Page 98 of The Little Liar
“Nico! Nico!”
“Nico!” Sebastian echoed.
At that moment, with his heartbeat slowing, it occurred to Nico how nice it was that the three of them were all together again, like the time they climbed the White Tower by the gulf. And as everything he had done in his life—all the lies, andall the efforts to make amends—came rushing past in a final blur, Nico realized his grandfather had been right about that prisoner, who kept painting and painting until the tower was white enough to cleanse his sins.
A man, to be forgiven, will do anything.
What happened next, as Fannie held Nico’s head and Sebastian pressed on his wound, is something I cannot explain.
The old boxcar began to move. It creaked along the tracks, slowly accelerating, ten feet, twenty feet, as if returning from a long journey and pulling into the station. People in the crowd nudged one another until they were all staring, their mouths agape.
Then, as snowflakes rode the winter wind like ashes, the train came to a stop. Its doors slid open. Fannie felt Nico’s head lift from her fingers. He stared for a long moment into the boxcar, then smiled, tears running down his cheeks, as if seeing the faces of everyone he’d ever loved and lied to, come to take him home.
He died a moment later, in the arms of the woman who adored him and the hands of the brother who absolved him. It may sound incredible, but that is what happened. Truth be told. Truth be told.
And Let Us Say...
Many years have passed since that incident in Salonika. And while perhaps nothing as dramatic as that day is left to share, I am bound to complete the story.
Dead men tell no lies, but their truths must be unearthed. Nico Krispis left behind many layers of discovery. His true identity was never revealed in the Hollywood community, since the only people who knew he was The Financier were Fannie and Sebastian. His studio closed under the same shroud of secrecy with which it had operated, explained in the trades as “the sudden retirement of its reclusive founder.” His explicit instructions, found in a manila envelope in a file cabinet, were for his projectionist, a woman named Fannie, to close out his affairs, pay whatever bills were outstanding, and draw down the operations, which she did.
When the moving men were sent to Nico’s home, Fannie accompanied them. She stood in his sparsely furnished bedroom, finding only an old leather bag in the closet. When one of the movers asked, “What about the stuff in the basement?”she followed him down the stairs and entered a dimly lit back room. Once again, she was taken by surprise.
There, in front of a gray curtain, was a movie camera on a tripod, a chair, and a set of lights. On the shelves were rows and rows of blue metal canisters, each bearing a number and containing a reel of film.
“Oh, Nico,” Fannie whispered.
That night, in the studio screening room, she threaded the first film through the spools, turned on the projector, and saw Nico’s face when he was in his twenties. Looking straight into the lens, his blond hair full and his features still vaguely boyish, he began: “This is how I survived the war...”
Fannie stopped the film, and immediately called Sebastian. “When can you come to California?” she said.
In the weeks that followed, the two of them viewed every reel, Nico telling the story of his incredible life. He detailed his various identities, as a German soldier, a Yugoslavian student, a Hungarian musician, a Polish Red Cross worker. He spoke of living with the Romani, learning to forge documents, stealing a uniform, posing as a young Nazi. He explained his relationship with the actress Katalin Karády and credited her with encouraging him to be brave, and teaching him about the movies. When he recalled that night on the Danube, he explained how he’d recognized Fannie, how happy he was to see her alive, and how, after making sure she was spared from the Arrow Cross, he used Katalin’s contacts to locate Gizella, the woman who had protected his friend, and sent money to a priest to have her freed.
When Fannie heard that, she burst into tears.
Nico recounted hundreds of conversations. For years, he had told the world nothing but lies, but to the camera he spoke only the truth, as if, having shared it with no one else, he’d preserved every piece meticulously.
In the final reels, he left instructions as to how his fortune should be distributed. Everything he owned—the stolen treasure from a Hungarian church, and every penny he made from his films—was to continue going to the families of survivors listed in his files. He had spent years flying back and forth to Europe to trace as many as he could, starting with children’s names scrawled on the walls of a basement in Zakopane, Poland, and continuing to every person on the Nazi manifests of trains out of Salonika.
He insisted that the funds be delivered to the victims’ children, and their children’s children, every year, on August 10, until it was all gone. He wished for this to be done anonymously, as achesed shel emet, an act of kindness not to be repaid.
In the final reel, recorded just before he left for Greece, he explained how he knew that Udo Graf would be in Salonika, because he’d kept tabs on the man for years, through secret payments to a certain U.S. senator. He’d been notified that the formerSchutzhaftlagerführerhad booked a ticket from Italy to Greece in March. Once Nico learned of Sebastian’s ceremony from a film director, and that the Hunter and Sebastian would be there, he knew what Graf was planning. And he had to stop it.
He thanked Fannie for finding him, for making him meals, and for not pushing him to face his own reflection until hewas ready, something, he said, he could not have done without her. He also thanked her for letting him “feel what it was like to be loved,” even for a little while.
He saved his final story for his brother. He said he knew that Sebastian assumed he had abandoned his family, but in truth, he had spent every day since they parted on the train tracks trying to get to Auschwitz. He explained how, after all that time, they had apparently missed each other by a few minutes on liberation day. But he’d discovered their grandfather, Lazarre, in the infirmary, and although he could not bring himself to tell his Nano the truth, he did come back and stay with him for his final days, posing as a doctor, holding his hand. During that time, whenever the blind man spoke, he always asked for “my brave grandson, Sebastian.”
Nico thought his brother would like to hear that.
When Lazarre died, Nico transported the body out of the camp and buried him in a faraway field, because he knew that his grandfather would not wish to be laid to rest in Nazi camp soil. He found a small boulder and used it as a headstone. A year later, using some of his newfound money, Nico went back and purchased the land that held the grave. And every summer, he went there to clean the stone with a rag and some water. He thought maybe Sebastian would like to continue that.
And what became of Udo Graf?
Well. The way our story has gone, you might assume he got what he deserved. But justice is never certain. Its scales can be manipulated.
Udo denied the murder charge, claiming he only shot his gun in the air as protest. He disavowed any connection to the Nazis. Flashing his Italian passport, he claimed to be a nationalist who simply did not believe “the lie of the Holocaust.”
Only when Sebastian, during a court hearing, held up a certain piece of Nazi identification his brother had provided and said, “This official document has Udo Graf’s fingerprints,” did Udo abruptly change his story and admit his true identity. He never knew that those papers, like so many others in Nico’s life, were a forgery.
