The Book Thief (22 page)

The girl was
still swallowing.

“Is that clear,
Saumensch
?”

That was better.

The girl nodded.

When she
reentered the bedroom to fetch her clothes, the body in the opposite bed had
turned and curled up. It was no longer a straight log but a kind of Z shape,
reaching diagonally from corner to corner. Zigzagging the bed.

She could see
his face now, in the tired light. His mouth was open and his skin was the color
of eggshells. Whiskers coated his jaw and chin, and his ears were hard and
flat. He had a small but misshapen nose.

“Liesel!”

She turned.

“Move it!”

She moved, to
the washroom.

Once changed and
in the hallway, she realized she would not be traveling far. Papa was standing
in front of the door to the basement. He smiled very faintly, lit the lamp, and
led her down.

Among the mounds
of drop sheets and the smell of paint, Papa told her to make herself
comfortable. Ignited on the walls were the painted words, learned in the past.
“I need to tell you some things.”

Liesel sat on
top of a meter-tall heap of drop sheets, Papa on a fifteen-liter paint can. For
a few minutes, he searched for the words. When they came, he stood to deliver
them. He rubbed his eyes.

“Liesel,” he
said quietly, “I was never sure if any of this would happen, so I never told
you. About me. About the man upstairs.” He walked from one end of the basement
to the other, the lamplight magnifying his shadow. It turned him into a giant
on the wall, walking back and forth.

When he stopped
pacing, his shadow loomed behind him, watching. Someone was always watching.

“You know my accordion?”
he said, and there the story began.

He explained
World War I and Erik Vandenburg, and then the visit to the fallen soldier’s
wife. “The boy who came into the room that day is the man upstairs.
Verstehst?
Understand?”

The book thief
sat and listened to Hans Hubermann’s story. It lasted a good hour, until the
moment of truth, which involved a very obvious and necessary lecture.

“Liesel, you
must listen.” Papa made her stand up and held her hand.

They faced the
wall.

Dark shapes and
the practice of words.

Firmly, he held
her fingers.

“Remember the
Führer
’s
birthday—when we walked home from the fire that night? Remember what you
promised me?”

The girl
concurred. To the wall, she said, “That I would keep a secret.”

“That’s right.”
Between the hand-holding shadows, the painted words were scattered about,
perched on their shoulders, resting on their heads, and hanging from their
arms. “Liesel, if you tell anyone about the man up there, we will all be in big
trouble.” He walked the fine line of scaring her into oblivion and soothing her
enough to keep her calm. He fed her the sentences and watched with his metallic
eyes. Desperation and placidity. “At the very least, Mama and I will be taken
away.” Hans was clearly worried that he was on the verge of frightening her too
much, but he calculated the risk, preferring to err on the side of too much
fear rather than not enough. The girl’s compliance had to be an absolute,
immutable fact.

Toward the end,
Hans Hubermann looked at Liesel Meminger and made certain she was focused.

He gave her a
list of consequences.

“If you tell
anyone about that man . . .”

Her teacher.

Rudy.

It didn’t matter
whom.

What mattered
was that all were punishable.

“For starters,”
he said, “I will take each and every one of your books— and I will burn them.”
It was callous. “I’ll throw them in the stove or the fireplace.” He was
certainly acting like a tyrant, but it was necessary. “Understand?”

The shock made a
hole in her, very neat, very precise.

Tears welled.

“Yes, Papa.”

“Next.” He had to
remain hard, and he needed to strain for it. “They’ll take you away from me. Do
you want that?”

She was crying
now, in earnest.
“Nein.”

“Good.” His grip
on her hand tightened. “They’ll drag that man up there away, and maybe Mama and
me, too—and we will never, ever come back.”

And that did it.

The girl began
to sob so uncontrollably that Papa was dying to pull her into him and hug her
tight. He didn’t. Instead, he squatted down and watched her directly in the
eyes. He unleashed his quietest words so far.
“Verstehst du mich?”
Do
you understand me?”

The girl nodded.
She cried, and now, defeated, broken, her papa held her in the painted air and
the kerosene light.

“I understand,
Papa, I do.”

Her voice was
muffled against his body, and they stayed like that for a few minutes, Liesel
with squashed breath and Papa rubbing her back.

Upstairs, when
they returned, they found Mama sitting in the kitchen, alone and pensive. When
she saw them, she stood and beckoned Liesel to come over, noticing the dried-up
tears that streaked her. She brought the girl into her and heaped a typically
rugged embrace around her body.
“Alles gut, Saumensch?”

She didn’t need
an answer.

Everything was
good.

But it was
awful, too.

THE SLEEPER

Max Vandenburg
slept for three days.

In certain
excerpts of that sleep, Liesel watched him. You might say that by the third day
it became an obsession, to check on him, to see if he was still breathing. She
could now interpret his signs of life, from the movement of his lips, his
gathering beard, and the twigs of hair that moved ever so slightly when his
head twitched in the dream state.

Often, when she
stood over him, there was the mortifying thought that he had just woken up, his
eyes splitting open to view her—to watch her watching. The idea of being caught
out plagued and enthused her at the same time. She dreaded it. She invited it.
Only when Mama called out to her could she drag herself away, simultaneously
soothed and disappointed that she might not be there when he woke.

Sometimes, close
to the end of the marathon of sleep, he spoke.

There was a
recital of murmured names. A checklist.

Isaac. Aunt
Ruth. Sarah. Mama. Walter. Hitler.

Family, friend,
enemy.

They were all
under the covers with him, and at one point, he appeared to be struggling with
himself.
“Nein,”
he whispered. It was repeated seven times. “No.”

Liesel, in the
act of watching, was already noticing the similarities between this stranger
and herself. They both arrived in a state of agitation on Himmel Street. They
both nightmared.

When the time
came, he awoke with the nasty thrill of disorientation. His mouth opened a
moment after his eyes and he sat up, right-angled.

“Ay!”

A patch of voice
escaped his mouth.

When he saw the
upside-down face of a girl above him, there was the fretful moment of
unfamiliarity and the grasp for recollection— to decode exactly where and when
he was currently sitting. After a few seconds, he managed to scratch his head
(the rustle of kindling) and he looked at her. His movements were fragmented,
and now that they were open, his eyes were swampy and brown. Thick and heavy.

As a reflex
action, Liesel backed away.

She was too
slow.

The stranger
reached out, his bed-warmed hand taking her by the forearm.

“Please.”

His voice also
held on, as if possessing fingernails. He pressed it into her flesh.

“Papa!” Loud.

“Please!” Soft.

It was late
afternoon, gray and gleaming, but it was only dirty-colored light that was
permitted entrance into the room. It was all the fabric of the curtains
allowed. If you’re optimistic, think of it as bronze.

When Papa came
in, he first stood in the doorway and witnessed Max Vandenburg’s gripping
fingers and his desperate face. Both held on to Liesel’s arm. “I see you two
have met,” he said.

Max’s fingers
started cooling.

THE SWAPPING OF NIGHTMARES

Max Vandenburg
promised that he would never sleep in Liesel’s room again. What was he thinking
that first night? The very idea of it mortified him.

He rationalized
that he was so bewildered upon his arrival that he allowed such a thing. The basement
was the only place for him as far as he was concerned. Forget the cold and the
loneliness. He was a Jew, and if there was one place he was destined to exist,
it was a basement or any other such hidden venue of survival.

“I’m sorry,” he
confessed to Hans and Rosa on the basement steps. “From now on I will stay down
here. You will not hear from me. I will not make a sound.”

Hans and Rosa,
both steeped in the despair of the predicament, made no argument, not even in
regard to the cold. They heaved blankets down and topped up the kerosene lamp.
Rosa admitted that there could not be much food, to which Max fervently asked
her to bring only scraps, and only when they were not wanted by anyone else.

“Na, na,” Rosa
assured him. “You will be fed, as best I can.”

They also took
the mattress down, from the spare bed in Liesel’s room, replacing it with drop
sheets—an excellent trade.

Downstairs, Hans
and Max placed the mattress beneath the steps and built a wall of drop sheets
at the side. The sheets were high enough to cover the whole triangular
entrance, and if nothing else, they were easily moved if Max was in dire need
of extra air.

Papa apologized.
“It’s quite pathetic. I realize that.”

“Better than
nothing,” Max assured him. “Better than I deserve— thank you.”

With some
well-positioned paint cans, Hans actually conceded that it did simply look like
a collection of junk gathered sloppily in the corner, out of the way. The one
problem was that a person needed only to shift a few cans and remove a drop
sheet or two to smell out the Jew.

“Let’s just hope
it’s good enough,” he said.

“It has to be.”
Max crawled in. Again, he said it. “Thank you.”

For Max
Vandenburg, those were the two most pitiful words he could possibly say,
rivaled only by
I’m sorry.
There was a constant urge to speak both
expressions, spurred on by the affliction of guilt.

How many times
in those first few hours of awakeness did he feel like walking out of that
basement and leaving the house altogether? It must have been hundreds.

Each time,
though, it was only a twinge.

Which made it
even worse.

He wanted to
walk out—Lord, how he wanted to (or at least he
wanted
to want to)—but
he knew he wouldn’t. It was much the same as the way he left his family in
Stuttgart, under a veil of fabricated loyalty.

To live.

Living was
living.

The price was
guilt and shame.

For his first
few days in the basement, Liesel had nothing to do with him. She denied his
existence. His rustling hair, his cold, slippery fingers.

His tortured
presence.

Mama and Papa.

There was such
gravity between them, and a lot of failed decision-making.

They considered
whether they could move him.

“But where?”

No reply.

In this
situation, they were friendless and paralyzed. There was nowhere else for Max
Vandenburg to go. It was them. Hans and Rosa Hubermann. Liesel had never seen
them look at each other so much, or with such solemnity.

It was they who
took the food down and organized an empty paint can for Max’s excrement. The
contents would be disposed of by Hans as prudently as possible. Rosa also took
him some buckets of hot water to wash himself. The Jew was filthy.

Outside, a
mountain of cold November air was waiting at the front door each time Liesel
left the house.

Drizzle came
down in spades.

Dead leaves were
slumped on the road.

Soon enough, it
was the book thief’s turn to visit the basement. They made her.

She walked
tentatively down the steps, knowing that no words were required. The scuffing
of her feet was enough to rouse him.

In the middle of
the basement, she stood and waited, feeling more like she was standing in the
center of a great dusky field. The sun was setting behind a crop of harvested
drop sheets.

When Max came
out, he was holding
Mein Kampf.
Upon his arrival, he’d offered it back
to Hans Hubermann but was told he could keep it.

Naturally,
Liesel, while holding the dinner, couldn’t take her eyes off it. It was a book
she had seen a few times at the BDM, but it hadn’t been read or used directly
in their activities. There were occasional references to its greatness, as well
as promises that the opportunity to study it would come in later years, as they
progressed into the more senior Hitler Youth division.

Max, following
her attention, also examined the book.

“Is?” she
whispered.

There was a
queer strand in her voice, planed off and curly in her mouth.

The Jew moved
only his head a little closer. “
Bitte?
Excuse me?”

She handed him
the pea soup and returned upstairs, red, rushed, and foolish.

“Is it a good
book?”

She practiced
what she’d wanted to say in the washroom, in the small mirror. The smell of
urine was still about her, as Max had just used the paint can before she’d come
down.
So ein G’schtank,
she thought. What a stink.