The Book Thief (40 page)

“We’d better
head home,” Rudy suggested, but Liesel did not go.

“Can you wait
here for ten minutes?”

“Of course.”

Liesel struggled
back up to 8 Grande Strasse and sat on the familiar territory of the front
entrance. The book was with Rudy, but she held the letter and rubbed her
fingers on the folded paper as the steps grew heavier around her. She tried four
times to knock on the daunting flesh of the door, but she could not bring
herself to do it. The most she could accomplish was to place her knuckles
gently on the warmness of the wood.

Again, her
brother found her.

From the bottom
of the steps, his knee healing nicely, he said, “Come on, Liesel, knock.”

As she made her
second getaway, she could soon see the distant figure of Rudy at the bridge.
The wind showered through her hair. Her feet swam with the pedals.

Liesel Meminger
was a criminal.

But not because
she’d stolen a handful of books through an open window.

You should have
knocked, she thought, and although there was a good portion of guilt, there was
also the juvenile trace of laughter.

As she rode, she
tried to tell herself something.

You don’t deserve
to be this happy, Liesel. You really don’t.

Can a person
steal happiness? Or is it just another internal, infernal human trick?

Liesel shrugged
away from her thoughts. She crossed the bridge and told Rudy to hurry up and
not to forget the book.

They rode home
on rusty bikes.

They rode home a
couple of miles, from summer to autumn, and from a quiet night to the noisy
breath of the bombing of Munich.

THE SOUND OF SIRENS

With the small
collection of money Hans had earned in the summer, he brought home a secondhand
radio. “This way,” he said, “we can hear when the raids are coming even before
the sirens start. They make a
cuckoo
sound and then announce the regions
at risk.”

He placed it on
the kitchen table and switched it on. They also tried to make it work in the
basement, for Max, but there was nothing but static and severed voices in the
speakers.

In September,
they did not hear it as they slept.

Either the radio
was already half broken, or it was swallowed immediately by the crying sound of
sirens.

A hand was
shoved gently at Liesel’s shoulder as she slept.

Papa’s voice
followed it in, afraid.

“Liesel, wake
up. We have to go.”

There was the
disorientation of interrupted sleep, and Liesel could barely decipher the
outline of Papa’s face. The only thing truly visible was his voice.

In the hallway,
they stopped.

“Wait,” said
Rosa.

Through the
dark, they rushed to the basement.

The lamp was
lit.

Max edged out
from behind the paint cans and drop sheets. His face was tired and he hitched
his thumbs nervously into his pants. “Time to go, huh?”

Hans walked to
him. “Yes, time to go.” He shook his hand and slapped his arm. “We’ll see you
when we get back, right?”

“Of course.”

Rosa hugged him,
as did Liesel.

“Goodbye, Max.”

Weeks earlier,
they’d discussed whether they should all stay together in their own basement or
if the three of them should go down the road, to a family by the name of
Fiedler. It was Max who convinced them. “They said it’s not deep enough here.
I’ve already put you in enough danger.”

Hans had nodded.
“It’s a shame we can’t take you with us. It’s a disgrace.”

“It’s how it
is.”

Outside, the
sirens howled at the houses, and the people came running, hobbling, and
recoiling as they exited their homes. Night watched. Some people watched it
back, trying to find the tin-can planes as they drove across the sky.

Himmel Street
was a procession of tangled people, all wrestling with their most precious
possessions. In some cases, it was a baby. In others, a stack of photo albums
or a wooden box. Liesel carried her books, between her arm and her ribs. Frau
Holtzapfel was heaving a suitcase, laboring on the footpath with bulbous eyes
and small-stepped feet.

Papa, who’d
forgotten everything—even his accordion—rushed back to her and rescued the
suitcase from her grip. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, what have you got in here?”
he asked. “An anvil?”

Frau Holtzapfel
advanced alongside him. “The necessities.”

The Fiedlers
lived six houses down. They were a family of four, all with wheat-colored hair
and good German eyes. More important, they had a nice, deep basement.
Twenty-two people crammed themselves into it, including the Steiner family,
Frau Holtzapfel, Pfiffikus, a young man, and a family named Jenson. In the
interest of a civil environment, Rosa Hubermann and Frau Holtzapfel were kept
separated, though some things were above petty arguments.

One light globe
dangled from the ceiling and the room was dank and cold. Jagged walls jutted
out and poked people in the back as they stood and spoke. The muffled sound of
sirens leaked in from somewhere. They could hear a distorted version of them
that somehow found a way inside. Although creating considerable apprehension
about the quality of the shelter, at least they could hear the three sirens
that would signal the end of the raid and safety. They didn’t need a
Luftschutzwart
—an
air-raid supervisor.

It wasn’t long
before Rudy found Liesel and was standing next to her. His hair was pointing at
something on the ceiling. “Isn’t this great?”

She couldn’t
resist some sarcasm. “It’s lovely.”

“Ah, come on,
Liesel, don’t be like that. What’s the worst that can happen, apart from all of
us being flattened or fried or whatever bombs do?”

Liesel looked
around, gauging the faces. She started compiling a list of who was most afraid.

1.
Frau Holtzapfel

2.
Mr. Fiedler

3.
The young man

4.
Rosa Hubermann

Frau
Holtzapfel’s eyes were trapped open. Her wiry frame was stooped forward, and
her mouth was a circle. Herr Fiedler busied himself by asking people, sometimes
repeatedly, how they were feeling. The young man, Rolf Schultz, kept to himself
in the corner, speaking silently at the air around him, castigating it. His
hands were cemented into his pockets. Rosa rocked back and forth, ever so
gently. “Liesel,” she whispered, “come here.” She held the girl from behind,
tightening her grip. She sang a song, but it was so quiet that Liesel could not
make it out. The notes were born on her breath, and they died at her lips. Next
to them, Papa remained quiet and motionless. At one point, he placed his warm
hand on Liesel’s cool skull. You’ll live, it said, and it was right.

To their left,
Alex and Barbara Steiner stood with the younger of their children, Emma and
Bettina. The two girls were attached to their mother’s right leg. The oldest boy,
Kurt, stared ahead in a perfect Hitler Youth stance, holding the hand of Karin,
who was tiny, even for her seven years. The ten-year-old, Anna-Marie, played
with the pulpy surface of the cement wall.

On the other
side of the Steiners were Pfiffikus and the Jenson family.

Pfiffikus kept
himself from whistling.

The bearded Mr.
Jenson held his wife tightly, and their two kids drifted in and out of silence.
Occasionally they pestered each other, but they held back when it came to the
beginning of true argument.

After ten
minutes or so, what was most prominent in the cellar was a kind of nonmovement.
Their bodies were welded together and only their feet changed position or
pressure. Stillness was shackled to their faces. They watched each other and
waited.

From other
shelters, there were stories of singing
“Deutschland über
Alles”
or
of people arguing amid the staleness of their own breath. No such things
happened in the Fiedler shelter. In that place, there was only fear and
apprehension, and the dead song at Rosa Hubermann’s cardboard lips.

Not long before
the sirens signaled the end, Alex Steiner—the man with the immovable, wooden
face—coaxed the kids from his wife’s legs. He was able to reach out and grapple
for his son’s free hand. Kurt, still stoic and full of stare, took it up and
tightened his grip gently on the hand of his sister. Soon, everyone in the
cellar was holding the hand of another, and the group of Germans stood in a
lumpy circle. The cold hands melted into the warm ones, and in some cases, the
feeling of another human pulse was transported. It came through the layers of
pale, stiffened skin. Some of them closed their eyes, waiting for their final
demise, or hoping for a sign that the raid was finally over.

Did they deserve
any better, these people?

How many had
actively persecuted others, high on the scent of Hitler’s gaze, repeating his
sentences, his paragraphs, his opus? Was Rosa Hubermann responsible? The hider
of a Jew? Or Hans? Did they all deserve to die? The children?

The answer to
each of these questions interests me very much, though I cannot allow them to
seduce me. I only know that all of those people would have sensed me that
night, excluding the youngest of the children. I was the suggestion. I was the
advice, my imagined feet walking into the kitchen and down the corridor.

As is often the
case with humans, when I read about them in the book thief’s words, I pitied
them, though not as much as I felt for the ones I scooped up from various camps
in that time. The Germans in basements were pitiable, surely, but at least they
had a chance. That basement was not a washroom. They were not sent there for a
shower. For those people, life was still achievable.

In the uneven
circle, the minutes soaked by.

Liesel held
Rudy’s hand, and her mama’s.

Only one thought
saddened her.

Max.

How would Max
survive if the bombs arrived on Himmel Street?

Around her, she
examined the Fiedlers’ basement. It was much sturdier and considerably deeper
than the one at 33 Himmel Street.

Silently, she
asked her papa.

Are you thinking
about him, too?

Whether the
silent question registered or not, he gave the girl a quick nod. It was
followed a few minutes later by the three sirens of temporary peace.

The people at 45
Himmel Street sank with relief.

Some clenched
their eyes and opened them again.

A cigarette was
passed around.

Just as it made
its way to Rudy Steiner’s lips, it was snatched away by his father. “Not you,
Jesse Owens.”

The children
hugged their parents, and it took many minutes for all of them to fully realize
that they were alive, and that they were
going
to be alive. Only then did
their feet climb the stairs, to Herbert Fiedler’s kitchen.

Outside, a
procession of people made its way silently along the street. Many of them
looked up and thanked God for their lives.

When the
Hubermanns made it home, they headed directly to the basement, but it seemed
that Max was not there. The lamp was small and orange and they could not see
him or hear an answer.

“Max?”

“He’s
disappeared.”

“Max, are you
there?”

“I’m here.”

They originally
thought the words had come from behind the drop sheets and paint cans, but
Liesel was first to see him, in front of them. His jaded face was camouflaged
among the painting materials and fabric. He was sitting there with stunned eyes
and lips.

When they walked
across, he spoke again.

“I couldn’t help
it,” he said.

It was Rosa who
replied. She crouched down to face him. “What are you talking about, Max?”

“I . . .” He
struggled to answer. “When everything was quiet, I went up to the corridor and
the curtain in the living room was open just a crack. . . . I could see outside.
I watched, only for a few seconds.” He had not seen the outside world for
twenty-two months.