The Book Thief (31 page)

Rudy spat.

They walked back
through Molching, making suggestions.

“What about Frau
Diller?”

“What about
her?”

“Maybe if we say
‘
heil
Hitler’ and
then
steal something, we’ll be all right.”

After roaming
Munich Street for an hour or so, the daylight was drawing to a close and they
were on the verge of giving up. “It’s pointless,” Rudy said, “and I’m even
hungrier now than I’ve ever been. I’m starving, for Christ’s sake.” He walked
another dozen steps before he stopped and looked back. “What’s with you?”
because now Liesel was standing completely still, and a moment of realization
was strapped to her face.

Why hadn’t she
thought of it before?

“What is it?”
Rudy was becoming impatient. “
Saumensch,
what’s going on?”

At that very
moment, Liesel was presented with a decision. Could she truly carry out what
she was thinking? Could she really seek revenge on a person like this? Could
she despise someone
this
much?

She began
walking in the opposite direction. When Rudy caught up, she slowed a little in
the vain hope of achieving a little more clarity. After all, the guilt was
already there. It was moist. The seed was already bursting into a dark-leafed
flower. She weighed up whether she could really go through with this. At a
crossroad, she stopped.

“I know a
place.”

They went over
the river and made their way up the hill.

On Grande
Strasse, they took in the splendor of the houses. The front doors glowed with
polish, and the roof tiles sat like toupees, combed to perfection. The walls
and windows were manicured and the chimneys almost breathed out smoke rings.

Rudy planted his
feet. “The mayor’s house?”

Liesel nodded,
seriously. A pause. “They fired my mama.”

When they angled
toward it, Rudy asked just how in God’s name they were going to get inside, but
Liesel knew. “Local knowledge,” she answered. “Local—” But when they were able
to see the window to the library at the far end of the house, she was greeted
with a shock. The window was closed.

“Well?” Rudy
asked.

Liesel swiveled
slowly and hurried off. “Not today,” she said. Rudy laughed.

“I knew it.” He
caught up. “I knew it, you filthy
Saumensch.
You couldn’t get in there
even if you had the key.”

“Do you mind?”
She quickened even more and brushed aside Rudy’s commentary. “We just have to
wait for the right opportunity.” Internally, she shrugged away from a kind of
gladness that the window was closed. She berated herself. Why, Liesel? she
asked. Why did you have to explode when they fired Mama? Why couldn’t you just
keep your big mouth shut? For all you know, the mayor’s wife is now completely
reformed after you yelled and screamed at her. Maybe she’s straightened herself
out, picked herself up. Maybe she’ll never let herself shiver in that house
again and the window will be shut forever. . . . You stupid
Saumensch
!

A week later,
however, on their fifth visit to the upper part of Molching, it was there.

The open window
breathed a slice of air in.

That was all it
would take.

It was Rudy who
stopped first. He tapped Liesel in the ribs, with the back of his hand. “Is
that window,” he whispered, “open?” The eagerness in his voice leaned from his
mouth, like a forearm onto Liesel’s shoulder.

“ Jawohl,” she
answered. “It sure is.”

And how her
heart began to heat.

On each previous
occasion, when they found the window clamped firmly shut, Liesel’s outer
disappointment had masked a ferocious relief. Would she have had the neck to go
in? And who and what, in fact, was she going in for? For Rudy? To locate some
food?

No, the
repugnant truth was this:

She didn’t care
about the food. Rudy, no matter how hard she tried to resist the idea, was
secondary to her plan. It was the book she wanted.
The Whistler.
She
wouldn’t tolerate having it given to her by a lonely, pathetic old woman.
Stealing it, on the other hand, seemed a little more acceptable. Stealing it,
in a sick kind of sense, was like earning it.

The light was
changing in blocks of shade.

The pair of them
gravitated toward the immaculate, bulky house. They rustled their thoughts.

“You hungry?”
Rudy asked.

Liesel replied.
“Starving.” For a book.

“Look—a light
just came on upstairs.”

“I see it.”

“Still hungry,
Saumensch
?”

They laughed
nervously for a moment before going through the motions of who should go in and
who should stand watch. As the male in the operation, Rudy clearly felt that he
should be the aggressor, but it was obvious that Liesel knew this place. It was
she who was going in. She knew what was on the other side of the window.

She said it. “It
has to be me.”

Liesel closed
her eyes. Tightly.

She compelled
herself to remember, to see visions of the mayor and his wife. She watched her
gathered friendship with Ilsa Hermann and made sure to see it kicked in the
shins and left by the wayside. It worked. She detested them.

They scouted the
street and crossed the yard silently.

Now they were
crouched beneath the slit in the window on the ground floor. The sound of their
breathing amplified.

“Here,” Rudy
said, “give me your shoes. You’ll be quieter.”

Without
complaint, Liesel undid the worn black laces and left the shoes on the ground.
She rose up and Rudy gently opened the window just wide enough for Liesel to
climb through. The noise of it passed overhead, like a low-flying plane.

Liesel heaved
herself onto the ledge and tussled her way inside. Taking off her shoes, she
realized, was a brilliant idea, as she landed much heavier on the wooden floor
than she’d anticipated. The soles of her feet expanded in that painful way,
rising to the inside edges of her socks.

The room itself
was as it always was.

Liesel, in the
dusty dimness, shrugged off her feelings of nostalgia. She crept forward and
allowed her eyes to adjust.

“What’s going
on?” Rudy whispered sharply from outside, but she waved him a backhander that
meant
Halt’s Maul.
Keep quiet.

“The food,” he
reminded her. “Find the
food.
And cigarettes, if you can.”

Both items,
however, were the last things on her mind. She was home, among the mayor’s
books of every color and description, with their silver and gold lettering. She
could smell the pages. She could almost taste the words as they stacked up around
her. Her feet took her to the right-hand wall. She knew the one she wanted—the
exact position—but when she made it to
The Whistler
’s usual place on the
shelf, it was not there. A slight gap was in its place.

From above, she
heard footsteps.

“The light!”
Rudy whispered. The words were shoved through the open window. “It’s out!”

“They’re coming
downstairs.”

There was a
giant length of a moment then, the eternity of split-second decision. Her eyes
scanned the room and she could see
The
Whistler,
sitting
patiently on the mayor’s desk.

“Hurry up,” Rudy
warned her. But very calmly and cleanly, Liesel walked over, picked up the
book, and made her way cautiously out. Headfirst, she climbed from the window,
managing to land on her feet again, feeling the pang of pain once more, this
time in her ankles.

“Come on,” Rudy
implored her. “Run, run. Schnell!”

Once around the
corner, on the road back down to the river and Munich Street, she stopped to
bend over and recover. Her body was folded in the middle, the air half frozen
in her mouth, her heart tolling in her ears.

Rudy was the
same.

When he looked
over, he saw the book under her arm. He struggled to speak. “What’s”—he
grappled with the words—“with the book?”

The darkness was
filling up truly now. Liesel panted, the air in her throat defrosting. “It was
all I could find.”

Unfortunately,
Rudy could smell it. The lie. He cocked his head and told her what he felt was
a fact. “You didn’t go in for food, did you? You got what you wanted. . . .”

Liesel straightened
then and was overcome with the sickness of another realization.

The shoes.

She looked at
Rudy’s feet, then at his hands, and at the ground all around him.

“What?” he
asked. “What is it?”

“Saukerl,”
she accused him.
“Where are my shoes?” Rudy’s face whitened, which left her in no doubt.
“They’re back at the house,” she suggested, “aren’t they?”

Rudy searched
desperately around himself, begging against all reality that he might have
brought them with him. He imagined himself picking them up, wishing it true—but
the shoes were not there. They sat uselessly, or actually, much worse,
incriminatingly, by the wall at 8 Grande Strasse.

“Dummkopf !”
he admonished
himself, smacking his ear. He looked down shamefully at the sullen sight of
Liesel’s socks. “Idiot!” It didn’t take him long to decide on making it right.
Earnestly, he said, “Just wait,” and he hurried back around the corner.

“Don’t get
caught,” Liesel called after him, but he didn’t hear.

The minutes were
heavy while he was gone.

Darkness was now
complete and Liesel was quite certain that a
Watschen
was most likely in
the cards when she returned home. “Hurry,” she murmured, but still Rudy didn’t
appear. She imagined the sound of a police siren throwing itself forward and
reeling itself in. Collecting itself.

Still, nothing.

Only when she
walked back to the intersection of the two streets in her damp, dirty socks did
she see him. Rudy’s triumphant face was held nicely up as he trotted steadily
toward her. His teeth were gnashed into a grin, and the shoes dangled from his
hand. “They nearly killed me,” he said, “but I made it.” Once they’d crossed
the river, he handed Liesel the shoes, and she threw them down.

Sitting on the
ground, she looked up at her best friend.
“Danke,”
she said. “Thank
you.”

Rudy bowed. “My
pleasure.” He tried for a little more. “No point asking if I get a kiss for
that, I guess?”

“For bringing my
shoes, which
you
left behind?”

“Fair enough.”
He held up his hands and continued speaking as they walked on, and Liesel made
a concerted effort to ignore him. She only heard the last part. “Probably
wouldn’t want to kiss you anyway—not if your breath’s anything like your
shoes.”

“You disgust
me,” she informed him, and she hoped he couldn’t see the escaped beginnings of
a smile that had fallen from her mouth.

On Himmel
Street, Rudy captured the book. Under a lamppost, he read out the title and
wondered what it was about.

Dreamily, Liesel
answered. “Just a murderer.”

“Is that all?”

“There’s also a
policeman trying to catch him.”

Rudy handed it
back. “Speaking of which, I think we’re both slightly in for it when we get
home. You especially.”

“Why me?”

“You know—your
mama.”

“What about
her?” Liesel was exercising the blatant right of every person who’s ever
belonged to a family. It’s all very well for such a person to whine and moan
and criticize other family members, but they won’t let
anyone else
do
it. That’s when you get your back up and show loyalty. “Is there something
wrong with her?”

Rudy backed
away. “Sorry,
Saumensch.
I didn’t mean to offend you.”

Even in the
night, Liesel could see that Rudy was growing. His face was lengthening. The
blond shock of hair was darkening ever so slightly and his features seemed to
be changing shape. But there was one thing that would never change. It was
impossible to be angry at him for long.

“Anything good
to eat at your place tonight?” he asked.

“I doubt it.”

“Me neither.
It’s a shame you can’t eat books. Arthur Berg said something like that once.
Remember?”

They recounted
the good old days for the remainder of the walk, Liesel often glancing down at
The
Whistler,
at the gray cover and the black imprinted title.

Before they went
into their respective homes, Rudy stopped a moment and said, “Goodbye,
Saumensch.
”
He laughed. “Good night, book thief.”

It was the first
time Liesel had been branded with her title, and she couldn’t hide the fact
that she liked it very much. As we’re both aware, she’d stolen books
previously, but in late October 1941, it became official. That night, Liesel
Meminger truly became the book thief.

THREE ACTS OF STUPIDITY

BY
RUDY STEINER

1.
He stole the biggest potato
from Mamer’s, the local grocer.

2.
Taking on Franz Deutscher
on Munich Street.

3.
Skipping the Hitler Youth
meetings altogether.

The problem with
Rudy’s first act was greed. It was a typically dreary afternoon in mid-November
1941.

Earlier, he’d
woven through the women with their coupons quite brilliantly, almost, dare I
say it, with a touch of criminal genius. He nearly went completely unnoticed.