Page 41 of The Little Liar
“This is my son, Mantis,” the bearded man said, pointing. “And these are my grandchildren, Christos and Kostas. You can call me Papo, as they do. It means ‘grandfather.’”
“Papo,” Nico repeated.
“And what do we call you?”
Nico swallowed.
“Erich Alman.”
“All right, Erich Alman, where is the passport you need help with?”
Nico hesitated. Part of him felt he had already shared too much with these people. But something in the bearded man’s eyes made him think of his own grandfather. It filled him with a longing, and a remembrance of trust. He removed his shoe, took Hans Degler’s passport from inside it, and handed it over. Papo saw the brown cover with the black eagle andthe swastika above the wordsDeutches Reich. A huge smile spread across his face.
“A German passport? You have given us a second gift, Erich Alman.”
“You can’t keep it!” Nico yelled.
“Oh, I don’t want to keep it.”
He yanked back the tarp to reveal a drafting table, bottles of ink, jars of chemicals, and a sewing machine.
“I want to copy it,” he said.
Despite his paint-stained smock, Papo was not an artist.
He was a forger.
His family had been providing false documents to the community for over a year. Identification cards. Marriage certificates. Always changing the spelling of names to avoid detection as Romani. This small workshop, hidden behind the guise of a painter’s studio, was impressive. Nico saw stacks of paper, rubber stamps, cups of colored water, various dyes, even a pile of different-colored passports.
“I’ve never had a German one before,” Papo said.
“Can you put my picture in it?” Nico asked.
Papo examined the pages. “I’ll have to erase this blue stamp and create another. But I can use lactic acid. It works well.”
Nico didn’t know what the man was talking about. But he was fascinated. Here, in this abandoned building, was a place of reinvention, where old identities could be destroyed and new ones created. For a chameleon like Nico, it was perfect.
“Teach me to do what you do,” Nico said.
“Teach you?” Papo said.
“Yes.”
“No.”
“I’ll pay you.”
“Listen up, boy,” Mantis said. “We are packing and heading out in a few hours. We’ll be gone by tomorrow night.”
Nico set his jaw. “Then I’ll go with you.”
Udo Gets a New Job
Forgive me. I realize, in my detailed accounts of Nico, Fannie, and Sebastian, I have ignored the progression of their tormentor, our fourth character, Udo Graf.
Udo arrived in the camp known as Auschwitz on the same day as Nico’s family. He stepped from his train car to witness the mayhem of passengers and guards. It repelled him. The awful stench, the stacking of dead bodies, all these skeletal figures running through the mud in their striped pajamas.What was he doing here?
The answer came within the hour. While arriving prisoners were being pushed, clubbed, shaved, disinfected, or led into gas chambers, Udo was escorted to a villa at the far corner of the camp, a stately brick structure with well-tended gardens surrounding it. The workers there—a groundskeeper, several maids—kept their eyes low when Udo walked past. Once inside, he looked out the windows. He noticed high walls and large trees that blocked much of the view of the camp, particularly the large chimney of the crematorium. The place felt like a country house, pleasant, almost pastoral.
