The Book Thief (43 page)

The soccer ball had given her an idea.

Whenever she walked to and from school now, Liesel was on the lookout for discarded items that might be valuable to a dying man. She wondered at first why it mattered so much. How could something so seemingly insignificant give comfort to someone? A ribbon in a gutter. A pinecone on the street. A button leaning casually against a classroom wall. Aflat round stone from the river. If nothing else, it showed that she cared, and it might give them something to talk about when Max woke up.

When she was alone, she would conduct those conversations.

“So what’s all this?” Max would say. “What’s all this junk?”

“Junk?” In her mind, she was sitting on the side of the bed. “This isn’t junk, Max. These are what made you wake up.”

The feather was lovely and trapped, in the door hinges of the church on Munich Street. It poked itself crookedly out and Liesel hurried over to rescue it. The fibers were combed flat on the left, but the right side was
made of delicate edges and sections of jagged triangles. There was no other way of describing it.

The newspapers came from the cold depths of a garbage can (enough said), and the candy wrapper was flat and faded. She found it near the school and held it up to the light. It contained a collage of shoe prints.

Then the cloud.

How do you give someone a piece of sky?

Late in February, she stood on Munich Street and watched a single giant cloud come over the hills like a white monster. It climbed the mountains. The sun was eclipsed, and in its place, a white beast with a gray heart watched the town.

“Would you look at that?” she said to Papa.

Hans cocked his head and stated what he felt was the obvious. “You should give it to Max, Liesel. See if you can leave it on the bedside table, like all the other things.”

Liesel watched him as if he’d gone insane. “How, though?”

Lightly, he tapped her skull with his knuckles. “Memorize it. Then write it down for him.”

“… It was like a great white beast,” she said at her next bedside vigil, “and it came from over the mountains.”

When the sentence was completed with several different adjustments and additions, Liesel felt like she’d done it. She imagined the vision of it passing from her hand to his, through the blankets, and she wrote it down on a scrap of paper, placing the stone on top of it.

•   •   •

The soldier was buried in the dirt, not far from Tommy Müller’s place. It was scratched and trodden, which, to Liesel, was the whole point. Even with injury, it could still stand up.

The leaf was a maple and she found it in the school broom closet, among the buckets and feather dusters. The door was slightly ajar. The leaf was dry and hard, like toasted bread, and there were hills and valleys all over its skin. Somehow, the leaf had made its way into the school hallway and into that closet. Like half a star with a stem. Liesel reached in and twirled it in her fingers.

Unlike the other items, she did not place the leaf on the bedside table. She pinned it to the closed curtain, just before reading the final thirty-four pages of
The Whistler
.

She did not have dinner that afternoon or go to the toilet. She didn’t drink. All day at school, she had promised herself that she would finish reading the book today, and Max Vandenburg was going to listen. He was going to wake up.

Papa sat on the floor, in the corner, workless as usual. Luckily, he would soon be leaving for the Knoller with his accordion. His chin resting on his knees, he listened to the girl he’d struggled to teach the alphabet. Reading proudly, she unloaded the final frightening words of the book to Max Vandenburg.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.” Hans couldn’t resist an incredulous tone. “A nun gave you
that?”
He stood up and made his way over, kissing her forehead. “Bye, Liesel, the Knoller awaits.”

“Bye, Papa.”

“Liesel!”

She ignored it.

“Come and eat something!”

She answered now. “I’m coming, Mama.” She actually spoke those words to Max as she came closer and placed the finished book on the bedside table, with everything else. As she hovered above him, she couldn’t help herself. “Come on, Max,” she whispered, and even the sound of Mama’s arrival at her back did not stop her from silently crying. It didn’t stop her from pulling a lump of salt water from her eye and feeding it onto Max Vandenburg’s face.

Mama took her.

Her arms swallowed her.

“I know,” she said.

She knew.

They were by the Amper River and Liesel had just told Rudy that she was interested in attaining another book from the mayor’s house. In place of
The Whistler
, she’d read
The Standover Man
several times at Max’s bedside. That was only a few minutes per reading. She’d also tried
The Shoulder Shrug
, even
The Grave Digger’s Handbook
, but none of it seemed quite right. I want something new, she thought.

“Did you even read the last one?”

“Of course I did.”

Rudy threw a stone into the water. “Was it any good?”

“Of course it was.”

“Of course I did, of course it was.”
He tried to dig another rock out of the ground but cut his finger.

“That’ll teach you.”

“Saumensch.”

When a person’s last response was
Saumensch
or
Saukerl
or
Arschloch
, you knew you had them beaten.

•   •   •

In terms of stealing, conditions were perfect. It was a gloomy afternoon early in March and only a few degrees above freezing—always more uncomfortable than ten degrees below. Very few people were out on the streets. Rain like gray pencil shavings.

“Are we going?”

“Bikes,” said Rudy. “You can use one of ours.”

On this occasion, Rudy was considerably more enthusiastic about being the
enterer
. “Today it’s my turn,” he said as their fingers froze to the bike handles.

Liesel thought fast. “Maybe you shouldn’t, Rudy. There’s stuff all over the place in there. And it’s dark. An idiot like you is bound to trip over or run into something.”

“Thanks very much.” In this mood, Rudy was hard to contain.

“There’s the drop, too. It’s deeper than you think.”

“Are you saying you don’t think I can do it?”

Liesel stood up on the pedals. “Not at all.”

They crossed the bridge and serpentined up the hill to Grande Strasse. The window was open.

Like last time, they surveyed the house. Vaguely, they could see inside, to where a light was on downstairs, in what was probably the kitchen. A shadow moved back and forth.