The Book Thief (59 page)

“Have you seen my Wolfgang?”

Their handprints would remain on his jacket.

“Stephanie!”

“Hansi!”

“Gustel! Gustel Stoboi!”

As the density subsided, the roll call of names limped through the ruptured streets, sometimes ending with an ash-filled embrace or a knelt-down howl of grief. They accumulated, hour by hour, like sweet and sour dreams, waiting to happen.

The dangers merged into one. Powder and smoke and the gusty flames. The damaged people. Like the rest of the men in the unit, Hans would need to perfect the art of forgetting.

“How are you, Hubermann?” the sergeant asked at one point. Fire was at his shoulder.

Hans nodded, uneasily, at the pair of them.

Midway through the shift, there was an old man who staggered defenselessly through the streets. As Hans finished stabilizing a building, he turned to find him at his back, waiting calmly for his turn. A bloodstain was signed across his face. It trailed off down his throat and neck. He was wearing a white shirt with a dark red collar and he held his leg as if it was next to him. “Could you prop
me
up now, young man?”

Hans picked him up and carried him out of the haze.

It wasn’t until he placed him down on a patch of concrete-coated grass that Hans noticed.

“What is it?” one of the other men asked.

Hans could only point.

“Oh.” A hand pulled him away. “Get used to it, Hubermann.”

For the rest of the shift, he threw himself into duty. He tried to ignore the distant echoes of calling people.

After perhaps two hours, he rushed from a building with the sergeant and two other men. He didn’t watch the ground and tripped. Only when he returned to his haunches and saw the others looking in distress at the obstacle did he realize.

The corpse was facedown.

It lay in a blanket of powder and dust, and it was holding its ears.

It was a boy.

Perhaps eleven or twelve years old.

Not far away, as they progressed along the street, they found a woman calling the name Rudolf. She was drawn to the four men and met them in the mist. Her body was frail and bent with worry.

“Have you seen my boy?”

“How old is he?” the sergeant asked.

“Twelve.”

Oh, Christ. Oh, crucified Christ.

They all thought it, but the sergeant could not bring himself to tell her or point the way.

As the woman tried to push past, Boris Schipper held her back. “We’ve just come from that street,” he assured her. “You won’t find him down there.”

The bent woman still clung to hope. She called over her shoulder as she half walked, half ran. “Rudy!”

Hans Hubermann thought of another Rudy then. The Himmel Street variety. Please, he asked into a sky he couldn’t see, let Rudy be safe. His thoughts naturally progressed to Liesel and Rosa and the Steiners, and Max.

When they made it to the rest of the men, he dropped down and lay on his back.

“How was it down there?” someone asked.

Papa’s lungs were full of sky.

A few hours later, when he’d washed and eaten and thrown up, he attempted to write a detailed letter home. His hands were uncontrollable, forcing him to make it short. If he could bring himself, the remainder would be told verbally, when and if he made it home.

To my dear Rosa and Liesel
, he began.

It took many minutes to write those six words down.

It had been a long and eventful year in Molching, and it was finally drawing to a close.

Liesel spent the last few months of 1942 consumed by thoughts of what she called three desperate men. She wondered where they were and what they were doing.

One afternoon, she lifted the accordion from its case and polished it with a rag. Only once, just before she put it away, did she take the step that Mama could not. She placed her finger on one of the keys and softly pumped the bellows. Rosa had been right. It only made the room feel emptier.

Whenever she met Rudy, she asked if there had been any word from his father. Sometimes he described to her in detail one of Alex Steiner’s letters. By comparison, the one letter her own papa had sent was somewhat of a disappointment.

Max, of course, was entirely up to her imagination.

It was with great optimism that she envisioned him walking alone on a deserted road. Once in a while she imagined him falling into a doorway of safety somewhere, his identity card enough to fool the right person.

The three men would turn up everywhere.

She saw her papa in the window at school. Max often sat with her by the fire. Alex Steiner arrived when she was with Rudy, staring back at them after they’d slammed the bikes down on Munich Street and looked into the shop.

“Look at those suits,” Rudy would say to her, his head and hands against the glass. “All going to waste.”

Strangely, one of Liesel’s favorite distractions was Frau Holtzapfel. The reading sessions included Wednesday now as well, and they’d finished the water-abridged version of
The Whistler
and were on to
The Dream Carrier
. The old woman sometimes made tea or gave Liesel some soup that was infinitely better than Mama’s. Less watery.

Between October and December, there had been one more parade of Jews, with one to follow. As on the previous occasion, Liesel had rushed to Munich Street, this time to see if Max Vandenburg was among them. She was torn between the obvious urge to see him—to know that he was still alive—and an absence that could mean any number of things, one of which being freedom.

In mid-December, a small collection of Jews and other miscreants was brought down Munich Street again, to Dachau. Parade number three.

Rudy walked purposefully down Himmel Street and returned from number thirty-five with a small bag and two bikes.

“You game,
Saumensch?”

•   •   •

They pedaled ahead of the parade, toward Dachau, and stopped at an empty piece of road. Rudy passed Liesel the bag. “Take a handful.”

“I’m not sure this is a good idea.”

He slapped some bread onto her palm. “Your papa did.”

How could she argue? It was worth a whipping.

“If we’re fast, we won’t get caught.” He started distributing the bread. “So move it,
Saumensch.”

Liesel couldn’t help herself. There was the trace of a grin on her face as she and Rudy Steiner, her best friend, handed out the pieces of bread on the road. When they were finished, they took their bikes and hid among the Christmas trees.

The road was cold and straight. It wasn’t long till the soldiers came with the Jews.

In the tree shadows, Liesel watched the boy. How things had changed, from fruit stealer to bread giver. His blond hair, although darkening, was like a candle. She heard his stomach growl—and he was giving people bread.

Was this Germany?

Was this Nazi Germany?

The first soldier did not see the bread—he was not hungry—but the first Jew saw it.

His ragged hand reached down and picked a piece up and shoved it deliriously to his mouth.

Is that Max? Liesel thought.

She could not see properly and moved to get a better view.

“Hey!” Rudy was livid. “Don’t move. If they find us here and match us to the bread, we’re history.”

Liesel continued.

More Jews were bending down and taking bread from the road, and from the edge of the trees, the book thief examined each and every one of them. Max Vandenburg was not there.

Relief was short-lived.

It stirred itself around her just as one of the soldiers noticed a prisoner drop a hand to the ground. Everyone was ordered to stop. The road was closely examined. The prisoners chewed as fast and silently as they could. Collectively, they gulped.

The soldier picked up a few pieces and studied each side of the road. The prisoners also looked.

“In there!”

One of the soldiers was striding over, to the girl by the closest trees. Next he saw the boy. Both began to run.

They chose different directions, under the rafters of branches and the tall ceiling of the trees.

“Don’t stop running, Liesel!”

“What about the bikes?”

“Scheiss drauf!
Shit on them, who cares!”

They ran, and after a hundred meters, the hunched breath of the soldier drew closer. It sidled up next to her and she waited for the accompanying hand.

She was lucky.

All she received was a boot up the ass and a fistful of words. “Keep running, little girl, you don’t belong here!” She ran and she did not stop for at least another mile. Branches sliced her arms, pinecones rolled at her feet, and the taste of Christmas needles chimed inside her lungs.

A good forty-five minutes had passed by the time she made it back, and Rudy was sitting by the rusty bikes. He’d collected what was left of the bread and was chewing on a stale, stiff portion.

“I told you not to get too close,” he said.

She showed him her backside. “Have I got a footprint?”

A few days before Christmas, there was another raid, although nothing dropped on the town of Molching. According to the radio news, most of the bombs fell in open country.

What was most important was the reaction in the Fiedlers’ shelter. Once the last few patrons had arrived, everyone settled down solemnly and waited. They looked at her, expectantly.

Papa’s voice arrived, loud in her ears.

“And if there are more raids, keep reading in the shelter.”

Liesel waited. She needed to be sure that they wanted it.

Rudy spoke for everyone. “Read,
Saumensch.”

She opened the book, and again, the words found their way upon all those present in the shelter.