The Book Thief (35 page)

It was afternoon. Liesel came down the basement steps. Max was halfway through his push-ups.

She watched awhile, without his knowledge, and when she came and sat with him, he stood up and leaned back against the wall. “Did I tell you,” he asked her, “that I’ve been having a new dream lately?”

Liesel shifted a little, to see his face.

“But I dream this when I’m awake.” He motioned to the glowless kerosene lamp. “Sometimes I turn out the light. Then I stand here and wait.”

“For what?”

Max corrected her. “Not for what. For whom.”

For a few moments, Liesel said nothing. It was one of those conversations that require some time to elapse between exchanges. “Who do you wait for?”

Max did not move. “The
Führer.”
He was very matter-of-fact about this. “That’s why I’m in training.”

“The push-ups?”

“That’s right.” He walked to the concrete stairway. “Every night, I wait in the dark and the
Führer
comes down these steps. He walks down and he and I, we fight for hours.”

Liesel was standing now. “Who wins?”

At first, he was going to answer that no one did, but then he noticed the paint cans, the drop sheets, and the growing pile of newspapers in the periphery of his vision. He watched the words, the long cloud, and the figures on the wall.

“I do,” he said.

It was as though he’d opened her palm, given her the words, and closed it up again.

Under the ground, in Molching, Germany, two people stood and spoke in a basement. It sounds like the beginning of a joke:

“There’s a Jew and a German standing in a basement, right? …”

This, however, was no joke.

The Painters: Early June

Another of Max’s projects was the remainder of
Mein Kampf
. Each page was gently stripped from the book and laid out on the floor to receive a coat of paint. It was then hung up to dry and replaced between the front and back covers. When Liesel came down one day after school, she found Max, Rosa, and her papa all painting the various pages. Many of them were already hanging from a drawn-out string with pegs, just as they must have done for
The Standover Man
.

All three people looked up and spoke.

“Hi, Liesel.”

“Here’s a brush, Liesel.”

“About time,
Saumensch
. Where have you been so long?”

As she started painting, Liesel thought about Max Vandenburg fighting the
Führer
, exactly as he’d explained it.

When the visions dissipated and she finished her first page, Papa winked at her. Mama castigated her for hogging the paint. Max examined each and every page, perhaps watching what he planned to produce on them. Many months later, he would also paint over the cover of that book and give it a new title, after one of the stories he would write and illustrate inside it.

That afternoon, in the secret ground below 33 Himmel Street, the Hubermanns, Liesel Meminger, and Max Vandenburg prepared the pages of
The Word Shaker
.

It felt good to be a painter.

The Showdown: June 24

Then came the seventh side of the die. Two days after Germany invaded Russia. Three days before Britain and the Soviets joined forces.

Seven.

You roll and watch it coming, realizing completely that this is no regular die. You claim it to be bad luck, but you’ve known all along that it had to come. You brought it into the room. The table could
smell it on your breath. The Jew was sticking out of your pocket from the outset. He’s smeared to your lapel, and the moment you roll, you know it’s a seven—the one thing that somehow finds a way to hurt you. It lands. It stares you in each eye, miraculous and loathsome, and you turn away with it feeding on your chest.

Just bad luck.

That’s what you say.

Of no consequence.

That’s what you make yourself believe—because deep down, you know that this small piece of changing fortune is a signal of things to come. You hide a Jew. You pay. Somehow or other, you must.

In hindsight, Liesel told herself that it was not such a big deal. Perhaps it was because so much more had happened by the time she wrote her story in the basement. In the great scheme of things, she reasoned that Rosa being fired by the mayor and his wife was not bad luck at all. It had nothing whatsoever to do with hiding Jews. It had everything to do with the greater context of the war. At the time, though, there was most definitely a feeling of punishment.

The beginning was actually a week or so earlier than June 24. Liesel scavenged a newspaper for Max Vandenburg as she always did. She reached into a garbage can just off Munich Street and tucked it under her arm. Once she delivered it to Max and he’d commenced his first reading, he glanced across at her and pointed to a picture on the front page. “Isn’t this whose washing and ironing you deliver?”

Liesel came over from the wall. She’d been writing the word
argument
six times, next to Max’s picture of the ropy cloud and the dripping sun. Max handed her the paper and she confirmed it. “That’s him.”

When she went on to read the article, Heinz Hermann, the mayor, was quoted as saying that although the war was progressing splendidly, the people of Molching, like all responsible Germans, should take adequate measures and prepare for the possibility of harder times. “You never know,” he stated, “what our enemies are thinking, or how they will try to debilitate us.”

A week later, the mayor’s words came to nasty fruition. Liesel, as she always did, showed up at Grande Strasse and read from
The Whistler
on the floor of the mayor’s library. The mayor’s wife showed no signs of abnormality (or, let’s be frank, no
additional
signs) until it was time to leave.

This time, when she offered Liesel
The Whistler
, she insisted on the girl taking it. “Please.” She almost begged. The book was held out in a tight, measured fist. “Take it. Please, take it.”

Liesel, touched by the strangeness of this woman, couldn’t bear to disappoint her again. The gray-covered book with its yellowing pages found its way into her hand and she began to walk the corridor. As she was about to ask for the washing, the mayor’s wife gave her a final look of bathrobed sorrow. She reached into the chest of drawers and withdrew an envelope. Her voice, lumpy from lack of use, coughed out the words. “I’m sorry. It’s for your mama.”

Liesel stopped breathing.

She was suddenly aware of how empty her feet felt inside her shoes. Something ridiculed her throat. She trembled. When finally she reached out and took possession of the letter, she noticed the sound of the clock in the library. Grimly, she realized that clocks don’t make a sound that even remotely resembles ticking, tocking. It was more the sound of a hammer, upside down, hacking methodically at the earth. It was the sound of a grave. If only mine was ready now, she thought—because Liesel Meminger, at that moment, wanted to die. When the others had canceled, it hadn’t hurt so much. There was
always the mayor, his library, and her connection with his wife. Also, this was the last one, the last hope, gone. This time, it felt like the greatest betrayal.

How could she face her mama?

For Rosa, the few scraps of money had still helped in various alleyways. An extra handful of flour. A piece of fat.

Ilsa Hermann was dying now herself—to get rid of her. Liesel could see it somewhere in the way she hugged the robe a little tighter. The clumsiness of sorrow still kept her at close proximity, but clearly, she wanted this to be over. “Tell your mama,” she spoke again. Her voice was adjusting now, as one sentence turned into two. “That we’re sorry.” She started shepherding the girl toward the door.

Liesel felt it now in the shoulders. The pain, the impact of final rejection.

That’s it? she asked internally. You just boot me out?

Slowly, she picked up her empty bag and edged toward the door. Once outside, she turned and faced the mayor’s wife for the second to last time that day. She looked her in the eyes with an almost savage brand of pride.
“Danke schön,”
she said, and Ilsa Hermann smiled in a rather useless, beaten way.

“If you ever want to come just to read,” the woman lied (or at least the girl, in her shocked, saddened state, perceived it as a lie), “you’re very welcome.”

At that moment, Liesel was amazed by the width of the doorway. There was so much space. Why did people need so much space to get through the door? Had Rudy been there, he’d have called her an idiot—it was to get all their stuff inside.

“Goodbye,” the girl said, and slowly, with great morosity, the door was closed.

Liesel did not leave.

•   •   •

For a long time, she sat on the steps and watched Molching. It was neither warm nor cool and the town was clear and still. Molching was in a jar.

She opened the letter. In it, Mayor Heinz Hermann diplomatically outlined exactly why he had to terminate the services of Rosa Hubermann. For the most part, he explained that he would be a hypocrite if he maintained his own small luxuries while advising others to
prepare for harder times
.

When she eventually stood and walked home, her moment of reaction came once again when she saw the
STEINER-SCHNEIDER-MEISTER
sign on Munich Street. Her sadness left her and she was overwhelmed with anger. “That bastard mayor,” she whispered. “That
pathetic
woman.” The fact that harder times were coming was surely the best reason for keeping Rosa employed, but no, they fired her. At any rate, she decided, they could do their own blasted washing and ironing, like normal people. Like poor people.