The Book Thief (49 page)

“It wouldn’t
stop growing,” she explained.

“But neither
would this.” The young man looked at the branch that held his hand. He had a
point.

When they had
looked and talked enough, they made their way back down. They left the blankets
and remaining food behind.

The people could
not believe what they were seeing, and the moment the word shaker and the young
man set foot in the world, the tree finally began to show the ax marks. Bruises
appeared. Slits were made in the trunk and the earth began to shiver.

“It’s going to
fall!” a young woman screamed. “The tree is going to fall!” She was right. The
word shaker’s tree, in all its miles and miles of height, slowly began to tip.
It moaned as it was sucked to the ground. The world shook, and when everything
finally settled, the tree was laid out among the rest of the forest. It could
never destroy all of it, but if nothing else, a different-colored path was
carved through it.

The word shaker
and the young man climbed up to the horizontal trunk. They navigated the
branches and began to walk. When they looked back, they noticed that the
majority of onlookers had started to return to their own places. In there. Out
there. In the forest.

But as they
walked on, they stopped several times, to listen. They thought they could hear
voices and words behind them, on the word shaker’s tree.

For a long time,
Liesel sat at the kitchen table and wondered where Max Vandenburg was, in all
that forest out there. The light lay down around her. She fell asleep. Mama
made her go to bed, and she did so, with Max’s sketchbook against her chest.

It was hours
later, when she woke up, that the answer to her question came. “Of course,” she
whispered. “Of course I know where he is,” and she went back to sleep.

She dreamed of
the tree.

THE
ANARCHIST’S SUIT COLLECTION

DECEMBER 24

The days leading
up to Christmas 1942 fell thick and heavy with snow. Liesel went through
The
Word Shaker
many times, from the story itself to the many sketches and
commentaries on either side of it. On Christmas Eve, she made a decision about
Rudy. To hell with being out too late.

She walked next
door just before dark and told him she had a present for him, for Christmas.

Rudy looked at
her hands and either side of her feet. “Well, where the hell is it?”

“Forget it,
then.”

But Rudy knew.
He’d seen her like this before. Risky eyes and sticky fingers. The breath of
stealing was all around her and he could smell it. “This gift,” he estimated.
“You haven’t got it yet, have you?”

“No.”

“And you’re not
buying it, either.”

“Of course not.
Do you think I have any money?” Snow was still falling. At the edge of the
grass, there was ice like broken glass. “Do you have the key?” she asked.

“The key to what?”
But it didn’t take Rudy long to understand. He made his way inside and returned
not long after. In the words of Viktor Chemmel, he said, “It’s time to go
shopping.”

The light was
disappearing fast, and except for the church, all of Munich Street had closed
up for Christmas. Liesel walked hurriedly to remain in step with the lankier
stride of her neighbor. They arrived at the designated shop window.
STEINER—SCHNEIDERMEISTER.
The glass wore a thin sheet of mud and grime that had blown onto it in the
passing weeks. On the opposite side, the mannequins stood like witnesses. They
were serious and ludicrously stylish. It was hard to shake the feeling that
they were watching everything.

Rudy reached
into his pocket.

It was Christmas
Eve.

His father was
near Vienna.

He didn’t think
he’d mind if they trespassed in his beloved shop. The circumstances demanded
it.

The door opened
fluently and they made their way inside. Rudy’s first instinct was to hit the
light switch, but the electricity had already been cut off.

“Any candles?”

Rudy was
dismayed. “
I
brought the key. And besides, this was your idea.”

In the middle of
the exchange, Liesel tripped on a bump in the floor. A mannequin followed her
down. It groped her arm and dismantled in its clothes on top of her. “Get this
thing off me!” It was in four pieces. The torso and head, the legs, and two
separate arms. When she was rid of it, Liesel stood and wheezed. “Jesus, Mary.”

Rudy found one
of the arms and tapped her on the shoulder with its hand. When she turned in
fright, he extended it in friendship. “Nice to meet you.”

For a few
minutes, they moved slowly through the tight pathways of the shop. Rudy started
toward the counter. When he fell over an empty box, he yelped and swore, then
found his way back to the entrance. “This is ridiculous,” he said. “Wait here a
minute.” Liesel sat, mannequin arm in hand, till he returned with a lit lantern
from the church.

A ring of light
circled his face.

“So where’s this
present you’ve been bragging about? It better not be one of these weird
mannequins.”

“Bring the light
over.”

When he made it
to the far left section of the shop, Liesel took the lantern with one hand and
swept through the hanging suits with the other. She pulled one out but quickly
replaced it with another. “No, still too big.” After two more attempts, she
held a navy blue suit in front of Rudy Steiner. “Does this look about your
size?”

While Liesel sat
in the dark, Rudy tried on the suit behind one of the curtains. There was a
small circle of light and the shadow dressing itself.

When he
returned, he held out the lantern for Liesel to see. Free of the curtain, the
light was like a pillar, shining onto the refined suit. It also lit up the
dirty shirt beneath and Rudy’s battered shoes.

“Well?” he
asked.

Liesel continued
the examination. She moved around him and shrugged. “Not bad.”

“Not bad! I look
better than just not bad.”

“The shoes let
you down. And your face.”

Rudy placed the
lantern on the counter and came toward her in mock-anger, and Liesel had to
admit that a nervousness started gripping her. It was with both relief and
disappointment that she watched him trip and fall on the disgraced mannequin.

On the floor,
Rudy laughed.

Then he closed
his eyes, clenching them hard.

Liesel rushed
over.

She crouched
above him.

Kiss him,
Liesel, kiss him.

“Are you all
right, Rudy? Rudy?”

“I miss him,”
said the boy, sideways, across the floor.

“Frohe
Weihnachten,”
Liesel
replied. She helped him up, straightening the suit. “Merry Christmas.”

PART NINE

the
last human stranger

featuring:

the next temptation—a cardplayer—

the snows of stalingrad—an ageless

brother—an accident—the bitter taste

of questions—a toolbox, a bleeder,

a bear—a broken plane—

and a homecoming

THE NEXT TEMPTATION

This time, there
were cookies.

But they were
stale.

They were
Kipferl
left over from Christmas, and they’d been sitting on the desk for at least
two weeks. Like miniature horseshoes with a layer of icing sugar, the ones on
the bottom were bolted to the plate. The rest were piled on top, forming a
chewy mound. She could already smell them when her fingers tightened on the
window ledge. The room tasted like sugar and dough, and thousands of pages.

There was no
note, but it didn’t take Liesel long to realize that Ilsa Hermann had been at
it again, and she certainly wasn’t taking the chance that the cookies might
not
be for her. She made her way back to the window and passed a whisper
through the gap. The whisper’s name was Rudy.

They’d gone on
foot that day because the road was too slippery for bikes. The boy was beneath
the window, standing watch. When she called out, his face appeared, and she
presented him with the plate. He didn’t need much convincing to take it.

His eyes feasted
on the cookies and he asked a few questions.

“Anything else?
Any milk?”

“What?”

“Milk,”
he repeated, a
little louder this time. If he’d recognized the offended tone in Liesel’s
voice, he certainly wasn’t showing it.

The book thief’s
face appeared above him again. “Are you stupid? Can I just steal the book?”

“Of course. All
I’m saying is . . .”

Liesel moved
toward the far shelf, behind the desk. She found some paper and a pen in the
top drawer and wrote
Thank you,
leaving the note on top.

To her right, a
book protruded like a bone. Its paleness was almost scarred by the dark
lettering of the title.
Die Letzte Menschliche
Fremde—The Last Human
Stranger.
It whispered softly as she removed it from the shelf. Some dust
showered down.

At the window,
just as she was about to make her way out, the library door creaked apart.

Her knee was up
and her book-stealing hand was poised against the window frame. When she faced
the noise, she found the mayor’s wife in a brand-new bathrobe and slippers. On
the breast pocket of the robe sat an embroidered swastika. Propaganda even
reached the bathroom.

They watched
each other.

Liesel looked at
Ilsa Hermann’s breast and raised her arm. “
Heil
Hitler.”

She was just
about to leave when a realization struck her.

The cookies.

They’d been
there for weeks.

That meant that
if the mayor himself used the library, he must have seen them. He must have
asked why they were there. Or—and as soon as Liesel felt this thought, it
filled her with a strange optimism—perhaps it wasn’t the mayor’s library at
all; it was hers. Ilsa Hermann’s.

She didn’t know
why it was so important, but she enjoyed the fact that the roomful of books
belonged to the woman. It was she who introduced her to the library in the
first place and gave her the initial, even literal, window of opportunity. This
way was better. It all seemed to fit.

Just as she
began to move again, she propped everything and asked, “This is your room,
isn’t it?”

The mayor’s wife
tightened. “I used to read in here, with my son. But then . . .”

Liesel’s hand
touched the air behind her. She saw a mother reading on the floor with a young
boy pointing at the pictures and the words. Then she saw a war at the window.
“I know.”

An exclamation
entered from outside.

“What did you
say?!”

Liesel spoke in
a harsh whisper, behind her. “Keep quiet,
Saukerl,
and watch the
street.” To Ilsa Hermann, she handed the words slowly across. “So all these
books . . .”

“They’re mostly
mine. Some are my husband’s, some were my son’s, as you know.”

There was
embarrassment now on Liesel’s behalf. Her cheeks were set alight. “I always
thought this was the mayor’s room.”

“Why?” The woman
seemed amused.

Liesel noticed
that there were also swastikas on the toes of her slippers. “He’s the mayor. I
thought he’d read a lot.”

The mayor’s wife
placed her hands in her side pockets. “Lately, it’s you who gets the most use
out of this room.”

“Have you read
this one?” Liesel held up
The Last Human Stranger.

Ilsa looked more
closely at the title. “I have, yes.”

“Any good?”

“Not bad.”

There was an
itch to leave then, but also a peculiar obligation to stay. She moved to speak,
but the available words were too many and too fast. There were several attempts
to snatch at them, but it was the mayor’s wife who took the initiative.