Page 13 of The Little Liar
“Yes,” another added. “Maybe she visited Berlin about ten years ago?”
They laughed, but Nico didn’t understand why. Before he could respond, he felt two hands on his shoulders. He looked up to see his grandfather.
“Come, boys,” he whispered.
He led them around the corner, where they intersected with Fannie and her father, who listened as Lazarre whispered that, as of now, the synagogue, like so many other things in Salonika, was no longer theirs.
“Are we going home, Nano?” Nico asked.
“Not before we pray.”
“But thekeliáis closed.”
“We don’t need a building.”
The five of them walked to the harbor. Finding an empty stretch of pavement along the water, Lazarre took out his prayer book and began to chant, and the others, following his lead, swayed back and forth with him. Fannie stood near the boys, while her father kept a wary eye out for German soldiers. They did this for half an hour, as birds swooped overhead and curious onlookers gawked. When Nico whispered, “What should we be praying for?” Lazarre, with his eyes still closed, answered, “Give thanks to the Lord for all the good in the world.”
He paused.
“And pray for this war to end.”
... Then They Take Your Home
Until he was eleven, Nico knew only one home. It was a two-story rowhouse at No. 3 Kleisouras Street, with white plaster walls, a wooden door, and brown shutters on every window. An acacia tree planted long ago sat out front; come springtime, its leaves turned white.
Inside there was a kitchen, a dining room, and two bedrooms on the main floor, and two rooms in the flat above where Nico’s grandparents lived. Large windows looked out to the street. The tobacco business was robust, and Lev, who worked hard and saved his money, was able to keep the house nicely appointed, with a comfortable couch and a grandfather clock. A few years earlier he’d purchased a new set of porcelain dishes for his wife, which she displayed proudly in a wooden hutch.
The house was in a desirable area near the city center, close to the Ladadika olive oil market and within a few blocks of a church, a mosque, and a synagogue, reflecting a Salonika where for many decades Jews, Christians, and Muslims lived together so harmoniously that the city observed three bank holidays a week, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
But harmony and humankind make a short marriage. Something always seems to happen.
Which brings us to a rainy Sunday, February 28, 1943.
On that morning, a group of youngsters carrying bulky sacks arrived at Nico’s house. Under the Wolf’s reign, Jews in Salonika were no longer permitted to attend schools or ride public transportation. Everything they owned had to be declared, including their pets. All their radios were confiscated. Even their food had to be turned over—wheat, butter, cheese, oil, olives, fruits, the fish they caught in the gulf—all of it taken by the Germans for their war effort. Jewish men were ripped from their homes and sent far away for labor projects, forced to work long hours in the hot sun. The men who survived returned only when Salonika’s Jewish community gave two billion drachmas to the Germans as ransom for their temporary freedom.
Resistance to this treatment was risky. The Germans controlled almost all aspects of daily life in Salonika. They shut down the Jewish newspapers. They plowed their libraries. They forced every Jewish person to wear a yellow star on their clothing. With the shocking blessing of the local government, they even ransacked the ancient Jewish cemetery that Lazarre and the children had visited a few months earlier, destroying three hundred thousand graves, picking through the bones, searching for gold teeth, as Jewish families wept among the remains of their dead. If there were an honest word for such disregard of other human beings, I would share it. There isnot. The Nazis even sold the Jewish tombstones for building material, and some of those tombstones went into street pavements or the walls of churches.
Still, perhaps the most stinging blow to the Jewish community was the closing of the schools to their children. “We have no future if we stop learning,” the elders lamented. So they began secret classes in one another’s houses. They moved locations to avoid Nazi suspicion.
On this particular morning, it was the Krispis family’s turn to host. The sacks the children carried were filled with books, and those books were now spread across the kitchen table. Lev directed the students to their seats. He called for his sons. “Nico! Sebastian!”
At that moment, Nico was hiding in his favorite place in the house: a crawl space beneath the stairs leading up to his grandparents’ rooms. The crawl space had no handle; you had to pry the door open with your fingers. Nico would often tuck inside, arms around his knees, listening to the bustling of life outside, his mother chopping food in the kitchen, his aunts gossiping, his grandfather and father arguing over the wages of tobacco workers. He felt secure curled up in the dark. He would wait until he heard his mother or father yell, “Nico! Dinner!” Sometimes he would wait an extra moment, just to hear his name yelled twice.
Meanwhile, at the same time, Sebastian stood by a mirror in his parents’ bedroom and checked his reflection. He knew Fannie was out there with the other kids, and he’d spent extra time pulling on his suspenders and pushing his dark hair this way and that, hoping to make himself more presentable.
His primping was interrupted by the sudden sound of banging doors and heavy footsteps. He heard strange male voices. He heard his mother yelling. He opened the door and saw the unmistakable black and brown uniforms of German soldiers moving about the furniture and barking orders in a language he didn’t understand. A mustached man who’d entered with them—Sebastian recognized him as Mr. Pinto, a member of the Jewish police—translated the screaming into Ladino.
“Get your things! Five minutes! You must be gone in five minutes!”
What followed was a cacophony of confusion and terror, played out in short, incongruous sentences.
“Where are we going?”
“Five minutes!”
“Tanna, grab what you can!”
“Children, you must all go home now!”
