thump-thump-thump …

The knife crashed down again and again onto the chopping board.

Thump-thump-thump-thump …

Through the mist of her tears all she could see was the flash of metal. For a mere fraction of a second, she pictured herself plunging the sharp blade into her chest. It seemed to her that it would provide instant relief from the self-loathing with which she had been seized. Never before had she felt this strange urge to punish herself. It lasted only a few seconds but she was amazed by how it had nearly seduced her. No, she told herself, you must face the consequences of what you have done.

She continued to dice the vegetables, but inevitably, the combination of anger, lack of concentration and a sharp knife was a dangerous one. With some inevitability, she sliced through her finger.

She dropped the knife and gripped her hand tightly, hoping to stem the copious bleeding. She had no idea there was so much blood in a finger. The pure white mound of chopped onions was now spotted with crimson.

The pain and the shock of the cut triggered uncontrollable sobs and she did not hear the opening and closing of the front door. When Gourgouris walked in she was vainly attempting to bandage her finger in a cloth.

‘Ah, my dear. What on earth is wrong?’ he said, approaching with open arms in order to embrace her.

Katerina ducked to avoid him. His vast bulk repelled her more than ever. Her crying stopped. She was determined to keep her dignity in front of this man.

‘I’ve cut myself,’ she said, concealing the wound ‘That’s all. It’s nothing.’

‘Well, I can see you won’t be able to make the dinner now,’ he said with mild disgust, seeing that blood was already soaking through the cloth. ‘Would you mind if I went straight out to eat? Grigoris is absolutely famished.’

As he spoke, Gourgouris was rubbing his stomach. Referring to himself in the third person was one of his many annoying habits. He was like a vast, jovial child and yet, beneath this exterior, she now knew there was someone very different.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m feeling faint. I think I had better go upstairs.’

She could not even look at Gourgouris and was relieved that he was leaving the house again. His absence would give her more time to think.

When he returned late that night, Katerina lay still and feigned sleep until she heard the sound of his snoring. A gut full of rich food and brandy was guaranteed to keep him asleep until morning.

The horrifying discovery of the afternoon went round and round again in her mind, as did the question of how she should respond. Did everyone at the workshop know that Gourgouris’ ‘acquisition’ was a reward for collaborating with the Nazis? Who could she tell and was there any point in revealing what she knew? She remembered that a few collaborators had been tried and almost immediately pardoned, or given perfunctory sentences. The crime of being a Communist was still considered a much more serious one than being a collaborator.

The following morning she kept her eyes shut until Gourgouris had gone and then swiftly dressed and left for Irini Street. There was one person with whom she must share this terrible burden.

Eugenia listened with dismay.

‘I am so sorry. I am so, so sorry,’ she kept repeating over and over again, shaking her head and full of pity for Katerina. ‘If I’d had any idea, I would have stopped you marrying him.’

‘It’s not your fault,’ said Katerina. ‘It’s nobody’s fault except mine. I made the decision and I’ve got to live with it.’

‘There must be something we can do,’ said Eugenia. ‘You could come and stay here for a while.’

‘He would find me,’ said Katerina. ‘And I would have to explain. I should never have opened the drawer.’

‘Well, you can’t turn back the clock,’ said Eugenia.

‘I know …’

‘You discovered something you would rather not have known,’ she said. ‘But that something was true. And perhaps it’s better that you know?’

‘I found him repulsive enough before. But now …’ Katerina’s elbows were on the table and her head rested in her hands as she cried. Her right hand was still crudely bandaged. ‘… now I know he’s a murderer.’