One Cretan Evening and Other Stories (6 page)

‘I had your seminar to attend,’ was all she could think of to say.

The real reason was her fear of her father’s reaction if she decided to go out on a demonstration. His disappointment would be bitter. And her mother would literally make herself ill with worry. Parading down Panepistimiou street and being spotted by her godmother holding a banner was something she would never risk.

In the past few weeks, the reason for marching had changed. The police had shot dead a fifteen-year-old boy in the street and the mood was a new and uglier one. There were many more occasions when classes at the university were empty of students and the streets were full of protest. Now the demonstrations became more violent. In the city centre, the stink of tear gas permeated the streets, shops were being set alight and every cash-point machine had become a blackened hole in the wall. Every capitalist institution was a target and even the city’s huge Christmas tree became a flaming symbol of the protesters’ anger.

One evening, after a journey home disrupted by road closures and police barricades, Irini got home later than usual. She crossed the polished floor of the hallway and through a scarcely open door, she caught a glimpse of her grandfather reading in his study. She heard him call her name.

‘Is that you, Irini? Come in to see me, would you?’

Even though he had been retired for twenty years, her
grandfather still had the manner of a government official and spent hours of each day reading at his desk.

‘Let me have a look at you,’ he said, scrutinising her face with a mixture of love and curiosity. ‘Where have you been?’

‘Getting back from the university . . .’

‘You seem to be out a lot at the moment. More than usual.’

‘It takes a while to get home when there are demonstrations.’

‘Yes. These demonstrations . . . That’s what I really want to talk to you about. We haven’t ever really discussed politics but—’

‘I’m not involved in them,’ interjected Irini.

‘I’m sure you’re not,’ he said. ‘But I know what your faculty is like. It has a reputation, you know. For being radical. And your father—’

‘Well I’m not a radical,’ she said. ‘Really I’m not.’

Even from a distance she could feel the eye of her father on her. Irini knew that he would probably already have heard that she often did not return until light.

A newspaper, which had been the catalyst for this discussion, lay on her grandfather’s desk. She could see the headlines:

‘Look at what’s going on!’ said her grandfather.

He waved the newspaper that had been lying on his desk in the air.

‘These
koukouloforoi
! These hooded kids! They’re a disgrace!’ His voice had risen. ‘They’re
anarchists
!’

The kindly old man could quickly lose his gentle air once he was on this subject.

And then something caught her eye.

There were two images on the front page. One of the burning tree and a second of someone falling beneath the baton blows of two riot police. Their anonymity was guaranteed – their faces were concealed behind the perspex globes of their helmets – but their victim’s features were caught vividly on camera, contorted by a mixture of pain and rage. If his eyes had not been so distinctive, so clear, so pale, the image would not have grabbed her attention so forcibly.

She took the newspaper calmly from her grandfather. Her hands were shaking and her heart pounded as she took a closer look. It was Fotis. It was undoubtedly him. What shocked her was that in his hand he clung on to a flaming torch. This was making the job of the police, who clearly feared that they might go up in flames, much harder. The picture showed that Fotis’ knuckles were white with determination. He was not going to let go of his weapon.

‘You see!’ said her grandfather. ‘Look at that hooligan!’

Irini could scarcely speak.

‘It’s awful, yes . . . awful,’ she whispered.

With those words she put the newspaper back on her grandfather’s desk.

‘I’m just going out for a while,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you later.’

‘But your grandmother has made supper—’

Before he had finished the sentence, the door had slammed.

Irini ran down the street, turned left and right and right again. This time her feet were soundless on the paving stones of Plaka. Twenty minutes later, she arrived, her chest tight
with exertion, in a familiar down-at-heel Exarchia street. The outer door to the block was ajar. It had been kicked off its latch some while back and no one had bothered to repair it. She ran up the stairs, two at a time and reached the ninth floor, where she fell against the door to Fotis’ flat, hammering on it with all her remaining strength.

A second later, Antonis threw it open.

‘Where . . .?’ she gasped.

‘He’s not here,’ he said, standing aside to let her pass.

In her panic and confusion, Irini only had two possible thoughts. That Fotis was locked up somewhere or in hospital. It took her some time to take in what Antonis was trying to tell her.

‘He’s gone. He’s gone away.’

‘What? Where?’

‘Look, you need to sit down. And I will tell you.’

She allowed Antonis to lead her by the arm to the kitchen table where she took one of the two rickety chairs.

‘What are these?’

‘I found all of these in Fotis’ room a couple of days ago.’

‘But why were they there?’

‘He collected them. I have known him a while but . . .’

Spread out before her on the kitchen table was a series of newspaper cuttings.

As she read the place names out aloud, she knew immediately what the link was between them.

‘Fire,’ she said. ‘All devastated by fire.’

‘But not just that,’ said Antonis. ‘Arson was suspected with all of them.’

‘And you think Fotis may have something to do with . . .?’

‘Well, what do you think?’ said Antonis. ‘And I suppose you saw this picture on the front of
Kathimerini
?’ he added.

‘Holding the torch? I did.’

‘And look at this.’

Antonis led Irini by the arm towards Fotis’ room. As soon as he opened the door, an acrid stench of burning almost choked her. In the middle of the room a small pile of clothes and papers had been burnt. The furniture was blackened, and the bed-clothes still dripped from Antonis’ frantic attempts to extinguish the flames.

‘My God. He could have set this whole block alight!’ she gasped.

‘If I hadn’t come back when I did . . .’

‘How could he?’ she said, her throat dry with the shock and the still-lingering fumes from the fire.

‘I don’t think he cared,’ answered Antonis. ‘That’s the nature of an arsonist. He just wouldn’t have cared . . .’

Once again she looked at the picture on the front of the newspaper and examined the familiar features. For all those weeks she had only seen their perfection but now she saw them twisted by an all-consuming rage and noticed again the devilish look she had seen in the street that night. And in that moment the flame went out. Even the memory of it chilled her, right to the heart.

The name ‘Irini’ means ‘Peace’, and ‘Fotis’ comes from the Greek word for ‘Fire
’.

This story is about Thessaloniki, Greece’s second city. In 1917, the population comprised an even mixture of Christians, Muslims and Jews. Within three decades, only Christians remained.
The Thread
is the tale of two people who lived through the most turbulent period of the city’s history, when it was battered almost beyond recognition by a sequence of political and human catastrophes.

The characters are entirely fictional, but the historical events all took place. Greece still carries their legacy today.

Thessaloniki, May 2007

I
T WAS SEVEN
thirty in the morning. The city was never more tranquil than at this hour. Over the bay hung a silvery mist and the water beneath it, as opaque as mercury, lapped quietly against the sea wall. There was no colour in the sky and the atmosphere was thick with salt. For some it was the tail end of the night before, for others it was a new day. Bedraggled students were taking a last coffee and cigarette alongside neatly dressed, elderly couples who had come out for their early morning constitutional.

With the lifting haze, Mount Olympus gradually emerged far away across the Thermaic Gulf and the restful blues of sea and sky shrugged off their pale shroud. Idle tankers lay offshore like basking sharks, their dark shapes silhouetted against the sky. One or two smaller boats moved across the horizon.

Along the marble-paved promenade, which followed the huge curve of the bay, there was a constant stream of ladies with lap dogs, youths with mongrels, joggers, rollerbladers, cyclists and mothers with prams. Between the sea, the
esplanade and the row of cafés, cars moved at a crawl to get into the city, and drivers, inscrutable behind their shades, mouthed the words of the latest hits.

Holding a slow but steady path along the water’s edge after a late night of dancing and drinking, a slim, silky-haired boy in expensively frayed jeans ambled along. His tanned face was stubbled from two days without shaving, but his chocolate eyes were bright and youthful. His relaxed gait was of someone at ease with himself and the world and he hummed quietly as he walked.

On the opposite side of the road, in the narrow space between the little table and the kerb, an elderly couple walked slowly to their usual café. The man set the pace with his careful steps, leaning heavily on his stick. Perhaps in their nineties, and both no more than five foot four, they were tidily dressed, he in a crisply ironed, short-sleeved shirt and pale slacks, she in a simple floral cotton frock with buttons from neck to hem, and a belt around her middle, a style of dress that she had worn for perhaps five decades.

All the seats in every café that lined the promenade on Niki Street faced out towards the sea so that customers could sit and watch the constantly animated landscape of people and cars and the ships that glided noiselessly in and out of the dockyard.

Dimitri and Katerina Komninos were greeted by the owner of the Assos café, and they exchanged a few words concerning the day’s General Strike. With a huge percentage of the working population effectively having a day’s holiday, the café would have more business so the owner was not complaining. Industrial action was something they were all used to.

There was no need for them to order. They always drank their coffee in the same way and sipped at the sweetened, muddy-textured liquid with a triangle of sweet pastry,
kataifi,
between them.

The old man was deep into his perusal of the day’s newspaper headlines when his wife patted him urgently on the arm.

‘Look – look,
agapi mou
! There’s Dimitri!’

‘Where, my sweet?’

‘Mitsos! Mitsos!’ she called out, using the diminutive of the name shared by her husband and their grandson, but the boy could not hear above the cacophony of impatiently sounded horns and the groan and grind of engines being revved at the lights.

Mitsos chose that moment to look up from his reverie and glimpsed the frantic waving of his grandmother through the traffic. He darted between moving cars to reach her.

‘Yia-yia!’
he said, throwing his arms around her, before taking his grandfather’s extended hand and planting a kiss on his forehead. ‘How are you? What a nice surprise . . . I was coming to see you today!’

His grandmother’s face broke into a broad smile. Both she and her husband adored their only grandson with a passion, and he in turn bathed in their affection.

‘Let’s order you something!’ said his grandmother with excitement.

‘Really, no, I’m fine. I don’t need anything.’

‘You must need something – have a coffee, an ice cream . . .’

‘Katerina, I’m sure he doesn’t want an ice cream!’

The waiter had reappeared.

‘I’ll just have a glass of water, please.’

‘Is that all? Are you sure?’ fussed his grandmother. ‘What about breakfast?’

The waiter had already moved away. The old man leaned forward and touched his grandson’s arm.

‘So, no lectures again today, I suppose?’ he said.

‘Sadly not,’ responded Mitsos. ‘I’m used to that now.’

The young man was spending a year at Thessaloniki University, studying for an MA, but the lecturers were on strike that day, along with every other civil servant in the country, so for Mitsos it was a holiday of sorts. After a long night in a club, he was making his way home to sleep.

He had grown up in London but every summer Mitsos had visited his paternal grandparents in Greece, and each Saturday, from the age of five, he had attended Greek school. His year in the university was almost at an end, and though strikes had often meant missed lectures, he was now totally fluent in what he thought of as his ‘father’ tongue.

In spite of his grandparents’ pressing invitation, Mitsos was living in student accommodation, but made regular weekend visits to their apartment close to the sea where they almost overwhelmed him with the fierce devotion that is the duty of the Greek grandparent.