The Book Thief (27 page)

The minutes were
cruel.

Hours were
punishing.

Standing above
him at all moments of awakeness was the hand of time, and it didn’t hesitate to
wring him out. It smiled and squeezed and let him live. What great malice there
could be in allowing something to live.

At least once a
day, Hans Hubermann would descend the basement steps and share a conversation.
Rosa would occasionally bring a spare crust of bread. It was when Liesel came
down, however, that Max found himself most interested in life again. Initially,
he tried to resist, but it was harder every day that the girl appeared, each
time with a new weather report, either of pure blue sky, cardboard clouds, or a
sun that had broken through like God sitting down after he’d eaten too much for
his dinner.

When he was alone,
his most distinct feeling was of disappearance. All of his clothes were
gray—whether they’d started out that way or not—from his pants to his woolen
sweater to the jacket that dripped from him now like water. He often checked if
his skin was flaking, for it was as if he were dissolving.

What he needed
was a series of new projects. The first was exercise. He started with push-ups,
lying stomach-down on the cool basement floor, then hoisting himself up. It
felt like his arms snapped at each elbow, and he envisaged his heart seeping
out of him and dropping pathetically to the ground. As a teenager in Stuttgart,
he could reach fifty push-ups at a time. Now, at the age of twenty-four,
perhaps fifteen pounds lighter than his usual weight, he could barely make it
to ten. After a week, he was completing three sets each of sixteen push-ups and
twenty-two sit-ups. When he was finished, he would sit against the basement
wall with his paint-can friends, feeling his pulse in his teeth. His muscles
felt like cake.

He wondered at
times if pushing himself like this was even worth it. Sometimes, though, when
his heartbeat neutralized and his body became functional again, he would turn
off the lamp and stand in the darkness of the basement.

He was
twenty-four, but he could still fantasize.

“In the blue
corner,” he quietly commentated, “we have the champion of the world, the Aryan
masterpiece—the
Führer.
” He breathed and turned. “And in the red
corner, we have the Jewish, rat-faced challenger—Max Vandenburg.”

Around him, it
all materialized.

White light
lowered itself into a boxing ring and a crowd stood and murmured—that magical
sound of many people talking all at once. How could every person there have so
much to say at the same time? The ring itself was perfect. Perfect canvas,
lovely ropes. Even the stray hairs of each thickened string were flawless,
gleaming in the tight white light. The room smelled like cigarettes and beer.

Diagonally
across, Adolf Hitler stood in the corner with his entourage. His legs poked out
from a red-and-white robe with a black swastika burned into its back. His
mustache was knitted to his face. Words were whispered to him from his trainer,
Goebbels. He bounced foot to foot, and he smiled. He smiled loudest when the
ring announcer listed his many achievements, which were all vociferously
applauded by the adoring crowd. “Undefeated!” the ringmaster proclaimed. “Over
many a Jew, and over any other threat to the German ideal! Herr
Führer,
”
he concluded, “we salute you!” The crowd: mayhem.

Next, when
everyone had settled down, came the challenger.

The ringmaster
swung over toward Max, who stood alone in the challenger’s corner. No robe. No
entourage. Just a lonely young Jew with dirty breath, a naked chest, and tired
hands and feet. Naturally, his shorts were gray. He too moved from foot to
foot, but it was kept at a minimum to conserve energy. He’d done a lot of
sweating in the gym to make the weight.

“The
challenger!” sang the ringmaster. “Of,” and he paused for effect, “
Jew
ish
blood.” The crowd oohed, like human ghouls. “Weighing in at . . .”

The rest of the
speech was not heard. It was overrun with the abuse from the bleachers, and Max
watched as his opponent was derobed and came to the middle to hear the rules
and shake hands.

“
Guten Tag,
Herr
Hitler.” Max nodded, but the
Führer
only showed him his yellow teeth,
then covered them up again with his lips.

“Gentlemen,” a
stout referee in black pants and a blue shirt began. A bow tie was fixed to his
throat. “First and foremost, we want a good clean fight.” He addressed only the
Führer
now. “Unless, of course, Herr Hitler, you begin to lose. Should
this occur, I will be quite willing to turn a blind eye to any unconscionable
tactics you might employ to grind this piece of Jewish stench and filth into the
canvas.” He nodded, with great courtesy. “Is that clear?”

The
Führer
spoke
his first word then. “Crystal.”

To Max, the
referee extended a warning. “As for you, my Jewish chum, I’d watch my step very
closely if I were you. Very closely indeed,” and they were sent back to their
respective corners.

A brief quiet
ensued.

The bell.

First out was
the
Führer,
awkward-legged and bony, running at Max and jabbing him
firmly in the face. The crowd vibrated, the bell still in their ears, and their
satisfied smiles hurdled the ropes. The smoky breath of Hitler steamed from his
mouth as his hands bucked at Max’s face, collecting him several times, on the
lips, the nose, the chin—and Max had still not ventured out of his corner. To
absorb the punishment, he held up his hands, but the
Führer
then aimed
at his ribs, his kidneys, his lungs. Oh, the eyes, the
Führer
’s eyes.
They were so deliciously brown—like Jews’ eyes—and they were so determined that
even Max stood transfixed for a moment as he caught sight of them between the
healthy blur of punching gloves.

There was only
one round, and it lasted hours, and for the most part, nothing changed.

The
Führer
pounded
away at the punching-bag Jew.

Jewish blood was
everywhere.

Like red rain
clouds on the white-sky canvas at their feet.

Eventually,
Max’s knees began to buckle, his cheekbones silently moaned, and the
Führer
’s
delighted face still chipped away, chipped away, until depleted, beaten, and
broken, the Jew flopped to the floor.

First, a roar.

Then silence.

The referee counted.
He had a gold tooth and a plethora of nostril hair.

Slowly, Max
Vandenburg, the Jew, rose to his feet and made himself upright. His voice
wobbled. An invitation. “Come on,
Führer,
” he said, and this time, when
Adolf Hitler set upon his Jewish counterpart, Max stepped aside and plunged him
into the corner. He punched him seven times, aiming on each occasion for only
one thing.

The mustache.

With the seventh
punch, he missed. It was the
Führer
’s chin that sustained the blow. All
at once, Hitler hit the ropes and creased forward, landing on his knees. This
time, there was no count. The referee flinched in the corner. The audience sank
down, back to their beer. On his knees, the
Führer
tested himself for
blood and straightened his hair, right to left. When he returned to his feet,
much to the approval of the thousand-strong crowd, he edged forward and did
something quite strange. He turned his back on the Jew and took the gloves from
his fists.

The crowd was
stunned.

“He’s given up,”
someone whispered, but within moments, Adolf Hitler was standing on the ropes,
and he was addressing the arena.

“My fellow
Germans,” he called, “you can see something here tonight, can’t you?”
Bare-chested, victory-eyed, he pointed over at Max. “You can see that what we
face is something far more sinister and powerful than we ever imagined. Can you
see that?”

They answered.
“Yes,
Führer.
”

“Can you see
that this enemy has found its ways—its despicable ways—through our armor, and
that clearly, I cannot stand up here alone and fight him?” The words were
visible. They dropped from his mouth like jewels. “Look at him! Take a good
look.” They looked. At the bloodied Max Vandenburg. “As we speak, he is
plotting his way into your neighborhood. He’s moving in next door. He’s
infesting you with his family and he’s about to take you over. He—” Hitler
glanced at him a moment, with disgust. “He will soon own you, until it is he
who stands not at the counter of your grocery shop, but sits in the back,
smoking his pipe. Before you know it, you’ll be working for him at minimum wage
while he can hardly walk from the weight in his pockets. Will you simply stand
there and let him do this? Will you stand by as your leaders did in the past,
when they gave your land to everybody else, when they sold your country for the
price of a few signatures? Will you stand out there, powerless? Or”—and now he
stepped one rung higher—“will you climb up into this ring with me?”

Max shook.
Horror stuttered in his stomach.

Adolf finished
him. “Will you climb in here so that we can defeat this enemy together?”

In the basement
of 33 Himmel Street, Max Vandenburg could feel the fists of an entire nation.
One by one they climbed into the ring and beat him down. They made him bleed.
They let him suffer. Millions of them—until one last time, when he gathered
himself to his feet . . .

He watched the
next person climb through the ropes. It was a girl, and as she slowly crossed
the canvas, he noticed a tear torn down her left cheek. In her right hand was a
newspaper.

“The crossword,”
she gently said, “is empty,” and she held it out to him.

Dark.

Nothing but dark
now.

Just basement.
Just Jew.

The
New Dream: A Few Nights Later

It was
afternoon. Liesel came down the basement steps. Max was halfway through his
push-ups.

She watched
awhile, without his knowledge, and when she came and sat with him, he stood up
and leaned back against the wall. “Did I tell you,” he asked her, “that I’ve
been having a new dream lately?”

Liesel shifted a
little, to see his face.

“But I dream
this when I’m awake.” He motioned to the glowless kerosene lamp. “Sometimes I turn
out the light. Then I stand here and wait.”

“For what?”

Max corrected
her. “Not for what. For whom.”

For a few
moments, Liesel said nothing. It was one of those conversations that require
some time to elapse between exchanges. “Who do you wait for?”

Max did not
move. “The
Führer.
” He was very matter-of-fact about this. “That’s why
I’m in training.”

“The push-ups?”

“That’s right.”
He walked to the concrete stairway. “Every night, I wait in the dark and the
Führer
comes down these steps. He walks down and he and I, we fight for hours.”

Liesel was
standing now. “Who wins?”

At first, he was
going to answer that no one did, but then he noticed the paint cans, the drop
sheets, and the growing pile of newspapers in the periphery of his vision. He
watched the words, the long cloud, and the figures on the wall.

“I do,” he said.

It was as though
he’d opened her palm, given her the words, and closed it up again.

Under the
ground, in Molching, Germany, two people stood and spoke in a basement. It
sounds like the beginning of a joke:

“There’s a Jew
and a German standing in a basement, right? . . .”

This, however,
was no joke.

The
Painters: Early June

Another of Max’s
projects was the remainder of
Mein Kampf.
Each page was gently stripped
from the book and laid out on the floor to receive a coat of paint. It was then
hung up to dry and replaced between the front and back covers. When Liesel came
down one day after school, she found Max, Rosa, and her papa all painting the
various pages. Many of them were already hanging from a drawn-out string with
pegs, just as they must have done for
The Standover
Man.