The Book Thief (19 page)

a jewish fist fighter—the wrath of rosa—a lecture—

a sleeper—the swapping of nightmares—

and some pages from the basement

THE ACCORDIONIST

(The
Secret Life of Hans Hubermann)

There was a
young man standing in the kitchen. The key in his hand felt like it was rusting
into his palm. He didn’t speak anything like hello, or please help, or any
other such expected sentence. He asked two questions.

As he looked
uncomfortably at the human shape before him, the young man’s voice was scraped
out and handed across the dark like it was all that remained of him.

Papa, alert and
appalled, stepped closer.

To the kitchen,
he whispered, “Of course I do.”

It all dated
back many years, to World War I.

They’re strange,
those wars.

Full of blood
and violence—but also full of stories that are equally difficult to fathom.
“It’s true,” people will mutter. “I don’t care if you don’t believe me. It was
that fox who saved my life,” or, “They died on either side of me and I was left
standing there, the only one without a bullet between my eyes. Why me? Why me
and not them?”

Hans Hubermann’s
story was a little like that. When I found it within the book thief’s words, I
realized that we passed each other once in a while during that period, though
neither of us scheduled a meeting. Personally, I had a lot of work to do. As
for Hans, I think he was doing his best to avoid me.

The first time
we were in the vicinity of each other, Hans was twenty-two years old, fighting
in France. The majority of young men in his platoon were eager to fight. Hans
wasn’t so sure. I had taken a few of them along the way, but you could say I
never even came close to touching Hans Hubermann. He was either too lucky, or
he deserved to live, or there was a good reason for him to live.

In the army, he
didn’t stick out at either end. He ran in the middle, climbed in the middle,
and he could shoot straight enough so as not to affront his superiors. Nor did
he excel enough to be one of the first chosen to run straight at me.

He’d been in the
fight for almost six months when he ended up in France, where, at face value, a
strange event saved his life. Another perspective would suggest that in the
nonsense of war, it made perfect sense.

On the whole,
his time in the Great War had astonished him from the moment he entered the
army. It was like a serial. Day after day after day. After day:

The conversation
of bullets.

Resting men.

The best dirty
jokes in the world.

Cold sweat—that
malignant little friend—outstaying its welcome in the armpits and trousers.

He enjoyed the
card games the most, followed by the few games of chess, despite being
thoroughly pathetic at it. And the music. Always the music.

It was a man a
year older than himself—a German Jew named Erik Vandenburg—who taught him to
play the accordion. The two of them gradually became friends due to the fact
that neither of them was terribly interested in fighting. They preferred
rolling cigarettes to rolling in snow and mud. They preferred shooting craps to
shooting bullets. A firm friendship was built on gambling, smoking, and music,
not to mention a shared desire for survival. The only trouble with this was
that Erik Vandenburg would later be found in several pieces on a grassy hill.
His eyes were open and his wedding ring was stolen. I shoveled up his soul with
the rest of them and we drifted away. The horizon was the color of milk. Cold
and fresh. Poured out among the bodies.

All that was
really left of Erik Vandenburg was a few personal items and the fingerprinted
accordion. Everything but the instrument was sent home. It was considered too
big. Almost with self-reproach, it sat on his makeshift bed at the base camp
and was given to his friend, Hans Hubermann, who happened to be the only man to
survive.

For that, he had
Erik Vandenburg to thank. Or more to the point, Erik Vandenburg and the
sergeant’s toothbrush.

That particular
morning, not too long before they were leaving, Sergeant Stephan Schneider
paced into the sleeping quarters and called everyone to attention. He was
popular with the men for his sense of humor and practical jokes, but more so
for the fact that he never followed anyone into the fire. He always went first.

On certain days,
he was inclined to enter the room of resting men and say something like, “Who
comes from Pasing?” or, “Who’s good with mathematics?” or, in the fateful case
of Hans Hubermann, “Who’s got neat handwriting?”

No one ever
volunteered, not after the first time he did it. On that day, an eager young
soldier named Philipp Schlink stood proudly up and said, “Yes, sir, I come from
Pasing.” He was promptly handed a toothbrush and told to clean the shit house.

When the
sergeant asked who had the best penmanship, you can surely understand why no
one was keen to step forward. They thought they might be first to receive a
full hygiene inspection or scrub an eccentric lieutenant’s shit-trampled boots
before they left.

“Now come on,”
Schneider toyed with them. Slapped down with oil, his hair gleamed, though a
small piece was always upright and vigilant at the apex of his head. “At least
one
of you useless bastards must be able to write properly.”

In the distance,
there was gunfire.

It triggered a
reaction.

“Look,” said
Schneider, “this isn’t like the others. It will take all morning, maybe
longer.” He couldn’t resist a smile. “Schlink was polishing that shit house while
the rest of you were playing cards, but this time, you’re going out
there.
”

Life or pride.

He was clearly
hoping that one of his men would have the intelligence to take life.

Erik Vandenburg
and Hans Hubermann glanced at each other. If someone stepped forward now, the
platoon would make his life a living hell for the rest of their time together.
No one likes a coward. On the other hand, if someone was to be nominated . . .

Still no one
stepped forward, but a voice stooped out and ambled toward the sergeant. It sat
at his feet, waiting for a good kicking. It said, “Hubermann, sir.” The voice
belonged to Erik Vandenburg. He obviously thought that today wasn’t the
appropriate time for his friend to die.

The sergeant
paced up and down the passage of soldiers.

“Who said that?”

He was a superb
pacer, Stephan Schneider—a small man who spoke, moved, and acted in a hurry. As
he strode up and down the two lines, Hans looked on, waiting for the news.
Perhaps one of the nurses was sick and they needed someone to strip and replace
bandages on the infected limbs of injured soldiers. Perhaps a thousand
envelopes were to be licked and sealed and sent home with death notices in
them.

At that moment,
the voice was put forward again, moving a few others to make themselves heard.
“Hubermann,” they echoed. Erik even said, “Immaculate handwriting, sir,
immaculate.
”

“It’s settled,
then.” There was a circular, small-mouthed grin. “Hubermann. You’re it.”

The gangly young
soldier made his way forward and asked what his duty might be.

The sergeant
sighed. “The captain needs a few dozen letters written for him. He’s got
terrible rheumatism in his fingers. Or arthritis. You’ll be writing them for
him.”

This was no time
to argue, especially when Schlink was sent to clean the toilets and the other
one, Pflegger, nearly killed himself licking envelopes. His tongue was
infection blue.

“Yes, sir.” Hans
nodded, and that was the end of it. His writing ability was dubious to say the
least, but he considered himself lucky. He wrote the letters as best he could
while the rest of the men went into battle.

None of them
came back.

That was the
first time Hans Hubermann escaped me. The Great War.

A second escape
was still to come, in 1943, in Essen.

Two wars for two
escapes.

Once young, once
middle-aged.

Not many men are
lucky enough to cheat me twice.

He carried the
accordion with him during the entirety of the war.

When he tracked
down the family of Erik Vandenburg in Stuttgart upon his return, Vandenburg’s
wife informed him that he could keep it. Her apartment was littered with them,
and it upset her too much to look at that one in particular. The others were
reminder enough, as was her once-shared profession of teaching it.

“He taught me to
play,” Hans informed her, as though it might help.

Perhaps it did,
for the devastated woman asked if he could play it for her, and she silently
wept as he pressed the buttons and keys of a clumsy “Blue Danube Waltz.” It was
her husband’s favorite.

“You know,” Hans
explained to her, “he saved my life.” The light in the room was small, and the
air restrained. “He—if there’s anything you ever need.” He slid a piece of
paper with his name and address on it across the table. “I’m a painter by
trade. I’ll paint your apartment for free, whenever you like.” He knew it was useless
compensation, but he offered anyway.

The woman took
the paper, and not long after, a small child wandered in and sat on her lap.

“This is Max,”
the woman said, but the boy was too young and shy to say anything. He was
skinny, with soft hair, and his thick, murky eyes watched as the stranger
played one more song in the heavy room. From face to face, he looked on as the
man played and the woman wept. The different notes handled her eyes. Such
sadness.

Hans left.

“You never told
me,” he said to a dead Erik Vandenburg and the Stuttgart skyline. “You never
told me you had a son.”

After a
momentary, head-shaken stoppage, Hans returned to Munich, expecting never to
hear from those people again. What he didn’t know was that his help would most
definitely be needed, but not for painting, and not for another twenty years or
so.

There were a few
weeks before he started painting. In the good-weather months, he worked
vigorously, and even in winter, he often said to Rosa that business might not
be pouring, but it would at least drizzle now and again.

For more than a
decade, it all worked.

Hans Junior and
Trudy were born. They grew up making visits to their papa at work, slapping
paint on walls and cleaning brushes.

When Hitler rose
to power in 1933, though, the painting business fell slightly awry. Hans didn’t
join the NSDAP like the majority of people did. He put a lot of thought into
his decision.

Once the
persecution began, his work slowly dried up. It wasn’t too bad to begin with,
but soon enough, he was losing customers. Handfuls of quotes seemed to vanish
into the rising Nazi air.

He approached an
old faithful named Herbert Bollinger—a man with a hemispheric waistline who
spoke
Hochdeutsch
(he was from Hamburg)—when he saw him on Munich
Street. At first, the man looked down, past his girth, to the ground, but when
his eyes returned to the painter, the question clearly made him uncomfortable.
There was no reason for Hans to ask, but he did.

“What’s going
on, Herbert? I’m losing customers quicker than I can count.”

Bollinger didn’t
flinch anymore. Standing upright, he delivered the fact as a question of his
own. “Well, Hans. Are you a member?”

“Of what?”

But Hans
Hubermann knew exactly what the man was talking about.

“Come on,
Hansi,” Bollinger persisted. “Don’t make me spell it out.”

The tall painter
waved him away and walked on.

As the years
passed by, the Jews were being terrorized at random throughout the country, and
in the spring of 1937, almost to his shame, Hans Hubermann finally submitted.
He made some inquiries and applied to join the Party.