They both
concentrated on breathing then, for there was nothing more to do or say. Their
business had come to an end.
The blood
enlarged on Ludwig Schmeikl’s ankle.
A single word
leaned against the girl.
To their left,
flames and burning books were cheered like heroes.
THE GATES OF THIEVERY
She remained on
the steps, waiting for Papa, watching the stray ash and the corpse of collected
books. Everything was sad. Orange and red embers looked like rejected candy,
and most of the crowd had vanished. She’d seen Frau Diller leave (very
satisfied) and Pfiffikus (white hair, a Nazi uniform, the same dilapidated
shoes, and a triumphant whistle). Now there was nothing but cleaning up, and
soon, no one would even imagine it had happened.
But you could
smell it.
“What are you
doing?”
Hans Hubermann
arrived at the church steps.
“Hi, Papa.”
“You were
supposed to be in front of the town hall.”
“Sorry, Papa.”
He sat down next
to her, halving his tallness on the concrete and taking a piece of Liesel’s
hair. His fingers adjusted it gently behind her ear. “Liesel, what’s wrong?”
For a while, she
said nothing. She was making calculations, despite already knowing. An
eleven-year-old girl is many things, but she is not stupid.
A
SMALL ADDITION
The word
communist
+ a large bonfire + a collection of dead
letters + the suffering of her mother + the death of her
brother = the
Führer
The
Führer.
He was the
they
that Hans and Rosa Hubermann were talking about that evening when she first
wrote to her mother. She knew it, but she had to ask.
“Is my mother a
communist?” Staring. Straight ahead. “They were always asking her things,
before I came here.”
Hans edged
forward a little, forming the beginnings of a lie. “I have no idea—I never met
her.”
“Did the
Führer
take her away?”
The question
surprised them both, and it forced Papa to stand up. He looked at the
brown-shirted men taking to the pile of ash with shovels. He could hear them hacking
into it. Another lie was growing in his mouth, but he found it impossible to
let it out. He said, “I think he might have, yes.”
“I knew it.” The
words were thrown at the steps and Liesel could feel the slush of anger,
stirring hotly in her stomach. “I hate the
Führer,
” she said. “I
hate
him.”
And Hans
Hubermann?
What did he do?
What did he say?
Did he bend down
and embrace his foster daughter, as he wanted to? Did he tell her that he was
sorry for what was happening to her, to her mother, for what had happened to
her brother?
Not exactly.
He clenched his
eyes. Then opened them. He slapped Liesel Meminger squarely in the face.
“Don’t
ever
say
that!” His voice was quiet, but sharp.
As the girl
shook and sagged on the steps, he sat next to her and held his face in his
hands. It would be easy to say that he was just a tall man sitting
poor-postured and shattered on some church steps, but he wasn’t. At the time,
Liesel had no idea that her foster father, Hans Hubermann, was contemplating
one of the most dangerous dilemmas a German citizen could face. Not only that,
he’d been facing it for close to a year.
“Papa?”
The surprise in
her voice rushed her, but it also rendered her useless. She wanted to run, but
she couldn’t. She could take a
Watschen
from nuns and Rosas, but it hurt
so much more from Papa. The hands were gone from Papa’s face now and he found
the resolve to speak again.
“You can say
that in our house,” he said, looking gravely at Liesel’s cheek. “But you never
say it on the street, at school, at the BDM, never!” He stood in front of her
and lifted her by the triceps. He shook her. “Do you hear me?”
With her eyes
trapped wide open, Liesel nodded her compliance.
It was, in fact,
a rehearsal for a future lecture, when all of Hans Hubermann’s worst fears
arrived on Himmel Street later that year, in the early hours of a November
morning.
“Good.” He
placed her back down. “Now, let us try . . .” At the bottom of the steps, Papa
stood erect and cocked his arm. Forty-five degrees. “
Heil
Hitler.”
Liesel stood up
and also raised her arm. With absolute misery, she repeated it. “
Heil
Hitler.”
It was quite a sight—an eleven-year-old girl, trying not to cry on the church
steps, saluting the
Führer
as the voices over Papa’s shoulder chopped
and beat at the dark shape in the background.
“Are we still
friends?”
Perhaps a
quarter of an hour later, Papa held a cigarette olive branch in his palm—the
paper and tobacco he’d just received. Without a word, Liesel reached gloomily
across and proceeded to roll it.
For quite a while,
they sat there together.
Smoke climbed
over Papa’s shoulder.
After another
ten minutes, the gates of thievery would open just a crack, and Liesel Meminger
would widen them a little further and squeeze through.
TWO
QUESTIONS
Would the gates shut behind her?
Or would they have the goodwill to let her back out?
As Liesel would
discover, a good thief requires many things.
Stealth. Nerve.
Speed.
More important
than any of those things, however, was one final requirement.
Luck.
Actually.
Forget the ten
minutes.
The gates open
now.
BOOK OF FIRE
The dark came in
pieces, and with the cigarette brought to an end, Liesel and Hans Hubermann
began to walk home. To get out of the square, they would walk past the bonfire
site and through a small side road onto Munich Street. They didn’t make it that
far.
A middle-aged
carpenter named Wolfgang Edel called out. He’d built the platforms for the Nazi
big shots to stand on during the fire and he was in the process now of pulling
them down. “Hans Hubermann?” He had long sideburns that pointed to his mouth
and a dark voice. “Hansi!”
“Hey, Wolfal,”
Hans replied. There was an introduction to the girl and a “
heil
Hitler.”
“Good, Liesel.”
For the first
few minutes, Liesel stayed within a five-meter radius of the conversation.
Fragments came past her, but she didn’t pay too much attention.
“Getting much
work?”
“No, it’s all
tighter now. You know how it is, especially when you’re not a member.”
“You told me you
were joining, Hansi.”
“I tried, but I
made a mistake—I think they’re still considering.”
Liesel wandered
toward the mountain of ash. It sat like a magnet, like a freak. Irresistible to
the eyes, similar to the road of yellow stars.
As with her
previous urge to see the mound’s ignition, she could not look away. All alone,
she didn’t have the discipline to keep a safe distance. It sucked her toward it
and she began to make her way around.
Above her, the
sky was completing its routine of darkening, but far away, over the mountain’s
shoulder, there was a dull trace of light.
“Pass auf,
Kind,”
a
uniform said to her at one point. “Look out, child,” as he shoveled some more
ash onto a cart.
Closer to the
town hall, under a light, some shadows stood and talked, most likely exulting
in the success of the fire. From Liesel’s position, their voices were only
sounds. Not words at all.
For a few
minutes, she watched the men shoveling up the pile, at first making it smaller
at the sides to allow more of it to collapse. They came back and forth from a
truck, and after three return trips, when the heap was reduced near the bottom,
a small section of living material slipped from inside the ash.
THE
MATERIAL
Half a red flag, two posters advertising a Jewish poet,
three books, and a wooden sign with something written
on it in Hebrew
Perhaps they
were damp. Perhaps the fire didn’t burn long enough to fully reach the depth
where they sat. Whatever the reason, they were huddled among the ashes, shaken.
Survivors.
“Three books.”
Liesel spoke softly and she looked at the backs of the men.
“Come on,” said
one of them. “Hurry up, will you, I’m starving.”
They moved
toward the truck.
The threesome of
books poked their noses out.
Liesel moved in.
The heat was
still strong enough to warm her when she stood at the foot of the ash heap.
When she reached her hand in, she was bitten, but on the second attempt, she
made sure she was fast enough. She latched onto the closest of the books. It
was hot, but it was also wet, burned only at the edges, but otherwise unhurt.
It was blue.
The cover felt
like it was woven with hundreds of tightly drawn strings and clamped down. Red
letters were pressed into those fibers. The only word Liesel had time to read
was
Shoulder.
There wasn’t enough time for the rest, and there was a
problem. The smoke.
Smoke lifted
from the cover as she juggled it and hurried away. Her head was pulled down,
and the sick beauty of nerves proved more ghastly with each stride. There were
fourteen steps till the voice.
It propped
itself up behind her.
“Hey!”
That was when
she nearly ran back and tossed the book onto the mound, but she was unable. The
only movement at her disposal was the act of turning.
“There are some
things here that didn’t burn!” It was one of the cleanup men. He was not facing
the girl, but rather, the people standing by the town hall.
“Well, burn them
again!” came the reply. “And
watch
them burn!”
“I think they’re
wet!”
“Jesus, Mary,
and Joseph, do I have to do everything myself?” The sound of footsteps passed
by. It was the mayor, wearing a black coat over his Nazi uniform. He didn’t
notice the girl who stood absolutely still only a short distance away.
A
REALIZATION
A statue of the book thief stood in the courtyard. . . .
It’s very rare, don’t you think, for a statue to appear
before its subject has become famous.
She sank.
The thrill of
being ignored!
The book felt
cool enough now to slip inside her uniform. At first, it was nice and warm
against her chest. As she began walking, though, it began to heat up again.
By the time she
made it back to Papa and Wolfgang Edel, the book was starting to burn her. It
seemed to be igniting.
Both men looked
at her.
She smiled.
Immediately,
when the smile shrank from her lips, she could feel something else. Or more to
the point,
someone
else. There was no mistaking the watched feeling. It
was all over her, and it was confirmed when she dared to face the shadows over
at the town hall. To the side of the collection of silhouettes, another one
stood, a few meters removed, and Liesel realized two things.
A
FEW SMALL PIECES
OF RECOGNITION
1.
The shadow’s identity and
2.
The fact that it had seen everything
The shadow’s
hands were in its coat pockets.
It had fluffy
hair.
If it had a
face, the expression on it would have been one of injury.
“Gottverdammt,”
Liesel said,
only loud enough for herself. “Goddamn it.”
“Are we ready to
go?”
In the previous
moments of stupendous danger, Papa had said goodbye to Wolfgang Edel and was
ready to accompany Liesel home.
“Ready,” she
answered.
They began to
leave the scene of the crime, and the book was well and truly burning her now.
The
Shoulder Shrug
had applied itself to her rib cage.
As they walked
past the precarious town hall shadows, the book thief winced.
“What’s wrong?”
Papa asked.
“Nothing.”
Quite a few
things, however, were most definitely wrong:
Smoke was rising
out of Liesel’s collar.
A necklace of
sweat had formed around her throat.
Beneath her
shirt, a book was eating her up.
PART THREE
meinkampf
featuring:
the way home—a broken woman—a struggler—
a juggler—the attributes of summer—
an aryan shopkeeper—a snorer—two tricksters—
and revenge in the shape of mixed candy
THE WAY HOME
Mein Kampf.
The book penned
by the
Führer
himself.
It was the third
book of great importance to reach Liesel Meminger; only this time, she did not
steal it. The book showed up at 33 Himmel Street perhaps an hour after Liesel
had drifted back to sleep from her obligatory nightmare.