The Book Thief (26 page)

“He taught me to play,” Hans informed her, as though it might help.

Perhaps it did, for the devastated woman asked if he could play it for her, and she silently wept as he pressed the buttons and keys of a clumsy “Blue Danube Waltz.” It was her husband’s favorite.

“You know,” Hans explained to her, “he saved my life.” The light in the room was small, and the air restrained. “He—if there’s anything you ever need.” He slid a piece of paper with his name and address on it across the table. “I’m a painter by trade. I’ll paint your apartment for free, whenever you like.” He knew it was useless compensation, but he offered anyway.

The woman took the paper, and not long after, a small child wandered in and sat on her lap.

“This is Max,” the woman said, but the boy was too young and shy to say anything. He was skinny, with soft hair, and his thick, murky eyes watched as the stranger played one more song in the heavy room. From face to face, he looked on as the man played and the woman wept. The different notes handled her eyes. Such sadness.

Hans left.

“You never told me,” he said to a dead Erik Vandenburg and the Stuttgart skyline. “You never told me you had a son.”

After a momentary, head-shaken stoppage, Hans returned to Munich, expecting never to hear from those people again. What he didn’t know was that his help would most definitely be needed, but not for painting, and not for another twenty years or so.

There were a few weeks before he started painting. In the good-weather months, he worked vigorously, and even in winter, he often said to Rosa that business might not be pouring, but it would at least drizzle now and again.

For more than a decade, it all worked.

Hans Junior and Trudy were born. They grew up making visits to their papa at work, slapping paint on walls and cleaning brushes.

When Hitler rose to power in 1933, though, the painting business fell slightly awry. Hans didn’t join the NSDAP like the majority of people did. He put a lot of thought into his decision.

Once the persecution began, his work slowly dried up. It wasn’t too bad to begin with, but soon enough, he was losing customers. Handfuls of quotes seemed to vanish into the rising Nazi air.

He approached an old faithful named Herbert Bollinger—a man with a hemispheric waistline who spoke
Hochdeutsch
(he was from Hamburg)—when he saw him on Munich Street. At first, the man looked down, past his girth, to the ground, but when his eyes returned to the painter, the question clearly made him uncomfortable. There was no reason for Hans to ask, but he did.

“What’s going on, Herbert? I’m losing customers quicker than I can count.”

Bollinger didn’t flinch anymore. Standing upright, he delivered the fact as a question of his own. “Well, Hans. Are you a member?”

“Of what?”

But Hans Hubermann knew exactly what the man was talking about.

“Come on, Hansi,” Bollinger persisted. “Don’t make me spell it out.”

The tall painter waved him away and walked on.

As the years passed by, the Jews were being terrorized at random throughout the country, and in the spring of 1937, almost to his shame, Hans Hubermann finally submitted. He made some inquiries and applied to join the Party.

After lodging his form at the Nazi headquarters on Munich Street, he witnessed four men throw several bricks into a clothing store named Kleinmann’s. It was one of the few Jewish shops that were still in operation in Molching. Inside, a small man was stuttering about, crushing the broken glass beneath his feet as he cleaned up. A star the color of mustard was smeared to the door. In sloppy lettering, the words JEWISH FILTH were spilling over at their edges. The movement inside tapered from hurried to morose, then stopped altogether.

Hans moved closer and stuck his head inside. “Do you need some help?”

Mr. Kleinmann looked up. A dust broom was fixed powerlessly to his hand. “No, Hans. Please. Go away.” Hans had painted Joel Kleinmann’s house the previous year. He remembered his three children. He could see their faces but couldn’t recall their names.

“I will come tomorrow,” he said, “and repaint your door.”

Which he did.

It was the second of two mistakes.

The first occurred immediately after the incident.

He returned to where he’d come from and drove his fist onto the door and then the window of the NSDAP. The glass shuddered but no one replied. Everyone had packed up and gone home. A last member was walking in the opposite direction. When he heard the rattle of the glass, he noticed the painter.

He came back and asked what was wrong.

“I can no longer join,” Hans stated.

The man was shocked. “Why not?”

Hans looked at the knuckles of his right hand and swallowed. He could already taste the error, like a metal tablet in his mouth. “Forget it.” He turned and walked home.

Words followed him.

“You just think about it, Herr Hubermann. Let us know what you decide.”

He did not acknowledge them.

The following morning, as promised, he rose earlier than usual, but not early enough. The door at Kleinmann’s Clothing was still moist with dew. Hans dried it. He managed to match the color as close as humanly possible and gave it a good solid coat.

Innocuously, a man walked past.

“Heil
Hitler,” he said.

“Heil
Hitler,” Hans replied.

For the next year, Hans was lucky that he didn’t revoke his membership application officially. While many people were instantly approved, he was added to a waiting list, regarded with suspicion. Toward the end of 1938, when the Jews were cleared out completely after Kristallnacht, the Gestapo visited. They searched the house, and when nothing or no one suspicious was found, Hans Hubermann was one of the fortunate:

He was allowed to stay.

What probably saved him was that people knew he was at least
waiting
for his application to be approved. For this, he was tolerated, if not endorsed as the competent painter he was.

Then there was his other savior.

It was the accordion that most likely spared him from total ostracism. Painters there were, from all over Munich, but under the brief tutorage of Erik Vandenburg and nearly two decades of his own steady practice, there was no one in Molching who could play exactly like him. It was a style not of perfection, but warmth. Even mistakes had a good feeling about them.

He
“heil
Hitlered” when it was asked of him and he flew the flag on the right days. There was no apparent problem.

Then, on June 16, 1939 (the date was like cement now), just over six months after Liesel’s arrival on Himmel Street, an event occurred that altered the life of Hans Hubermann irreversibly.

It was a day in which he had some work.

He left the house at 7 a.m. sharp.

He towed his paint cart behind him, oblivious to the fact that he was being followed.

When he arrived at the work site, a young stranger walked up to him. He was blond and tall, and serious.

The pair watched each other.

“Would you be Hans Hubermann?”

Hans gave him a single nod. He was reaching for a paintbrush.

“Yes, I would.”

“Do you play the accordion, by any chance?”

This time, Hans stopped, leaving the brush where it was. Again, he nodded.

The stranger rubbed his jaw, looked around him, and then spoke with great quietness, yet great clarity. “Are you a man who likes to keep a promise?”

Hans took out two paint cans and invited him to sit down. Before he accepted the invitation, the young man extended his hand and introduced himself. “My name’s Kugler. Walter. I come from Stuttgart.”

They sat and talked quietly for fifteen minutes or so, arranging a meeting for later on, in the night.

In November 1940, when Max Vandenburg arrived in the kitchen of 33 Himmel Street, he was twenty-four years old. His clothes seemed to weigh him down, and his tiredness was such that an itch could break him in two. He stood shaking and shaken in the doorway.

“Do you still play the accordion?”

Of course, the question was really, “Will you still help me?”

Liesel’s papa walked to the front door and opened it. Cautiously, he looked outside, each way, and returned. The verdict was “nothing.”

Max Vandenburg, the Jew, closed his eyes and drooped a little further into safety. The very idea of it was ludicrous, but he accepted it nonetheless.

Hans checked that the curtains were properly closed. Not a crack could be showing. As he did so, Max could no longer bear it. He crouched down and clasped his hands.

The darkness stroked him.

His fingers smelled of suitcase, metal,
Mein Kampf
, and survival.

It was only when he lifted his head that the dim light from the
hallway reached his eyes. He noticed the pajamaed girl, standing there, in full view.

“Papa?”

Max stood up, like a struck match. The darkness swelled now, around him.

“Everything’s fine, Liesel,” Papa said. “Go back to bed.”

She lingered a moment before her feet dragged from behind. When she stopped and stole one last look at the foreigner in the kitchen, she could decipher the outline of a book on the table.