The Book Thief(57)





The Standover Man.



He calculated that he needed thirteen pages, so he painted forty, expecting at least twice as many slipups as successes. There were practice versions on the pages of the Molching Express, improving his basic, clumsy artwork to a level he could accept. As he worked, he heard the whispered words of a girl. His hair, she told him, is like feathers.



When he was finished, he used a knife to pierce the pages and tie them with string. The result was a thirteen-page booklet that went like this:





In late February, when Liesel woke up in the early hours of morning, a figure made its way into her bedroom. Typical of Max, it was as close as possible to a noiseless shadow.



Liesel, searching through the dark, could only vaguely sense the man coming toward her.



Hello?



There was no reply.



There was nothing but the near silence of his feet as he came closer to the bed and placed the pages on the floor, next to her socks. The pages crackled. Just slightly. One edge of them curled into the floor.



Hello?



This time there was a response.



She couldnt tell exactly where the words came from. What mattered was that they reached her. They arrived and kneeled next to the bed.



A late birthday gift. Look in the morning. Good night.



For a while, she drifted in and out of sleep, not sure anymore whether shed dreamed of Max coming in.



In the morning, when she woke and rolled over, she saw the pages sitting on the floor. She reached down and picked them up, listening to the paper as it rippled in her early-morning hands.



All my life, Ive been scared of men standing over me. . . .



As she turned them, the pages were noisy, like static around the written story.



Three days, they told me . . . and what did I find when I woke up?



There were the erased pages of Mein Kampf, gagging, suffocating under the paint as they turned.



It makes me understand that the best standover man Ive ever known . . .



Liesel read and viewed Max Vandenburgs gift three times, noticing a different brush line or word with each one. When the third reading was finished, she climbed as quietly as she could from her bed and walked to Mama and Papas room. The allocated space next to the fire was vacant.



As she thought about it, she realized it was actually appropriate, or even betterperfectto thank him where the pages were made.



She walked down the basement steps. She saw an imaginary framed photo seep into the walla quiet-smiled secret.



No more than a few meters, it was a long walk to the drop sheets and the assortment of paint cans that shielded Max Vandenburg. She removed the sheets closest to the wall until there was a small corridor to look through.



The first part of him she saw was his shoulder, and through the slender gap, she slowly, painfully, inched her hand in until it rested there. His clothing was cool. He did not wake.



She could feel his breathing and his shoulder moving up and down ever so slightly. For a while, she watched him. Then she sat and leaned back.



Sleepy air seemed to have followed her.



The scrawled words of practice stood magnificently on the wall by the stairs, jagged and childlike and sweet. They looked on as both the hidden Jew and the girl slept, hand to shoulder.



They breathed.



German and Jewish lungs.



Next to the wall, The Standover Man sat, numb and gratified, like a beautiful itch at Liesel Memingers feet.





PART FIVE





the whistler





featuring:

a floating bookthe gamblersa small ghost

two haircutsrudys youthlosers and sketches

a whistler and some shoesthree acts of stupidity

and a frightened boy with frozen legs





THE FLOATING BOOK (Part I)





A book floated down the Amper River.



A boy jumped in, caught up to it, and held it in his right hand. He grinned.



He stood waist-deep in the icy, Decemberish water.



How about a kiss, Saumensch? he said.



The surrounding air was a lovely, gorgeous, nauseating cold, not to mention the concrete ache of the water, thickening from his toes to his hips.



How about a kiss?



How about a kiss?



Poor Rudy.





A SMALL ANNOUNCEMENT

ABOUT RUDY STEINER

He didnt deserve to die the way he did.





In your visions, you see the sloppy edges of paper still stuck to his fingers. You see a shivering blond fringe. Preemptively, you conclude, as I would, that Rudy died that very same day, of hypothermia. He did not. Recollections like those merely remind me that he was not deserving of the fate that met him a little under two years later.



On many counts, taking a boy like Rudy was robberyso much life, so much to live foryet somehow, Im certain he would have loved to see the frightening rubble and the swelling of the sky on the night he passed away. Hed have cried and turned and smiled if only he could have seen the book thief on her hands and knees, next to his decimated body. Hed have been glad to witness her kissing his dusty, bomb-hit lips.

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