The Book Thief (64 page)

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When morning came, the visions were gone and she could hear the quiet recital of words in the living room. Rosa was sitting with the accordion, praying.

“Make them come back alive,” she repeated. “Please, Lord, please. All of them.” Even the wrinkles around her eyes were joining hands.

The accordion must have ached her, but she remained.

Rosa would never tell Hans about these moments, but Liesel believed that it must have been those prayers that helped Papa survive the LSE’s accident in Essen. If they didn’t help, they certainly can’t have hurt.

It was a surprisingly clear afternoon and the men were climbing into the truck. Hans Hubermann had just sat down in his appointed seat. Reinhold Zucker was standing above him.

“Move it,” he said.

“Bitte?
Excuse me?”

Zucker was hunched beneath the vehicle’s ceiling. “I said move it,
Arschloch.”
The greasy jungle of his fringe fell in clumps onto his forehead. “I’m swapping seats with you.”

Hans was confused. The backseat was probably the most uncomfortable of the lot. It was the draftiest, the coldest. “Why?”

“Does it matter?” Zucker was losing patience. “Maybe I want to get off first to use the shit house.”

Hans was quickly aware that the rest of the unit was already watching this pitiful struggle between two supposed grown men. He didn’t want to lose, but he didn’t want to be petty, either. Also, they’d just finished a tiring shift and he didn’t have the energy to go on with it. Bent-backed, he made his way forward to the vacant seat in the middle of the truck.

“Why did you give in to that
Scheisskopf?”
the man next to him asked.

Hans lit a match and offered a share of the cigarette. “The draft back there goes straight through my ears.”

The olive green truck was on its way toward the camp, maybe ten miles away. Brunnenweg was telling a joke about a French waitress when the left front wheel was punctured and the driver lost control. The vehicle rolled many times and the men swore as they tumbled with the air, the light, the trash, and the tobacco. Outside, the blue sky changed from ceiling to floor as they clambered for something to hold.

When it stopped, they were all crowded onto the right-hand wall of the truck, their faces wedged against the filthy uniform next to them. Questions of health were passed around until one of the men, Eddie Alma, started shouting, “Get this bastard off me!” He said it three times, fast. He was staring into Reinhold Zucker’s blinkless eyes.

They dragged each other out until only the corpse was left in the truck.

The driver, Helmut Brohmann, was sitting on the ground, scratching his head. “The tire,” he explained, “it just blew.” Some of
the men sat with him and echoed that it wasn’t his fault. Others walked around smoking, asking each other if they thought their injuries were bad enough to be relieved of duty. Another small group gathered at the back of the truck and viewed the body.

Over by a tree, a thin strip of intense pain was still opening in Hans Hubermann’s leg. “It should have been me,” he said.

“What?” the sergeant called over from the truck.

“He was sitting in my seat.”

Helmut Brohmann regained his senses and climbed back into the driver’s compartment. Sideways, he tried to start the engine, but there was no kicking it over. Another truck was sent for, as was an ambulance. The ambulance didn’t come.

“You know what that means, don’t you?” said Boris Schipper. They did.

When they resumed the trip back to camp, each man tried not to look down at Reinhold Zucker’s openmouthed sneer. “I told you we should have turned him facedown,” someone mentioned. A few times, some of them simply forgot and rested their feet on the body. Once they arrived, they all tried to avoid the task of pulling him out. When the job was done, Hans Hubermann took a few abbreviated steps before the pain fractured in his leg and brought him down.

An hour later, when the doctor examined him, he was told it was definitely broken. The sergeant was on hand and stood with half a grin.

“Well, Hubermann. Looks like you’ve got away with it, doesn’t it?” He was shaking his round face, smoking, and he provided a list of what would happen next. “You’ll rest up. They’ll ask me what we should do with you. I’ll tell them you did a great job.” He blew some more smoke. “And I think I’ll tell them you’re not fit for the LSE
anymore and you should be sent back to Munich to work in an office or do whatever cleaning up needs doing there. How does that sound?”

Unable to resist a laugh within the grimace of pain, Hans replied, “It sounds good, Sergeant.”

Boris Schipper finished his cigarette. “Damn right it sounds good. You’re lucky I like you, Hubermann. You’re lucky you’re a good man, and generous with the cigarettes.”

In the next room, they were making up the plaster.

Just over a week after Liesel’s birthday in mid-February, she and Rosa finally received a detailed letter from Hans Hubermann. She ran inside from the mailbox and showed it to Mama. Rosa made her read it aloud, and they could not contain their excitement when Liesel read about his broken leg. She was stunned to the extent that she mouthed the next sentence only to herself.

“What is it?” Rosa pushed.
“Saumensch?”

Liesel looked up from the letter and was close to shouting. The sergeant had been true to his word. “He’s coming home, Mama. Papa’s coming home!”

They embraced in the kitchen and the letter was crushed between their bodies. A broken leg was certainly something to celebrate.

When Liesel took the news next door, Barbara Steiner was ecstatic. She rubbed the girl’s arms and called out to the rest of her family. In their kitchen, the household of Steiners seemed buoyed by the news that Hans Hubermann was returning home. Rudy smiled and laughed, and Liesel could see that he was at least trying.
However, she could also sense the bitter taste of questions in his mouth.

Why him?

Why Hans Hubermann and not Alex Steiner?

He had a point.

Since his father’s recruitment to the army the previous October, Rudy’s anger had been growing nicely. The news of Hans Hubermann’s return was all he needed to take it a few steps further. He did not tell Liesel about it. There was no complaining that it wasn’t fair. His decision was to act.

He carried a metal case up Himmel Street at the typical thieving time of darkening afternoon.

Liesel saw him from the kitchen window—his purposeful steps and committed face, exactly like the day he’d gone to find his father. He gripped the handle with as much force as he could, and his movements were stiff with rage.

The book thief dropped the towel she was holding and replaced it with a single thought.

He’s going stealing.

She ran out to meet him.

There was not even the semblance of a hello.

Rudy simply continued walking and spoke through the cold air in front of him. Close to Tommy Müller’s apartment block, he said, “You know something, Liesel, I was thinking. You’re not a thief at all,” and he didn’t give her a chance to reply. “That woman lets you in. She even leaves you cookies, for Christ’s sake. I don’t call that stealing. Stealing is what the army does. Taking your father, and mine.” He kicked a stone and it clanged against a gate. He walked faster. “All those rich Nazis up there, on Grande Strasse, Gelb Strasse, Heide Strasse.”

Liesel could concentrate on nothing but keeping up. They’d already passed Frau Diller’s and were well onto Munich Street. “Rudy—”

“How does it feel, anyway?”

“How does what feel?”

“When you take one of those books?”

At that moment, she chose to keep still. If he wanted an answer, he’d have to come back, and he did. “Well?” But again, it was Rudy
who answered, before Liesel could even open her mouth. “It feels good, doesn’t it? To steal something back.”

Liesel forced her attention to the toolbox, trying to slow him down. “What have you got in there?”

He bent over and opened it up.

Everything appeared to make sense but the teddy bear.

As they kept walking, Rudy explained the toolbox at length, and what he would do with each item. For example, the hammers were for smashing windows and the towel was to wrap them up, to quell the sound.

“And the teddy bear?”

It belonged to Anna-Marie Steiner and was no bigger than one of Liesel’s books. The fur was shaggy and worn. The eyes and ears had been sewn back on repeatedly, but it was friendly looking nonetheless.

“That,” answered Rudy, “is the one masterstroke. That’s if a kid walks in while I’m inside. I’ll give it to them to calm them down.”

“And what do you plan to steal?”

He shrugged. “Money, food, jewelry. Whatever I can get my hands on.” It sounded simple enough.

It wasn’t until fifteen minutes later, when Liesel watched the sudden silence on his face, that she realized Rudy Steiner wasn’t stealing anything. The commitment had disappeared, and although he still watched the imagined glory of stealing, she could see that now he was not believing it. He was
trying
to believe it, and that’s never a good sign. His criminal greatness was unfurling before his eyes, and as the footsteps slowed and they watched the houses, Liesel’s relief was pure and sad inside her.