Page 54 of The Little Liar
Nico’s throat went dry. Could this really be his vibrant, cheerful, barrel-chested grandfather? His body was a fraction of its old size. His neck could fit in Nico’s hand. His hair was shaved white stubble, and his eyes were covered in a grayish goo.
“Can you help me?” the old man croaked. “I can’t see anymore. But I have a grandson...”
“Yes, it’s m—”
“His name is Sebastian. He’s all I have left.”
Nico swallowed.All I have left? What does that mean?In his coat pocket, Nico held newly forged identification papers for his father, his mother, both his grandparents, his siblings, his uncle and aunt. He’d created them so they could escape this place and go home. All the lies Nico had told were to serve that single mission: a return to Salonika. A return to their house. A return to the sun-soaked Sabbath mornings when they walked to synagogue and the starry nights strolling the promenade to the White Tower.All I have left? Why did he only ask about Sebastian?
“Sir,” Nico said, in a practiced adult tone, “where is the rest of your family?”
Lazarre sniffed in deeply. He looked away.
“Dead.”
Nico repeated the word without even realizing it.
“Dead?” he whispered.
“They killed them all. These devils. They killed them all.”
The old man began to weep without tears, his face meltingin pain, as if he wanted to say more, but no words came. In the corner, a woman howled when a nurse touched her. Across the room, Russian soldiers lifted crying patients onto stretchers.
I would like to tell you that Nico dropped his charade at that very moment and embraced his beloved grandfather. That the two of them were reunited after all that suffering. But nothing cements a lie more than guilt. So in that infirmary, believing he had ushered his loved ones to their deaths—they killed them all—Nico Krispis finally lost me forever, like an astronaut losing the cord out in space.
“You must go to a hospital, sir,” he said, rising.
“I don’t think I will make it.”
“You will. Believe that you will.”
The old man tried to blink away the pus.
“What is your name?” he whispered.
Nico cleared his throat.
“My name is Filip Gorka. I am a doctor with the Red Cross. Stay here. I will find someone to help you.”
He turned, wiped the tears from his eyes, and walked away.
And that is how the war ended for Nico.
Part III
1946
Truth is universal.You often hear that expression.
Nonsense.
Were I truly universal, there would be no disagreement over right and wrong, who deserves what, or what happiness means.
But there are certain truths that are experienced universally, and one of them is loss. The hollow in your heart as you stand by a grave. The lump in your throat as you stare at your destroyed home. Loss. Yes. Loss is universal. Everyone in their lifetime will know it.
Salonika, by 1946, was a monument to loss. A city of ghosts. Less than two thousand Jews remained, the “lucky” ones, who had hidden like hunted animals in the nearby mountains, and the less fortunate who dragged home from the camps, dead yet somehow alive, searching for something but uncertain what for, having lost everyone they loved and everything they knew.
Sebastian Krispis, now fully grown but bone thin, stood in front of No. 3 Kleisouras Street on a chilly February morning and banged on the door. He wore a coat provided by the RedCross, pants and shirt from a relief agency, and boots he was given by an empathetic Polish shoe merchant. His shoulder still ached from the bullet he had taken a year ago.
