Page 39 of The Little Liar
“I work for Herr Udo Graf, theHauptsturmführer! And he will have you killed!”
Only then did he realize he had yelled this in Greek.
The barber looked at the teenaged boys, and nodded for them to let Nico up.
“You’re from Salonika,” the man said. “I hear it in your accent. You may look like a German, and you may speak their language, but you’re one of us. A Greek. Why are you pretending?”
Nico scowled. “Give me back my bag.”
“You can have the bag, but I’m keeping everything in it. Unless you tell me what you’re doing.”
“I need a photo. For a passport.”
“Where are you traveling?”
Nico hesitated. “To the camps.”
“The camps? TheGermancamps?”
The barber looked at the teenagers and started laughing.
“Nobody goes to those camps willingly. They take you there like a captured animal. And you never come back.”
Nico tightened his jaw.
“Tell me, boy,” the man said. “Who’s in the camps that you need to see so badly?”
“None of your business.”
“You’re a Jew?” the barber asked.
“No.”
“We could pull down your pants and see quickly enough.”
Nico clenched his fists. The teenaged boys eyed one another. The barber waved them off.
“Never mind. Maybe a Jew, maybe not a Jew, but a boy whospeaks German and needs a passport to gointothe camps. That is something interesting.”
He stepped away and rifled through the bag. Beneath the clothes and the sausage, he discovered more papers folded at the bottom. He took one out, then chuckled to himself. He turned back to the teenaged boys.
“Bring him to your grandfather,” he said.
Who were these people?
The barber’s name was Zafi Mantis, and the teenaged boys were his sons, Christos and Kostas. They were Romani, often referred to in those days as “Gypsies.” They, too, were hiding from the Nazis, the barbershop being a front for their real intentions.
The three of them led Nico to the outskirts of town, a deserted block with just two buildings standing. Nico noticed a cluster of tents behind one building, and some women bathing children in a large metal tub. He was led up a set of stairs. On the second floor, Mantis knocked on a door four times, waited, knocked three more times, then knocked once more.
The door opened, and a short, bearded man wearing a smock let them inside.
“Who is this?” he asked.
“Our gold mine,” Mantis said.
Nico looked around. There were paint cans and canvases and various works of art on easels. At the back end, a large tarp hung from floor to ceiling, and some stools sat in front of it, as if for models.
“Look at this,” Mantis said, opening Nico’s bag and pulling out papers. “Identification documents.Germandocuments!”
