The Book Thief (44 page)

Again, the human
child. So much cannier.

Later, when the
coat men left, the two boys, one seventeen, the other fourteen, found the
courage to face the kitchen.

They stood in
the doorway. The light punished their eyes.

It was Kurt who
spoke. “Are they taking him?”

Their mother’s
forearms were flat on the table. Her palms were facing up.

Alex Steiner
raised his head.

It was heavy.

His expression
was sharp and definite, freshly cut.

A wooden hand
wiped at the splinters of his fringe, and he made several attempts to speak.

“Papa?”

But Rudy did not
walk toward his father.

He sat at the
kitchen table and took hold of his mother’s facing-up hand.

Alex and Barbara
Steiner would not disclose what was said while the dominoes were falling like
dead bodies in the living room. If only Rudy had kept listening at the door,
just for another few minutes . . .

He told himself
in the weeks to come—or in fact, pleaded with himself—that if he’d heard the
rest of the conversation that night, he’d have entered the kitchen much
earlier. “I’ll go,” he’d have said. “Please, take me, I’m ready now.”

If he’d
intervened, it might have changed everything.

1.
Alex Steiner wouldn’t have suffered the same punishment as Hans Hubermann.

2.
Rudy would have gone away to school.

3.
And just maybe, he would have lived.

The cruelty of
fate, however, did not allow Rudy Steiner to enter the kitchen at the opportune
moment.

He’d returned to
his sisters and the dominoes.

He sat down.

Rudy Steiner wasn’t
going anywhere.

THE THOUGHT OF RUDY NAKED

There had been a
woman.

Standing in the
corner.

She had the
thickest braid he’d ever seen. It roped down her back, and occasionally, when
she brought it over her shoulder, it lurked at her colossal breast like an
overfed pet. In fact, everything about her was magnified. Her lips, her legs.
Her paved teeth. She had a large, direct voice. No time to waste.
“Komm,”
she
instructed them. “Come. Stand here.”

The doctor, by
comparison, was like a balding rodent. He was small and nimble, pacing the
school office with his manic yet business-like movements and mannerisms. And he
had a cold.

Out of the three
boys, it was difficult to decide which was the more reluctant to take off his
clothes when ordered to do so. The first one looked from person to person, from
the aging teacher to the gargantuan nurse to the pint-sized doctor. The one in
the middle looked only at his feet, and the one on the far left counted his
blessings that he was in the school office and not a dark alley. The nurse,
Rudy decided, was a frightener.

“Who’s first?”
she asked.

It was the
supervising teacher, Herr Heckenstaller, who answered. He was more a black suit
than a man. His face was a mustache. Examining the boys, his choice came
swiftly.

“Schwarz.”

The unfortunate
Jürgen Schwarz undid his uniform with great discomfort. He was left standing
only in his shoes and underwear. A luckless plea was marooned on his German
face.

“And?” Herr
Heckenstaller asked. “The shoes?”

He removed both
shoes, both socks.

“Und die
Unterhosen,”
said
the nurse. “And the underpants.”

Both Rudy and
the other boy, Olaf Spiegel, had started undressing now as well, but they were
nowhere near the perilous position of Jürgen Schwarz. The boy was shaking. He
was a year younger than the other two, but taller. When his underpants came
down, it was with abject humiliation that he stood in the small, cool office.
His self-respect was around his ankles.

The nurse
watched him with intent, her arms folded across her devastating chest.

Heckenstaller
ordered the other two to get moving.

The doctor
scratched his scalp and coughed. His cold was killing him.

The three naked
boys were each examined on the cold flooring.

They cupped
their genitals in their hands and shivered like the future.

Between the
doctor’s coughing and wheezing, they were put through their paces.

“Breathe in.”
Sniffle.

“Breathe out.”
Second sniffle.

“Arms out now.”
A cough. “I said arms
out.
” A horrendous hail of coughing.

As humans do,
the boys looked constantly at each other for some sign of mutual sympathy. None
was there. All three pried their hands from their penises and held out their
arms. Rudy did not feel like he was part of a master race.

“We are
gradually succeeding,” the nurse was informing the teacher, “in creating a new
future. It will be a new class of physically and mentally advanced Germans. An
officer class.”

Unfortunately,
her sermon was cut short when the doctor creased in half and coughed with all
his might over the abandoned clothes. Tears welled up in his eyes and Rudy
couldn’t help but wonder.

A new future?
Like him?

Wisely, he did
not speak it.

The examination
was completed and he managed to perform his first nude “
heil
Hitler.” In
a perverse kind of way, he conceded that it didn’t feel half bad.

Stripped of
their dignity, the boys were allowed to dress again, and as they were shown
from the office, they could already hear the discussion held in their honor
behind them.

“They’re a
little older than usual,” the doctor said, “but I’m thinking at least two of
them.”

The nurse
agreed. “The first and the third.”

Three boys stood
outside.

First and third.

“First was you,
Schwarz,” said Rudy. He then questioned Olaf Spiegel. “Who was third?”

Spiegel made a
few calculations. Did she mean third in line or third examined? It didn’t
matter. He knew what he wanted to believe. “That was you, I think.”

“Cow shit,
Spiegel, it was you.”

The day after
they’d visited Himmel Street, Rudy sat on his front step with Liesel and
related the whole saga, even the smallest details. He gave up and admitted what
had happened that day at school when he was taken out of class. There was even
some laughter about the tremendous nurse and the look on Jürgen Schwarz’s face.
For the most part, though, it was a tale of anxiety, especially when it came to
the voices in the kitchen and the dead-body dominoes.

For days, Liesel
could not shift one thought from her head.

It was the
examination of the three boys, or if she was honest, it was Rudy.

She would lie in
bed, missing Max, wondering where he was, praying that he was alive, but
somewhere, standing among all of it, was Rudy.

He glowed in the
dark, completely naked.

There was great
dread in that vision, especially the moment when he was forced to remove his
hands. It was disconcerting to say the least, but for some reason, she couldn’t
stop thinking about it.

PUNISHMENT

On the ration
cards of Nazi Germany, there was no listing for punishment, but everyone had to
take their turn. For some it was death in a foreign country during the war. For
others it was poverty and guilt when the war was over, when six million
discoveries were made throughout Europe. Many people must have seen their
punishments coming, but only a small percentage welcomed it. One such person
was Hans Hubermann.

You do not help
Jews on the street.

Your basement
should not be hiding one.

At first, his
punishment was conscience. His oblivious unearthing of Max Vandenburg plagued
him. Liesel could see it sitting next to his plate as he ignored his dinner, or
standing with him at the bridge over the Amper. He no longer played the
accordion. His silver-eyed optimism was wounded and motionless. That was bad
enough, but it was only the beginning.

One Wednesday in
early November, his true punishment arrived in the mailbox. On the surface, it
appeared to be good news.

“The Nazi
Party?” Rosa asked. “I thought they didn’t want you.”

“They didn’t.”

Papa sat down
and read the letter again.

He was not being
put on trial for treason or for helping Jews or anything of the sort. Hans
Hubermann was being
rewarded,
at least as far as some people were
concerned. How could this be possible?

“There has to be
more.”

There was.

On Friday, a
statement arrived to say that Hans Hubermann was to be drafted into the German
army. A member of the party would be happy to play a role in the war effort, it
concluded. If he wasn’t, there would certainly be consequences.

Liesel had just
returned from reading with Frau Holtzapfel. The kitchen was heavy with soup
steam and the vacant faces of Hans and Rosa Hubermann. Papa was seated. Mama
stood above him as the soup started to burn.

“God, please
don’t send me to Russia,” Papa said.

“Mama, the
soup’s burning.”

“What?”

Liesel hurried
across and took it from the stove. “The soup.” When she’d successfully rescued
it, she turned and viewed her foster parents. Faces like ghost towns. “Papa,
what’s wrong?”

He handed her
the letter and her hands began to shake as she made her way through it. The
words had been punched forcefully into the paper.

LIESEL MEMINGER’S IMAGINATION

In truth, Liesel
only saw the typewriter later, when she wrote. She wondered how many letters
like that were sent out as punishment to Germany’s Hans Hubermanns and Alex
Steiners—to those who helped the helpless, and those who refused to let go of
their children.

It was a sign of
the German army’s growing desperation.

They were losing
in Russia.

Their cities
were being bombed.

More people were
needed, as were ways of attaining them, and in most cases, the worst possible
jobs would be given to the worst possible people.

As her eyes
scanned the paper, Liesel could see through the punched letter holes to the
wooden table. Words like
compulsory
and
duty
were beaten into the
page. Saliva was triggered. It was the urge to vomit. “What is this?”

Papa’s answer
was quiet. “I thought I taught you to read, my girl.” He did not speak with
anger or sarcasm. It was a voice of vacancy, to match his face.

Liesel looked
now to Mama.

Rosa had a small
rip beneath her right eye, and within the minute, her cardboard face was
broken. Not down the center, but to the right. It gnarled down her cheek in an
arc, finishing at her chin.

Five days later,
when she continued her habit of looking at the weather, she did not get a
chance to see the sky.

Next door,
Barbara Steiner was sitting on the front step with her neatly combed hair. She
was smoking a cigarette and shivering. On her way over, Liesel was interrupted
by the sight of Kurt. He came out and sat with his mother. When he saw the girl
stop, he called out.

“Come on,
Liesel. Rudy will be out soon.”

After a short
pause, she continued walking toward the step.

Barbara smoked.

A wrinkle of ash
was teetering at the end of the cigarette. Kurt took it, ashed it, inhaled,
then gave it back.

When the
cigarette was done, Rudy’s mother looked up. She ran a hand through her tidy
lines of hair.

“Our papa’s
going, too,” Kurt said.

Quietness then.

A group of kids
was kicking a ball, up near Frau Diller’s.