As she crossed
the river, a rumor of sunshine stood behind the clouds.
At 8 Grande
Strasse, she walked up the steps, left the plate by the front door, and
knocked, and by the time the door was opened, the girl was around the corner.
Liesel did not look back, but she knew that if she did, she’d have found her
brother at the bottom of the steps again, his knee completely healed. She could
even hear his voice.
“That’s better,
Liesel.”
It was with
great sadness that she realized that her brother would be six forever, but when
she held that thought, she also made an effort to smile.
She remained at
the Amper River, at the bridge, where Papa used to stand and lean.
She smiled and
smiled, and when it all came out, she walked home and her brother never climbed
into her sleep again. In many ways, she would miss him, but she could never
miss his deadly eyes on the floor of the train or the sound of a cough that killed.
The book thief
lay in bed that night, and the boy only came before she closed her eyes. He was
one member of a cast, for Liesel was always visited in that room. Her papa
stood and called her half a woman. Max was writing
The Word Shaker
in
the corner. Rudy was naked by the door. Occasionally her mother stood on a
bedside train platform. And far away, in the room that stretched like a bridge
to a nameless town, her brother, Werner, played in the cemetery snow.
From down the
hall, like a metronome for the visions, Rosa snored, and Liesel lay awake
surrounded, but also remembering a quote from her most recent book.
THE
LAST HUMAN STRANGER, PAGE 38
There were people everywhere on the city
street, but the stranger could not have
been more alone if it were empty.
When morning
came, the visions were gone and she could hear the quiet recital of words in
the living room. Rosa was sitting with the accordion, praying.
“Make them come
back alive,” she repeated. “Please, Lord, please. All of them.” Even the wrinkles
around her eyes were joining hands.
The accordion
must have ached her, but she remained.
Rosa would never
tell Hans about these moments, but Liesel believed that it must have been those
prayers that helped Papa survive the LSE’s accident in Essen. If they didn’t
help, they certainly can’t have hurt.
THE ACCIDENT
It was a
surprisingly clear afternoon and the men were climbing into the truck. Hans
Hubermann had just sat down in his appointed seat. Reinhold Zucker was standing
above him.
“Move it,” he said.
“
Bitte?
Excuse
me?”
Zucker was
hunched beneath the vehicle’s ceiling. “I said move it,
Arschloch.
” The
greasy jungle of his fringe fell in clumps onto his forehead. “I’m swapping
seats with you.”
Hans was
confused. The backseat was probably the most uncomfortable of the lot. It was
the draftiest, the coldest. “Why?”
“Does it
matter?” Zucker was losing patience. “Maybe I want to get off first to use the
shit house.”
Hans was quickly
aware that the rest of the unit was already watching this pitiful struggle
between two supposed grown men. He didn’t want to lose, but he didn’t want to
be petty, either. Also, they’d just finished a tiring shift and he didn’t have
the energy to go on with it. Bent-backed, he made his way forward to the vacant
seat in the middle of the truck.
“Why did you
give in to that
Scheisskopf
?” the man next to him asked.
Hans lit a match
and offered a share of the cigarette. “The draft back there goes straight
through my ears.”
The olive green
truck was on its way toward the camp, maybe ten miles away. Brunnenweg was
telling a joke about a French waitress when the left front wheel was punctured
and the driver lost control. The vehicle rolled many times and the men swore as
they tumbled with the air, the light, the trash, and the tobacco. Outside, the
blue sky changed from ceiling to floor as they clambered for something to hold.
When it stopped,
they were all crowded onto the right-hand wall of the truck, their faces wedged
against the filthy uniform next to them. Questions of health were passed around
until one of the men, Eddie Alma, started shouting, “Get this bastard off me!”
He said it three times, fast. He was staring into Reinhold Zucker’s blinkless
eyes.
THE
DAMAGE, ESSEN
Six men burned by cigarettes.
Two broken hands.
Several broken fingers.
A broken leg for Hans Hubermann.
A broken neck for Reinhold
Zucker, snapped almost in line
with his earlobes.
They dragged
each other out until only the corpse was left in the truck.
The driver,
Helmut Brohmann, was sitting on the ground, scratching his head. “The tire,” he
explained, “it just blew.” Some of the men sat with him and echoed that it
wasn’t his fault. Others walked around smoking, asking each other if they
thought their injuries were bad enough to be relieved of duty. Another small
group gathered at the back of the truck and viewed the body.
Over by a tree,
a thin strip of intense pain was still opening in Hans Hubermann’s leg. “It
should have been me,” he said.
“What?” the
sergeant called over from the truck.
“He was sitting
in my seat.”
Helmut Brohmann
regained his senses and climbed back into the driver’s compartment. Sideways,
he tried to start the engine, but there was no kicking it over. Another truck
was sent for, as was an ambulance. The ambulance didn’t come.
“You know what
that means, don’t you?” said Boris Schipper. They did.
When they
resumed the trip back to camp, each man tried not to look down at Reinhold
Zucker’s openmouthed sneer. “I told you we should have turned him facedown,”
someone mentioned. A few times, some of them simply forgot and rested their
feet on the body. Once they arrived, they all tried to avoid the task of
pulling him out. When the job was done, Hans Hubermann took a few abbreviated
steps before the pain fractured in his leg and brought him down.
An hour later,
when the doctor examined him, he was told it was definitely broken. The
sergeant was on hand and stood with half a grin.
“Well,
Hubermann. Looks like you’ve got away with it, doesn’t it?” He was shaking his
round face, smoking, and he provided a list of what would happen next. “You’ll
rest up. They’ll ask me what we should do with you. I’ll tell them you did a
great job.” He blew some more smoke. “And I think I’ll tell them you’re not fit
for the LSE anymore and you should be sent back to Munich to work in an office
or do whatever cleaning up needs doing there. How does that sound?”
Unable to resist
a laugh within the grimace of pain, Hans replied, “It sounds good, Sergeant.”
Boris Schipper
finished his cigarette. “Damn right it sounds good. You’re lucky I like you,
Hubermann. You’re lucky you’re a good man, and generous with the cigarettes.”
In the next
room, they were making up the plaster.
THE BITTER TASTE OF QUESTIONS
Just over a week
after Liesel’s birthday in mid-February, she and Rosa finally received a
detailed letter from Hans Hubermann. She ran inside from the mailbox and showed
it to Mama. Rosa made her read it aloud, and they could not contain their
excitement when Liesel read about his broken leg. She was stunned to the extent
that she mouthed the next sentence only to herself.
“What is it?”
Rosa pushed.
“Saumensch?”
Liesel looked up
from the letter and was close to shouting. The sergeant had been true to his
word. “He’s coming home, Mama. Papa’s coming home!”
They embraced in
the kitchen and the letter was crushed between their bodies. A broken leg was
certainly something to celebrate.
When Liesel took
the news next door, Barbara Steiner was ecstatic. She rubbed the girl’s arms
and called out to the rest of her family. In their kitchen, the household of
Steiners seemed buoyed by the news that Hans Hubermann was returning home. Rudy
smiled and laughed, and Liesel could see that he was at least trying. However,
she could also sense the bitter taste of questions in his mouth.
Why him?
Why Hans
Hubermann and not Alex Steiner?
He had a point.
ONE TOOLBOX, ONE
BLEEDER, ONE
BEAR
Since his
father’s recruitment to the army the previous October, Rudy’s anger had been
growing nicely. The news of Hans Hubermann’s return was all he needed to take
it a few steps further. He did not tell Liesel about it. There was no
complaining that it wasn’t fair. His decision was to act.
He carried a
metal case up Himmel Street at the typical thieving time of darkening
afternoon.
RUDY’S
TOOLBOX
It was patchy red and the
length of an oversized shoe box.
It contained the following:
Rusty pocketknife
×
1
Small flashlight
×
1
Hammer
×
2
(one medium, one small)
Hand towel
×
1
Screwdriver
×
3
(varying in size)
Ski mask
×
1
Clean socks
×
1
Teddy bear
×
1
Liesel saw him
from the kitchen window—his purposeful steps and committed face, exactly like
the day he’d gone to find his father. He gripped the handle with as much force
as he could, and his movements were stiff with rage.
The book thief
dropped the towel she was holding and replaced it with a single thought.
He’s going
stealing.
She ran out to
meet him.
There was not
even the semblance of a hello.
Rudy simply
continued walking and spoke through the cold air in front of him. Close to
Tommy Müller’s apartment block, he said, “You know something, Liesel, I was
thinking. You’re not a thief at all,” and he didn’t give her a chance to reply.
“That woman lets you in. She even leaves you cookies, for Christ’s sake. I
don’t call that stealing. Stealing is what the army does. Taking your father,
and mine.” He kicked a stone and it clanged against a gate. He walked faster.
“All those rich Nazis up there, on Grande Strasse, Gelb Strasse, Heide
Strasse.”
Liesel could
concentrate on nothing but keeping up. They’d already passed Frau Diller’s and
were well onto Munich Street. “Rudy—”
“How does it
feel, anyway?”
“How does what
feel?”
“When you take
one of those books?”
At that moment,
she chose to keep still. If he wanted an answer, he’d have to come back, and he
did. “Well?” But again, it was Rudy who answered, before Liesel could even open
her mouth. “It feels good, doesn’t it? To steal something back.”
Liesel forced
her attention to the toolbox, trying to slow him down. “What have you got in
there?”
He bent over and
opened it up.
Everything
appeared to make sense but the teddy bear.
As they kept
walking, Rudy explained the toolbox at length, and what he would do with each
item. For example, the hammers were for smashing windows and the towel was to
wrap them up, to quell the sound.
“And the teddy
bear?”
It belonged to
Anna-Marie Steiner and was no bigger than one of Liesel’s books. The fur was
shaggy and worn. The eyes and ears had been sewn back on repeatedly, but it was
friendly looking nonetheless.
“That,” answered
Rudy, “is the one masterstroke. That’s if a kid walks in while I’m inside. I’ll
give it to them to calm them down.”
“And what do you
plan to steal?”
He shrugged.
“Money, food, jewelry. Whatever I can get my hands on.” It sounded simple
enough.
It wasn’t until
fifteen minutes later, when Liesel watched the sudden silence on his face, that
she realized Rudy Steiner wasn’t stealing anything. The commitment had
disappeared, and although he still watched the imagined glory of stealing, she
could see that now he was not believing it. He was
trying
to believe it,
and that’s never a good sign. His criminal greatness was unfurling before his
eyes, and as the footsteps slowed and they watched the houses, Liesel’s relief
was pure and sad inside her.
It was Gelb
Strasse.
On the whole,
the houses sat dark and huge.
Rudy took off
his shoes and held them with his left hand. He held the toolkit with his right.
Between the
clouds, there was a moon. Perhaps a mile of light.
“What am I
waiting for?” he asked, but Liesel didn’t reply. Again, Rudy opened his mouth,
but without any words. He placed the toolbox on the ground and sat on it.