Page 29 of The Little Liar
“You’ll be late for work!” yelled another.
Nico ran. He ran beyond the platform and out into the open spaces where the tracks were surrounded by gravel. He pumped his arms and churned his legs, between the stock rails and past the switch rails, his feet slapping hard on the horizontal wooden planks. Under the hot morning sun, he chased that disappearing train until he couldn’t breathe and he couldn’t run and he couldn’t see it anymore. Then he collapsed in a sobbing heap. His chest was burning. His soles were bleeding inside his shoes.
The boy would survive. But Nico Krispis would die that afternoon and his name would never be used again. It was a death by betrayal, on a day of many betrayals, three on a train platform, and countless more inside those suffocating cattle cars, now heading to hell.
Part II
The Pivots
Truth is a straight line, but human life is a flexible experience. You exit the womb curling into a new world, and from that moment forward, you bend and adjust.
I have promised you a story with many twists and turns. So let me share the following pivot points that happen to three of our four characters in a single week, each of which changes their lives forever.
We begin with Fannie, who falls from the train.
She is hiding by a river now, in a thicket of brush. She dips her hands in the cool water and spills it over her left leg and elbow, which look like they have been scraped with a rake. Her wounds moisten, and Fannie winces.
She has been on the move since the previous morning. She is hungry and exhausted. She wonders if she is even in Greece anymore. She studies the trees by the riverbank, and the dark soil surrounding them. Are they Greek trees? What is a Greek tree? How can she tell?
Her escape from the train comes back to her in flashes: thefast drop from the boxcar window, the impact with the ground that knocks the wind from her lungs, the sudden flipping, the hard, wild sensation, sky/dirt/sky/dirt, until she finally comes to a halt, flat on her back, gasping for breath. She lays there as pain shoots through her body and the sound of the train grows dim. Then she hears a distant screeching, which means the train is braking.
Someone has seen her escape.
She pushes to her feet, her body so sore it feels as if a bag of glass is being lifted and all its contents shifting. She hears a gunshot. Then another.
She runs.
She runs until her lungs are bursting. Then she stumbles. Then she runs some more. She continues this way for hours, through vast open grass, not a soul in sight, until finally, as the sun begins to set, she finds this thicket of woods framing a winding river. She gulps down handfuls of water, then curls by the trunk of a large tree and hides, fearing the sound of Nazi guards at any moment.
When she can no longer stay awake, Fannie falls into a churning sleep. In her dreams she sees Nico at the train station, calling her name, but she cannot respond. Then he disappears, replaced by Sebastian, grabbing her in the boxcar, pushing her forward.Take her!
She awakes with a gasp. Sunlight spills through the branches and she hears chirping sounds. The image of Sebastian is still in her mind and she feels a burn of anger.Why had he done it? Why had he separated her from the others?She didn’t want to go out that window. She didn’t want to be chased like ananimal, or sleep by a river with dirt on her forehead and small stones sticking to her neck. Wherever that train was going, it had to be better than this.
She squints in the sunlight. She hears her own breath. She feels a choking loneliness, growing larger as she grows smaller, until every chirring insect, every gurgle of the river, is screaming the words“Alone, Fannie! You are all alone!”
She shuts her eyes against a new flood of tears. A moment later, she is startled by the sound of a female voice.
“Zsido?”
She spins to see an older woman with a basket of clothes. The woman wears a long tan skirt and a brown waistcoat over a white cotton blouse with the sleeves rolled up.
“Zsido?”the woman repeats.
Fannie’s heart is pounding. She doesn’t understand this woman’s language, which means she is no longer in Greece.
“Zsido?”the woman says once more, this time pointing at Fannie’s chest. Fannie looks down. The woman is pointing at the yellow star on her sweater. The language is Hungarian.
The word means “Jew.”
Now to Sebastian’s pivot, as the train reaches its true destination.
The doors slide open and passengers shield their eyes from the blasting sunlight. For a moment, all is silent. Then German soldiers in long dark coats are screaming at them.
“Move! Move! Out! MOVE!”
Sebastian, Lev, and the rest of the family are huddled nearthe back. It feels like someone is jostling them from a deep sleep. After eight days in this boxcar, their limbs are rubbery and their thought processes groggy. They have eaten only crumbs of bread and small pieces of sausage. They’ve had almost no water. Their throats burn. The metal bucket to collect their waste was filled by the first day; after that, people relieved themselves in the corners and the stench fouls every particle of air inside the train.
It takes time for the passengers to disembark, because many have perished. The living must stumble through the dead, stepping gingerly over their lifeless husks, as if trying not to wake them. As they move toward the sunlight, Lev glances down to see the bearded man who had whispered to Fannie, “Be a good person,” and whose face had been slashed with the grate by the German officer. He is lying on his side, no breath left inside of him, his nose and cheeks a shredded mess of dried blood and pus.
