The Book Thief (55 page)

Rudy could listen no longer.

He scraped the candle wax from his hand and drew back from the splice of light that came through the crack in the door. When he sat down, the flame went out. Too much movement. Darkness flowed in. The only light available was a white rectangular stencil, the shape of the kitchen door.

He struck another match and reignited the candle. The sweet smell of fire and carbon.

Rudy and his sisters each tapped a different domino and they watched them fall until the tower in the middle was brought to its knees. The girls cheered.

Kurt, his older brother, arrived in the room.

“They look like dead bodies,” he said.

“What?”

Rudy peered up at the dark face, but Kurt did not answer. He’d noticed the arguing from the kitchen. “What’s going on in there?”

It was one of the girls who answered. The youngest, Bettina. She was five. “There are two monsters,” she said. “They’ve come for Rudy.”

Again, the human child. So much cannier.

Later, when the coat men left, the two boys, one seventeen, the other fourteen, found the courage to face the kitchen.

They stood in the doorway. The light punished their eyes.

It was Kurt who spoke. “Are they taking him?”

Their mother’s forearms were flat on the table. Her palms were facing up.

Alex Steiner raised his head.

It was heavy.

His expression was sharp and definite, freshly cut.

A wooden hand wiped at the splinters of his fringe, and he made several attempts to speak.

“Papa?”

But Rudy did not walk toward his father.

He sat at the kitchen table and took hold of his mother’s facing-up hand.

Alex and Barbara Steiner would not disclose what was said while the dominoes were falling like dead bodies in the living room. If only Rudy had kept listening at the door, just for another few minutes …

He told himself in the weeks to come—or in fact, pleaded with himself—that if he’d heard the rest of the conversation that night,
he’d have entered the kitchen much earlier. “I’ll go,” he’d have said. “Please, take me, I’m ready now.”

If he’d intervened, it might have changed everything.

The cruelty of fate, however, did not allow Rudy Steiner to enter the kitchen at the opportune moment.

He’d returned to his sisters and the dominoes.

He sat down.

Rudy Steiner wasn’t going anywhere.

There had been a woman.

Standing in the corner.

She had the thickest braid he’d ever seen. It roped down her back, and occasionally, when she brought it over her shoulder, it lurked at her colossal breast like an overfed pet. In fact, everything about her was magnified. Her lips, her legs. Her paved teeth. She had a large, direct voice. No time to waste.
“Komm,”
she instructed them. “Come. Stand here.”

The doctor, by comparison, was like a balding rodent. He was small and nimble, pacing the school office with his manic yet businesslike movements and mannerisms. And he had a cold.

Out of the three boys, it was difficult to decide which was the more reluctant to take off his clothes when ordered to do so. The first one looked from person to person, from the aging teacher to the gargantuan nurse to the pint-sized doctor. The one in the middle looked only at his feet, and the one on the far left counted his blessings that he was in the school office and not a dark alley. The nurse, Rudy decided, was a frightener.

“Who’s first?” she asked.

It was the supervising teacher, Herr Heckenstaller, who answered. He was more a black suit than a man. His face was a mustache. Examining the boys, his choice came swiftly.

“Schwarz.”

The unfortunate Jürgen Schwarz undid his uniform with great discomfort. He was left standing only in his shoes and underwear. A luckless plea was marooned on his German face.

“And?” Herr Heckenstaller asked. “The shoes?”

He removed both shoes, both socks.

“Und die Unterhosen,”
said the nurse. “And the underpants.”

Both Rudy and the other boy, Olaf Spiegel, had started undressing now as well, but they were nowhere near the perilous position of Jürgen Schwarz. The boy was shaking. He was a year younger than the other two, but taller. When his underpants came down, it was with abject humiliation that he stood in the small, cool office. His self-respect was around his ankles.

The nurse watched him with intent, her arms folded across her devastating chest.

Heckenstaller ordered the other two to get moving.

The doctor scratched his scalp and coughed. His cold was killing him.

The three naked boys were each examined on the cold flooring.

They cupped their genitals in their hands and shivered like the future.

Between the doctor’s coughing and wheezing, they were put through their paces.

“Breathe in.” Sniffle.

“Breathe out.” Second sniffle.

“Arms out now.” A cough. “I said arms
out.”
A horrendous hail of coughing.

As humans do, the boys looked constantly at each other for some sign of mutual sympathy. None was there. All three pried their hands from their penises and held out their arms. Rudy did not feel like he was part of a master race.

“We are gradually succeeding,” the nurse was informing the teacher, “in creating a new future. It will be a new class of physically and mentally advanced Germans. An officer class.”

Unfortunately, her sermon was cut short when the doctor creased in half and coughed with all his might over the abandoned clothes. Tears welled up in his eyes and Rudy couldn’t help but wonder.

A new future? Like him?

Wisely, he did not speak it.

The examination was completed and he managed to perform his first nude
“heil
Hitler.” In a perverse kind of way, he conceded that it didn’t feel half bad.

Stripped of their dignity, the boys were allowed to dress again, and as they were shown from the office, they could already hear the discussion held in their honor behind them.

“They’re a little older than usual,” the doctor said, “but I’m thinking at least two of them.”

The nurse agreed. “The first and the third.”

Three boys stood outside.

First and third.

“First was you, Schwarz,” said Rudy. He then questioned Olaf Spiegel. “Who was third?”

Spiegel made a few calculations. Did she mean third in line or third examined? It didn’t matter. He knew what he wanted to believe. “That was you, I think.”

“Cow shit, Spiegel, it was you.”

The day after they’d visited Himmel Street, Rudy sat on his front step with Liesel and related the whole saga, even the smallest details. He gave up and admitted what had happened that day at school when he was taken out of class. There was even some laughter about the tremendous nurse and the look on Jürgen Schwarz’s face. For the most part, though, it was a tale of anxiety, especially when it came to the voices in the kitchen and the dead-body dominoes.

For days, Liesel could not shift one thought from her head.

It was the examination of the three boys, or if she was honest, it was Rudy.

She would lie in bed, missing Max, wondering where he was, praying that he was alive, but somewhere, standing among all of it, was Rudy.

He glowed in the dark, completely naked.

There was great dread in that vision, especially the moment when he was forced to remove his hands. It was disconcerting to say the least, but for some reason, she couldn’t stop thinking about it.

On the ration cards of Nazi Germany, there was no listing for punishment, but everyone had to take their turn. For some it was death in a foreign country during the war. For others it was poverty and guilt when the war was over, when six million discoveries were made throughout Europe. Many people must have seen their punishments coming, but only a small percentage welcomed it. One such person was Hans Hubermann.

You do not help Jews on the street.

Your basement should not be hiding one.

At first, his punishment was conscience. His oblivious unearthing of Max Vandenburg plagued him. Liesel could see it sitting next to his plate as he ignored his dinner, or standing with him at the bridge over the Amper. He no longer played the accordion. His silver-eyed optimism was wounded and motionless. That was bad enough, but it was only the beginning.

One Wednesday in early November, his true punishment arrived in the mailbox. On the surface, it appeared to be good news.