The Book Thief (2 page)

All that was
left was the body, the dwindling smell of smoke, and the smiling teddy bear.

As the crowd
arrived in full, things, of course, had changed. The horizon was beginning to
charcoal. What was left of the blackness above was nothing now but a scribble,
and disappearing fast.

The man, in
comparison, was the color of bone. Skeleton-colored skin. A ruffled uniform.
His eyes were cold and brown—like coffee stains—and the last scrawl from above
formed what, to me, appeared an odd, yet familiar, shape. A signature.

The crowd did
what crowds do.

As I made my way
through, each person stood and played with the quietness of it. It was a small
concoction of disjointed hand movements, muffled sentences, and mute,
self-conscious turns.

When I glanced
back at the plane, the pilot’s open mouth appeared to be smiling.

A final dirty
joke.

Another human
punch line.

He remained
shrouded in his uniform as the graying light arm-wrestled the sky. As with many
of the others, when I began my journey away, there seemed a quick shadow again,
a final moment of eclipse—the recognition of another soul gone.

You see, to me,
for just a moment, despite all of the colors that touch and grapple with what I
see in this world, I will often catch an eclipse when a human dies.

I’ve seen
millions of them.

I’ve seen more
eclipses than I care to remember.

THE FLAG

The last time I
saw her was red. The sky was like soup, boiling and stirring. In some places,
it was burned. There were black crumbs, and pepper, streaked across the
redness.

Earlier, kids
had been playing hopscotch there, on the street that looked like oil-stained
pages. When I arrived, I could still hear the echoes. The feet tapping the
road. The children-voices laughing, and the smiles like salt, but decaying
fast.

Then, bombs.

This time,
everything was too late.

The sirens. The
cuckoo shrieks in the radio. All too late.

Within minutes,
mounds of concrete and earth were stacked and piled. The streets were ruptured
veins. Blood streamed till it was dried on the road, and the bodies were stuck
there, like driftwood after the flood.

They were glued
down, every last one of them. A packet of souls.

Was it fate?

Misfortune?

Is that what
glued them down like that?

Of course not.

Let’s not be
stupid.

It probably had
more to do with the hurled bombs, thrown down by humans hiding in the clouds.

Yes, the sky was
now a devastating, home-cooked red. The small German town had been flung apart
one more time. Snowflakes of ash fell so
lovelily
you were tempted to
stretch out your tongue to catch them, taste them. Only, they would have
scorched your lips. They would have cooked your mouth.

Clearly, I see
it.

I was just about
to leave when I found her kneeling there.

A mountain range
of rubble was written, designed, erected around her. She was clutching at a
book.

Apart from
everything else, the book thief wanted desperately to go back to the basement,
to write, or to read through her story one last time. In hindsight, I see it so
obviously on her face. She was dying for it— the safety of it, the home of
it—but she could not move. Also, the basement didn’t even exist anymore. It was
part of the mangled landscape.

Please, again, I
ask you to believe me.

I wanted to
stop. To crouch down.

I wanted to say:

“I’m sorry,
child.”

But that is not
allowed.

I did not crouch
down. I did not speak.

Instead, I
watched her awhile. When she was able to move, I followed her.

She dropped the
book.

She knelt.

The book thief
howled.

Her book was
stepped on several times as the cleanup began, and although orders were given
only to clear the mess of concrete, the girl’s most precious item was thrown
aboard a garbage truck, at which point I was compelled. I climbed aboard and
took it in my hand, not realizing that I would keep it and view it several
thousand times over the years. I would watch the places where we intersect, and
marvel at what the girl saw and how she survived. That is the best I can do—
watch it fall into line with everything else I spectated during that time.

When I recollect
her, I see a long list of colors, but it’s the three in which I saw her in the
flesh that resonate the most. Sometimes I manage to float far above those three
moments. I hang suspended, until a septic truth bleeds toward clarity.

That’s when I
see them formulate.

They fall on top
of each other. The scribbled signature black, onto the blinding global white,
onto the thick soupy red.

Yes, often, I am
reminded of her, and in one of my vast array of pockets, I have kept her story
to retell. It is one of the small legion I carry, each one extraordinary in its
own right. Each one an attempt— an immense leap of an attempt—to prove to me
that you, and your human existence, are worth it.

Here it is. One
of a handful.

If you feel like
it, come with me. I will tell you a story.

I’ll show you
something.

PART ONE

the
grave digger’s handbook

featuring:

himmel street—the art of
saumensch
ing—an ironfisted

woman—a kiss attempt—jesse owens—

sandpaper—the smell of friendship—a heavyweight

champion—and the mother of all
watschens

ARRIVAL ON HIMMEL STREET

That last time.

That red sky . .
.

How does a book
thief end up kneeling and howling and flanked by a man-made heap of ridiculous,
greasy, cooked-up rubble?

Years earlier,
the start was snow.

The time had
come. For one.

The book thief
and her brother were traveling down toward Munich, where they would soon be
given over to foster parents. We now know, of course, that the boy didn’t make
it.

When the
coughing stopped, there was nothing but the nothingness of life moving on with
a shuffle, or a near-silent twitch. A suddenness found its way onto his lips
then, which were a corroded brown color and peeling, like old paint. In
desperate need of redoing.

Their mother was
asleep.

I entered the
train.

My feet stepped
through the cluttered aisle and my palm was over his mouth in an instant.

No one noticed.

The train
galloped on.

Except the girl.

With one eye
open, one still in a dream, the book thief—also known as Liesel Meminger—could
see without question that her younger brother, Werner, was now sideways and
dead.

His blue eyes
stared at the floor.

Seeing nothing.

Prior to waking
up, the book thief was dreaming about the
Führer,
Adolf Hitler. In the
dream, she was attending a rally at which he spoke, looking at the
skull-colored part in his hair and the perfect square of his mustache. She was
listening contentedly to the torrent of words spilling from his mouth. His
sentences glowed in the light. In a quieter moment, he actually crouched down
and smiled at her. She returned the smile and said,
“Guten Tag, Herr Führer.
Wie geht’s dir
heut?”
She hadn’t learned to speak too well, or even
to read, as she had rarely frequented school. The reason for that she would
find out in due course.

Just as the
Führer
was about to reply, she woke up.

It was January
1939. She was nine years old, soon to be ten.

Her brother was
dead.

One eye open.

One still in a
dream.

It would be
better for a complete dream, I think, but I really have no control over that.

The second eye
jumped awake and she caught me out, no doubt about it. It was exactly when I
knelt down and extracted his soul, holding it limply in my swollen arms. He
warmed up soon after, but when I picked him up originally, the boy’s spirit was
soft and cold, like ice cream. He started melting in my arms. Then warming up
completely. Healing.

For Liesel
Meminger, there was the imprisoned stiffness of movement and the staggered
onslaught of thoughts.
Es stimmt nicht.
This isn’t happening. This isn’t
happening.

And the shaking.

Why do they
always shake them?

Yes, I know, I
know, I assume it has something to do with instinct. To stem the flow of truth.
Her heart at that point was slippery and hot, and loud, so loud so loud.

Stupidly, I
stayed. I watched.

Next, her
mother.

She woke her up
with the same distraught shake.

If you can’t
imagine it, think clumsy silence. Think bits and pieces of floating despair.
And drowning in a train.

Snow had been
falling consistently, and the service to Munich was forced to stop due to
faulty track work. There was a woman wailing. A girl stood numbly next to her.

In panic, the
mother opened the door.

She climbed down
into the snow, holding the small body.

What could the
girl do but follow?

As you’ve been
informed, two guards also exited the train. They discussed and argued over what
to do. The situation was unsavory to say the least. It was eventually decided
that all three of them should be taken to the next township and left there to
sort things out.

This time, the
train limped through the snowed-in country.

It hobbled in
and stopped.

They stepped
onto the platform, the body in her mother’s arms.

They stood.

The boy was
getting heavy.

Liesel had no
idea where she was. All was white, and as they remained at the station, she
could only stare at the faded lettering of the sign in front of her. For
Liesel, the town was nameless, and it was there that her brother, Werner, was
buried two days later. Witnesses included a priest and two shivering grave
diggers.

Mistakes,
mistakes, it’s all I seem capable of at times.

For two days, I
went about my business. I traveled the globe as always, handing souls to the
conveyor belt of eternity. I watched them trundle passively on. Several times,
I warned myself that I should keep a good distance from the burial of Liesel
Meminger’s brother. I did not heed my advice.

From miles away,
as I approached, I could already see the small group of humans standing
frigidly among the wasteland of snow. The cemetery welcomed me like a friend,
and soon, I was with them. I bowed my head.

Standing to
Liesel’s left, the grave diggers were rubbing their hands together and whining
about the snow and the current digging conditions. “So hard getting through all
the ice,” and so forth. One of them couldn’t have been more than fourteen. An
apprentice. When he walked away, after a few dozen paces, a black book fell
innocuously from his coat pocket without his knowledge.

A few minutes
later, Liesel’s mother started leaving with the priest. She was thanking him
for his performance of the ceremony.

The girl,
however, stayed.

Her knees
entered the ground. Her moment had arrived.