Page 81 of The Little Liar
“What?” Udo said.
“The little guy, on the van, the leader. His father’s Jewish. What’s he even doing up there?”
Udo was incensed. This was the final indignity. The son of a Jew? Wearing the uniform? He moved toward the vans,wedging through the police, who were tangling with screaming Black youths. He drew closer, and made eye contact with the short imposter. He even formed the sounds in his mouth to holler: “Get down! You are a disgrace!”
He never got the chance. His fury was interrupted by two words he had not heard in decades, words so unexpected he could not help but turn to see their source.
“UDO GRAF!”
There, across the park, was a tall, skinny man, his expression almost maniacal. Udo recognized the face, older now, no longer a teen. The Brother. Sebastian.But I shot him! How is he alive?
“UDO GRAF!”
Udo dug his hands in his pockets and moved swiftly in the opposite direction.Why did I come here? It was reckless.He heard his name being called again and again, but tried to ignore it in the cacophony of protesters and the short man atop the van screaming, “If you want a holocaust, we will give you one!” Udo’s head was throbbing.Think. Think.He passed a police officer and leaned into him.
“Officer, there’s a crazy man yelling ‘Udo Graf’ back there. He has a gun. I saw it.”
The police officer grabbed a partner and raced off as Udo kept his feet moving, hurrying but not running, head down, talking to himself,Don’t look up, don’t look up, just as he had talked to himself thirty-three years earlier when he walked past those Russian soldiers. His temper had gotten the better of him that time, and the pugnacious Jew had done him in. He would not succumb twice.
He kept moving, exiting the park, crossing a busy street. He saw an approaching bus, which he flagged and jumped aboard, handing the driver a dollar bill and moving swiftly to the back, away from a window. Only when he sat down did he realize his shirt, socks, and undershorts were soaked with sweat.
***
Sebastian bent to catch his breath. His throat was raw from screaming. He looked up and down the streets, but he could not spot the old man. Still. It was him. He knew it. His suspicions had been correct. The thought of Nazis rising had been irresistible to the formerSchutzhaftlagerführer. He’d been drawn out of the weeds.
Sebastian’s mind was racing. More than thirty years of haunting dreams, midnight screams, visions of vengeance, all the while never knowing if the man was even alive to face his punishment.But he was! I saw him!The same jutting jaw. The same steely eyes that used to stare at Sebastian across the Auschwitz yard. His hair was even the same color.
He had chased Udo through the park, but the police grabbed Sebastian and protesters blocked his view. Part of him sagged with the thought that a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity had slipped through his fingers.
But the other part felt his actual fingers. They were gripped like talons around an object that gave him comfort, a shred of hope that justice, finally, had a chance.
It was a camera.
And Sebastian had taken at least twenty photos.
His first call was to the Hunter.
He could barely contain his enthusiasm. “I found him!” was how Sebastian began, followed by a detailed description of all that had taken place. The Hunter was pleased but measured in his response, reminding Sebastian that seeing the devil and capturing him are two different things.
Nonetheless, the photographs, combined with Sebastian’s eyewitness testimony—considering he personally spent nearly two years under Udo Graf’s torture—should be enough to engage the U.S. authorities, the Hunter said. But he cautioned Sebastian to remember that for the Americans to help locate a former Nazi, they might be forced to admit they had harbored him.
“Proceed cautiously,” he warned. “Learn who you can trust.”
Sebastian hung up and ran his hands through his hair, scratching his head, rubbing his temples. The proof he had been waiting for had finally come to pass, and now his instructions were “proceed cautiously”?
He drank a miniature bottle of vodka from the hotel refrigerator. Then he called the front desk and asked them to put through a call to California. He read them the digits he had scribbled in an address book. It was the last phone number he’d had for his now ex-wife.
Hollywood, 1980
“Start the movie, please.”
The film was fed through the projector upside down as an intense light passed through lenses and spilled images onto a screen. Somehow, during the process, the picture turned right side up. Twenty-four frames were projected each second, and each one flashed three times, yet the scenes played smoothly on the screen, as if the actors were right in front of you. Every part of watching a motion picture is some kind of deception. But this occurred to me, not so much the weary man in the screening room.
“The lights,” Nico said.
“Yes, sir, sorry,” said the projectionist.
The room darkened. The film ran. It was the third time in three weeks that Nico had watched it by himself. The movie, which had not yet been released, was about a German clown during World War II who, through his drunken behavior, ends up in an internment camp. There he performs for Jewish children who are imprisoned. Upon seeing how he makes them laugh, the Nazis use the clown to convince those children to board the trains to the death camps. Against his will,he does this again and again. Finally, in the end, feeling guilty for his deceptions, the clown himself goes to Auschwitz and takes the hand of a child, as they enter the gas chambers together.
