Page 49 of The Little Liar

He fell again and Fannie lifted him. She kept his arm in her grip for the next three hours, until it looked like he would pass out.

“Let me help,” Fannie said. “I promise I will give it back.”

The boy no longer protested. Fannie slung the pack on her shoulder. It was heavy, and made her steps more labored. She wondered if there was really cheese inside.

“Where do you live?” she asked the boy.

“No place.”

“What about your family?”

“I don’t have any.”

He corrected himself. “Anymore.”

He began crying again, and Fannie told him to stop, it would tire him out. Her shoulders ached. Her feet were throbbing. When nighttime fell, the marchers stopped and she told the boy to sleep and maybe the next day they would be liberated.

“Then where will I go?” he whispered.

“You can live with me.”

“Where?”

“We’ll find someplace.”

They fell asleep next to each other. Fannie awoke at dawn to the shouting of Nazi commands. The prisoners around her slowly rose, but the little boy did not. Fannie jostled him.

“Wake up, boy.”

He didn’t move.

“Wake up. Come on.”

“Leave him!”

An SS guard was hovering over her, his gun drawn.

“No, please, don’t shoot! He’s just sleeping.”

“Marsch!”

She stumbled ahead, carrying the pack, pushed along by the crowd behind her. She glanced back at the boy’s small body. She tried to remember the words from the kaddish, but could only recall the first two lines, which she whispered under her breath. A man standing next to her overheard this and whispered along with her.

Five hours later, her eyelids heavy, she threw the pack off her shoulders and left it in the mud. She never even opened it.

***

Now, I’ve warned that this is a story which might, in its twists and turns, make you question the coincidence of certain events. I can only confirm what happened next:

On that day, Saturday, January 27, 1945, the sky was dark, and word came that the death march line was drawing closeto Hegyeshalom, a town by the Austrian border. Fannie shivered when she heard that word.Austria?No! Once they entered the Wolf’s birthplace, no one would ever help her, even if she escaped. She had to do something. But what?

At the precise moment of Fannie’s deliberation, snow began to fall. And as the wind whipped it into a squall, a large group of Hungarian refugees suddenly appeared, trudging up the road perpendicular to the Nazi march. The SS guards blew whistles and hollered, trying to let the refugees pass. But the refugees swarmed them, hands out in desperation.

“Give us food... Give us water! Please! Some water!”

In the chaos of the crowd, Fannie saw her chance. The guards were preoccupied. She took a deep breath, then slipped from the line with her head down. She quick-stepped into the refugee group and, once there, began shouting the words they were shouting in Hungarian.

The annoyed Germans kept waving the refugees on. “Out of the way! We have nothing for you! Move!”