The Book Thief (32 page)

Inconspicuous as
he was, however, he managed to take hold of the biggest potato of the lot—the
very same one that several people in the line had been watching. They all
looked on as a thirteen-year-old fist rose up and grabbed it. A choir of
heavyset Helgas pointed him out, and Thomas Mamer came storming toward the
dirty fruit.

“Meine
Erdäpfel,”
he
said. “My earth apples.”

The potato was
still in Rudy’s hands (he couldn’t hold it in just the one), and the women
gathered around him like a troop of wrestlers. Some fast talking was required.

“My family,”
Rudy explained. A convenient stream of clear fluid began to trickle from his
nose. He made a point of not wiping it away. “We’re all starving. My sister
needed a new coat. The last one was stolen.”

Mamer was no
fool. Still holding Rudy by the collar, he said, “And you plan to dress her
with a potato?”

“No, sir.” He
looked diagonally into the one eye he could see of his captor. Mamer was a
barrel of a man, with two small bullet holes to look out of. His teeth were
like a soccer crowd, crammed in. “We traded all our points for the coat three
weeks ago and now we have nothing to eat.”

The grocer held
Rudy in one hand and the potato in the other. He called out the dreaded word to
his wife.
“Polizei.”

“No,” Rudy begged,
“please.” He would tell Liesel later on that he was not the slightest bit
afraid, but his heart was certainly bursting at that moment, I’m sure. “Not the
police. Please, not the police.”

“Polizei.”
Mamer remained
unmoved as the boy wriggled and fought with the air.

Also in the line
that afternoon was a teacher, Herr Link. He was in the percentage of teachers
at school who were not priests or nuns. Rudy found him and accosted him in the
eyes.

“Herr Link.”
This was his last chance. “Herr Link, tell him, please. Tell him how poor I
am.”

The grocer
looked at the teacher with inquiring eyes.

Herr Link
stepped forward and said, “Yes, Herr Mamer. This boy is poor. He’s from Himmel
Street.” The crowd of predominantly women conferred at that point, knowing that
Himmel Street was not exactly the epitome of idyllic Molching living. It was
well known as a relatively poor neighborhood. “He has eight brothers and
sisters.”

Eight!

Rudy had to hold
back a smile, though he wasn’t in the clear yet. At least he had the teacher
lying now. He’d somehow managed to add three more children to the Steiner
family.

“Often, he comes
to school without breakfast,” and the crowd of women was conferring again. It
was like a coat of paint on the situation, adding a little extra potency and
atmosphere.

“So that means
he should be allowed to steal my potatoes?”

“The biggest
one!” one of the women ejaculated.

“Keep quiet,
Frau Metzing,” Mamer warned her, and she quickly settled down.

At first, all
attention was on Rudy and the scruff of his neck. It then moved back and forth,
from the boy to the potato to Mamer—from best-looking to worst—and exactly what
made the grocer decide in Rudy’s favor would forever be unanswered.

Was it the
pathetic nature of the boy?

The dignity of
Herr Link?

The annoyance of
Frau Metzing?

Whatever it was,
Mamer dropped the potato back on the pile and dragged Rudy from his premises.
He gave him a good push with his right boot and said, “Don’t come back.”

From outside,
Rudy looked on as Mamer reached the counter to serve his next customer with
food and sarcasm. “I wonder which potato
you’re
going to ask for,” he
said, keeping one eye open for the boy.

For Rudy, it was
yet another failure.

The second act
of stupidity was equally dangerous, but for different reasons.

Rudy would
finish this particular altercation with a black eye, cracked ribs, and a
haircut.

Again, at the
Hitler Youth meetings, Tommy Müller was having his problems, and Franz
Deutscher was just waiting for Rudy to step in. It didn’t take long.

Rudy and Tommy
were given another comprehensive drill session while the others went inside to
learn tactics. As they ran in the cold, they could see the warm heads and
shoulders through the windows. Even when they joined the rest of the group, the
drills weren’t quite finished. As Rudy slumped into the corner and flicked mud
from his sleeve at the window, Franz fired the Hitler Youth’s favorite question
at him.

“When was our
Führer,
Adolf Hitler, born?”

Rudy looked up.
“Sorry?”

The question was
repeated, and the very stupid Rudy Steiner, who knew all too well that it was
April 20, 1889, answered with the birth of Christ. He even threw in Bethlehem
as an added piece of information.

Franz smeared
his hands together.

A very bad sign.

He walked over
to Rudy and ordered him back outside for some more laps of the field.

Rudy ran them
alone, and after every lap, he was asked again the date of the
Führer
’s
birthday. He did seven laps before he got it right.

The major
trouble occurred a few days after the meeting.

On Munich
Street, Rudy noticed Deutscher walking along the footpath with some friends and
felt the need to throw a rock at him. You might well ask just what the hell he
was thinking. The answer is, probably nothing at all. He’d probably say that he
was exercising his God-given right to stupidity. Either that, or the very sight
of Franz Deutscher gave him the urge to destroy himself.

The rock hit its
mark on the spine, though not as hard as Rudy might have hoped. Franz Deutscher
spun around and looked happy to find him standing there, with Liesel, Tommy,
and Tommy’s little sister, Kristina.

“Let’s run,”
Liesel urged him, but Rudy didn’t move.

“We’re not at
Hitler Youth now,” he informed her. The older boys had already arrived. Liesel
remained next to her friend, as did the twitching Tommy and the delicate
Kristina.

“Mr. Steiner,”
Franz declared, before picking him up and throwing him to the pavement.

When Rudy stood
up, it served only to infuriate Deutscher even more. He brought him to the
ground for a second time, following him down with a knee to the rib cage.

Again, Rudy
stood up, and the group of older boys laughed now at their friend. This was not
the best news for Rudy. “Can’t you make him feel it?” the tallest of them said.
His eyes were as blue and cold as the sky, and the words were all the incentive
Franz needed. He was determined that Rudy would hit the ground and stay there.

A larger crowd
made its way around them as Rudy swung at Franz Deutscher’s stomach, missing
him completely. Simultaneously, he felt the burning sensation of a fist on his
left eye socket. It arrived with sparks, and he was on the ground before he
even realized. He was punched again, in the same place, and he could feel the
bruise turn yellow and blue and black all at once. Three layers of exhilarating
pain.

The developing
crowd gathered and leered to see if Rudy might get up again. He didn’t. This
time, he remained on the cold, wet ground, feeling it rise through his clothes
and spread itself out.

The sparks were
still in his eyes, and he didn’t notice until it was too late that Franz now
stood above him with a brand-new pocketknife, about to crouch down and cut him.

“No!” Liesel
protested, but the tall one held her back. In her ear, his words were deep and
old.

“Don’t worry,”
he assured her. “He won’t do it. He doesn’t have the guts.”

He was wrong.

Franz merged
into a kneeling position as he leaned closer to Rudy and whispered:

“When was our
Führer
born?” Each word was carefully created and fed into his ear. “Come on,
Rudy, when was he born? You can tell me, everything’s fine, don’t be afraid.”

And Rudy?

How did he
reply?

Did he respond
prudently, or did he allow his stupidity to sink himself deeper into the mire?

He looked
happily into the pale blue eyes of Franz Deutscher and whispered, “Easter Monday.”

Within a few
seconds, the knife was applied to his hair. It was haircut number two in this
section of Liesel’s life. The hair of a Jew was cut with rusty scissors. Her
best friend was taken to with a gleaming knife. She knew nobody who actually
paid for a haircut.

As for Rudy, so
far this year he’d swallowed mud, bathed himself in fertilizer, been
half-strangled by a developing criminal, and was now receiving something at
least nearing the icing on the cake— public humiliation on Munich Street.

For the most
part, his fringe was sliced away freely, but with each stroke, there were
always a few hairs that held on for dear life and were pulled out completely.
As each one was plucked, Rudy winced, his black eye throbbing in the process
and his ribs flashing in pain.

“April
twentieth, eighteen eighty-nine!” Franz lectured him, and when he led his
cohorts away, the audience dispersed, leaving only Liesel, Tommy, and Kristina
with their friend.

Rudy lay quietly
on the ground, in the rising damp.

Which leaves us
only with stupid act number three—skipping the Hitler Youth meetings.

He didn’t stop
going right away, purely to show Deutscher that he wasn’t afraid of him, but
after another few weeks, Rudy ceased his involvement altogether.

Dressed proudly
in his uniform, he exited Himmel Street and kept walking, his loyal subject,
Tommy, by his side.

Instead of
attending the Hitler Youth, they walked out of town and along the Amper,
skipping stones, heaving enormous rocks into the water, and generally getting
up to no good. He made sure to get the uniform dirty enough to fool his mother,
at least until the first letter arrived. That was when he heard the dreaded
call from the kitchen.

First, his
parents threatened him. He didn’t attend.

They begged him
to go. He refused.

Eventually, it
was the opportunity to join a different division that swayed Rudy in the right
direction. This was fortunate, because if he didn’t show his face soon, the
Steiners would be fined for his non-attendance. His older brother, Kurt,
inquired as to whether Rudy might join the Flieger Division, which specialized
in the teaching of aircraft and flying. Mostly, they built model airplanes, and
there was no Franz Deutscher. Rudy accepted, and Tommy also joined. It was the
one time in his life that his idiotic behavior delivered beneficial results.

In his new
division, whenever he was asked the famous
Führer
question, Rudy would
smile and answer, “April 20, 1889,” and then to Tommy, he’d whisper a different
date, like Beethoven’s birthday, or Mozart’s, or Strauss’s. They’d been
learning about composers in school, where despite his obvious stupidity, Rudy
excelled.

THE
FLOATING BOOK (Part II)

At the beginning
of December, victory finally came to Rudy Steiner, though not in a typical
fashion.

It was a cold
day, but very still. It had come close to snowing.

After school,
Rudy and Liesel stopped in at Alex Steiner’s shop, and as they walked home,
they saw Rudy’s old friend Franz Deutscher coming around the corner. Liesel, as
was her habit these days, was carrying
The Whistler.
She liked to feel
it in her hand. Either the smooth spine or the rough edges of paper. It was she
who saw him first.

“Look.” She
pointed. Deutscher was loping toward them with another Hitler Youth leader.

Rudy shrank into
himself. He felt at his mending eye. “Not this time.” He searched the streets.
“If we go past the church, we can follow the river and cut back that way.”

With no further
words, Liesel followed him, and they successfully avoided Rudy’s
tormentor—straight into the path of another.

At first, they
thought nothing of it.

The group
crossing the bridge and smoking cigarettes could have been anybody, and it was
too late to turn around when the two parties recognized each other.

“Oh, no, they’ve
seen us.”

Viktor Chemmel
smiled.

He spoke very
amiably. This could only mean that he was at his most dangerous. “Well, well,
if it isn’t Rudy Steiner and his little whore.” Very smoothly, he met them and
snatched
The Whistler
from Liesel’s grip. “What are we reading?”

“This is between
us.” Rudy tried to reason with him. “It has nothing to do with her. Come on,
give it back.”

“The Whistler.”
He addressed
Liesel now. “Any good?”

She cleared her
throat. “Not bad.” Unfortunately, she gave herself away. In the eyes. They were
agitated. She knew the exact moment when Viktor Chemmel established that the
book was a prize possession.

“I’ll tell you
what,” he said. “For fifty marks, you can have it back.”

“Fifty marks!”
That was Andy Schmeikl. “Come on, Viktor, you could buy a thousand books for
that.”

“Did I ask you
to speak?”

Andy kept quiet.
His mouth seemed to swing shut.

Liesel tried a
poker face. “You can keep it, then. I’ve already read it.”

“What happens at
the end?”

Damn it!

She hadn’t
gotten that far yet.

She hesitated,
and Viktor Chemmel deciphered it instantly.

Rudy rushed at
him now. “Come on, Viktor, don’t do this to her. It’s me you’re after. I’ll do
anything you want.”