Page 45 of The Little Liar
“Be careful. Trust no one.”
Nico choked up. Part of him wanted to stay here, with thenightly fires and the pleasant songs and the fellow Romani who had taken him in without questions. It felt like family. But his real family needed him. Having learned the art of forgery, his plan was to create enough doctored paperwork to set them free.
“Thank you for everything,” he told Papo.
“We should be thanking you. You saved our lives.”
Mantis exhaled deeply. “You know, if you go to those camps, they’ll kill you in a second.”
Nico didn’t reply.
“I’ll tell you this, Erich Alman, or whatever your name is, you have some guts.”
The wind blew leaves across the frozen mud. Papo walked Nico to the edge of their encampment.
“Always remember this,” he said. “Si khohaimo may pachivalo sar o chachimo.”
“What does it mean?” Nico asked.
“‘Some lies are easier to believe than the truth.’”
***
Employing that philosophy, Nico walked, rode trains, hitched rides with wagons and automobiles, and made his way toward Poland by traveling through Yugoslavia and into Hungary, adopting whatever identities suited him. In Belgrade, he posed as a student and ate for a week in a school lunchroom. In Osijek, he found work as a printer’s apprentice, staying long enough to steal paper and supplies for more forgeries. He always had a story ready, should some authority figure stop him. He was a Hungarian musician, visiting his grandparents.He was a Polish athlete on holidays with his uncle.Some lies are easier to believe than the truth.Nico’s truth, that he was a Jewish boy from Greece who had been tutored by a NaziHaupsturmtführer, had deceived his own people on a train platform, was taught the art of forgery by Romani, and now was traveling to a death camp from which he had been spared, was far less believable than his cover stories.
One night, in the Hungarian city of Kapsovár, Nico was walking a busy street when a group of Nazis pulled up in transports and ran inside a department store. The owners, three Jewish brothers, were marched out at gunpoint and lined up by the store’s front windows. A young German soldier, bony and tightly muscled, removed his coat and hat and placed them on a bench. As the brothers were restrained, the soldier beat each of them senseless.
A crowd gathered to watch, some of them cheering with each new blow.“Hit him again!” “It’s about time!”The German was energized, and when the brothers lost consciousness, he demanded they be propped up for more strikes. When he finally finished, his knuckles were raw and his shirtsleeves were stained in blood. He took congratulatory slaps from his fellow troops and exhaled in satisfaction.
But when he went to retrieve his coat and hat, they were gone.
Nico was already blocks away.
***
As the weeks passed, Nico studied Hungarian from people he met in his various identities. He found a job washing dishesin a café in Szeged. The cook took a shine to him and would teach him phrases as they played cards after work. Having already learned parts of eight different languages, Nico had a system. Learn certain key verbs (do, want, see, make, go, come, eat, sleep), certain key nouns (food, water, room, friend, family, country), memorize all the pronouns, then begin to fill in the rest.
One night, Nico put on the German soldier’s coat and hat and walked to the city center. Although he admittedly looked young for the Nazi uniform, nobody questioned him. Quite the opposite. They feigned smiles and stepped out of his way.
Near the center of town, Nico spotted a swarm of people in front of a cinema. He approached to see what was happening. There, in the middle of the crowd, stood a beautiful, wavy-haired woman who, from what he overheard, was an actress in the new film playing there. She had come to Szeged to promote it. She wore a sparkly gown and white gloves, and people crammed around her for autographs.
“Katalin!” they yelled. “Over here, Katalin!”
Nico had never seen a movie in his life. While the crowd fussed in front of the theater, he snuck around the back and found an unlocked door. He slipped inside and took a seat in the rear. When the other seats filled and the room went dark, he felt a moment of trepidation. Then the screen lit up.
The film was about a Hungarian count who, through a magic time machine, travels back two centuries to win the hand of a woman, played by the actress outside the theater. Nico wascaptivated, not only by the film itself, the images, the action, the larger-than-life characters, but also by the story, and the idea of traveling backward. The whole experience was magical. For a few moments, he didn’t think about the war, the trains, or his lies. He just watched the screen, his mouth agape. He didn’t want it to end.
But it did end. Abruptly. A loud commotion shattered the peace, reminding Nico of the moment his home was swarmed by troops as he hid in a crawl space. The lights burst on, and Nico heard men screaming in German. SS troops. They ordered the patrons outside.
“Schneller!”they yelled. Faster!
Nico waited until the theater was mostly empty, then marched out slowly with his hands behind his back, as if he had helped to clear it. When he saw the other Nazis, he edged away, his heart pounding. It was one thing to present phony papers, or walk the streets alone in this outfit. It was another to play the part of a Nazi in front of other real ones. Fortunately for Nico, the war at this point was depleting German personnel, and members of the Nazi youth were being deployed more and more. It wasn’t that unusual for a teenager to be pressed into service.
The soldiers at this theater—there were only five of them—were more concerned with the owner and the actress, whom they accused of pushing propaganda. They hollered about the film being “forbidden” and a “violation” of protocol. They forced the actress into the backseat of a transport, presumably to arrest her.
Nico knew he should slip away while he could. But this woman, whom he had just watched moments earlier on a giant screen, froze him in place. She seemed otherworldly. So glamorous. Even in the transport, she showed no signs of fear. She folded her hands in her lap and looked straight ahead.
The Nazis began to argue with some of the patrons, who were demanding their money back from the theater owner. A fight broke out, and the soldiers pushed in to break it up. One ran past Nico and, seeing his uniform, pointed to the transport and yelled in German, “Watch the woman!”
