The Book Thief (7 page)

On the way home,
Mr. Steiner decided to talk politics with the boy as best he could. Only in the
years ahead would Rudy understand it all— when it was too late to bother
understanding anything.

They walked
around a few corners onto Himmel Street, and Alex said, “Son, you can’t go
around painting yourself black, you hear?”

Rudy was
interested, and confused. The moon was undone now, free to move and rise and
fall and drip on the boy’s face, making him nice and murky, like his thoughts.
“Why not, Papa?”

“Because they’ll
take you away.”

“Why?”

“Because you
shouldn’t want to be like black people or Jewish people or anyone who is . . .
not
us.
”

“Who are Jewish
people?”

“You know my
oldest customer, Mr. Kaufmann? Where we bought your shoes?”

“Yes.”

“Well, he’s
Jewish.”

“I didn’t know
that. Do you have to pay to be Jewish? Do you need a license?”

“No, Rudy.” Mr.
Steiner was steering the bike with one hand and Rudy with the other. He was
having trouble steering the conversation. He still hadn’t relinquished the hold
on his son’s earlobe. He’d forgotten about it. “It’s like you’re German or
Catholic.”

“Oh. Is Jesse
Owens Catholic?”

“
I
don’t
know!” He tripped on a bike pedal then and released the ear.

They walked on
in silence for a while, until Rudy said, “I just wish I was like Jesse Owens,
Papa.”

This time, Mr.
Steiner placed his hand on Rudy’s head and explained, “I know, son—but you’ve
got beautiful blond hair and big, safe blue eyes. You should be happy with
that; is that clear?”

But nothing was
clear.

Rudy understood
nothing, and that night was the prelude of things to come. Two and a half years
later, the Kaufmann Shoe Shop was reduced to broken glass, and all the shoes
were flung aboard a truck in their boxes.

THE OTHER SIDE OF SANDPAPER

People have
defining moments, I suppose, especially when they’re children. For some it’s a
Jesse Owens incident. For others it’s a moment of bed-wetting hysteria:

It was late May
1939, and the night had been like most others. Mama shook her iron fist. Papa
was out. Liesel cleaned the front door and watched the Himmel Street sky.

Earlier, there
had been a parade.

The
brown-shirted extremist members of the NSDAP (otherwise known as the Nazi Party)
had marched down Munich Street, their banners worn proudly, their faces held
high, as if on sticks. Their voices were full of song, culminating in a roaring
rendition of
“Deutschland über
Alles.”
“Germany over Everything.”

As always, they
were clapped.

They were
spurred on as they walked to who knows where.

People on the
street stood and watched, some with straight-armed salutes, others with hands
that burned from applause. Some kept faces that were contorted by pride and
rally like Frau Diller, and then there were the scatterings of odd men out,
like Alex Steiner, who stood like a human-shaped block of wood, clapping slow
and dutiful. And beautiful. Submission.

On the footpath,
Liesel stood with her papa and Rudy. Hans Hubermann wore a face with the shades
pulled down.

In the night,
Liesel dreamed like she always did. At first, she saw the brownshirts marching,
but soon enough, they led her to a train, and the usual discovery awaited. Her
brother was staring again.

When she woke up
screaming, Liesel knew immediately that on this occasion, something had changed.
A smell leaked out from under the sheets, warm and sickly. At first, she tried
convincing herself that nothing had happened, but as Papa came closer and held
her, she cried and admitted the fact in his ear.

“Papa,” she
whispered, “Papa,” and that was all. He could probably smell it.

He lifted her
gently from the bed and carried her into the washroom. The moment came a few
minutes later.

“We take the
sheets off,” Papa said, and when he reached under and pulled at the fabric,
something loosened and landed with a thud. A black book with silver writing on
it came hurtling out and landed on the floor, between the tall man’s feet.

He looked down
at it.

He looked at the
girl, who timidly shrugged.

Then he read the
title, with concentration, aloud:
“The Grave
Digger’s Handbook.”

So that’s what
it’s called, Liesel thought.

A patch of
silence stood among them now. The man, the girl, the book. He picked it up and
spoke soft as cotton.

Four years
later, when she came to write in the basement, two thoughts struck Liesel about
the trauma of wetting the bed. First, she felt extremely lucky that it was Papa
who discovered the book. (Fortunately, when the sheets had been washed
previously, Rosa had made Liesel strip the bed and make it up. “And be quick
about it,
Saumensch
! Does it look like we’ve got all day?”) Second, she
was clearly proud of Hans Hubermann’s part in her education.
You wouldn’t
think it,
she wrote,
but it was not so much the school who helped me to
read. It was Papa.
People think he’s not so smart, and it’s true that he
doesn’t read too fast, but I
would soon learn that words and writing
actually saved his life once. Or at
least, words and a man who taught
him the accordion . . .

“First things
first,” Hans Hubermann said that night. He washed the sheets and hung them up.
“Now,” he said upon his return. “Let’s get this midnight class started.”

The yellow light
was alive with dust.

Liesel sat on
cold clean sheets, ashamed, elated. The thought of bed-wetting prodded her, but
she was going to read. She was going to read the book.

The excitement
stood up in her.

Visions of a
ten-year-old reading genius were set alight.

If only it was
that easy.

“To tell you the
truth,” Papa explained upfront, “I am not such a good reader myself.”

But it didn’t
matter that he read slowly. If anything, it might have helped that his own
reading pace was slower than average. Perhaps it would cause less frustration
in coping with the girl’s lack of ability.

Still,
initially, Hans appeared a little uncomfortable holding the book and looking
through it.

When he came
over and sat next to her on the bed, he leaned back, his legs angling over the
side. He examined the book again and dropped it on the blanket. “Now why would
a nice girl like you want to read such a thing?”

Again, Liesel
shrugged. Had the apprentice been reading the complete works of Goethe or any
other such luminary, that was what would have sat in front of them. She
attempted to explain. “I— when . . . It was sitting in the snow, and—” The
soft-spoken words fell off the side of the bed, emptying to the floor like
powder.

Papa knew what
to say, though. He always knew what to say.

He ran a hand
through his sleepy hair and said, “Well, promise me one thing, Liesel. If I die
anytime soon, you make sure they bury me right.”

She nodded, with
great sincerity.

“No skipping
chapter six or step four in chapter nine.” He laughed, as did the bed wetter.
“Well, I’m glad that’s settled. We can get on with it now.”

He adjusted his
position and his bones creaked like itchy floorboards. “The fun begins.”

Amplified by the
still of night, the book opened—a gust of wind.

Looking back,
Liesel could tell exactly what her papa was thinking when he scanned the first
page of
The Grave Digger’s Handbook.
As he realized the difficulty of
the text, he was clearly aware that such a book was hardly ideal. There were
words in there that he’d have trouble with himself. Not to mention the
morbidity of the subject. As for the girl, there was a sudden desire to read it
that she didn’t even attempt to understand. On some level, perhaps she wanted
to make sure her brother was buried right. Whatever the reason, her hunger to
read that book was as intense as any ten-year-old human could experience.

Chapter one was
called “The First Step: Choosing the Right Equipment.” In a short introductory
passage, it outlined the kind of material to be covered in the following twenty
pages. Types of shovels, picks, gloves, and so forth were itemized, as well as
the vital need to properly maintain them. This grave digging was serious.

As Papa flicked
through it, he could surely feel Liesel’s eyes on him. They reached over and
gripped him, waiting for something, anything, to slip from his lips.

“Here.” He
shifted again and handed her the book. “Look at this page and tell me how many
words you can read.”

She looked at
it—and lied.

“About half.”

“Read some for
me.” But of course, she couldn’t. When he made her point out any words she
could read and actually say them, there were only three—the three main German
words for “the.” The whole page must have had two hundred words on it.

This might be
harder than I thought.

She caught him
thinking it, just for a moment.

He lifted
himself forward, rose to his feet, and walked out.

This time, when
he came back, he said, “Actually, I have a better idea.” In his hand, there was
a thick painter’s pencil and a stack of sandpaper. “Let’s start from scratch.”
Liesel saw no reason to argue.

In the left
corner of an upturned piece of sandpaper, he drew a square of perhaps an inch
and shoved a capital
A
inside it. In the other corner, he placed a
lowercase one. So far, so good.

“A,”
Liesel said.

“
A
for
what?”

She smiled.
“Apfel.”

He wrote the
word in big letters and drew a misshapen apple under it. He was a housepainter,
not an artist. When it was complete, he looked over and said, “Now for
B.
”

As they
progressed through the alphabet, Liesel’s eyes grew larger. She had done this
at school, in the kindergarten class, but this time was better. She was the
only one there, and she was not gigantic. It was nice to watch Papa’s hand as
he wrote the words and slowly constructed the primitive sketches.

“Ah, come on,
Liesel,” he said when she struggled later on. “Something that starts with S.
It’s easy. I’m very disappointed in you.”

She couldn’t
think.

“Come on!” His
whisper played with her. “Think of Mama.”

That was when
the word struck her face like a slap. A reflex grin.
“SAUMENSCH!”
she
shouted, and Papa roared with laughter, then quieted.

“Shhh, we have
to be quiet.” But he roared all the same and wrote the word, completing it with
one of his sketches.

A TYPICAL HANS
HUBERMANN
ARTWORK