The Book Thief (37 page)

“One click!” they were told. “That’s all the
Führer
wants to hear. Everyone united. Everyone together as one!”

Then Tommy.

It was his left ear, I think. That was the most troublesome of the two, and when the bitter cry of “Halt!” wet the ears of everybody else,
Tommy marched comically and obliviously on. He could transform a marching line into a dog’s breakfast in the blink of an eye.

On one particular Saturday, at the beginning of July, just after three-thirty and a litany of Tommy-inspired failed marching attempts, Franz Deutscher (the ultimate name for the ultimate teenage Nazi) was completely fed up.

“Müller,
du Affe!”
His thick blond hair massaged his head and his words manipulated Tommy’s face. “You ape—what’s wrong with you?”

Tommy slouched fearfully back, but his left cheek still managed to twitch in a manic, cheerful contortion. He appeared not only to be laughing with a triumphant smirk, but accepting the bucketing with glee. And Franz Deutscher wasn’t having any of it. His pale eyes cooked him.

“Well?” he asked. “What can you say for yourself?”

Tommy’s twitch only increased, in both speed and depth.

“Are you mocking me?”

“Heil,”
twitched Tommy, in a desperate attempt to buy some approval, but he did not make it to the “Hitler” part.

That was when Rudy stepped forward. He faced Franz Deutscher, looking up at him. “He’s got a problem, sir—”

“I can see that!”

“With his ears,” Rudy finished. “He can’t—”

“Right, that’s it.” Deutscher rubbed his hands together. “Both of you—six laps of the grounds.” They obeyed, but not fast enough.
“Schnell!”
His voice chased them.

When the six laps were completed, they were given some drills of the run-drop down-get up-get down again variety, and after fifteen very long minutes, they were ordered to the ground for what should have been the last time.

Rudy looked down.

A warped circle of mud grinned up at him.

What might you be looking at? it seemed to ask.

“Down!” Franz ordered.

Rudy naturally jumped over it and dropped to his stomach.

“Up!” Franz smiled. “One step back.” They did it. “Down!”

The message was clear and now, Rudy accepted it. He dived at the mud and held his breath, and at that moment, lying ear to sodden earth, the drill ended.

“Vielen Dank, meine Herren,”
Franz Deutscher politely said. “Many thanks, my gentlemen.”

Rudy climbed to his knees, did some gardening in his ear, and looked across at Tommy.

Tommy closed his eyes, and he twitched.

When they returned to Himmel Street that day, Liesel was playing hopscotch with some of the younger kids, still in her BDM uniform. From the corner of her eye, she saw the two melancholic figures walking toward her. One of them called out.

They met on the front step of the Steiners’ concrete shoe box of a house, and Rudy told her all about the day’s episode.

After ten minutes, Liesel sat down.

After eleven minutes, Tommy, who was sitting next to her, said, “It’s all my fault,” but Rudy waved him away, somewhere between sentence and smile, chopping a mud streak in half with his finger. “It’s my—” Tommy tried again, but Rudy broke the sentence completely and pointed at him.

“Tommy, please.” There was a peculiar look of contentment on Rudy’s face. Liesel had never seen someone so miserable yet so wholeheartedly alive. “Just sit there and—twitch—or something,” and he continued with the story.

He paced.

He wrestled his tie.

The words were flung at her, landing somewhere on the concrete step.

“That Deutscher,” he summed up buoyantly. “He got us, huh, Tommy?”

Tommy nodded, twitched, and spoke, not necessarily in that order. “It was because of me.”

“Tommy, what did I say?”

“When?”

“Now! Just keep quiet.”

“Sure, Rudy.”

When Tommy walked forlornly home a short while later, Rudy tried what appeared to be a masterful new tactic.

Pity.

On the step, he perused the mud that had dried as a crusty sheet on his uniform, then looked Liesel hopelessly in the face. “What about it,
Saumensch?”

“What about what?”

“You know ….”

Liesel responded in the usual fashion.

“Saukerl,”
she laughed, and she walked the short distance home. A disconcerting mixture of mud and pity was one thing, but kissing Rudy Steiner was something entirely different.

Smiling sadly on the step, he called out, rummaging a hand through his hair. “One day,” he warned her. “One day, Liesel!”

In the basement, just over two years later, Liesel ached sometimes to go next door and see him, even if she was writing in the early hours of morning. She also realized it was most likely those sodden days at the Hitler Youth that had fed his, and subsequently her own, desire for crime.

After all, despite the usual bouts of rain, summer was beginning to arrive properly. The
Klar
apples should have been ripening. There was more stealing to be done.

When it came to stealing, Liesel and Rudy first stuck with the idea that there was safety in numbers. Andy Schmeikl invited them to the river for a meeting. Among other things, a game plan for fruit stealing would be on the agenda.

“So are you the leader now?” Rudy had asked, but Andy shook his head, heavy with disappointment. He clearly wished that he had what it took.

“No.” His cool voice was unusually warm. Half-baked. “There’s someone else.”

Unlike most people engaged in the various arts of thievery, Viktor Chemmel had it all. He lived in the best part of Molching, high up in a villa that had been fumigated when the Jews were driven out. He had money. He had cigarettes. What he wanted, however, was more.

“No crime in wanting a little more,” he claimed, lying back in the grass with a collection of boys assembled around him. “Wanting more is our fundamental right as Germans. What does our
Führer
say?” He answered his own rhetoric. “We must take what is rightfully ours!”

At face value, Viktor Chemmel was clearly your typical teenage bullshit artist. Unfortunately, when he felt like revealing it, he also possessed a certain charisma, a kind
of follow me
.

When Liesel and Rudy approached the group by the river, she heard him ask another question. “So where are these two deviants you’ve been bragging about? It’s ten past four already.”

“Not by my watch,” said Rudy.

Viktor Chemmel propped himself up on an elbow. “You’re not wearing a watch.”

“Would I be here if I was rich enough to own a watch?”

The new leader sat up fully and smiled, with straight white teeth. He then turned his casual focus onto the girl. “Who’s the little whore?” Liesel, well accustomed to verbal abuse, simply watched the fog-ridden texture of his eyes.

“Last year,” she listed, “I stole at least three hundred apples and dozens of potatoes. I have little trouble with barbed wire fences and I can keep up with anyone here.”

“Is that right?”

“Yes.” She did not shrink or step away. “All I ask is a small part of anything we take. A dozen apples here or there. A few leftovers for me and my friend.”

“Well, I suppose that can be arranged.” Viktor lit a cigarette and
raised it to his mouth. He made a concerted effort to blow his next mouthful in Liesel’s face.

Liesel did not cough.

It was the same group as the previous year, the only exception being the leader. Liesel wondered why none of the other boys had assumed the helm, but looking from face to face, she realized that none of them had it. They had no qualms about stealing, but they needed to be told. They
liked
to be told, and Viktor Chemmel liked to be the teller. It was a nice microcosm.

For a moment, Liesel longed for the reappearance of Arthur Berg. Or would he, too, have fallen under the leadership of Chemmel? It didn’t matter. Liesel only knew that Arthur Berg did not have a tyrannical bone in his body, whereas the new leader had hundreds of them. Last year, she knew that if she was stuck in a tree, Arthur would come back for her, despite claiming otherwise. This year, by comparison, she was instantly aware that Viktor Chemmel wouldn’t even bother to look back.

He stood, regarding the lanky boy and the malnourished-looking girl. “So you want to steal with me?”

What did they have to lose? They nodded.

He stepped closer and grabbed Rudy’s hair. “I want to hear it.”

“Definitely,” Rudy said, before being shoved back, fringe first.

“And you?”

“Of course.” Liesel was quick enough to avoid the same treatment.

Viktor smiled. He squashed his cigarette, breathed deeply in, and scratched his chest. “My gentlemen, my whore, it looks like it’s time to go shopping.”

As the group walked off, Liesel and Rudy were at the back, as they’d always been in the past.

“Do you like him?” Rudy whispered.

“Do you?”

Rudy paused a moment. “I think he’s a complete bastard.”

“Me too.”

The group was getting away from them.

“Come on,” Rudy said, “we’ve fallen behind.”

After a few miles, they reached the first farm. What greeted them was a shock. The trees they’d imagined to be swollen with fruit were frail and injured-looking, with only a small array of apples hanging miserly from each branch. The next farm was the same. Maybe it was a bad season, or their timing wasn’t quite right.

By the end of the afternoon, when the spoils were handed out, Liesel and Rudy were given one diminutive apple between them. In fairness, the takings were incredibly poor, but Viktor Chemmel also ran a tighter ship.

“What do you call this?” Rudy asked, the apple resting in his palm.

Viktor didn’t even turn around. “What does it look like?” The words were dropped over his shoulder.

“One lousy apple?”

“Here.” A half-eaten one was also tossed their way, landing chewed-side-down in the dirt. “You can have that one, too.”

Rudy was incensed. “To hell with this. We didn’t walk ten miles for one and a half scrawny apples, did we, Liesel?”

Liesel did not answer.

She did not have time, for Viktor Chemmel was on top of Rudy before she could utter a word. His knees had pinned Rudy’s arms and his hands were around his throat. The apples were scooped up by none other than Andy Schmeikl, at Viktor’s request.

“You’re hurting him,” Liesel said.

“Am I?” Viktor was smiling again. She hated that smile.

“He’s
not
hurting me.” Rudy’s words were rushed together and his face was red with strain. His nose began to bleed.

After an extended moment or two of increased pressure, Viktor let Rudy go and climbed off him, taking a few careless steps. He said, “Get up, boy,” and Rudy, choosing wisely, did as he was told.

Viktor came casually closer again and faced him. He gave him a gentle rub on the arm. A whisper. “Unless you want me to turn that blood into a fountain, I suggest you go away, little boy.” He looked at Liesel. “And take the little slut with you.”

No one moved.

“Well, what are you waiting for?”

Liesel took Rudy’s hand and they left, but not before Rudy turned one last time and spat some blood and saliva at Viktor Chemmel’s feet. It evoked one final remark.