Page 43 of The Little Liar
“Look out for Big Ears today, he’s on the warpath.”
“I saw Vampire sleeping outside the latrine.”
“The Ferret shot two prisoners yesterday, steer clear.”
Sebastian even connected with some Polish civilians who were brought in as day workers to labor alongside the Jewish prisoners. The two groups were not allowed to speak. But one morning Sebastian found himself shoveling gravel next to a thick-necked laborer who wore an eye patch.
“You’re a damn skeleton,” the man whispered to him. “What are they doing to you in here?”
Sebastian swallowed. He hadn’t thought about how he looked to other people. None of the prisoners commented on one another’s appearance. Everyone was equally diminished—shaved to the nubs, bruised, scarred, open-sored, grease-stained, bone thin. But the Pole’s question:What are they doing to you in here?How could this man, who obviously lived nearby, be so clueless about what was happening in his neighborhood?
Part of Sebastian wanted to start from the beginning, the cattle cars, the separations, the disinfecting, the beatings, the morning punishments, the evening plop of tasteless soup, the coughing, vomiting, typhus, scarlet fever, the bodies found dead in their bunks.
On the other hand, if it got back to the guards, he would be hanged in front of the whole camp, and his father and grandfather with him. It was a deadly multiplier the Nazis employed; for every prisoner caught stealing food, five would be tortured. For every attempted runaway, ten would be killed. How could Sebastian reveal the Truth, when the Nazis were choking me inside his throat?
“Can you get me some food?” he finally mumbled.
The man with the eye patch shook his head and kept shoveling, as if to say,Why did I bother?But the next day, when the guards were elsewhere, he slipped Sebastian a single potato and a tin of sardines, which Sebastian hid in his underwear until he got back to his block. He shared it with his father and grandfather.
“Tonight, I am grateful for our brilliant Sebastian,” Lazarre said, smacking his lips. “I don’t think a potato ever tasted this good.”
Lev smiled and rubbed his son’s head. He noticed the curved scar above his collarbone, a souvenir from a dog bite after Schutzhaftlagerführer Graf had ordered the hounds on a group of prisoners.
“How is it healing?” Lev asked.
Sebastian glanced down. “Still hurts.”
“When you put on a collared shirt, you won’t even notice it.”
Sebastian smirked. “When am I putting on a collared shirt?”
“One day,” Lev said.
Lazarre leaned in. “Never be ashamed of a scar. In the end, scars tell the story of our lives, everything that hurt us, and everything that healed us.”
Sebastian touched the wound lightly.
“I’m proud of you, Seb,” Lev whispered. He blinked back a tear. “I never realized how strong you were. I’m sorry. I guess I didn’t pay enough attention.”
“It’s all right, Papa,” Sebastian replied.
“I love you, son.”
Sebastian shivered. He thought about those words, and the many times he’d wished his father would say them to him. Now, however, words were no longer critical. Food was. Water was. Avoiding the guards’ gaze was. It is a sad fact I have noticed with humans. By the time you share what a loved one longs to hear, they often no longer need it.
***
One night, in the late summer of 1944, the prisoners were startled by the distant sound of explosions. The next day, thework they had been doing was replaced by the hurried construction of air raid shelters.
“We’re being bombed,” one of them whispered.
“They’re coming to free us!” whispered another.
“But what if theyhitus?”
“It’s the end of the war! Don’t you see?”
Sadly, it was not the end. The Allied forces were indeed bombing, but not the death camp itself, rather the factories surrounding it. Day after day, the sound of airplanes rumbled the sky. The Germans ran to their shelters, which were off-limits to prisoners, who could only lie in a muddy waste field, one atop the other.
