Page 70 of The Little Liar
Instead, Nico found success in films by financing them.
He met a young director named Robert Morris at a swimming club. Robert had an idea for a movie about King Solomon. When he lamented lacking the money to make it, Nico said, “I can help with that.”
Together they went to a studio, which, encouraged by a partner who would share the risk, invested in the project. The movie became extremely popular and earned Nico’s money back many times over. Soon he had his own office at the studio, where he listened to people’s ideas for films and decided which ones to pursue. The more successes he had, the richer the studio became. His skill at judging popular ideas greatly impressed his industry colleagues, but it was no surprise to me. A good liar knows what people want to hear; why wouldn’t he know what they want to watch?
Nico’s influence increased exponentially. People whispered about his success rate. They clamored to meet with him. He was using the name Nathan Guidili, which was on the diploma that hung in his office. He told people to call him Nate.
The 1950s passed, with films becoming more popular, more complicated, and more expensive. Nico grew even more valuable to the studio. He was well compensated and was permitted to keep his own schedule, which often saw him disappear for days at a time.
From the outside, it appeared to be an enviable existence. A high-paying job. A glamorous business. A private office in a movie factory where one’s wildest dreams turned to celluloid reality.
But the lies you tell by daylight leave you lonesome in the dark. Nico’s sleep was haunted. He rarely had a night where a war memory did not wake him, gasping. He would see Nazis shooting bodies into the Danube River. He would see the gates of Auschwitz. He would see corpses stacked in the mud. But mostly he would see the thousands of fellow Jews he had lied to on the train platform, their sallow faces, their trusting eyes, the obedient way they entered the boxcars to their doom, after Nico had told them everything would be fine.
Sometimes the ghosts of his parents would come to him in dreams, always asking a single question: “Why?” On such occasions, Nico would get so agitated he would have to leave his house, walking hours around his neighborhood until his breathing eased and his nerves calmed.
As a result, he rarely came to work in the morning. Hebecame more and more dependent on sleeping pills, and would sometimes not arrive until the midafternoon. He always had an explanation. Car trouble. A doctor’s appointment. Because his talent was so valuable, the studio indulged his excuses.
Eventually, Nico only took meetings at night. He kept his office lights low, concerned that visitors might see the anxiety on his face, or the effects of the pills he was taking. He became known around the studio as eccentric, but in the film business, the more eccentric a successful man acted, the more his colleagues hailed the eccentricity. Soon others at the studio began taking their meetings at night, too.
In the summer of 1960, the studio was producing a very expensive motion picture, a western, one that Nico had approved. To help create publicity, the studio owner, Robert Young, gave an interview to a major newspaper. He shared what he knew about the eccentric Nate Guidili, which, it turned out, was the reporter’s real interest. The reporter began to dig into where Mr. Guidili came from. He made calls to the London School of Economics and discovered there was never a student there by that name. He shared this information with the studio owner, who, the following night, confronted Nico as he was leaving work.
“Nate, I gotta ask you,” he said. “You have the diploma on your wall. But did you ever really attend that school?”
Nico felt his skin tingle. It was the first time in America he’d been confronted with his lies. His mind raced.How did they find out? What else do they know?He thought about his classes in England, and how well he had done under the name Tomas Gergel.Did he ever really attend? Of course he did.
“No, I didn’t,” he said. “I’m sorry. I thought it would impress people.”
The owner shrugged and exhaled deeply. “Well. Makes no difference to me. I guess I shouldn’t have talked to that reporter. We’ll take care of it.”
“What do you mean?”
He slapped Nico’s arm. “Don’t worry about it. You keep picking winners. But no more lies, OK?”
Nico watched him leave. He waited, day after day, for the story to appear. But it never did. The western came out and was a huge success. Nico was given a bonus. Three months later, he quit the studio and started his own company, where his office had a back door directly to his parking space and no one saw him come or go.
The Heart, and What It Yearns
Let me speak here of love. You might ask, what does Truth know about that subject? But which word do humans choose to describe love’s purest form?
“True.”
So hear me out.
You have debated for centuries about what true love means. Some say it is when another’s happiness means more to you than your own. Others say it is when you cannot imagine the world without your partner.
For me, true love is easy. It’s the kind where you do not lie to yourself.
Fannie, if she were being honest, had never truly loved Sebastian. She’d run to him as shelter. She’d embraced him as relief. When they found each other by the White Tower in Salonika, they were both alive, but not sure why. A wedding gave meaning to their survival.
But tragedy arranged that marriage, and death attended the ceremony. Their love was less for each other than for all the ghosts around them. As the years passed, those ghosts whispered differently to Fannie than to Sebastian. Hers was justher father, who said, “Live your life.” His was three generations murdered in the camps, screaming in his head, “Avenge us!”
So, despite his wife’s objections, Sebastian eventually moved the family to Vienna, where he could work with the Nazi Hunter.
And Fannie never forgave him.
She hated being in Austria. She hated the memories. She hated the cold. She refused to learn German or visit the mountains or learn to ski. She focused only on raising Tia, hovering over her after school, reminding her of her Jewish roots. Tia grew into a shy, intelligent teenager, who read a great deal and, like her mother, was largely unaware of her beauty. She often asked when they could return to Greece, where it was warmer and she could swim in the sea.
Sebastian found a night job as a security guard, which left him hours during the day to help the Nazi Hunter review lists, make phone calls, write letters, and chase information. There was a small group of equally dedicated workers at the agency, most of them survivors of the camps. They smoked and drank coffee. They kept photos of escaped Nazis on a wall and celebrated every arrest or deportation. Sebastian skipped many meals with his wife and daughter to work with these people, and when he came home, he wanted to speak of the progress they were making, which Fannie forbade.
