The Book Thief(8)

Liesel answered quietly. Auch Mamaalso Mama.



Well, Im Mama Number Two, then. She looked over at her husband. And him over there. She seemed to collect the words in her hand, pat them together, and hurl them across the table. That Saukerl, that filthy pigyou call him Papa, verstehst? Understand?



Yes, Liesel promptly agreed. Quick answers were appreciated in this household.



Yes, Mama, Mama corrected her. Saumensch. Call me Mama when you talk to me.



At that moment, Hans Hubermann had just completed rolling a cigarette, having licked the paper and joined it all up. He looked over at Liesel and winked. She would have no trouble calling him Papa.





THE WOMAN WITH THE IRON FIST





Those first few months were definitely the hardest.



Every night, Liesel would nightmare.



Her brothers face.



Staring at the floor.



She would wake up swimming in her bed, screaming, and drowning in the flood of sheets. On the other side of the room, the bed that was meant for her brother floated boatlike in the darkness. Slowly, with the arrival of consciousness, it sank, seemingly into the floor. This vision didnt help matters, and it would usually be quite a while before the screaming stopped.



Possibly the only good to come out of these nightmares was that it brought Hans Hubermann, her new papa, into the room, to soothe her, to love her.



He came in every night and sat with her. The first couple of times, he simply stayeda stranger to kill the aloneness. A few nights after that, he whispered, Shhh, Im here, its all right. After three weeks, he held her. Trust was accumulated quickly, due primarily to the brute strength of the mans gentleness, his thereness. The girl knew from the outset that Hans Hubermann would always appear midscream, and he would not leave.





A DEFINITION NOT FOUND

IN THE DICTIONARY

Not leaving: an act of trust and love,

often deciphered by children





Hans Hubermann sat sleepy-eyed on the bed and Liesel would cry into his sleeves and breathe him in. Every morning, just after two oclock, she fell asleep again to the smell of him. It was a mixture of dead cigarettes, decades of paint, and human skin. At first, she sucked it all in, then breathed it, until she drifted back down. Each morning, he was a few feet away from her, crumpled, almost halved, in the chair. He never used the other bed. Liesel would climb out and cautiously kiss his cheek and he would wake up and smile.



Some days Papa told her to get back into bed and wait a minute, and he would return with his accordion and play for her. Liesel would sit up and hum, her cold toes clenched with excitement. No one had ever given her music before. She would grin herself stupid, watching the lines drawing themselves down his face and the soft metal of his eyesuntil the swearing arrived from the kitchen.



STOPTHATNOISE, SAUKERL!



Papa would play a little longer.



He would wink at the girl, and clumsily, shed wink back.



A few times, purely to incense Mama a little further, he also brought the instrument to the kitchen and played through breakfast.



Papas bread and jam would be half eaten on his plate, curled into the shape of bite marks, and the music would look Liesel in the face. I know it sounds strange, but thats how it felt to her. Papas right hand strolled the tooth-colored keys. His left hit the buttons. (She especially loved to see him hit the silver, sparkled buttonthe C major.) The accordions scratched yet shiny black exterior came back and forth as his arms squeezed the dusty bellows, making it suck in the air and throw it back out. In the kitchen on those mornings, Papa made the accordion live. I guess it makes sense, when you really think about it.



How do you tell if somethings alive?



You check for breathing. The sound of the accordion was, in fact, also the announcement of safety. Daylight. During the day, it was impossible to dream of her brother. She would miss him and frequently cry in the tiny washroom as quietly as possible, but she was still glad to be awake. On her first night with the Hubermanns, she had hidden her last link to him The Grave Diggers Handbookunder her mattress, and occasionally she would pull it out and hold it. Staring at the letters on the cover and touching the print inside, she had no idea what any of it was saying. The point is, it didnt really matter what that book was about. It was what it meant that was more important.





THE BOOKS MEANING





The last time she saw her brother.



The last time she saw her mother.



Sometimes she would whisper the word Mama and see her mothers face a hundred times in a single afternoon. But those were small miseries compared to the terror of her dreams. At those times, in the enormous mileage of sleep, she had never felt so completely alone.



As Im sure youve already noticed, there were no other children in the house.



The Hubermanns had two of their own, but they were older and had moved out. Hans Junior worked in the center of Munich, and Trudy held a job as a housemaid and child minder. Soon, they would both be in the war. One would be making bullets. The other would be shooting them.



School, as you might imagine, was a terrific failure.