The Book Thief(21)

Escaping the ire of Sister Maria.



Receiving two books for Christmas.



December 17.



She remembered the date well, as it was exactly a week before Christmas.



As usual, her nightly nightmare interrupted her sleep and she was woken by Hans Hubermann. His hand held the sweaty fabric of her pajamas. The train? he whispered.



Liesel confirmed. The train.



She gulped the air until she was ready, and they began reading from the eleventh chapter of The Grave Diggers Handbook. Just past three oclock, they finished it, and only the final chapter, Respecting the Graveyard, remained. Papa, his silver eyes swollen in their tiredness and his face awash with whiskers, shut the book and expected the leftovers of his sleep. He didnt get them.



The light was out for barely a minute when Liesel spoke to him across the dark.



Papa?



He made only a noise, somewhere in his throat.



Are you awake, Papa?



Ja.



Up on one elbow. Can we finish the book, please?



There was a long breath, the scratchery of hand on whiskers, and then the light. He opened the book and began. Chapter Twelve: Respecting the Graveyard.



They read through the early hours of morning, circling and writing the words she did not comprehend and turning the pages toward daylight. A few times, Papa nearly slept, succumbing to the itchy fatigue in his eyes and the wilting of his head. Liesel caught him out on each occasion, but she had neither the selflessness to allow him to sleep nor the hide to be offended. She was a girl with a mountain to climb.



Eventually, as the darkness outside began to break up a little, they finished. The last passage looked like this:



We at the Bayern Cemetery Association hope that we have informedand entertained you in the workings, safety measures, and duties of grave digging. We wish you every success with your career in the funerary arts and hope this book has helped in some way.



When the book closed, they shared a sideways glance. Papa spoke.



We made it, huh?



Liesel, half-wrapped in blanket, studied the black book in her hand and its silver lettering. She nodded, dry-mouthed and early-morning hungry. It was one of those moments of perfect tiredness, of having conquered not only the work at hand, but the night who had blocked the way.



Papa stretched with his fists closed and his eyes grinding shut, and it was a morning that didnt dare to be rainy. They each stood and walked to the kitchen, and through the fog and frost of the window, they were able to see the pink bars of light on the snowy banks of Himmel Streets rooftops.



Look at the colors, Papa said. Its hard not to like a man who not only notices the colors, but speaks them.



Liesel still held the book. She gripped it tighter as the snow turned orange. On one of the rooftops, she could see a small boy, sitting, looking at the sky. His name was Werner, she mentioned. The words trotted out, involuntarily.



Papa said, Yes.



At school during that time, there had been no more reading tests, but as Liesel slowly gathered confidence, she did pick up a stray textbook before class one morning to see if she could read it without trouble. She could read every word, but she remained stranded at a much slower pace than that of her classmates. Its much easier, she realized, to be on the verge of something than to actually be it. This would still take time.



One afternoon, she was tempted to steal a book from the class bookshelf, but frankly, the prospect of another corridor Watschen at the hands of Sister Maria was a powerful enough deterrent. On top of that, there was actually no real desire in her to take the books from school. It was most likely the intensity of her November failure that caused this lack of interest, but Liesel wasnt sure. She only knew that it was there.



In class, she did not speak.



She didnt so much as look the wrong way.



As winter set in, she was no longer a victim of Sister Marias frustrations, preferring to watch as others were marched out to the corridor and given their just rewards. The sound of another student struggling in the hallway was not particularly enjoyable, but the fact that it was someone else was, if not a true comfort, a relief.



When school broke up briefly for Weihnachten, Liesel even afforded Sister Maria a merry Christmas before going on her way. Knowing that the Hubermanns were essentially broke, still paying off debts and paying rent quicker than the money could come in, she was not expecting a gift of any sort. Perhaps only some better food. To her surprise, on Christmas Eve, after sitting in church at midnight with Mama, Papa, Hans Junior, and Trudy, she came home to find something wrapped in newspaper under the Christmas tree.



From Saint Niklaus, Papa said, but the girl was not fooled. She hugged both her foster parents, with snow still laid across her shoulders.



Unfurling the paper, she unwrapped two small books. The first one, Faust the Dog, was written by a man named Mattheus Ottleberg. All told, she would read that book thirteen times. On Christmas Eve, she read the first twenty pages at the kitchen table while Papa and Hans Junior argued about a thing she did not understand. Something called politics.



Later, they read some more in bed, adhering to the tradition of circling the words she didnt know and writing them down. Faust the Dog also had pictureslovely curves and ears and caricatures of a German Shepherd with an obscene drooling problem and the ability to talk.