The Book Thief (21 page)

The circle
counted.

They always
counted, just in case. Voices and numbers.

The custom after
a fight was that the loser would raise the hand of the victor. When Kugler
finally stood up, he walked sullenly to Max Vandenburg and lifted his arm into
the air.

“Thanks,” Max
told him.

Kugler proffered
a warning. “Next time I kill you.”

Altogether, over
the next few years, Max Vandenburg and Walter Kugler fought thirteen times.
Walter was always seeking revenge for that first victory Max took from him, and
Max was looking to emulate his moment of glory. In the end, the record stood at
10–3 for Walter.

They fought each
other until 1933, when they were seventeen. Grudging respect turned to genuine
friendship, and the urge to fight left them. Both held jobs until Max was
sacked with the rest of the Jews at the Jedermann Engineering Factory in ’35.
That wasn’t long after the Nuremberg Laws came in, forbidding Jews to have
German citizenship and for Germans and Jews to intermarry.

“Jesus,” Walter
said one evening, when they met on the small corner where they used to fight.
“That was a time, wasn’t it? There was none of this around.” He gave the star
on Max’s sleeve a backhanded slap. “We could never fight like that now.”

Max disagreed.
“Yes we could. You can’t marry a Jew, but there’s no law against fighting one.”

Walter smiled.
“There’s probably a law
rewarding
it—as long as you win.”

For the next few
years, they saw each other sporadically at best. Max, with the rest of the
Jews, was steadily rejected and repeatedly trodden upon, while Walter
disappeared inside his job. A printing firm.

If you’re the
type who’s interested, yes, there were a few girls in those years. One named
Tania, the other Hildi. Neither of them lasted. There was no time, most likely
due to the uncertainty and mounting pressure. Max needed to scavenge for work.
What could he offer those girls? By 1938, it was difficult to imagine that life
could get any harder.

Then came
November 9. Kristallnacht. The night of broken glass.

It was the very
incident that destroyed so many of his fellow Jews, but it proved to be Max
Vandenburg’s moment of escape. He was twenty-two.

Many Jewish
establishments were being surgically smashed and looted when there was a
clatter of knuckles on the apartment door. With his aunt, his mother, his
cousins, and their children, Max was crammed into the living room.

“Aufmachen!”

The family
watched each other. There was a great temptation to scatter into the other
rooms, but apprehension is the strangest thing. They couldn’t move.

Again. “Open
up!”

Isaac stood and
walked to the door. The wood was alive, still humming from the beating it had
just been given. He looked back at the faces naked with fear, turned the lock,
and opened the door.

As expected, it
was a Nazi. In uniform.

“Never.”

That was Max’s
first response.

He clung to his
mother’s hand and that of Sarah, the nearest of his cousins. “I won’t leave. If
we all can’t go, I don’t go, either.”

He was lying.

When he was
pushed out by the rest of his family, the relief struggled inside him like an
obscenity. It was something he didn’t want to feel, but nonetheless, he felt it
with such gusto it made him want to throw up. How could he? How could he?

But he did.

“Bring nothing,”
Walter told him. “Just what you’re wearing. I’ll give you the rest.”

“Max.” It was
his mother.

From a drawer,
she took an old piece of paper and stuffed it in his jacket pocket. “If ever .
. .” She held him one last time, by the elbows. “This could be your last hope.”

He looked into
her aging face and kissed her, very hard, on the lips.

“Come on.”
Walter pulled at him as the rest of the family said their goodbyes and gave him
money and a few valuables. “It’s chaos out there, and chaos is what we need.”

They left,
without looking back.

It tortured him.

If only he’d
turned for one last look at his family as he left the apartment. Perhaps then
the guilt would not have been so heavy. No final goodbye.

No final grip of
the eyes.

Nothing but
goneness.

For the next two
years, he remained in hiding, in an empty storeroom. It was in a building where
Walter had worked in previous years. There was very little food. There was
plenty of suspicion. The remaining Jews with money in the neighborhood were
emigrating. The Jews without money were also trying, but without much success.
Max’s family fell into the latter category. Walter checked on them
occasionally, as inconspicuously as he could. One afternoon, when he visited,
someone else opened the door.

When Max heard
the news, his body felt like it was being screwed up into a ball, like a page
littered with mistakes. Like garbage.

Yet each day, he
managed to unravel and straighten himself, disgusted and thankful. Wrecked, but
somehow not torn into pieces.

Halfway through
1939, just over six months into the period of hiding, they decided that a new
course of action needed to be taken. They examined the piece of paper Max was
handed upon his desertion. That’s right—his desertion, not only his escape.
That was how he viewed it, amid the grotesquerie of his relief. We already know
what was written on that piece of paper:

“It’s getting
worse,” Walter told Max. “Anytime now, they could find us out.” There was much
hunching in the dark. “We don’t know what might happen. I might get caught. You
might need to find that place. . . . I’m too scared to ask anyone for help
here. They might put me in.” There was only one solution. “I’ll go down there
and find this man. If he’s turned into a Nazi—which is very likely—I’ll just
turn around. At least we know then,
richtig
?”

Max gave him
every last pfennig to make the trip, and a few days later, when Walter
returned, they embraced before he held his breath. “And?”

Walter nodded.
“He’s good. He still plays that accordion your mother told you about—your
father’s. He’s not a member of the party. He gave me money.” At this stage, Hans
Hubermann was only a list. “He’s fairly poor, he’s married, and there’s a kid.”

This sparked
Max’s attention even further. “How old?”

“Ten. You can’t
have everything.”

“Yes. Kids have
big mouths.”

“We’re lucky as
it is.”

They sat in
silence awhile. It was Max who disturbed it.

“He must already
hate me, huh?”

“I don’t think
so. He gave me the money, didn’t he? He said a promise is a promise.”

A week later, a
letter came. Hans notified Walter Kugler that he would try to send things to
help whenever he could. There was a one-page map of Molching and Greater
Munich, as well as a direct route from Pasing (the more reliable train station)
to his front door. In his letter, the last words were obvious.

Midway through
May 1940,
Mein Kampf
arrived, with a key taped to the inside cover.

The man’s a
genius, Max decided, but there was still a shudder when he thought about
traveling to Munich. Clearly, he wished, along with the other parties involved,
that the journey would not have to be made at all.

You don’t always
get what you wish for.

Especially in
Nazi Germany.

Again, time
passed.

The war
expanded.

Max remained
hidden from the world in another empty room.

Until the
inevitable.

Walter was
notified that he was being sent to Poland, to continue the assertion of
Germany’s authority over both the Poles and Jews alike. One was not much better
than the other. The time had come.

Max made his way
to Munich and Molching, and now he sat in a stranger’s kitchen, asking for the
help he craved and suffering the condemnation he felt he deserved.

Hans Hubermann
shook his hand and introduced himself.

He made him some
coffee in the dark.

The girl had
been gone quite a while, but now some more footsteps had approached arrival.
The wildcard.

In the darkness,
all three of them were completely isolated. They all stared. Only the woman
spoke.

THE WRATH OF ROSA

Liesel had
drifted back to sleep when the unmistakable voice of Rosa Hubermann entered the
kitchen. It shocked her awake.

Curiosity got
the better of her then, as she imagined a tirade thrown down from the wrath of
Rosa. There was definite movement and the shuffle of a chair.

After ten
minutes of excruciating discipline, Liesel made her way to the corridor, and
what she saw truly amazed her, because Rosa Hubermann was at Max Vandenburg’s
shoulder, watching him gulp down her infamous pea soup. Candlelight was
standing at the table. It did not waver.

Mama was grave.

Her plump figure
glowed with worry.

Somehow, though,
there was also a look of triumph on her face, and it was not the triumph of
having saved another human being from persecution. It was something more along
the lines of, See? At least
he’s
not complaining. She looked from the
soup to the Jew to the soup.

When she spoke
again, she asked only if he wanted more.

Max declined,
preferring instead to rush to the sink and vomit. His back convulsed and his
arms were well spread. His fingers gripped the metal.

“Jesus, Mary,
and Joseph,” Rosa muttered. “Another one.”

Turning around,
Max apologized. His words were slippery and small, quelled by the acid. “I’m
sorry. I think I ate too much. My stomach, you know, it’s been so long since .
. . I don’t think it can handle such—”

“Move,” Rosa
ordered him. She started cleaning up.

When she was
finished, she found the young man at the kitchen table, utterly morose. Hans
was sitting opposite, his hands cupped above the sheet of wood.

Liesel, from the
hallway, could see the drawn face of the stranger, and behind it, the worried
expression scribbled like a mess onto Mama.

She looked at
both her foster parents.

Who were these
people?

LIESEL’S
LECTURE

Exactly what
kind of people Hans and Rosa Hubermann were was not the easiest problem to
solve. Kind people? Ridiculously ignorant people? People of questionable
sanity?

What was easier
to define was their predicament.

When a Jew shows
up at your place of residence in the early hours of morning, in the very
birthplace of Nazism, you’re likely to experience extreme levels of discomfort.
Anxiety, disbelief, paranoia. Each plays its part, and each leads to a sneaking
suspicion that a less than heavenly consequence awaits. The fear is shiny.
Ruthless in the eyes.

The surprising
point to make is that despite this iridescent fear glowing as it did in the
dark, they somehow resisted the urge for hysteria.

Mama ordered
Liesel away.

“Bett,
Saumensch.”
The
voice calm but firm. Highly unusual.

Papa came in a
few minutes later and lifted the covers on the vacant bed.

“
Alles gut,
Liesel?
Is everything good?”

“Yes, Papa.”

“As you can see,
we have a visitor.” She could only just make out the shape of Hans Hubermann’s
tallness in the dark. “He’ll sleep in here tonight.”

“Yes, Papa.”

A few minutes
later, Max Vandenburg was in the room, noiseless and opaque. The man did not
breathe. He did not move. Yet, somehow, he traveled from the doorway to the bed
and was under the covers.

“Everything
good?”

It was Papa
again, talking this time to Max.

The reply floated
from his mouth, then molded itself like a stain to the ceiling. Such was his
feeling of shame. “Yes. Thank you.” He said it again, when Papa made his way
over to his customary position in the chair next to Liesel’s bed. “Thank you.”

Another hour
passed before Liesel fell asleep.

She slept hard
and long.

A hand woke her
just after eight-thirty the next morning.

The voice at the
end of it informed her that she would not be attending school that day.
Apparently, she was sick.

When she awoke
completely, she watched the stranger in the bed opposite. The blanket showed
only a nest of lopsided hair at the top, and there was not a sound, as if he’d
somehow trained himself even to sleep more quietly. With great care, she walked
the length of him, following Papa to the hall.

For the first
time ever, the kitchen and Mama were dormant. It was a kind of bemused,
inaugural silence. To Liesel’s relief, it lasted only a few minutes.

There was food
and the sound of eating.

Mama announced
the day’s priority. She sat at the table and said, “Now listen, Liesel. Papa’s
going to tell you something today.” This was serious—she didn’t even say
Saumensch.
It was a personal feat of abstinence. “He’ll talk to you and you have to
listen. Is that clear?”