The Book Thief (38 page)

PART SEVEN

the
complete duden dictionary and thesaurus

featuring:

champagne and accordions—

a trilogy—some sirens—a sky

stealer—an offer—the long

walk to dachau—peace—

an idiot and some coat men

CHAMPAGNE AND ACCORDIONS

In the summer of
1942, the town of Molching was preparing for the inevitable. There were still
people who refused to believe that this small town on Munich’s outskirts could
be a target, but the majority of the population was well aware that it was not
a question of if, but when. Shelters were more clearly marked, windows were in
the process of being blackened for the nights, and everyone knew where the
closest basement or cellar was.

For Hans
Hubermann, this uneasy development was actually a slight reprieve. At an
unfortunate time, good luck had somehow found its way into his painting
business. People with blinds were desperate enough to enlist his services to
paint them. His problem was that black paint was normally used more as a mixer,
to darken other colors, and it was soon depleted and hard to find. What he did
have was the knack of being a good tradesman, and a good tradesman has many
tricks. He took coal dust and stirred it through, and he worked cheap. There
were many houses in all parts of Molching in which he confiscated the window
light from enemy eyes.

On some of his
workdays, Liesel went with him.

They carted his
paint through town, smelling the hunger on some of the streets and shaking
their heads at the wealth on others. Many times, on the way home, women with
nothing but kids and poverty would come running out and plead with him to paint
their blinds.

“Frau Hallah,
I’m sorry, I have no black paint left,” he would say, but a little farther down
the road, he would always break. There was tall man and long street.
“Tomorrow,” he’d promise, “first thing,” and when the next morning dawned,
there he was, painting those blinds for nothing, or for a cookie or a warm cup
of tea. The previous evening, he’d have found another way to turn blue or green
or beige to black. Never did he tell them to cover their windows with spare
blankets, for he knew they’d need them when winter came. He was even known to
paint people’s blinds for half a cigarette, sitting on the front step of a
house, sharing a smoke with the occupant. Laughter and smoke rose out of the
conversation before they moved on to the next job.

When the time
came to write, I remember clearly what Liesel Meminger had to say about that
summer. A lot of the words have faded over the decades. The paper has suffered
from the friction of movement in my pocket, but still, many of her sentences
have been impossible to forget.

Every day when
they worked together, he would tell Liesel his stories. There was the Great War
and how his miserable handwriting helped save his life, and the day he met
Mama. He said that she was beautiful once, and actually very quiet-spoken.
“Hard to believe, I know, but absolutely true.” Each day, there was a story,
and Liesel forgave him if he told the same one more than once.

On other
occasions, when she was daydreaming, Papa would dab her lightly with his brush,
right between the eyes. If he misjudged and there was too much on it, a small
path of paint would dribble down the side of her nose. She would laugh and try
to return the favor, but Hans Hubermann was a hard man to catch out at work. It
was there that he was most alive.

Whenever they
had a break, to eat or drink, he would play the accordion, and it was this that
Liesel remembered best. Each morning, while Papa pushed or dragged the paint
cart, Liesel carried the instrument. “Better that we leave the paint behind,”
Hans told her, “than ever forget the music.” When they paused to eat, he would
cut up the bread, smearing it with what little jam remained from the last
ration card. Or he’d lay a small slice of meat on top of it. They would eat
together, sitting on their cans of paint, and with the last mouthfuls still in
the chewing stages, Papa would be wiping his fingers, unbuckling the accordion
case.

Traces of bread
crumbs were in the creases of his overalls. Paint-specked hands made their way
across the buttons and raked over the keys, or held on to a note for a while.
His arms worked the bellows, giving the instrument the air it needed to
breathe.

Liesel would sit
each day with her hands between her knees, in the long legs of daylight. She
wanted none of those days to end, and it was always with disappointment that
she watched the darkness stride forward.

As far as the
painting itself was concerned, probably the most interesting aspect for Liesel
was the mixing. Like most people, she assumed her papa simply took his cart to
the paint shop or hardware store and asked for the right color and away he
went. She didn’t realize that most of the paint was in lumps, in the shape of a
brick. It was then rolled out with an empty champagne bottle. (Champagne
bottles, Hans explained, were ideal for the job, as their glass was slightly
thicker than that of an ordinary bottle of wine.) Once that was completed,
there was the addition of water, whiting, and glue, not to mention the
complexities of matching the right color.

The science of
Papa’s trade brought him an even greater level of respect. It was well and good
to share bread and music, but it was nice for Liesel to know that he was also
more than capable in his occupation. Competence was attractive.

One afternoon, a
few days after Papa’s explanation of the mixing, they were working at one of
the wealthier houses just east of Munich Street. Papa called Liesel inside in
the early afternoon. They were just about to move on to another job when she
heard the unusual volume in his voice.

Once inside, she
was taken to the kitchen, where two older women and a man sat on delicate, highly
civilized chairs. The women were well dressed. The man had white hair and
sideburns like hedges. Tall glasses stood on the table. They were filled with
crackling liquid.

“Well,” said the
man, “here we go.”

He took up his
glass and urged the others to do the same.

The afternoon
had been warm. Liesel was slightly put off by the coolness of her glass. She
looked at Papa for approval. He grinned and said, “
Prost, Mädel
—cheers,
girl.” Their glasses chimed together and the moment Liesel raised it to her mouth,
she was bitten by the fizzy, sickly sweet taste of champagne. Her reflexes
forced her to spit straight onto her papa’s overalls, watching it foam and
dribble. A shot of laughter followed from all of them, and Hans encouraged her
to give it another try. On the second attempt she was able to swallow it, and
enjoy the taste of a glorious broken rule. It felt great. The bubbles ate her
tongue. They prickled her stomach. Even as they walked to the next job, she
could feel the warmth of pins and needles inside her.

Dragging the
cart, Papa told her that those people claimed to have no money.

“So you asked
for champagne?”

“Why not?” He
looked across, and never had his eyes been so silver. “I didn’t want you
thinking that champagne bottles are only used for rolling paint.” He warned
her, “Just don’t tell Mama. Agreed?”

“Can I tell
Max?”

“Sure, you can
tell Max.”

In the basement,
when she wrote about her life, Liesel vowed that she would never drink
champagne again, for it would never taste as good as it did on that warm
afternoon in July.

It was the same
with accordions.

Many times, she
wanted to ask her papa if he might teach her to play, but somehow, something
always stopped her. Perhaps an unknown intuition told her that she would never
be able to play it like Hans Hubermann. Surely, not even the world’s greatest
accordionists could compare. They could never be equal to the casual
concentration on Papa’s face. Or there wouldn’t be a paintwork-traded cigarette
slouched on the player’s lips. And they could never make a small mistake with a
three-note laugh of hindsight. Not the way he could.

At times, in
that basement, she woke up tasting the sound of the accordion in her ears. She
could feel the sweet burn of champagne on her tongue.

Sometimes she
sat against the wall, longing for the warm finger of paint to wander just once
more down the side of her nose, or to watch the sandpaper texture of her papa’s
hands.

If only she
could be so oblivious again, to feel such love without knowing it, mistaking it
for laughter and bread with only the scent of jam spread out on top of it.

It was the best
time of her life.

But it was
bombing carpet.

Make no mistake.

Bold and bright,
a trilogy of happiness would continue for summer’s duration and into autumn. It
would then be brought abruptly to an end, for the brightness had shown
suffering the way.

Hard times were
coming.

Like a parade.

THE TRILOGY

While Liesel
worked, Rudy ran.

He did laps of
Hubert Oval, ran around the block, and raced almost everyone from the bottom of
Himmel Street to Frau Diller’s, giving varied head starts.

On a few
occasions, when Liesel was helping Mama in the kitchen, Rosa would look out the
window and say, “What’s that little
Saukerl
up to
this
time? All
that running out there.”

Liesel would
move to the window. “At least he hasn’t painted himself black again.”

“Well, that’s
something, isn’t it?”

RUDY’S
REASONS

“Four gold
medals,” he said to Liesel one afternoon when she did laps with him at Hubert
Oval. “Like Jesse Owens back in ’36.”

“You’re not
still obsessed with him, are you?”

Rudy’s feet
rhymed with his breathing. “Not really, but it would be nice, wouldn’t it? It
would show all those bastards who said I was crazy. They’d see that I wasn’t so
stupid after all.”

“But can you
really win all four events?”

They slowed to a
stop at the end of the track, and Rudy placed his hands on his hips. “I have
to.”

For six weeks,
he trained, and when the day of the carnival arrived in mid-August, the sky was
hot-sunned and cloudless. The grass was overrun with Hitler Youths, parents,
and a glut of brown-shirted leaders. Rudy Steiner was in peak condition.

“Look,” he
pointed out. “There’s Deutscher.”

Through the
clusters of crowd, the blond epitome of Hitler Youth standards was giving
instructions to two members of his division. They were nodding and occasionally
stretching. One of them shielded his eyes from the sun like a salute.

“You want to say
hello?” Liesel asked.

“No thanks. I’ll
do that later.”

When I’ve won.

The words were
not spoken, but they were definitely there, somewhere between Rudy’s blue eyes
and Deutscher’s advisory hands.

There was the
obligatory march around the grounds.

The anthem.

Heil
Hitler.

Only then could
they begin.

When Rudy’s age
group was called for the 1500, Liesel wished him luck in a typically German
manner.

She’d told him
to break his neck and leg.

Boys collected
themselves on the far side of the circular field. Some stretched, some focused,
and the rest were there because they had to be.

Next to Liesel,
Rudy’s mother, Barbara, sat with her youngest children. A thin blanket was
brimming with kids and loosened grass. “Can you see Rudy?” she asked them.
“He’s the one on the far left.” Barbara Steiner was a kind woman whose hair
always looked recently combed.