The Book Thief (48 page)

While Liesel worked, Rudy ran.

He did laps of Hubert Oval, ran around the block, and raced almost everyone from the bottom of Himmel Street to Frau Diller’s, giving varied head starts.

On a few occasions, when Liesel was helping Mama in the kitchen, Rosa would look out the window and say, “What’s that little
Saukerl
up to
this
time? All that running out there.”

Liesel would move to the window. “At least he hasn’t painted himself black again.”

“Well, that’s something, isn’t it?”

•   •   •

“Four gold medals,” he said to Liesel one afternoon when she did laps with him at Hubert Oval. “Like Jesse Owens back in ′36.”

“You’re not still obsessed with him, are you?”

Rudy’s feet rhymed with his breathing. “Not really, but it would be nice, wouldn’t it? It would show all those bastards who said I was crazy. They’d see that I wasn’t so stupid after all.”

“But can you really win all four events?”

They slowed to a stop at the end of the track, and Rudy placed his hands on his hips. “I have to.”

For six weeks, he trained, and when the day of the carnival arrived in mid-August, the sky was hot-sunned and cloudless. The grass was overrun with Hitler Youths, parents, and a glut of brown-shirted leaders. Rudy Steiner was in peak condition.

“Look,” he pointed out. “There’s Deutscher.”

Through the clusters of crowd, the blond epitome of Hitler Youth standards was giving instructions to two members of his division. They were nodding and occasionally stretching. One of them shielded his eyes from the sun like a salute.

“You want to say hello?” Liesel asked.

“No thanks. I’ll do that later.”

When I’ve won.

The words were not spoken, but they were definitely there, somewhere between Rudy’s blue eyes and Deutscher’s advisory hands.

There was the obligatory march around the grounds.

The anthem.

Heil
Hitler.

Only then could they begin.

•   •   •

When Rudy’s age group was called for the 1500, Liesel wished him luck in a typically German manner.

“Hals und Beinbruch, Saukerl.”

She’d told him to break his neck and leg.

Boys collected themselves on the far side of the circular field. Some stretched, some focused, and the rest were there because they had to be.

Next to Liesel, Rudy’s mother, Barbara, sat with her youngest children. A thin blanket was brimming with kids and loosened grass. “Can you see Rudy?” she asked them. “He’s the one on the far left.” Barbara Steiner was a kind woman whose hair always looked recently combed.

“Where?” said one of the girls. Probably Bettina, the youngest. “I can’t see him at all.”

“That last one. No, not there.
There.”

They were still in the identification process when the starter’s gun gave off its smoke and sound. The small Steiners rushed to the fence.

For the first lap, a group of seven boys led the field. On the second, it dropped to five, and on the next lap, four. Rudy was the fourth runner on every lap until the last. A man on the right was saying that the boy coming second looked the best. He was the tallest. “You wait,” he told his nonplussed wife. “With two hundred left, he’ll break away.” The man was wrong.

A gargantuan brown-shirted official informed the group that there was one lap to go. He certainly wasn’t suffering under the ration system. He called out as the lead pack crossed the line, and it was not the second boy who accelerated, but the fourth. And he was two hundred meters early.

Rudy ran.

He did not look back at any stage.

Like an elastic rope, he lengthened his lead until any thought of someone else winning snapped altogether. He took himself around the
track as the three runners behind him fought each other for the scraps. In the homestretch, there was nothing but blond hair and space, and when he crossed the line, he didn’t stop. He didn’t raise his arm. There wasn’t even a bent-over relief. He simply walked another twenty meters and eventually looked over his shoulder to watch the others cross the line.

On the way back to his family, he met first with his leaders and then with Franz Deutscher. They both nodded.

“Steiner.”

“Deutscher.”

“Looks like all those laps I gave you paid off, huh?”

“Looks like it.”

He would not smile until he’d won all four.

For Liesel, there was the 400. She finished seventh, then fourth in her heat of the 200. All she could see up ahead were the hamstrings and bobbing ponytails of the girls in front. In the long jump, she enjoyed the sand packed around her feet more than any distance, and the shot put wasn’t her greatest moment, either. This day, she realized, was Rudy’s.

In the 400 final, he led from the backstretch to the end, and he won the 200 only narrowly.

“You getting tired?” Liesel asked him. It was early afternoon by then.

“Of course not.” He was breathing heavily and stretching his calves. “What are you talking about,
Saumensch?
What the hell would you know?”

When the heats of the 100 were called, he rose slowly to his feet and followed the trail of adolescents toward the track. Liesel went after him. “Hey, Rudy.” She pulled at his shirtsleeve. “Good luck.”

“I’m not tired,” he said.

“I know.”

He winked at her.

He was tired.

In his heat, Rudy slowed to finish second, and after ten minutes of other races, the final was called. Two other boys had looked formidable, and Liesel had a feeling in her stomach that Rudy could not win this one. Tommy Müller, who’d finished second to last in his heat, stood with her at the fence. “He’ll win it,” he informed her.

“I know.”

No, he won’t.

When the finalists reached the starting line, Rudy dropped to his knees and began digging starting holes with his hands. A balding brownshirt wasted no time in walking over and telling him to cut it out. Liesel watched the adult finger, pointing, and she could see the dirt falling to the ground as Rudy brushed his hands together.

When they were called forward, Liesel tightened her grip on the fence. One of the boys false-started; the gun was shot twice. It was Rudy. Again, the official had words with him and the boy nodded. Once more and he was out.

Set for the second time, Liesel watched with concentration, and for the first few seconds, she could not believe what she was seeing. Another false start was recorded and it was the same athlete who had done it. In front of her, she created a perfect race, in which Rudy trailed but came home to win in the last ten meters. What she actually saw, however, was Rudy’s disqualification. He was escorted to the side of the track and was made to stand there, alone, as the remainder of boys stepped forward.

They lined up and raced.

A boy with rusty brown hair and a big stride won by at least five meters.

Rudy remained.

•   •   •

Later, when the day was complete and the sun was taken from Himmel Street, Liesel sat with her friend on the footpath.

They talked about everything else, from Franz Deutscher’s face after the 1500 to one of the eleven-year-old girls having a tantrum after losing the discus.

Before they proceeded to their respective homes, Rudy’s voice reached over and handed Liesel the truth. For a while, it sat on her shoulder, but a few thoughts later, it made its way to her ear.