“Really,” Liesel
said. “Just keep playing, Rudy. I can make it.”
“No, no.” He
wouldn’t be shifted. The stubbornness of him! “It’ll only take a minute or
two.”
Again, she had
to think, and again, she was able. With Rudy holding her up, she made herself
drop once more to the ground, on her back. “My papa,” she said. The sky, she
noticed, was utterly blue. Not even the suggestion of a cloud. “Could you get
him, Rudy?”
“Stay there.” To
his right, he called out, “Tommy, watch her, will you? Don’t let her move.”
Tommy snapped
into action. “I’ll watch her, Rudy.” He stood above her, twitching and trying
not to smile, as Liesel kept an eye on the party man.
A minute later,
Hans Hubermann was standing calmly above her.
“Hey, Papa.”
A disappointed
smile mingled with his lips. “I was wondering when this would happen.”
He picked her up
and helped her home. The game went on, and the Nazi was already at the door of
a lodging a few doors up. No one answered. Rudy was calling out again.
“Do you need
help, Herr Hubermann?”
“No, no, you
keep playing, Herr Steiner.” Herr Steiner. You had to love Liesel’s papa.
Once inside,
Liesel gave him the information. She attempted to find the middle ground
between silence and despair. “Papa.”
“Don’t talk.”
“The party,” she
whispered. Papa stopped. He fought off the urge to open the door and look up
the street. “They’re checking basements to make shelters.”
He set her down.
“Smart girl,” he said, then called for Rosa.
They had a
minute to come up with a plan. A shemozzle of thoughts.
“We’ll just put
him in Liesel’s room,” was Mama’s suggestion. “Under the bed.”
“That’s
it
?
What if they decide to search our rooms as well?”
“Do you have a
better plan?”
Correction: they
did not have a minute.
A seven-punch
knock was hammered into the door of 33 Himmel Street, and it was too late to
move anyone anywhere.
The voice.
“Open up!”
Their heartbeats
fought each other, a mess of rhythm. Liesel tried to eat hers down. The taste
of heart was not too cheerful.
Rosa whispered,
“Jesus, Mary—”
On this day, it
was Papa who rose to the occasion. He rushed to the basement door and threw a
warning down the steps. When he returned, he spoke fast and fluent. “Look,
there is no time for tricks. We could distract him a hundred different ways,
but there is only one solution.” He eyed the door and summed up. “Nothing.”
That was not the
answer Rosa wanted. Her eyes widened. “Nothing? Are you
crazy
?”
The knocking
resumed.
Papa was strict.
“Nothing. We don’t even go down there—not a care in the world.”
Everything slowed.
Rosa accepted
it.
Clenched with
distress, she shook her head and proceeded to answer the door.
“Liesel.” Papa’s
voice sliced her up. “Just stay calm,
verstehst
?”
“Yes, Papa.”
She tried to
concentrate on her bleeding leg.
“Aha!”
At the door,
Rosa was still asking the meaning of this interruption when the kindly party
man noticed Liesel.
“The maniacal
soccer player!” He grinned. “How’s the knee?” You don’t usually imagine the
Nazis being too chirpy, but this man certainly was. He came in and made as if
to crouch and view the injury.
Does he know?
Liesel thought. Can he smell we’re hiding a Jew?
Papa came from
the sink with a wet cloth and soaked it onto Liesel’s knee. “Does it sting?”
His silver eyes were caring and calm. The scare in them could easily be
mistaken as concern for the injury.
Rosa called
across the kitchen, “It can’t sting enough. Maybe it will teach her a lesson.”
The party man
stood and laughed. “I don’t think this girl is learning any lessons out there,
Frau . . . ?”
“Hubermann.” The
cardboard contorted.
“. . . Frau
Hubermann—I think she
teaches
lessons.” He handed Liesel a smile. “To
all those boys. Am I right, young girl?”
Papa shoved the
cloth into the graze and Liesel winced rather than answered. It was Hans who
spoke. A quiet “sorry,” to the girl.
There was the
discomfort of silence then, and the party man remembered his purpose. “If you
don’t mind,” he explained, “I need to inspect your basement, just for a minute
or two, to see if it’s suitable for a shelter.”
Papa gave
Liesel’s knee a final dab. “You’ll have a nice bruise there, too, Liesel.”
Casually, he acknowledged the man above them. “Certainly. First door on the
right. Please excuse the mess.”
“I wouldn’t
worry—it can’t be worse than some of the others I’ve seen today. . . . This
one?”
“That’s it.”
THE
LONGEST THREE MINUTES
IN HUBERMANN HISTORY
Papa sat at the table. Rosa prayed in the corner,
mouthing the words. Liesel was cooked: her knee,
her chest, the muscles in her arms. I doubt any
of them had the audacity to consider what they’d
do if the basement was appointed as a shelter.
They had to survive the inspection first.
They listened to
Nazi footsteps in the basement. There was the sound of measuring tape. Liesel
could not ward off the thought of Max sitting beneath the steps, huddled around
his sketchbook, hugging it to his chest.
Papa stood.
Another idea.
He walked to the
hall and called out, “Everything good down there?”
The answer
ascended the steps, on top of Max Vandenburg. “Another minute, perhaps!”
“Would you like
some coffee, some tea?”
“No thank you!”
When Papa
returned, he ordered Liesel to fetch a book and for Rosa to start cooking. He
decided the last thing they should do was sit around looking worried. “Well,
come on,” he said loudly, “move it, Liesel. I don’t care if your knee hurts.
You have to finish that book, like you said.”
Liesel tried not
to break. “Yes, Papa.”
“What are you
waiting for?” It took great effort to wink at her, she could tell.
In the corridor,
she nearly collided with the party man.
“In trouble with
your papa, huh? Never mind. I’m the same with my own children.”
They walked
their separate ways, and when Liesel made it to her room, she closed the door
and fell to her knees, despite the added pain. She listened first to the
judgment that the basement was too shallow, then the goodbyes, one of which was
sent down the corridor. “Goodbye, maniacal soccer player!”
She remembered
herself. “
Auf Wiedersehen!
Goodbye!”
The Dream
Carrier
simmered
in her hands.
According to
Papa, Rosa melted next to the stove the moment the party man was gone. They
collected Liesel and made their way to the basement, removing the well-placed
drop sheets and paint cans. Max Vandenburg sat beneath the steps, holding his
rusty scissors like a knife. His armpits were soggy and the words fell like
injuries from his mouth.
“I wouldn’t have
used them,” he quietly said. “I’m . . .” He held the rusty arms flat against
his forehead. “I’m so sorry I put you through that.”
Papa lit a
cigarette. Rosa took the scissors.
“You’re alive,” she
said. “We all are.”
It was too late
now for apologies.
THE SCHMUNZELER
Minutes later, a
second knocker was at the door.
“Good Lord,
another one!”
Worry resumed
immediately.
Max was covered
up.
Rosa trudged up
the basement steps, but when she opened the door this time, it was not the
Nazis. It was none other than Rudy Steiner. He stood there, yellow-haired and
good-intentioned. “I just came to see how Liesel is.”
When she heard
his voice, Liesel started making her way up the steps. “I can deal with this
one.”
“Her boyfriend,”
Papa mentioned to the paint cans. He blew another mouthful of smoke.
“He is
not
my
boyfriend,” Liesel countered, but she was not irritated. It was impossible
after such a close call. “I’m only going up because Mama will be yelling out
any second.”
“Liesel!”
She was on the
fifth step. “See?”
When she reached
the door, Rudy moved from foot to foot. “I just came to see—” He stopped.
“What’s that smell?” He sniffed. “Have you been smoking in there?”
“Oh. I was
sitting with Papa.”
“Do you have any
cigarettes? Maybe we can sell some.”
Liesel wasn’t in
the mood for this. She spoke quietly enough so that Mama wouldn’t hear. “I
don’t steal from my papa.”
“But you steal
from certain other places.”
“Talk a bit
louder, why don’t you.”
Rudy
schmunzel
ed.
“See what stealing does? You’re all worried.”
“Like you’ve
never stolen anything.”
“Yes, but you
reek of it.” Rudy was really warming up now. “Maybe that’s not cigarette smoke
after all.” He leaned closer and smiled. “It’s a criminal I can smell. You
should have a bath.” He shouted back to Tommy Müller. “Hey, Tommy, you should
come and have a smell of this!”
“What did you
say?” Trust Tommy. “I can’t hear you!”
Rudy shook his
head in Liesel’s direction. “Useless.”
She started
shutting the door. “Get lost,
Saukerl,
you’re the last thing I need
right now.”
Very pleased
with himself, Rudy made his way back to the street. At the mailbox, he seemed
to remember what he’d wanted to verify all along. He came back a few steps. “
Alles
gut, Saumensch?
The injury, I mean.”
It was June. It
was Germany.
Things were on
the verge of decay.
Liesel was
unaware of this. For her, the Jew in her basement had not been revealed. Her
foster parents were not taken away, and she herself had contributed greatly to
both of these accomplishments.
“Everything’s
good,” she said, and she was not talking about a soccer injury of any
description.
She was fine.
DEATH’S
DIARY: THE PARISIANS
Summer came.
For the book
thief, everything was going nicely.
For me, the sky
was the color of Jews.
When their
bodies had finished scouring for gaps in the door, their souls rose up. When
their fingernails had scratched at the wood and in some cases were nailed into
it by the sheer force of desperation, their spirits came toward me, into my
arms, and we climbed out of those shower facilities, onto the roof and up, into
eternity’s certain breadth. They just kept feeding me. Minute after minute.
Shower after shower.
I’ll never
forget the first day in Auschwitz, the first time in Mauthausen. At that second
place, as time wore on, I also picked them up from the bottom of the great
cliff, when their escapes fell awfully awry. There were broken bodies and dead,
sweet hearts. Still, it was better than the gas. Some of them I caught when
they were only halfway down. Saved you, I’d think, holding their souls in
midair as the rest of their being—their physical shells—plummeted to the earth.
All of them were light, like the cases of empty walnuts. Smoky sky in those
places. The smell like a stove, but still so cold.
I shiver when I
remember—as I try to de-realize it.
I blow warm air
into my hands, to heat them up.
But it’s hard to
keep them warm when the souls still shiver.
God.
I always say
that name when I think of it.
God.
Twice, I speak
it.
I say His name
in a futile attempt to understand. “But it’s not your job to understand.”
That’s me who answers. God never says anything. You think you’re the only one
he never answers? “Your job is to . . .” And I stop listening to me, because to
put it bluntly, I tire me. When I start thinking like that, I become so
exhausted, and I don’t have the luxury of indulging fatigue. I’m compelled to
continue on, because although it’s not true for every person on earth, it’s
true for the vast majority—that death waits for no man—and if he does, he
doesn’t usually wait very long.
On June 23,
1942, there was a group of French Jews in a German prison, on Polish soil. The
first person I took was close to the door, his mind racing, then reduced to
pacing, then slowing down, slowing down. . . .
Please believe
me when I tell you that I picked up each soul that day as if it were newly
born. I even kissed a few weary, poisoned cheeks. I listened to their last,
gasping cries. Their vanishing words. I watched their love visions and freed
them from their fear.
I took them all
away, and if ever there was a time I needed distraction, this was it. In
complete desolation, I looked at the world above. I watched the sky as it
turned from silver to gray to the color of rain. Even the clouds were trying to
get away.
Sometimes I
imagined how everything looked above those clouds, knowing without question
that the sun was blond, and the endless atmosphere was a giant blue eye.
They were
French, they were Jews, and they were you.