The Book Thief(120)
A SMALL, SAD HOPE
No one wanted to
bomb Himmel Street.
No one would bomb a
place named after
heaven, would they?
Would they?
The bombs came down, and soon, the clouds would bake and the cold raindrops would turn to ash. Hot snowflakes would shower to the ground.
In short, Himmel Street was flattened.
Houses were splashed from one side of the street to the other. A framed photo of a very serious-looking Fhrer was bashed and beaten on the shattered floor. Yet he smiled, in that serious way of his. He knew something we all didnt know. But I knew something he didnt know. All while people slept.
Rudy Steiner slept. Mama and Papa slept. Frau Holtzapfel, Frau Diller. Tommy Mller. All sleeping. All dying.
Only one person survived.
She survived because she was sitting in a basement reading through the story of her own life, checking for mistakes. Previously, the room had been declared too shallow, but on that night, October 7, it was enough. The shells of wreckage cantered down, and hours later, when the strange, unkempt silence settled itself in Molching, the local LSE could hear something. An echo. Down there, somewhere, a girl was hammering a paint can with a pencil.
They all stopped, with bent ears and bodies, and when they heard it again, they started digging.
PASSED ITEMS, HAND TO HAND
Blocks of cement and roof tiles.
A piece of wall with a dripping
sun painted on it. An unhappy-
looking accordion, peering
through its eaten case.
They threw all of it upward.
When another piece of broken wall was removed, one of them saw the book thiefs hair.
The man had such a nice laugh. He was delivering a newborn child. I cant believe itshes alive!
There was so much joy among the cluttering, calling men, but I could not fully share their enthusiasm.
Earlier, Id held her papa in one arm and her mama in the other. Each soul was so soft.
Farther away, their bodies were laid out, like the rest. Papas lovely silver eyes were already starting to rust, and Mamas cardboard lips were fixed half open, most likely the shape of an incomplete snore. To blaspheme like the GermansJesus, Mary, and Joseph.
The rescuing hands pulled Liesel out and brushed the crumbs of rubble from her clothes. Young girl, they said, the sirens were too late. What were you doing in the basement? How did you know?
What they didnt notice was that the girl was still holding the book. She screamed her reply. A stunning scream of the living.
Papa!
A second time. Her face creased as she reached a higher, more panic-stricken pitch. Papa, Papa!
They passed her up as she shouted, wailed, and cried. If she was injured, she did not yet know it, for she struggled free and searched and called and wailed some more.
She was still clutching the book.
She was holding desperately on to the words who had saved her life.
THE NINETY-EIGHTH DAY
For the first ninety-seven days after Hans Hubermanns return in April 1943, everything was fine. On many occasions he was pensive about the thought of his son fighting in Stalingrad, but he hoped that some of his luck was in the boys blood.
On his third night at home, he played the accordion in the kitchen. A promise was a promise. There was music, soup, and jokes, and the laughter of a fourteen-year-old girl.
Saumensch, Mama warned her, stop laughing so loud. His jokes arent that funny. And theyre filthy, too. . . .
After a week, Hans resumed his service, traveling into the city to one of the army offices. He said that there was a good supply of cigarettes and food there, and sometimes he was able to bring home some cookies or extra jam. It was like the good old days. A minor air raid in May. A heil Hitler here or there and everything was fine.
Until the ninety-eighth day.
A SMALL STATEMENT
BYAN OLD WOMAN
On Munich Street, she said, Jesus,
Mary, and Joseph, I wish they
wouldnt bring them through. These
wretched Jews, theyre rotten luck.
Theyre a bad sign. Every time I see
them, I know well be ruined.
It was the same old lady who announced the Jews the first time Liesel saw them. On ground level, her face was a prune. Her eyes were the dark blue of a vein. And her prediction was accurate.
In the heart of summer, Molching was delivered a sign of things to come. It moved into sight like it always did. First the bobbing head of a soldier and the gun poking at the air above him. Then the ragged chain of clinking Jews.
The only difference this time was that they were brought from the opposite direction. They were taken through to the neighboring town of Nebling to scrub the streets and do the cleanup work that the army refused to do. Late in the day, they were marched back to camp, slow and tired, defeated.
Again, Liesel searched for Max Vandenburg, thinking that he could easily have ended up in Dachau without being marched through Molching. He was not there. Not on this occasion.