Page 90 of The Little Liar
Still, Sebastian was rightly proud of the event he’d helped create in Salonika, the first official recognition of what had happened there. And if Fannie would not meet him in her new home, perhaps she would do so in their old one.
He sent her the newspaper article and a letter, asking if she would consider attending the march, to honor her father, if nothing else. Perhaps Tia would come, too?
He mailed it off, hoping Fannie had not changed her address.
Fannie read the letter in private.
It had been decades since she’d set foot in Greece. She called her daughter, who said, “If you go, I’ll go,” and Fannie thoughtit might be nice if they were all together. Her resentment toward Sebastian had softened over the last five years, partly because they had little to do with one another, and partly because of her rekindled affection for his brother, whom she now saw once a week in a screening room.
Every Wednesday, Nico arrived at 2:00P.M.to view the films that Fannie had loaded. She observed him while he watched. He was still beautiful, in a mature way. But he rarely spoke. Only after the movies were finished would he walk up to the booth and make polite small talk. He was always kind, asking if the job was suitable, if there was anything she needed. His voice was soft and had a vulnerability that drew her in. And, of course, deep down, she felt intensely connected to him, the way we often feel about those we loved young, even decades later, even after they have changed dramatically.
Did they speak about the past?
No. Fannie waited week after week for a spark of recognition, a moment when it felt right for her to say “Can we talk about what we’re not talking about?” But it never came. Instead, they settled into an unspoken complicity. He did not acknowledge who she was because it meant confronting the pain of what he’d done. And she did not push him because his mind was clearly not right. The layers of deception. The meaningless lies. There must be a reason, Fannie thought. She worried her truth might chase him away. The things she wanted toknow—Where had he been? What had he endured? Was he sending great amounts of money to people every year?—were too much to blurt out. She needed to be patient. She reminded herself that for so long she had no idea if he was even alive. She could wait.
And so, for a while, they exchanged a rare kindness: the kindness of silence. They worked side by side in the present, and let the past sleep undisturbed.
Then, after nearly a year of working together, Fannie brought Nico food for a rare evening screening.
“What is this?” he asked, surprised at the tray of chicken pancakes and stuffed cabbage leaves.
“I just thought, it’s so late, and you probably won’t get a chance to eat afterward,” she said. “I hope it’s all right.”
He thanked her and she returned to the booth. After the screening, she noticed he had eaten everything.
“It was very good.”
“Thank you.”
“Where did you learn to cook like that?”
“A Hungarian woman taught me.”
He paused.
“So you’re Hungarian?”
“No. I just stayed with her for a while.”
“When?”
“During the war.” She chose her next words carefully. “I was hiding. From the Germans. That Hungarian woman kept me alive until I was captured by the Arrow Cross.”
She studied his face, searching for a reaction.
“I went to cooking school in Paris,” he said.
He rose from his seat.
“Well, good night, Miss.”
***
The heart has many routes to love, and compassion is one of them. Fannie used the gap between their weekly meetings to try and understand Nico’s affliction. Although she felt uneasy doing it, she sometimes followed him when he left the building. She observed him eating by himself in cheap restaurants, rummaging through bookstores, or disappearing for days at the apartment near the airport.
Every week, on Friday mornings, Nico would drive out to the cemetery and clean the headstones. Fannie would trail behind him. The sight of him bent over those graves touched her deeply. Whatever Nico had suffered, it clearly left him more comfortable with the dead than the living.
Although Fannie had pursued Nico in search of their past, as time went on, she realized she didn’t need a past to care about him. With Sebastian, everything had been about the war. They could never escape its shadow.
