The Book Thief (42 page)

In mid-February, a few days before Liesel was thirteen, he came to the fireplace on the verge of collapse. He nearly fell into the fire.

“Hans,” he whispered, and his face seemed to cramp. His legs gave way and his head hit the accordion case.

At once, a wooden spoon fell into some soup and Rosa Hubermann was at his side. She held Max’s head and barked across the room at Liesel, “Don’t just stand there, get the extra blankets. Take them to your bed. And you!” Papa was next. “Help me pick him up and carry him to Liesel’s room.
Schnell!”

Papa’s face was stretched with concern. His gray eyes clanged and he picked him up on his own. Max was light as a child. “Can’t we put him here, in our bed?”

Rosa had already considered that. “No. We have to keep these curtains open in the day or else it looks suspicious.”

“Good point.” Hans carried him out.

Blankets in hand, Liesel watched.

Limp feet and hanging hair in the hallway. One shoe had fallen off him.

“Move.”

Mama marched in behind them, in her waddlesome way.

Once Max was in the bed, blankets were heaped on top and fastened around his body.

“Mama?”

Liesel couldn’t bring herself to say anything else.

“What?” The bun of Rosa Hubermann’s hair was wound tight enough to frighten from behind. It seemed to tighten further when she repeated the question. “What, Liesel?”

She stepped closer, afraid of the answer. “Is he alive?”

The bun nodded.

Rosa turned then and said something with great assurance. “Now listen to me, Liesel. I didn’t take this man into my house to watch him die. Understand?”

Liesel nodded.

“Now go.”

In the hall, Papa hugged her.

She desperately needed it.

Later on, she heard Hans and Rosa speaking in the night. Rosa made her sleep in their room, and she lay next to their bed, on the floor, on the mattress they’d dragged up from the basement. (There was concern as to whether it was infected, but they came to the conclusion that such thoughts were unfounded. This was no virus Max was suffering from, so they carried it up and replaced the sheet.)

Imagining the girl to be asleep, Mama voiced her opinion.

“That damn snowman,” she whispered. “I bet it started with the snowman—fooling around with ice and snow in the cold down there.”

Papa was more philosophical. “Rosa, it started with Adolf.” He lifted himself. “We should check on him.”

In the course of the night, Max was visited seven times.

•   •   •

In the morning, Liesel brought him his sketchbook from the basement and placed it on the bedside table. She felt awful for having looked at it the previous year, and this time, she kept it firmly closed, out of respect.

When Papa came in, she did not turn to face him but talked across Max Vandenburg, at the wall. “Why did I have to bring all that snow down?” she asked. “It started all of this, didn’t it, Papa?” She clenched her hands, as if to pray. “Why did I have to build that snowman?”

Papa, to his enduring credit, was adamant. “Liesel,” he said, “you had to.”

For hours, she sat with him as he shivered and slept.

“Don’t die,” she whispered. “Please, Max, just don’t die.”

He was the second snowman to be melting away before her eyes, only this one was different. It was a paradox.

The colder he became, the more he melted.

It was Max’s arrival, revisited.

Feathers turned to twigs again. Smooth face turned to rough. The proof she needed was there. He was alive.

The first few days, she sat and talked to him. On her birthday, she told him there was an enormous cake waiting in the kitchen, if only he’d wake up.

There was no waking.

There was no cake.

On the fifth day, there was much excitement when Max opened his eyes, if only for a few moments. What he predominantly saw (and what a frightening version it must have been close-up) was Rosa Hubermann, practically slinging an armful of soup into his mouth. “Swallow,” she advised him. “Don’t think. Just swallow.” As soon as Mama handed back the bowl, Liesel tried to see his face again, but there was a soup-feeder’s backside in the way.

“Is he still awake?”

When she turned, Rosa did not have to answer.

After close to a week, Max woke up a second time, on this occasion with Liesel and Papa in the room. They were both watching the body in the bed when there was a small groan. If it’s possible, Papa fell upward, out of the chair.

“Look,” Liesel gasped. “Stay awake, Max, stay awake.”

He looked at her briefly, but there was no recognition. The eyes studied her as if she were a riddle. Then gone again.

“Papa, what happened?”

Hans dropped, back to the chair.

Later, he suggested that perhaps she should read to him. “Come on, Liesel, you’re such a good reader these days—even if it’s a mystery to all of us where that book came from.”

“I told you, Papa. One of the nuns at school gave it to me.”

Papa held his hands up in mock-protest. “I know, I know.” He
sighed, from a height. “Just …” He chose his words gradually. “Don’t get caught.” This from a man who’d stolen a Jew.

From that day on, Liesel read
The Whistler
aloud to Max as he occupied her bed. The one frustration was that she kept having to skip whole chapters on account of many of the pages being stuck together. It had not dried well. Still, she struggled on, to the point where she was nearly three-quarters of the way through it. The book was 396 pages.

In the outside world, Liesel rushed from school each day in the hope that Max was feeling better. “Has he woken up? Has he eaten?”

“Go back out,” Mama begged her. “You’re chewing a hole in my stomach with all this talking. Go on. Get out there and play soccer, for God’s sake.”

“Yes, Mama.” She was about to open the door. “But you’ll come and get me if he wakes up, won’t you? Just make something up. Scream out like I’ve done something wrong. Start swearing at me. Everyone will believe it, don’t worry.”

Even Rosa had to smile at that. She placed her knuckles on her hips and explained that Liesel wasn’t too old yet to avoid a
Watschen
for talking in such a way. “And score a goal,” she threatened, “or don’t come home at all.”

“Sure, Mama.”

“Make that
two
goals,
Saumensch!”

“Yes, Mama.”

“And stop answering back!”

Liesel considered, but she ran onto the street, to oppose Rudy on the mud-slippery road.

“About time, ass scratcher.” He welcomed her in the customary way as they fought for the ball. “Where have you been?”

Half an hour later, when the ball was squashed by the rare passage of a car on Himmel Street, Liesel had found her first present for Max Vandenburg. After judging it irreparable, all of the kids walked home in disgust, leaving the ball twitching on the cold, blistered road. Liesel and Rudy remained stooped over the carcass. There was a gaping hole on its side like a mouth.

“You want it?” Liesel asked.

Rudy shrugged. “What do I want with this squashed shit heap of a ball? There’s no chance of getting air into it now, is there?”

“Do you want it or not?”

“No thanks.” Rudy prodded it cautiously with his foot, as if it were a dead animal. Or an animal that
might
be dead.

As he walked home, Liesel picked the ball up and placed it under her arm. She could hear him call out, “Hey,
Saumensch.”
She waited.
“Saumensch!”

She relented. “What?”

“I’ve got a bike without wheels here, too, if you want it.”

“Stick your bike.”

From her position on the street, the last thing she heard was the laughter of that
Saukerl
, Rudy Steiner.

Inside, she made her way to the bedroom. She took the ball in to Max and placed it at the end of the bed.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “it’s not much. But when you wake up, I’ll tell you all about it. I’ll tell you it was the grayest afternoon you can imagine, and this car without its lights on ran straight over the ball. Then the man got out and yelled at us. And
then
he asked for directions. The nerve of him …”

Wake up! she wanted to scream.

Or shake him.

She didn’t.

All Liesel could do was watch the ball and its trampled, flaking skin. It was the first gift of many.