Page 94 of The Little Liar
Poté Xaná.
“Never again.”
Sebastian held a paper on the podium.
As the wind blew his hair across his forehead, he spoke passionately into a microphone about the many ways the Jews of Salonika had suffered in the 1940s. He spoke of the beatings. The humiliations. The random shootings. He spoke of the yellow stars they were forced to wear. The Baron Hirsch ghetto. The barbed wire above the walls and the deadly fate of anyone trying to escape.
He told of how Nazis handed his father’s business over to two strangers, then chased him out of his own shop. As he spoke, he wondered if the children of those strangers might be in the crowd, and if they felt even an ounce of shame.
“Our history was destroyed, our community was destroyed, our families were destroyed,” Sebastian declared. “But our faith was not. Today we remember. But tomorrow, justice must continue...”
Heads nodded. Some people applauded. When Sebastian finished, he stepped aside and let the Hunter speak. When the Hunter concluded by saying, “We will never rest, we will never forget,” the crowd began to walk, en masse, in the direction of the old train station.
Sebastian took his place at the front. He breathed in deeply and squinted at the clouds. It was cold for March and felt like it would rain. He dug his hands into his pockets. Although he was happy this event had come together, there was something ill-fitting about it. The people marching were healthy, well-fed, many of them were young, some not even Jewish. They wore fashionable clothes and running shoes. The buildings were different from how Sebastian remembered them. There was a huge new parking structure. A new courthouse. The old Ladadika olive oil market was being renovated into an entertainment zone, with cafés and bars now lining its cobblestone streets.
To Sebastian, it felt too modern and bright for the solemnity of the occasion, as if he were trying to wedge an adult foot into a child’s shoe. But then, commemorating something is not the same as living through it.
He thought about those missing from the day. He thought about his mother and baby sisters, how his life with them ended so abruptly. He thought about his father and grandfather, how they had tried to protect him from the horrors of Auschwitz, and how Lazarre insisted, every night, that they recite one good thing that God had provided that day. He wondered if they were all with God now, and if somehow they were watching this march in their memory. Hewondered what they thought of such solidarity, forty years too late.
He looked over his shoulder. There were maybe a thousand people—equal to the total number of Jews now left in Salonika. One thousand. Where fifty thousand had once thrived.
Sebastian craned his neck. He knew Fannie and Tia were somewhere in the crowd, but he could not see them. He wondered if the words he’d spoken had shed any light on what he’d done with his life, and why it had taken him away from them for all these years.
Fannie held her daughter’s hand.
They moved in step with the other marchers. As they approached the old Baron Hirsch neighborhood, which remained largely desolate, Fannie felt her pulse quicken. She remembered being dragged here as a girl, two women holding her by the elbows, the image of her father’s execution still fresh in her mind, gunned down in front of the apothecary, his hand on the doorknob.
“What is it, Mama?” Tia said, seeing Fannie’s face.
“Nothing, just memories,” Fannie said. She forced her lips into a smile. But her mind was drifting back, to that day, to the raincoat she wore, to the crawl space she hid in. To Nico.
She hadn’t seen him since that morning on the steps of her apartment building, when she’d said to him, “I know it’s you.” His eyes had filled with tears and she was sure he would break through, open up, admit everything. But he hadn’t. Instead, he’d risen to his feet and mumbled, “You don’t have tocome to work anymore, I’ll still pay you,” before hurrying off to his car.
After that, he was nowhere to be found. Fannie came to work every day for the next three weeks. She went to his house. She went to the apartment. No sign.
The night before she left for Greece, she went once more to the studio, hoping he might somehow be there late. The screening room was empty. His private office was dark. She tried the door. It was unlocked. She hesitated, then let herself in.
She had never entered this room without him in it. She approached his desk. It was mostly clear, just a few scripts piled neatly together. She opened a drawer. Nothing. Another drawer. Empty.
She went to a file cabinet and pulled on the top handle. She saw a half dozen files, with the names of movies she recognized from the screenings. The next drawer down was equally sparse. She wondered, with so little paperwork, if Nico kept track of everything in his head. It was so much information. How could he do it?
She wasn’t going to bother with the bottom drawer. But she changed her mind and leaned over to tug the handle. It resisted. She pulled harder. Finally, she squatted down and yanked the drawer loose, and instantly saw why it had been so difficult.
The drawer was stuffed with dozens of files, each of them marked by year, beginning with 1946 and going all the way to the present. She pulled one out, opened it, and felt her breath escape her.
There, inside, was list after list of Jewish names, each withan age and an address—in France, in Israel, in Brazil, in Australia—alongside a numerical notation with a check mark next to it. There were photos and supporting documents, copies of birth and death certificates.
She pulled out a second file. More lists. Another file. The same. Each year, it seemed, the files got thicker. The last one, marked 1983, was so fat, Fannie needed two hands to lift it. When she did, she noticed something tucked in the rear. A large manila envelope, with the wordFANNIEwritten in blue marker. With her hands shaking, she undid its clasp.
Ten minutes later, she raced out of the office. When she reached her car, she fell against it and wept. She wept for all she had lost in her life and the feeling that she had just lost something else. She stared at the envelope and knew that Nico was never coming back. In her insistence on truth versus lies, she had doomed herself to a third alternative: never knowing which was which.
Udo felt the butt of his gun.
It was hidden inside his jacket pocket, and he stroked it as the crowd reached the railroad station. He had thought about killing the Nazi Hunter back at Liberty Square, but he was too far away for a clean shot. Besides, the railroad station was more fitting. It was the site of his best efforts, the cleansing of Jewish filth from this city.Fifty thousand gone. Soon, two more.
Salonika had changed greatly since he’d left it, but it was not without memories. As the crowd neared the tracks, Udo,disguised as a participant and carrying a white balloon, thought about the asset he’d put to good use here. Nico Krispis. The boy who never lied.
Udo often wondered what became of him. He had spared the child’s life. Over the years, whenever he killed someone, he would remind himself of that single act of mercy and award himself merit. The time they’d spent together in the house on Kleisouras Street was as close as Udo had ever come to being a parent, and he still remembered the night he read Nico a German book, and the time Nico brought Udo a hot towel for his headache. He realized now, in seeing the railroad platform, that his last words to the boy might have been “You stupid Jew.” He almost regretted that.
