Still in
disbelief, she started to dig. He couldn’t be dead. He couldn’t be dead. He
couldn’t—
Within seconds,
snow was carved into her skin.
Frozen blood was
cracked across her hands.
Somewhere in all
the snow, she could see her broken heart, in two pieces. Each half was glowing,
and beating under all that white. She realized her mother had come back for her
only when she felt the boniness of a hand on her shoulder. She was being
dragged away. A warm scream filled her throat.
A
SMALL IMAGE, PERHAPS
*
TWENTY METERS AWAY
When the dragging was done, the mother and
the girl stood and breathed.
There was something black and rectangular
lodged in the snow.
Only the girl saw it.
She bent down and picked it up and
held it firmly in her fingers.
The book had silver writing on it.
They held hands.
A final, soaking
farewell was let go of, and they turned and left the cemetery, looking back
several times.
As for me, I
remained a few moments longer.
I waved.
No one waved
back.
Mother and
daughter vacated the cemetery and made their way toward the next train to
Munich.
Both were skinny
and pale.
Both had sores
on their lips.
Liesel noticed
it in the dirty, fogged-up window of the train when they boarded just before
midday. In the written words of the book thief herself, the journey continued
like
everything
had happened.
When the train
pulled into the
Bahnhof
in Munich, the passengers slid out as if from a
torn package. There were people of every stature, but among them, the poor were
the most easily recognized. The impoverished always try to keep moving, as if
relocating might help. They ignore the reality that a new version of the same
old problem will be waiting at the end of the trip—the relative you cringe to
kiss.
I think her
mother knew this quite well. She wasn’t delivering her children to the higher
echelons of Munich, but a foster home had apparently been found, and if nothing
else, the new family could at least feed the girl and the boy a little better,
and educate them properly.
The boy.
Liesel was sure
her mother carried the memory of him, slung over her shoulder. She dropped him.
She saw his feet and legs and body slap the platform.
How could that
woman walk?
How could she
move?
That’s the sort
of thing I’ll never know, or comprehend—what humans are capable of.
She picked him
up and continued walking, the girl clinging now to her side.
Authorities were
met and questions of lateness and the boy raised their vulnerable heads. Liesel
remained in the corner of the small, dusty office as her mother sat with
clenched thoughts on a very hard chair.
There was the
chaos of goodbye.
It was a goodbye
that was wet, with the girl’s head buried into the woolly, worn shallows of her
mother’s coat. There had been some more dragging.
Quite a way
beyond the outskirts of Munich, there was a town called Molching, said best by
the likes of you and me as “Molking.” That’s where they were taking her, to a
street by the name of Himmel.
A
TRANSLATION
Himmel
= Heaven
Whoever named
Himmel Street certainly had a healthy sense of irony. Not that it was a living
hell. It wasn’t. But it sure as hell wasn’t heaven, either.
Regardless,
Liesel’s foster parents were waiting.
The Hubermanns.
They’d been
expecting a girl and a boy and would be paid a small allowance for having them.
Nobody wanted to be the one to tell Rosa Hubermann that the boy didn’t survive
the trip. In fact, no one ever really wanted to tell her anything. As far as
dispositions go, hers wasn’t really enviable, although she had a good record
with foster kids in the past. Apparently, she’d straightened a few out.
For Liesel, it
was a ride in a car.
She’d never been
in one before.
There was the
constant rise and fall of her stomach, and the futile hopes that they’d lose
their way or change their minds. Among it all, her thoughts couldn’t help
turning toward her mother, back at the
Bahnhof,
waiting to leave again.
Shivering. Bundled up in that useless coat. She’d be eating her nails, waiting
for the train. The platform would be long and uncomfortable—a slice of cold
cement. Would she keep an eye out for the approximate burial site of her son on
the return trip? Or would sleep be too heavy?
The car moved
on, with Liesel dreading the last, lethal turn.
The day was
gray, the color of Europe.
Curtains of rain
were drawn around the car.
“Nearly there.”
The foster care lady, Frau Heinrich, turned around and smiled. “
Dein neues
Heim.
Your new home.”
Liesel made a
clear circle on the dribbled glass and looked out.
A
PHOTO OF HIMMEL STREET
The buildings appear to be glued together, mostly small houses
and apartment blocks that look nervous.
There is murky snow spread out like carpet.
There is concrete, empty hat-stand trees, and gray air.
A man was also
in the car. He remained with the girl while Frau Heinrich disappeared inside.
He never spoke. Liesel assumed he was there to make sure she wouldn’t run away
or to force her inside if she gave them any trouble. Later, however, when the
trouble did start, he simply sat there and watched. Perhaps he was only the
last resort, the final solution.
After a few
minutes, a very tall man came out. Hans Hubermann, Liesel’s foster father. On
one side of him was the medium-height Frau Heinrich. On the other was the squat
shape of Rosa Hubermann, who looked like a small wardrobe with a coat thrown
over it. There was a distinct waddle to her walk. Almost cute, if it wasn’t for
her face, which was like creased-up cardboard and annoyed, as if she was merely
tolerating all of it. Her husband walked straight, with a cigarette smoldering
between his fingers. He rolled his own.
The fact was
this:
Liesel would not
get out of the car.
“Was ist los mit
dem Kind?”
Rosa
Hubermann inquired. She said it again. “What’s wrong with this child?” She
stuck her face inside the car and said,
“Na, komm. Komm.”
The seat in
front was flung forward. A corridor of cold light invited her out. She would
not move.
Outside, through
the circle she’d made, Liesel could see the tall man’s fingers, still holding
the cigarette. Ash stumbled from its edge and lunged and lifted several times
until it hit the ground. It took nearly fifteen minutes to coax her from the
car. It was the tall man who did it.
Quietly.
There was the
gate next, which she clung to.
A gang of tears
trudged from her eyes as she held on and refused to go inside. People started
to gather on the street until Rosa Hubermann swore at them, after which they
reversed back, whence they came.
A
TRANSLATION OF
ROSA HUBERMANN’S ANNOUNCEMENT
“What are you assholes looking at?”
Eventually,
Liesel Meminger walked gingerly inside. Hans Hubermann had her by one hand. Her
small suitcase had her by the other. Buried beneath the folded layer of clothes
in that suitcase was a small black book, which, for all we know, a
fourteen-year-old grave digger in a nameless town had probably spent the last
few hours looking for. “I promise you,” I imagine him saying to his boss, “I
have no idea what happened to it. I’ve looked everywhere.
Ev
erywhere!”
I’m sure he would never have suspected the girl, and yet, there it was—a black
book with silver words written against the ceiling of her clothes:
THE
GRAVE DIGGER’S HANDBOOK
A Twelve-Step Guide to
Grave-Digging Success
Published by the Bayern Cemetery Association
The book thief
had struck for the first time—the beginning of an illustrious career.
GROWING UP A SAUMENSCH
Yes, an
illustrious career.
I should hasten
to admit, however, that there was a considerable hiatus between the first
stolen book and the second. Another noteworthy point is that the first was
stolen from snow and the second from fire. Not to omit that others were also
given to her. All told, she owned fourteen books, but she saw her story as
being made up predominantly of ten of them. Of those ten, six were stolen, one
showed up at the kitchen table, two were made for her by a hidden Jew, and one
was delivered by a soft, yellow-dressed afternoon.
When she came to
write her story, she would wonder exactly when the books and the words started
to mean not just something, but everything. Was it when she first set eyes on
the room with shelves and shelves of them? Or when Max Vandenburg arrived on
Himmel Street carrying handfuls of suffering and Hitler’s
Mein
Kampf
?
Was it reading in the shelters? The last parade to Dachau? Was it
The Word
Shaker
? Perhaps there would never be a precise answer as to when and where
it occurred. In any case, that’s getting ahead of myself. Before we make it to
any of that, we first need to tour Liesel Meminger’s beginnings on Himmel
Street and the art of
saumensch
ing:
Upon her
arrival, you could still see the bite marks of snow on her hands and the frosty
blood on her fingers. Everything about her was undernourished. Wirelike shins.
Coat hanger arms. She did not produce it easily, but when it came, she had a
starving smile.
Her hair was a
close enough brand of German blond, but she had dangerous eyes. Dark brown. You
didn’t really want brown eyes in Germany around that time. Perhaps she received
them from her father, but she had no way of knowing, as she couldn’t remember
him. There was really only one thing she knew about her father. It was a label
she did not understand.
A
STRANGE WORD
Kommunist
She’d heard it
several times in the past few years.
“Communist.”
There were
boardinghouses crammed with people, rooms filled with questions. And that word.
That strange word was always there somewhere, standing in the corner, watching
from the dark. It wore suits, uniforms. No matter where they went, there it
was, each time her father was mentioned. She could smell it and taste it. She
just couldn’t spell or understand it. When she asked her mother what it meant,
she was told that it wasn’t important, that she shouldn’t worry about such
things. At one boardinghouse, there was a healthier woman who tried to teach
the children to write, using charcoal on the wall. Liesel was tempted to ask her
the meaning, but it never eventuated. One day, that woman was taken away for
questioning. She didn’t come back.
When Liesel
arrived in Molching, she had at least some inkling that she was being saved,
but that was not a comfort. If her mother loved her, why leave her on someone
else’s doorstep? Why? Why?
Why?
The fact that
she knew the answer—if only at the most basic level—seemed beside the point.
Her mother was constantly sick and there was never any money to fix her. Liesel
knew that. But that didn’t mean she had to accept it. No matter how many times
she was told that she was loved, there was no recognition that the proof was in
the abandonment. Nothing changed the fact that she was a lost, skinny child in
another foreign place, with more foreign people. Alone.
The Hubermanns
lived in one of the small, boxlike houses on Himmel Street. A few rooms, a
kitchen, and a shared outhouse with neighbors. The roof was flat and there was
a shallow basement for storage. It was supposedly not a basement of
adequate
depth.
In 1939, this wasn’t a problem. Later, in ’42 and ’43, it was. When
air raids started, they always needed to rush down the street to a better
shelter.
In the
beginning, it was the profanity that made an immediate impact. It was so
vehement
and prolific. Every second word was either
Saumensch
or
Saukerl
or
Arschloch.
For people who aren’t familiar with these words, I should
explain.
Sau,
of course, refers to pigs. In the case of Sau
mensch,
it
serves to castigate, berate, or plain humiliate a female. Sau
kerl
(pronounced
“saukairl”) is for a male.
Arschloch
can be translated directly into
“asshole.” That word, however, does not differentiate between the sexes. It
simply is.
“Saumensch, du
dreckiges!”
Liesel’s
foster mother shouted that first evening when she refused to have a bath. “You
filthy pig! Why won’t you get undressed?” She was good at being furious. In
fact, you could say that Rosa Hubermann had a face decorated with constant
fury. That was how the creases were made in the cardboard texture of her complexion.