The Book Thief (34 page)

When she returned to the basement, she told him.

“The sky is blue today, Max, and there is a big long cloud, and it’s stretched out, like a rope. At the end of it, the sun is like a yellow hole ….”

Max, at that moment, knew that only a child could have given him a weather report like that. On the wall, he painted a long, tightly knotted rope with a dripping yellow sun at the end of it, as if you could dive right into it. On the ropy cloud, he drew two figures—a thin girl and a withering Jew—and they were walking, arms balanced, toward that dripping sun. Beneath the picture, he wrote the following sentence.

The Boxer: End of May

For Max Vandenburg, there was cool cement and plenty of time to spend with it.

The minutes were cruel.

Hours were punishing.

Standing above him at all moments of awakeness was the hand of time, and it didn’t hesitate to wring him out. It smiled and squeezed and let him live. What great malice there could be in allowing something to live.

At least once a day, Hans Hubermann would descend the basement steps and share a conversation. Rosa would occasionally bring a spare crust of bread. It was when Liesel came down, however, that Max found himself most interested in life again. Initially, he tried to resist, but it was harder every day that the girl appeared, each time with a new weather report, either of pure blue sky, cardboard clouds, or a sun that had broken through like God sitting down after he’d eaten too much for his dinner.

When he was alone, his most distinct feeling was of disappearance. All of his clothes were gray—whether they’d started out that way or not—from his pants to his woolen sweater to the jacket that dripped from him now like water. He often checked if his skin was flaking, for it was as if he were dissolving.

What he needed was a series of new projects. The first was exercise. He started with push-ups, lying stomach-down on the cool basement floor, then hoisting himself up. It felt like his arms snapped at each elbow, and he envisaged his heart seeping out of him and dropping pathetically to the ground. As a teenager in Stuttgart, he could reach fifty push-ups at a time. Now, at the age of twenty-four, perhaps fifteen pounds lighter than his usual weight, he could barely make it to ten. After a week, he was completing three sets each of sixteen
push-ups and twenty-two sit-ups. When he was finished, he would sit against the basement wall with his paint-can friends, feeling his pulse in his teeth. His muscles felt like cake.

He wondered at times if pushing himself like this was even worth it. Sometimes, though, when his heartbeat neutralized and his body became functional again, he would turn off the lamp and stand in the darkness of the basement.

He was twenty-four, but he could still fantasize.

“In the blue corner,” he quietly commentated, “we have the champion of the world, the Aryan masterpiece—the
Führer.”
He breathed and turned. “And in the red corner, we have the Jewish, rat-faced challenger—Max Vandenburg.”

Around him, it all materialized.

White light lowered itself into a boxing ring and a crowd stood and murmured—that magical sound of many people talking all at once. How could every person there have so much to say at the same time? The ring itself was perfect. Perfect canvas, lovely ropes. Even the stray hairs of each thickened string were flawless, gleaming in the tight white light. The room smelled like cigarettes and beer.

Diagonally across, Adolf Hitler stood in the corner with his entourage. His legs poked out from a red-and-white robe with a black swastika burned into its back. His mustache was knitted to his face. Words were whispered to him from his trainer, Goebbels. He bounced foot to foot, and he smiled. He smiled loudest when the ring announcer listed his many achievements, which were all vociferously applauded by the adoring crowd. “Undefeated!” the ringmaster proclaimed. “Over many a Jew, and over any other threat to the German ideal! Herr
Führer,”
he concluded, “we salute you!” The crowd: mayhem.

Next, when everyone had settled down, came the challenger.

The ringmaster swung over toward Max, who stood alone in the challenger’s corner. No robe. No entourage. Just a lonely young Jew
with dirty breath, a naked chest, and tired hands and feet. Naturally, his shorts were gray. He too moved from foot to foot, but it was kept at a minimum to conserve energy. He’d done a lot of sweating in the gym to make the weight.

“The challenger!” sang the ringmaster. “Of,” and he paused for effect,
“Jewish
blood.” The crowd oohed, like human ghouls. “Weighing in at …”

The rest of the speech was not heard. It was overrun with the abuse from the bleachers, and Max watched as his opponent was de-robed and came to the middle to hear the rules and shake hands.

“Guten Tag
, Herr Hitler.” Max nodded, but the
Führer
only showed him his yellow teeth, then covered them up again with his lips.

“Gentlemen,” a stout referee in black pants and a blue shirt began. A bow tie was fixed to his throat. “First and foremost, we want a good clean fight.” He addressed only the
Führer
now. “Unless, of course, Herr Hitler, you begin to lose. Should this occur, I will be quite willing to turn a blind eye to any unconscionable tactics you might employ to grind this piece of Jewish stench and filth into the canvas.” He nodded, with great courtesy. “Is that clear?”

The
Führer
spoke his first word then. “Crystal.”

To Max, the referee extended a warning. “As for you, my Jewish chum, I’d watch my step very closely if I were you. Very closely indeed,” and they were sent back to their respective corners.

A brief quiet ensued.

The bell.

First out was the
Führer
, awkward-legged and bony, running at Max and jabbing him firmly in the face. The crowd vibrated, the bell still in their ears, and their satisfied smiles hurdled the ropes. The smoky breath of Hitler steamed from his mouth as his hands bucked at Max’s face, collecting him several times, on the lips, the nose, the chin—and Max had still not ventured out of his corner. To absorb the punishment, he held up his hands, but the
Führer
then aimed at his
ribs, his kidneys, his lungs. Oh, the eyes, the
Führer
‘s eyes. They were so deliciously brown—like Jews’ eyes—and they were so determined that even Max stood transfixed for a moment as he caught sight of them between the healthy blur of punching gloves.

There was only one round, and it lasted hours, and for the most part, nothing changed.

The
Führer
pounded away at the punching-bag Jew.

Jewish blood was everywhere.

Like red rain clouds on the white-sky canvas at their feet.

Eventually, Max’s knees began to buckle, his cheekbones silently moaned, and the
Führer
‘s delighted face still chipped away, chipped away, until depleted, beaten, and broken, the Jew flopped to the floor.

First, a roar.

Then silence.

The referee counted. He had a gold tooth and a plethora of nostril hair.

Slowly, Max Vandenburg, the Jew, rose to his feet and made himself upright. His voice wobbled. An invitation. “Come on,
Führer,”
he said, and this time, when Adolf Hitler set upon his Jewish counterpart, Max stepped aside and plunged him into the corner. He punched him seven times, aiming on each occasion for only one thing.

The mustache.

With the seventh punch, he missed. It was the
Führer
’s chin that sustained the blow. All at once, Hitler hit the ropes and creased forward, landing on his knees. This time, there was no count. The referee flinched in the corner. The audience sank down, back to their beer. On his knees, the
Führer
tested himself for blood and straightened his hair, right to left. When he returned to his feet, much to the approval of the thousand-strong crowd, he edged forward and did something quite strange. He turned his back on the Jew and took the gloves from his fists.

The crowd was stunned.

“He’s given up,” someone whispered, but within moments, Adolf Hitler was standing on the ropes, and he was addressing the arena.

“My fellow Germans,” he called, “you can see something here tonight, can’t you?” Bare-chested, victory-eyed, he pointed over at Max. “You can see that what we face is something far more sinister and powerful than we ever imagined. Can you see that?”

They answered. “Yes,
Führer.”

“Can you see that this enemy has found its ways—its despicable ways—through our armor, and that clearly, I cannot stand up here alone and fight him?” The words were visible. They dropped from his mouth like jewels. “Look at him! Take a good look.” They looked. At the bloodied Max Vandenburg. “As we speak, he is plotting his way into your neighborhood. He’s moving in next door. He’s infesting you with his family and he’s about to take you over. He—” Hitler glanced at him a moment, with disgust. “He will soon own you, until it is he who stands not at the counter of your grocery shop, but sits in the back, smoking his pipe. Before you know it, you’ll be working for him at minimum wage while he can hardly walk from the weight in his pockets. Will you simply stand there and let him do this? Will you stand by as your leaders did in the past, when they gave your land to everybody else, when they sold your country for the price of a few signatures? Will you stand out there, powerless? Or”—and now he stepped one rung higher—“will you climb up into this ring with me?”

Max shook. Horror stuttered in his stomach.

Adolf finished him. “Will you climb in here so that we can defeat this enemy together?”

In the basement of 33 Himmel Street, Max Vandenburg could feel the fists of an entire nation. One by one they climbed into the ring and beat him down. They made him bleed. They let him suffer. Millions of them—until one last time, when he gathered himself to his feet …

He watched the next person climb through the ropes. It was a girl, and as she slowly crossed the canvas, he noticed a tear torn down her left cheek. In her right hand was a newspaper.

“The crossword,” she gently said, “is empty,” and she held it out to him.

Dark.

Nothing but dark now.

Just basement. Just Jew.

The New Dream: A Few Nights Later