The Book Thief (72 page)

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He couldn’t hold out inside the collapsed house, and I was carrying his soul up Himmel Street when I noticed the LSE shouting and laughing.

There was a small valley in the mountain range of rubble.

The hot sky was red and turning. Pepper streaks were starting to swirl and I became curious. Yes, yes, I know what I told you at the beginning. Usually my curiosity leads to the dreaded witnessing of some kind of human outcry, but on this occasion, I have to say that although it broke my heart, I was, and still am, glad I was there.

When they pulled her out, it’s true that she started to wail and scream for Hans Hubermann. The men of the LSE attempted to keep her in their powdery arms, but the book thief managed to break away. Desperate humans often seem able to do this.

She did not know where she was running, for Himmel Street no longer existed. Everything was new and apocalyptic. Why was the sky red? How could it be snowing? And why did the snowflakes burn her arms?

Liesel slowed to a staggering walk and concentrated up ahead.

Where’s Frau Diller’s? she thought. Where’s—

She wandered a short while longer until the man who found her took her arm and kept talking. “You’re just in shock, my girl. It’s just shock; you’re going to be fine.”

“What’s happened?” Liesel asked. “Is this still Himmel Street?”

“Yes.” The man had disappointed eyes. What had he seen these past few years? “This is Himmel. You got bombed, my girl.
Es tut mir leid, Schatzi
. I’m sorry, darling.”

The girl’s mouth wandered on, even if her body was now still. She had forgotten her previous wails for Hans Hubermann. That was years ago—a bombing will do that. She said, “We have to get my
papa, my mama. We have to get Max out of the basement. If he’s not there, he’s in the hallway, looking out the window. He does that sometimes when there’s a raid—he doesn’t get to look much at the sky, you see. I have to tell him how the weather looks now. He’ll never believe me ….”

Her body buckled at that moment and the LSE man caught her and sat her down. “We’ll move her in a minute,” he told his sergeant. The book thief looked at what was heavy and hurting in her hand.

The book.

The words.

Her fingers were bleeding, just like they had on her arrival here.

The LSE man lifted her and started to lead her away. A wooden spoon was on fire. Aman walked past with a broken accordion case and Liesel could see the instrument inside. She could see its white teeth and the black notes in between. They smiled at her and triggered an alertness to her reality. We were bombed, she thought, and now she turned to the man at her side and said, “That’s my papa’s accordion.” Again. “That’s my papa’s accordion.”

“Don’t worry, young girl, you’re safe; just come a little farther.”

But Liesel did not come.

She looked to where the man was taking the accordion and followed him. With the red sky still showering its beautiful ash, she stopped the tall LSE worker and said, “I’ll take that if you like—it’s my papa’s.” Softly, she took it from the man’s hand and began carrying it off. It was right about then that she saw the first body.

The accordion case fell from her grip. The sound of an explosion.

Frau Holtzapfel was scissored on the ground.

When she saw the rest of them, Liesel coughed. She listened momentarily as a man told the others that they had found one of the bodies in pieces, in one of the maple trees.

There were shocked pajamas and torn faces. It was the boy’s hair she saw first.

Rudy?

She did more than mouth the word now. “Rudy?”

He lay with yellow hair and closed eyes, and the book thief ran toward him and fell down. She dropped the black book. “Rudy,” she sobbed, “wake up ….” She grabbed him by his shirt and gave him just the slightest disbelieving shake. “Wake up, Rudy,” and now, as the sky went on heating and showering ash, Liesel was holding Rudy Steiner’s shirt by the front. “Rudy, please.” The tears grappled with her face. “Rudy, please, wake up, Goddamn it, wake up, I love you. Come on, Rudy, come on, Jesse Owens, don’t you know I love you, wake up, wake up, wake up ….”

But nothing cared.

The rubble just climbed higher. Concrete hills with caps of red. A beautiful, tear-stomped girl, shaking the dead.

“Come on, Jesse Owens—”

But the boy did not wake.

In disbelief, Liesel buried her head into Rudy’s chest. She held his
limp body, trying to keep him from lolling back, until she needed to return him to the butchered ground. She did it gently.

Slow. Slow.

“God, Rudy …”

She leaned down and looked at his lifeless face and Liesel kissed her best friend, Rudy Steiner, soft and true on his lips. He tasted dusty and sweet. He tasted like regret in the shadows of trees and in the glow of the anarchist’s suit collection. She kissed him long and soft, and when she pulled herself away, she touched his mouth with her fingers. Her hands were trembling, her lips were fleshy, and she leaned in once more, this time losing control and misjudging it. Their teeth collided on the demolished world of Himmel Street.

She did not say goodbye. She was incapable, and after a few more minutes at his side, she was able to tear herself from the ground. It amazes me what humans can do, even when streams are flowing down their faces and they stagger on, coughing and searching, and finding.

Liesel did not run or walk or move at all. Her eyes had scoured the humans and stopped hazily when she noticed the tall man and the short, wardrobe woman. That’s my mama. That’s my papa. The words were stapled to her.

“They’re not moving,” she said quietly. “They’re not moving.”

Perhaps if she stood still long enough, it would be
they
who moved, but they remained motionless for as long as Liesel did. I realized at that moment that she was not wearing any shoes. What an odd thing to notice
right then. Perhaps I was trying to avoid her face, for the book thief was truly an irretrievable mess.

She took a step and didn’t want to take any more, but she did. Slowly, Liesel walked to her mama and papa and sat down between them. She held Mama’s hand and began speaking to her. “Remember when I came here, Mama? I clung to the gate and cried. Do you remember what you said to everyone on the street that day?” Her voice wavered now. “You said, ‘What are you assholes looking at?’” She took Mama’s hand and touched her wrist. “Mama, I know that you … I liked when you came to school and told me Max had woken up. Did you know I saw you with Papa’s accordion?” She tightened her grip on the hardening hand. “I came and watched and you were beautiful. Goddamn it, you were so beautiful, Mama.”

Papa was a man with silver eyes, not dead ones.

Papa was an accordion!

But his bellows were all empty.

Nothing went in and nothing came out.

She began to rock back and forth. A shrill, quiet, smearing note was caught somewhere in her mouth until she was finally able to turn.

To Papa.

At that point, I couldn’t help it. I walked around to see her better, and from the moment I witnessed her face again, I could tell that this was
who she loved the most. Her expression stroked the man on his face. It followed one of the lines down his cheek. He had sat in the washroom with her and taught her how to roll a cigarette. He gave bread to a dead man on Munich Street and told the girl to keep reading in the bomb shelter. Perhaps if he didn’t, she might not have ended up writing in the basement.