The Book Thief (58 page)

Liesel stayed and watched.

Many minutes dripped past. The book thief’s desire to hear a note was exhausting, and still, it would not come. The keys were not struck. The bellows didn’t breathe. There was only the moonlight, like a long strand of hair in the curtain, and there was Rosa.

The accordion remained strapped to her chest. When she bowed her head, it sank to her lap. Liesel watched. She knew that for the next few days, Mama would be walking around with the imprint of an accordion on her body. There was also an acknowledgment that there was great beauty in what she was currently witnessing, and she chose not to disturb it.

She returned to bed and fell asleep to the vision of Mama and the silent music. Later, when she woke up from her usual dream and crept again to the hallway, Rosa was still there, as was the accordion.

Like an anchor, it pulled her forward. Her body was sinking. She appeared dead.

She can’t possibly be breathing in that position, Liesel thought, but when she made her way closer, she could hear it.

Mama was snoring again.

Who needs bellows, she thought, when you’ve got a pair of lungs like that?

Eventually, when Liesel returned to bed, the image of Rosa Hubermann and the accordion would not leave her. The book thief’s eyes remained open. She waited for the suffocation of sleep.

Neither Hans Hubermann nor Alex Steiner was sent to fight. Alex was sent to Austria, to an army hospital outside Vienna. Given his expertise in tailoring, he was given a job that at least resembled his profession. Cartloads of uniforms and socks and shirts would come in every week and he would mend what needed mending, even if they could only be used as underclothes for the suffering soldiers in Russia.

Hans was sent first, quite ironically, to Stuttgart, and later, to Essen. He was given one of the most undesirable positions on the home front. The LSE.

The job of the LSE was to remain aboveground during air raids and put out fires, prop up the walls of buildings, and rescue anyone who had
been trapped during the raid. As Hans soon discovered, there was also an alternative definition for the acronym. The men in the unit would explain to him on his first day that it really stood for
Leichensammler Einheit—Dead
Body Collectors.

When he arrived, Hans could only guess what those men had done to deserve such a task, and in turn, they wondered the same of him. Their leader, Sergeant Boris Schipper, asked him straight out. When Hans explained the bread, the Jews, and the whip, the round-faced sergeant gave out a short spurt of laughter. “You’re lucky to be alive.” His eyes were also round and he was constantly wiping them. They were either tired or itchy or full of smoke and dust. “Just remember that the enemy here is not in front of you.”

Hans was about to ask the obvious question when a voice arrived from behind. Attached to it was the slender face of a young man with a smile like a sneer. Reinhold Zucker. “With us,” he said, “the enemy isn’t over the hill or in any specific direction. It’s all around.” He returned his focus to the letter he was writing. “You’ll see.”

In the messy space of a few months, Reinhold Zucker would be dead. He would be killed by Hans Hubermann’s seat.

As the war flew into Germany with more intensity, Hans would learn that every one of his shifts started in the same fashion. The men would gather at the truck to be briefed on what had been hit during their break, what was most likely to be hit next, and who was working with whom.

Even when no raids were in operation, there would still be a great deal of work to be done. They would drive through broken towns, cleaning up. In the truck, there were twelve slouched men, all rising and falling with the various inconsistencies in the road.

From the beginning, it was clear that they all owned a seat.

Reinhold Zucker’s was in the middle of the left row.

Hans Hubermann’s was at the very back, where the daylight
stretched itself out. He learned quickly to be on the lookout for any rubbish that might be thrown from anywhere in the truck’s interior. Hans reserved a special respect for cigarette butts, still burning as they whistled by.

In late November, he had his first smoky taste of an actual raid. The truck was mobbed by rubble and there was much running and shouting. Fires were burning and the ruined cases of buildings were piled up in mounds. Framework leaned. The smoke bombs stood like matchsticks in the ground, filling the city’s lungs.

Hans Hubermann was in a group of four. They formed a line. Sergeant Boris Schipper was at the front, his arms disappearing into the smoke. Behind him was Kessler, then Brunnenweg, then Hubermann. As the sergeant hosed the fire, the other two men hosed the sergeant, and just to make sure, Hubermann hosed all three of them.

Behind him, a building groaned and tripped.

It fell face-first, stopping a few meters from his heels. The concrete smelled brand-new, and the wall of powder rushed at them.

“
Gottverdammt
, Hubermann!” The voice struggled out of the flames. It was followed immediately by three men. Their throats were filled with particles of ash. Even when they made it around the corner, away from the center of the wreckage, the haze of the collapsed building attempted to follow. It was white and warm, and it crept behind them.

Slumped in temporary safety, there was much coughing and swearing. The sergeant repeated his earlier sentiments. “Goddamn it, Hubermann.” He scraped at his lips to loosen them. “What the hell was that?”

“It just collapsed, right behind us.”

“That much I know already. The question is, how big was it? It must have been ten stories high.”

“No, sir, just two, I think.”

“Jesus.” A coughing fit. “Mary and Joseph.” Now he yanked at the paste of sweat and powder in his eye sockets. “Not much you could do about that.”

One of the other men wiped his face and said, “Just once I want to be there when they hit a pub, for Christ’s sake. I’m dying for a beer.” Each man leaned back.

They could all taste it, putting out the fires in their throats and softening the smoke. It was a nice dream, and an impossible one. They were all aware that any beer that flowed in these streets would not be beer at all, but a kind of milk shake or porridge.

All four men were plastered with the gray-and-white conglomeration of dust. When they stood up fully, to resume work, only small cracks of their uniform could be seen.

The sergeant walked to Brunnenweg. He brushed heavily at his chest. Several smacks. “That’s better. You had some dust on there, my friend.” As Brunnenweg laughed, the sergeant turned to his newest recruit. “You first this time, Hubermann.”

They put the fires out for several hours, and they found anything they could to convince a building to remain standing. In some cases, where the sides were damaged, the remaining edges poked out like elbows. This was Hans Hubermann’s strong point. He almost came to enjoy finding a smoldering rafter or disheveled slab of concrete to prop those elbows up, to give them something to rest on.

His hands were packed tightly with splinters, and his teeth were caked with residue from the fallout. Both lips were set with moist dust that had hardened, and there wasn’t a pocket, a thread, or a hidden crease in his uniform that wasn’t covered in a film left by the loaded air.

The worst part of the job was the people.

Once in a while there was a person roaming doggedly through the fog, mostly single-worded. They always shouted a name.

Sometimes it was Wolfgang.