The Book Thief (17 page)

For a while, she said nothing. She was making calculations, despite
already knowing. An eleven-year-old girl is many things, but she is not stupid.

The
Führer
.

He was the
they
that Hans and Rosa Hubermann were talking about that evening when she first wrote to her mother. She knew it, but she had to ask.

“Is my mother a communist?” Staring. Straight ahead. “They were always asking her things, before I came here.”

Hans edged forward a little, forming the beginnings of a lie. “I have no idea—I never met her.”

“Did the
Führer
take her away?”

The question surprised them both, and it forced Papa to stand up. He looked at the brown-shirted men taking to the pile of ash with shovels. He could hear them hacking into it. Another lie was growing in his mouth, but he found it impossible to let it out. He said, “I think he might have, yes.”

“I knew it.” The words were thrown at the steps and Liesel could feel the slush of anger, stirring hotly in her stomach. “I hate the
Führer,”
she said. “I
hate
him.”

And Hans Hubermann?

What did he do?

What did he say?

Did he bend down and embrace his foster daughter, as he wanted
to? Did he tell her that he was sorry for what was happening to her, to her mother, for what had happened to her brother?

Not exactly.

He clenched his eyes. Then opened them. He slapped Liesel Meminger squarely in the face.

“Don’t
ever
say that!” His voice was quiet, but sharp.

As the girl shook and sagged on the steps, he sat next to her and held his face in his hands. It would be easy to say that he was just a tall man sitting poor-postured and shattered on some church steps, but he wasn’t. At the time, Liesel had no idea that her foster father, Hans Hubermann, was contemplating one of the most dangerous dilemmas a German citizen could face. Not only that, he’d been facing it for close to a year.

“Papa?”

The surprise in her voice rushed her, but it also rendered her useless. She wanted to run, but she couldn’t. She could take a
Watschen
from nuns and Rosas, but it hurt so much more from Papa. The hands were gone from Papa’s face now and he found the resolve to speak again.

“You can say that in our house,” he said, looking gravely at Liesel’s cheek. “But you never say it on the street, at school, at the BDM, never!” He stood in front of her and lifted her by the triceps. He shook her. “Do you hear me?”

With her eyes trapped wide open, Liesel nodded her compliance.

It was, in fact, a rehearsal for a future lecture, when all of Hans Hubermann’s worst fears arrived on Himmel Street later that year, in the early hours of a November morning.

“Good.” He placed her back down. “Now, let us try …” At the bottom of the steps, Papa stood erect and cocked his arm. Forty-five degrees.
“Heil
Hitler.”

Liesel stood up and also raised her arm. With absolute misery, she repeated it.
“Heil
Hitler.” It was quite a sight—an eleven-year-old girl, trying not to cry on the church steps, saluting the
Führer
as the voices
over Papa’s shoulder chopped and beat at the dark shape in the background.

“Are we still friends?”

Perhaps a quarter of an hour later, Papa held a cigarette olive branch in his palm—the paper and tobacco he’d just received. Without a word, Liesel reached gloomily across and proceeded to roll it.

For quite a while, they sat there together.

Smoke climbed over Papa’s shoulder.

After another ten minutes, the gates of thievery would open just a crack, and Liesel Meminger would widen them a little further and squeeze through.

As Liesel would discover, a good thief requires many things.

Stealth. Nerve. Speed.

More important than any of those things, however, was one final requirement.

Luck.

Actually.

Forget the ten minutes.

The gates open now.

The dark came in pieces, and with the cigarette brought to an end, Liesel and Hans Hubermann began to walk home. To get out of the square, they would walk past the bonfire site and through a small side road onto Munich Street. They didn’t make it that far.

A middle-aged carpenter named Wolfgang Edel called out. He’d built the platforms for the Nazi big shots to stand on during the fire and he was in the process now of pulling them down. “Hans Hubermann?” He had long sideburns that pointed to his mouth and a dark voice. “Hansi!”

“Hey, Wolfal,” Hans replied. There was an introduction to the girl and a
“heil
Hitler.” “Good, Liesel.”

For the first few minutes, Liesel stayed within a five-meter radius of the conversation. Fragments came past her, but she didn’t pay too much attention.

“Getting much work?”

“No, it’s all tighter now. You know how it is, especially when you’re not a member.”

“You told me you were joining, Hansi.”

“I tried, but I made a mistake—I think they’re still considering.”

•   •   •

Liesel wandered toward the mountain of ash. It sat like a magnet, like a freak. Irresistible to the eyes, similar to the road of yellow stars.

As with her previous urge to see the mound’s ignition, she could not look away. All alone, she didn’t have the discipline to keep a safe distance. It sucked her toward it and she began to make her way around.

Above her, the sky was completing its routine of darkening, but far away, over the mountain’s shoulder, there was a dull trace of light.

“Pass auf, Kind,”
a uniform said to her at one point. “Look out, child,” as he shoveled some more ash onto a cart.

Closer to the town hall, under a light, some shadows stood and talked, most likely exulting in the success of the fire. From Liesel’s position, their voices were only sounds. Not words at all.

For a few minutes, she watched the men shoveling up the pile, at first making it smaller at the sides to allow more of it to collapse. They came back and forth from a truck, and after three return trips, when the heap was reduced near the bottom, a small section of living material slipped from inside the ash.

Perhaps they were damp. Perhaps the fire didn’t burn long enough to fully reach the depth where they sat. Whatever the reason, they were huddled among the ashes, shaken. Survivors.

“Three books.” Liesel spoke softly and she looked at the backs of the men.

“Come on,” said one of them. “Hurry up, will you, I’m starving.”

They moved toward the truck.

The threesome of books poked their noses out.

Liesel moved in.

The heat was still strong enough to warm her when she stood at the foot of the ash heap. When she reached her hand in, she was bitten, but on the second attempt, she made sure she was fast enough. She latched onto the closest of the books. It was hot, but it was also wet, burned only at the edges, but otherwise unhurt.

It was blue.

The cover felt like it was woven with hundreds of tightly drawn strings and clamped down. Red letters were pressed into those fibers. The only word Liesel had time to read was
Shoulder
. There wasn’t enough time for the rest, and there was a problem. The smoke.

Smoke lifted from the cover as she juggled it and hurried away. Her head was pulled down, and the sick beauty of nerves proved more ghastly with each stride. There were fourteen steps till the voice.

It propped itself up behind her.

“Hey!”