The Book Thief(82)

Mamas soup? Really?



It was not a smile he gave her. Thank you for the presents. More just a slight tear of the mouth. Thank you for the cloud. Your papa explained that one a little further.



After an hour, Liesel also made an attempt on the truth. We didnt know what wed do if youd died, Max. We



It didnt take him long. You mean, how to get rid of me?



Im sorry.



No. He was not offended. You were right. He played weakly with the ball. You were right to think that way. In your situation, a dead Jew is just as dangerous as a live one, if not worse.



I also dreamed. In detail, she explained it, with the soldier in her grip. She was on the verge of apologizing again when Max intervened.



Liesel. He made her look at him. Dont ever apologize to me. It should be me who apologizes to you. He looked at everything shed brought him. Look at all this. These gifts. He held the button in his hand. And Rosa said you read to me twice every day, sometimes three times. Now he looked at the curtains as if he could see out of them. He sat up a little higher and paused for a dozen silent sentences. Trepidation found its way onto his face and he made a confession to the girl. Liesel? He moved slightly to the right. Im afraid, he said, of falling asleep again.



Liesel was resolute. Then Ill read to you. And Ill slap your face if you start dozing off. Ill close the book and shake you till you wake up.



That afternoon, and well into the night, Liesel read to Max Vandenburg. He sat in bed and absorbed the words, awake this time, until just after ten oclock. When Liesel took a quick rest from The Dream Carrier, she looked over the book and Max was asleep. Nervously, she nudged him with it. He awoke.



Another three times, he fell asleep. Twice more, she woke him.



For the next four days, he woke up every morning in Liesels bed, then next to the fireplace, and eventually, by mid-April, in the basement. His health had improved, the beard was gone, and small scraps of weight had returned.



In Liesels inside world, there was great relief in that time. Outside, things were starting to look shaky. Late in March, a place called Lbeck was hailed with bombs. Next in line would be Cologne, and soon enough, many more German cities, including Munich.



Yes, the boss was at my shoulder.



Get it done, get it done.



The bombs were comingand so was I.





DEATHS DIARY: COLOGNE





The fallen hours of May 30.



Im sure Liesel Meminger was fast asleep when more than a thousand bomber planes flew toward a place known as Kln. For me, the result was five hundred people or thereabouts. Fifty thousand others ambled homelessly around the ghostly piles of rubble, trying to work out which way was which, and which slabs of broken home belonged to whom.



Five hundred souls.



I carried them in my fingers, like suitcases. Or Id throw them over my shoulder. It was only the children I carried in my arms.



By the time I was finished, the sky was yellow, like burning newspaper. If I looked closely, I could see the words, reporting headlines, commentating on the progress of the war and so forth. How Id have loved to pull it all down, to screw up the newspaper sky and toss it away. My arms ached and I couldnt afford to burn my fingers. There was still so much work to be done.



As you might expect, many people died instantly. Others took a while longer. There were several more places to go, skies to meet and souls to collect, and when I came back to Cologne later on, not long after the final planes, I managed to notice a most unique thing.



I was carrying the charred soul of a teenager when I looked gravely up at what was now a sulfuric sky. A group of ten-year-old girls was close by. One of them called out.



Whats that?



Her arm extended and her finger pointed out the black, slow object, falling from above. It began as a black feather, lilting, floating. Or a piece of ash. Then it grew larger. The same girla redhead with period frecklesspoke once again, this time more emphatically. What is that?



Its a body, another girl suggested. Black hair, pigtails, and a crooked part down the center.



Its another bomb!



It was too slow to be a bomb.



With the adolescent spirit still burning lightly in my arms, I walked a few hundred meters with the rest of them. Like the girls, I remained focused on the sky. The last thing I wanted was to look down at the stranded face of my teenager. A pretty girl. Her whole death was now ahead of her.



Like the rest of them, I was taken aback when a voice lunged out. It was a disgruntled father, ordering his kids inside. The redhead reacted. Her freckles lengthened into commas. But, Papa, look.



The man took several small steps and soon figured out what it was. Its the fuel, he said.



What do you mean?



The fuel, he repeated. The tank. He was a bald man in disrupted bedclothes. They used up all their fuel in that one and got rid of the empty container. Look, theres another one over there.



And there!



Kids being kids, they all searched frantically at that point, trying to find an empty fuel container floating to the ground.