Read Online The Thread by Victoria Hislop - Free Book Online Page A

ago, every memory returned in a single flash of compressed recollection, as swift and unchronological as a dream. His eyes were stinging from the acrid fumes that hung in the air, but now his tears flowed.
    Konstantinos immediately thought of the desk in his study, his personal papers, his priceless collection of clocks, his paintings, the magnificent drapes that had swept so elegantly from ceiling to floor. It had all gone, and all of it was irreplaceable. Fury swept through him like a flame.
    ‘Come on Leonidas,’ he snapped, taking his brother’s arm. ‘There’s nothing we can do. I need to see the showroom and then the warehouse.’
    ‘It’ll be the same story,’ Leonidas replied, bleakly. ‘Do you really need to see?’
    ‘The showroom might have withstood the fire,’ said Konstantinos optimistically. ‘We won’t know until we go there.’
    They walked together along the devastated streets, with purposeful pace. Konstantinos was determined not to lose hope, but arrival at their destination only confirmed that Leonidas was right. The showroom had vanished. There was not a trace of the rainbow of which he had been so proud: red, blue, green and yellow, all were now reduced to shades of grey. They did not venture inside. Metal girders swung dangerously from the ceiling and who knew how sound the remains of the brick walls really were?
    ‘The warehouse is of a much more modern construction,’ he said. ‘And that’s where the bulk of the stock is kept, so let’s not waste time here.’
    Konstantinos Komninos turned away. The sight of these ruins was unbearable and he did not want his brother to see how their loss affected him.
    Leonidas was still taking in this spectacle, when he realised that Konstantinos was already at the end of the street. He hastened after him.
    They took a circuitous route as some of the roads were impassable, walking street after deserted street. Sometimes, as though the fire had not liked the taste, part of a building had survived. One of the big department stores still had a legible sign: ‘ Vêtements, Chaussures, Bonneterie ’. It seemed so cheerful but so untrue. No such things remained. In the same street, a twisted metal sign, ‘Cinema Pathé’ still hung from a beam. They already looked like words from another era.
    Eventually they saw a sight that would have saddened the hardest of hearts: the burned out church of Agios Dimitri, the city’s patron saint. The flames had consumed it. Both the brothers had memories of their parents’ funeral services being held there, and it was where Konstantinos and Olga had been married. Now it was just an open space, a courtyard, its floor piled high with bricks, its painted apse exposed to light and air for the first time in its hundreds of years of history. It was naked, undignified. They saw a lone priest walk among its ruins. He wept. Another crazed individual called out the words that St Paul had written to the people of this very city. They had never had more resonance.
    ‘“When the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, he shall inflict vengeance upon those who do not know God and upon those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus”,’ he cried.
    As well as churches, Konstantinos and Leonidas saw the ruins of synagogues and mosques, and it seemed people still found comfort in their places of worship. Where walls had survived people camped in their shadows; laundry was strung up between their pillars, kitchens had already been improvised in synagogue doorways and blankets were neatly arranged dormitory-style inside burned-out mosques.
    The sight of two banks, the Banque Salonique and the Banque d’Athènes, almost undamaged gave Konstantinos a moment of optimism, as did a grand marble-fronted department store, but these buildings were miraculous exceptions.
    The Hotel Splendide, where people had dined on the night of the eighteenth of August, totally confident that the flames would