Page 47 of The Little Liar
Katalin chuckled. “The face of a schoolboy, the clothes of a Nazi, and the words of a philosopher.
“You should be in the movies.”
Nico found Katalin fascinating. She found him amusing.
That night, they stayed up until dawn, with Nico asking endless questions about films. Where did the clothes come from? Who wrote the stories? How did they make it seem like she traveled back in time? Katalin was charmed by his naivete, and it helped take her mind off her worry that what happened in Szeged would soon follow her here.
It didn’t take long. Two days later, German transports roared to her apartment building, and she was arrested and carted off to jail. It wasn’t the first time. It wouldn’t be the last. The Hungarian authorities accused her of spying, and in a prison cell, she was beaten and tortured. This went on for several months.
Finally, through the help of a government official, Katalin was released. But her apartment, during her incarceration, had been stripped by the Nazis. She returned to empty rooms. Even the curtains were gone.
She collapsed in the corner and pulled her knees to her chest. Her legs and arms were gashed. Her once beautiful face was blotched with purple bruises.
As she wiped away tears, she heard a noise outside the living room window. She sucked in her breath. She saw one hand, then two, appear in the frame, followed by a shock ofblond hair and Nico’s smiling face. He pushed up the glass pane and tumbled through it.
“You again?” she said.
“Are you all right?”
“Do I look all right?”
“No.”
“The bastards.” She motioned to the empty room. “They robbed me blind. They took everything.”
Nico smiled.
“Not everything,” he said.
The Words of a Blessing
There is a prayer that Jewish people recite when they learn of a death. While the words are in Hebrew, the translation is roughly this:
Blessed are you, Lord our God, the Judge of Truth.
Of all the things you could say when someone dies, why mention me? Why reference truth at all? Why not ask for forgiveness? For mercy? For a soft landing in a glorious heaven?
Perhaps it’s because the lies you die with are the first thing the Lord peels away—the lies you have told, and the lies that have been told about you.
Or perhaps I am more important than you think.
***
After Lev switched number cards with his father in the selection line, it was just a matter of time before the Germans came for him. At night, in their bunks, Lazarre pleaded with his son to admit what he had done, to tell the SS men he was only trying to save his elderly father. But Lev shook his head.
“Then they will just kill both of us.”
He was right, of course. So Lev remained silent, his father wept, and Sebastian waited, feeling so powerless his hands and feet went numb. On the third morning, a chilly, rainy day, the SS guards read the numbers of those “selected” and pulled the subjects from the roll call lines. Lev was one of them. He heaved a huge breath and Sebastian saw his father’s hands trembling. Just before they took him away, he leaned into his son.
“I love you, Sebby,” Lev whispered. “Never give up. You survive for me, OK? Watch over Nano. And find your brother one day. However long it takes. Tell him he is forgiven.”
“No, Papa,” Sebastian pleaded. “Please, please don’t leave...”
A guard smacked Sebastian’s face as Lev was yanked away. Sebastian felt hot tears streaming down his cheeks. He wanted to howl. He wanted to kill these soldiers, grab his father, and run. But where could he go? Where could any of them go?
Suddenly he heard these words:
“Blessed are you, Lord our God, the Judge of Truth.”
