The Book Thief (21 page)

The authorities’ problem with the book was obvious. The protagonist was a Jew, and he was presented in a positive light. Unforgivable. He was a rich man who was tired of letting life pass him by—what he referred to as the shrugging of the shoulders to the problems and pleasures of a person’s time on earth.

In the early part of summer in Molching, as Liesel and Papa made their way through the book, this man was traveling to Amsterdam on business, and the snow was shivering outside. The girl loved that—the shivering snow. “That’s exactly what it does when it comes down,” she told Hans Hubermann. They sat together on the bed, Papa half asleep and the girl wide awake.

Sometimes she watched Papa as he slept, knowing both more and less about him than either of them realized. She often heard him and Mama discussing his lack of work or talking despondently about Hans going to see their son, only to discover that the young man had left his lodging and was most likely already on his way to war.

“Schlaf gut
, Papa,” the girl said at those times. “Sleep well,” and she slipped around him, out of bed, to turn off the light.

The next attribute, as I’ve mentioned, was the mayor’s library.

To exemplify that particular situation, we can look to a cool day in late June. Rudy, to put it mildly, was incensed.

Who did Liesel Meminger think she was, telling him she had to take the washing and ironing alone today? Wasn’t he good enough to walk the streets with her?

“Stop complaining,
Saukerl,”
she reprimanded him. “I just feel bad. You’re missing the game.”

He looked over his shoulder. “Well, if you put it like that.” There was a
Schmunzel
. “You can stick your washing.” He ran off and wasted
no time joining a team. When Liesel made it to the top of Himmel Street, she looked back just in time to see him standing in front of the nearest makeshift goals. He was waving.

“Saukerl,”
she laughed, and as she held up her hand, she knew completely that he was simultaneously calling her a
Saumensch
. I think that’s as close to love as eleven-year-olds can get.

She started to run, to Grande Strasse and the mayor’s house.

Certainly, there was sweat, and the wrinkled pants of breath, stretching out in front of her.

But she was reading.

The mayor’s wife, having let the girl in for the fourth time, was sitting at the desk, simply watching the books. On the second visit, she had given permission for Liesel to pull one out and go through it, which led to another and another, until up to half a dozen books were stuck to her, either clutched beneath her arm or among the pile that was climbing higher in her remaining hand.

On this occasion, as Liesel stood in the cool surrounds of the room, her stomach growled, but no reaction was forthcoming from the mute, damaged woman. She was in her bathrobe again, and although she observed the girl several times, it was never for very long. She usually paid more attention to what was next to her, to something missing. The window was opened wide, a square cool mouth, with occasional gusty surges.

Liesel sat on the floor. The books were scattered around her.

After forty minutes, she left. Every title was returned to its place.

“Goodbye, Frau Hermann.” The words always came as a shock. “Thank you.” After which the woman paid her and she left. Every movement was accounted for, and the book thief ran home.

As summer set in, the roomful of books became warmer, and with every pickup or delivery day the floor was not as painful. Liesel would
sit with a small pile of books next to her, and she’d read a few paragraphs of each, trying to memorize the words she didn’t know, to ask Papa when she made it home. Later on, as an adolescent, when Liesel wrote about those books, she no longer remembered the titles. Not one. Perhaps had she stolen them, she would have been better equipped.

What she did remember was that one of the picture books had a name written clumsily on the inside cover:

Liesel bit down on her lip, but she could not resist it for long. From the floor, she turned and looked up at the bathrobed woman and made an inquiry. “Johann Hermann,” she said. “Who is that?”

The woman looked beside her, somewhere next to the girl’s knees.

Liesel apologized. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be asking such things ….” She let the sentence die its own death.

The woman’s face did not alter, yet somehow she managed to speak. “He is nothing now in this world,” she explained. “He was my …”

•   •   •

“Apart from everything else,” she said, “he froze to death.” For a moment, she played with her hands, and she said it again. “He froze to death, I’m sure of it.”

The mayor’s wife was just one of a worldwide brigade. You have seen her before, I’m certain. In your stories, your poems, the screens you like to watch. They’re everywhere, so why not here? Why not on a shapely hill in a small German town? It’s as good a place to suffer as any.

The point is, Ilsa Hermann had decided to make suffering her triumph. When it refused to let go of her, she succumbed to it. She embraced it.

She could have shot herself, scratched herself, or indulged in other forms of self-mutilation, but she chose what she probably felt was the weakest option—to at least endure the discomfort of the weather. For all Liesel knew, she prayed for summer days that were cold and wet. For the most part, she lived in the right place.

When Liesel left that day, she said something with great uneasiness. In translation, two giant words were struggled with, carried on her shoulder, and dropped as a bungling pair at Ilsa Hermann’s feet. They fell off sideways as the girl veered with them and could no longer sustain their weight. Together, they sat on the floor, large and loud and clumsy.

Again, the mayor’s wife watched the space next to her. A blank-page face.

“For what?” she asked, but time had elapsed by then. The girl was already well out of the room. She was nearly at the front door. When she heard it, Liesel stopped, but she chose not to go back, preferring to make her way noiselessly from the house and down the steps. She took in the view of Molching before disappearing down into it, and she pitied the mayor’s wife for quite a while.

At times, Liesel wondered if she should simply leave the woman alone, but Ilsa Hermann was too interesting, and the pull of the books was too strong. Once, words had rendered Liesel useless, but now, when she sat on the floor, with the mayor’s wife at her husband’s desk, she felt an innate sense of power. It happened every time she deciphered a new word or pieced together a sentence.

She was a girl.

In Nazi Germany.

How fitting that she was discovering the power of words.

And how awful (and yet exhilarating!) it would feel many months later, when she would unleash the power of this newfound discovery the very moment the mayor’s wife let her down. How quickly the pity would leave her, and how quickly it would spill over into something else completely ….

Now, though, in the summer of 1940, she could not see what lay ahead, in more ways than one. She was witness only to a sorrowful woman with a roomful of books whom she enjoyed visiting. That was all. It was part two of her existence that summer.

Part three
, thank God, was a little more lighthearted—Himmel Street soccer.

Allow me to play you a picture:

Feet scuffing road.

The rush of boyish breath.

Shouted words: “Here! This way!
Scheisse!
”

The coarse bounce of ball on road.

•   •   •