The Book Thief (54 page)

He allowed her
screams to fill the street.

Much later, Hans
walked with her, with painstaking care, through her front gate, and into the
house. And no matter how many times I try to see it differently, I can’t pull
it off. . . .

When I imagine
that scene of the distraught woman and the tall silver-eyed man, it is still snowing
in the kitchen of 31 Himmel Street.

THE WAR MAKER

There was the
smell of a freshly cut coffin. Black dresses. Enormous suitcases under the
eyes. Liesel stood like the rest, on the grass. She read to Frau Holtzapfel
that same afternoon.
The Dream Carrier,
her neighbor’s favorite.

It was a busy
day all around, really.

The Germans were
starting to pay in earnest by then. The
Führer
’s pimply little knees
were starting to shake.

Still, I’ll give
him something, that
Führer.

He certainly had
an iron will.

There was no
slackening off in terms of war-making, nor was there any scaling back on the
extermination and punishment of a Jewish plague. While most of the camps were
spread throughout Europe, there were some still in existence in Germany itself.

In those camps,
many people were still made to work, and walk.

Max Vandenburg
was one such Jew.

WAY OF THE WORDS

It happened in a
small town of Hitler’s heartland.

The flow of more
suffering was pumped nicely out, and a small piece of it had now arrived.

Jews were being
marched through the outskirts of Munich, and one teenage girl somehow did the
unthinkable and made her way through to walk with them. When the soldiers
pulled her away and threw her to the ground, she stood up again. She continued.

The morning was
warm.

Another
beautiful day for a parade.

The soldiers and
Jews made their way through several towns and were arriving now in Molching. It
was possible that more work needed to be done in the camp, or several prisoners
had died. Whatever the reason, a new batch of fresh, tired Jews was being taken
on foot to Dachau.

As she always
did, Liesel ran to Munich Street with the usual band of onlookers.

“
Heil
Hitler!”

She could hear
the first soldier from far up the road and made her way toward him through the
crowd, to meet the procession. The voice amazed her. It made the endless sky
into a ceiling just above his head, and the words bounced back, landing
somewhere on the floor of limping Jewish feet.

Their eyes.

They watched the
moving street, one by one, and when Liesel found a good vantage point, she
stopped and studied them. She raced through the files of face after face,
trying to match them to the Jew who wrote
The Standover Man
and
The
Word Shaker.

Feathery hair,
she thought.

No, hair like
twigs. That’s what it looks like when it hasn’t been washed. Look out for hair
like twigs and swampy eyes and a kindling beard.

God, there were
so many of them.

So many sets of
dying eyes and scuffing feet.

Liesel searched
them and it was not so much a recognition of facial features that gave Max
Vandenburg away. It was how the face was acting—also studying the crowd. Fixed
in concentration. Liesel felt herself pausing as she found the only face
looking directly into the German spectators. It examined them with such purpose
that people on either side of the book thief noticed and pointed him out.

“What’s
he
looking
at?” said a male voice at her side.

The book thief
stepped onto the road.

Never had
movement been such a burden. Never had a heart been so definite and big in her
adolescent chest.

She stepped
forward and said, very quietly, “He’s looking for me.”

Her voice
trailed off and fell away, inside. She had to refind it—reaching far down, to
learn to speak again and call out his name.

Max.

“I’m here, Max!”

Louder.

He heard her.

Liesel shrugged
away entirely from the crowd and entered the tide of Jews, weaving through them
till she grabbed hold of his arm with her left hand.

His face fell on
her.

It reached down
as she tripped, and the Jew, the nasty Jew, helped her up. It took all of his
strength.

“I’m here, Max,”
she said again. “I’m here.”

“I can’t believe
. . .” The words dripped from Max Vandenburg’s mouth. “Look how much you’ve
grown.” There was an intense sadness in his eyes. They swelled. “Liesel . . .
they got me a few months ago.” The voice was crippled but it dragged itself
toward her. “Halfway to Stuttgart.”

From the inside,
the stream of Jews was a murky disaster of arms and legs. Ragged uniforms. No
soldier had seen her yet, and Max gave her a warning. “You have to let go of
me, Liesel.” He even tried to push her away, but the girl was too strong. Max’s
starving arms could not sway her, and she walked on, between the filth, the
hunger and confusion.

After a long
line of steps, the first soldier noticed.

“Hey!” he called
in. He pointed with his whip. “Hey, girl, what are you doing? Get out of
there.”

When she ignored
him completely, the soldier used his arm to separate the stickiness of people.
He shoved them aside and made his way through. He loomed above her as Liesel
struggled on and noticed the strangled expression on Max Vandenburg’s face. She
had seen him afraid, but never like this.

The soldier took
her.

His hands
manhandled her clothes.

She could feel
the bones in his fingers and the ball of each knuckle. They tore at her skin.
“I said get out!” he ordered her, and now he dragged the girl to the side and
flung her into the wall of onlooking Germans. It was getting warmer. The sun
burned her face. The girl had landed sprawling with pain, but now she stood
again. She recovered and waited. She reentered.

This time,
Liesel made her way through from the back.

Ahead, she could
just see the distinct twigs of hair and walked again toward them.

This time, she
did not reach out—she stopped. Somewhere inside her were the souls of words.
They climbed out and stood beside her.

“Max,” she said.
He turned and briefly closed his eyes as the girl continued. “ ‘There was once
a strange, small man,’ ” she said. Her arms were loose but her hands were fists
at her side. “But there was a word shaker, too.”

One of the Jews
on his way to Dachau had stopped walking now.

He stood
absolutely still as the others swerved morosely around him, leaving him
completely alone. His eyes staggered, and it was so simple. The words were
given across from the girl to the Jew. They climbed on to him.

The next time
she spoke, the questions stumbled from her mouth. Hot tears fought for room in
her eyes as she would not let them out. Better to stand resolute and proud. Let
the words do all of it. “ ‘Is it really you? the young man asked,’ ” she said.
“ ‘Is it from your cheek that I took the seed?’ ”

Max Vandenburg
remained standing.

He did not drop
to his knees.

People and Jews
and clouds all stopped. They watched.

As he stood, Max
looked first at the girl and then stared directly into the sky who was wide and
blue and magnificent. There were heavy beams—planks of sun—falling randomly,
wonderfully to the road. Clouds arched their backs to look behind as they
started again to move on. “It’s such a beautiful day,” he said, and his voice
was in many pieces. A great day to die. A great day to die, like this.

Liesel walked at
him. She was courageous enough to reach out and hold his bearded face. “Is it
really you, Max?”

Such a brilliant
German day and its attentive crowd.

He let his mouth
kiss her palm. “Yes, Liesel, it’s me,” and he held the girl’s hand in his face
and cried onto her fingers. He cried as the soldiers came and a small
collection of insolent Jews stood and watched.

Standing, he was
whipped.

“Max,” the girl
wept.

Then silently,
as she was dragged away:

Max.

Jewish fist
fighter.

Inside, she said
all of it.

Maxi Taxi.
That’s what that friend called you in Stuttgart when you fought on the street,
remember? Remember, Max? You told me. I remember everything. . . .

That was you—the
boy with the hard fists, and you said you would land a punch on death’s face
when he came for you.

Remember the
snowman, Max?

Remember?

In the basement?

Remember the
white cloud with the gray heart?

The
Führer
still
comes down looking for you sometimes. He misses you. We all miss you.

The whip. The
whip.

The whip
continued from the soldier’s hand. It landed on Max’s face. It clipped his chin
and carved his throat.

Max hit the
ground and the soldier now turned to the girl. His mouth opened. He had
immaculate teeth.

A sudden flash
came before her eyes. She recalled the day she’d wanted Ilsa Hermann or at
least the reliable Rosa to slap her, but neither of them would do it. On this
occasion, she was not let down.

The whip sliced
her collarbone and reached across her shoulder blade.

“Liesel!”

She knew that
person.

As the soldier
swung his arm, she caught sight of a distressed Rudy Steiner in the gaps of the
crowd. He was calling out. She could see his tortured face and yellow hair.
“Liesel, get out of there!”

The book thief
did not get out.

She closed her
eyes and caught the next burning streak, and another, till her body hit the warm
flooring of the road. It heated her cheek.

More words
arrived, this time from the soldier.

The economical
sentence was directed not to the girl but the Jew. It was elaborated on. “Get
up, you dirty asshole, you Jewish whore-dog, get up, get up. . . .”

Max hoisted
himself upright.

Just another
push-up, Max.

Just another
push-up on the cold basement floor.

His feet moved.

They dragged and
he traveled on.

His legs
staggered and his hands wiped at the marks of the whip, to soothe the stinging.
When he tried to look again for Liesel, the soldier’s hands were placed upon
his bloodied shoulders and pushed.

The boy arrived.
His lanky legs crouched and he called over, to his left.

“Tommy, get out
here and help me. We have to get her up. Tommy,
hurry
!” He lifted the
book thief by her armpits. “Liesel, come on, you have to get off the road.”

When she was
able to stand, she looked at the shocked, frozen-faced Germans, fresh out of
their packets. At their feet, she allowed herself to collapse, but only momentarily.
A graze struck a match on the side of her face, where she’d met the ground. Her
pulse flipped it over, frying it on both sides.

Far down the
road, she could see the blurry legs and heels of the last walking Jew.

Her face was
burning and there was a dogged ache in her arms and legs—a numbness that was
simultaneously painful and exhausting.

She stood, one
last time.

Waywardly, she
began to walk and then run down Munich Street, to haul in the last steps of Max
Vandenburg.

“Liesel, what
are you doing?!”

She escaped the
grip of Rudy’s words and ignored the watching people at her side. Most of them
were mute. Statues with beating hearts. Perhaps bystanders in the latter stages
of a marathon. Liesel cried out again and was not heard. Hair was in her eyes. “Please,
Max!”

After perhaps
thirty meters, just as a soldier turned around, the girl was felled. Hands were
clamped upon her from behind and the boy next door brought her down. He forced
her knees to the road and suffered the penalty. He collected her punches as if
they were presents. Her bony hands and elbows were accepted with nothing but a
few short moans. He accumulated the loud, clumsy specks of saliva and tears as
if they were lovely to his face, and more important, he was able to hold her
down.