Markus_Zusak_The_Book_Thief_2007

HOMECOMING

It was a time of bleeders and broken planes and teddy bears, but the first quarter of 1943 was to finish on a positive note for the book thief.

At the beginning of April, Hans Hubermanns plaster was trimmed to the knee and he boarded a train for Munich. He would be given a week of rest and recreation at home before joining the ranks of army pen pushers in the city. He would help with the paperwork on the cleanup of Munichs factories, houses, churches, and hospitals. Time would tell if he would be sent out to do the repair work. That all depended on his leg and the state of the city.

It was dark when he arrived home. It was a day later than expected, as the train was delayed due to an air-raid scare. He stood at the door of 33 Himmel Street and made a fist.

Four years earlier, Liesel Meminger was coaxed through that doorway when she showed up for the first time. Max Vandenburg had stood there with a key biting into his hand. Now it was Hans Hubermanns turn. He knocked four times and the book thief answered.

Papa, Papa.

She must have said it a hundred times as she hugged him in the kitchen and wouldnt let go.

Later, after they ate, they sat at the kitchen table long into the night and Hans told his wife and Liesel Meminger everything. He explained the LSE and the smoke-filled streets and the poor, lost, wandering souls. And Reinhold Zucker. Poor, stupid Reinhold Zucker. It took hours.

At 1 a.m., Liesel went to bed and Papa came in to sit with her, like he used to. She woke up several times to check that he was there, and he did not fail her.

The night was calm.

Her bed was warm and soft with contentment.

Yes, it was a great night to be Liesel Meminger, and the calm, the warm, and the soft would remain for approximately three more months.

But her story lasts for six.

PART TEN

the book thief

featuring:

the end of a worldthe ninety-eighth day

a war makerway of the wordsa catatonic girl confessionsilsa hermanns little black book

some rib-cage planesand a mountain range of rubble

THE END OF THE WORLD (Part I)

Again, I offer you a glimpse of the end. Perhaps its to soften the blow for later, or to better prepare myself for the telling. Either way, I must inform you that it was raining on Himmel Street when the world ended for Liesel Meminger.

The sky was dripping.

Like a tap that a child has tried its hardest to turn off but hasnt quite managed. The first drops were cool. I felt them on my hands as I stood outside Frau Dillers.

Above me, I could hear them.

Through the overcast sky, I looked up and saw the tin-can planes. I watched their stomachs open and the bombs drop casually out. They were off target, of course. They were often off target.

A SMALL, SAD HOPE No one wanted to bomb Himmel Street. No one would bomb a place named after heaven, would they? Would they?

The bombs came down, and soon, the clouds would bake and the cold raindrops would turn to ash. Hot snowflakes would shower to the ground.

In short, Himmel Street was flattened.

Houses were splashed from one side of the street to the other. A framed photo of a very seriouslooking Fhrer was bashed and beaten on the shattered floor. Yet he smiled, in that serious way of his. He knew something we all didnt know. But I knew something he didnt know. All while people slept.

Rudy Steiner slept. Mama and Papa slept. Frau Holtzapfel, Frau Diller. Tommy Mller. All sleeping. All dying.

Only one person survived.

She survived because she was sitting in a basement reading through the story of her own life, checking for mistakes. Previously, the room had been declared too shallow, but on that night, October 7, it was enough. The shells of wreckage cantered down, and hours later, when the strange, unkempt silence

settled itself in Molching, the local LSE could hear something. An echo. Down there, somewhere, a girl was hammering a paint can with a pencil.

They all stopped, with bent ears and bodies, and when they heard it again, they started digging.

PASSED ITEMS, HAND TO HAND Blocks of cement and roof tiles. A piece of wall with a dripping sun painted on it. An unhappy-

looking accordion, peering through its eaten case.

They threw all of it upward.

When another piece of broken wall was removed, one of them saw the book thiefs hair.

The man had such a nice laugh. He was delivering a newborn child. I cant believe itshes alive!

There was so much joy among the cluttering, calling men, but I could not fully share their enthusiasm.

Earlier, Id held her papa in one arm and her mama in the other. Each soul was so soft.

Farther away, their bodies were laid out, like the rest. Papas lovely silver eyes were already starting to rust, and Mamas cardboard lips were fixed half open, most likely the shape of an incomplete snore. To blaspheme like the GermansJesus, Mary, and Joseph.

The rescuing hands pulled Liesel out and brushed the crumbs of rubble from her clothes. Young girl, they said, the sirens were too late. What were you doing in the basement? How did you know?

What they didnt notice was that the girl was still holding the book. She screamed her reply. A stunning scream of the living.

Papa!

A second time. Her face creased as she reached a higher, more panic-stricken pitch. Papa, Papa!

They passed her up as she shouted, wailed, and cried. If she was injured, she did not yet know it, for she struggled free and searched and called and wailed some more.

She was still clutching the book.

She was holding desperately on to the words who had saved her life.

THE NINETY-EIGHTH DAY

For the first ninety-seven days after Hans Hubermanns return in April 1943, everything was fine. On many occasions he was pensive about the thought of his son fighting in Stalingrad, but he hoped that some of his luck was in the boys blood.

On his third night at home, he played the accordion in the kitchen. A promise was a promise. There was music, soup, and jokes, and the laughter of a fourteen-year-old girl.

Saumensch, Mama warned her, stop laughing so loud. His jokes arent that funny. And theyre filthy, too. . . .

After a week, Hans resumed his service, traveling into the city to one of the army offices. He said that there was a good supply of cigarettes and food there, and sometimes he was able to bring home some cookies or extra jam. It was like the good old days. A minor air raid in May. A heil Hitler here or there and everything was fine.

Until the ninety-eighth day.

A SMALL STATEMENT

BYAN OLD WOMAN

On Munich Street, she said, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, I wish they wouldnt bring them through. These wretched Jews, theyre rotten luck. Theyre a bad sign. Every time I see them, I know well be ruined.

It was the same old lady who announced the Jews the first time Liesel saw them. On ground level, her face was a prune. Her eyes were the dark blue of a vein. And her prediction was accurate.

In the heart of summer, Molching was delivered a sign of things to come. It moved into sight like it always did. First the bobbing head of a soldier and the gun poking at the air above him. Then the ragged chain of clinking Jews.

The only difference this time was that they were brought from the opposite direction. They were taken through to the neighboring town of Nebling to scrub the streets and do the cleanup work that the army refused to do. Late in the day, they were marched back to camp, slow and tired, defeated.

Again, Liesel searched for Max Vandenburg, thinking that he could easily have ended up in Dachau without being marched through Molching. He was not there. Not on this occasion.

Just give it time, though, for on a warm afternoon in August, Max would most certainly be marched through town with the rest of them. Unlike the others, however, he would not watch the road. He would not look randomly into the Fhrers German grand-stand.

A FACT REGARDING

MAX VANDENBURG

He would search the faces on Munich

Street for a book-thieving girl.

On this occasion, in July, on what Liesel later calculated as the ninety-eighth day of her papas return, she stood and studied the moving pile of mournful Jewslooking for Max. If nothing else, it alleviated the pain of simply watching.

Thats a horrible thought, she would write in her Himmel Street basement, but she knew it to be true. The pain of watching them. What about their pain? The pain of stumbling shoes and torment and the closing gates of the camp?

They came through twice in ten days, and soon after, the anonymous, prune-faced woman on Munich Street was proven absolutely correct. Suffering had most definitely come, and if they could blame the Jews as a warning or prologue, they should have blamed the Fhrer and his quest for Russia as the actual causefor when Himmel Street woke later in July, a returned soldier was discovered to be dead. He was hanging from one of the rafters in a laundry up near Frau Dillers. Another human pendulum. Another clock, stopped.

The careless owner had left the door open.

JULY 24, 6:03 A.M. The laundry was warm, the rafters were firm, and Michael Holtzapfel jumped from the chair as if it were a cliff.

So many people chased after me in that time, calling my name, asking me to take them with me. Then there was the small percentage who called me casually over and whispered with their tightened voices.

Have me, they said, and there was no stopping them. They were frightened, no question, but they were not afraid of me. It was a fear of messing up and having to face themselves again, and facing the world, and the likes of you.

There was nothing I could do.

They had too many ways, they were too resourcefuland when they did it too well, whatever their chosen method, I was in no position to refuse.

Michael Holtzapfel knew what he was doing.

He killed himself for wanting to live.

Of course, I did not see Liesel Meminger at all that day. As is usually the case, I advised myself that I was far too busy to remain on Himmel Street to listen to the screams. Its bad enough when people catch me red-handed, so I made the usual decision to make my exit, into the breakfast-colored sun.

I did not hear the detonation of an old mans voice when he found the hanging body, nor the sound of running feet and jaw-dropped gasps when other people arrived. I did not hear a skinny man with a mustache mutter, Crying shame, a damn shame . . .

I did not see Frau Holtzapfel laid out flat on Himmel Street, her arms out wide, her screaming face in total despair. No, I didnt discover any of that until I came back a few months later and read something called The Book Thief. It was explained to me that in the end, Michael Holtzapfel was worn down not by his damaged hand or any other injury, but by the guilt of living.

In the lead-up to his death, the girl had realized that he wasnt sleeping, that each night was like poison. I often imagine him lying awake, sweating in sheets of snow, or seeing visions of his brothers severed legs. Liesel wrote that sometimes she almost told him about her own brother, like she did with Max, but there seemed a big difference between a long-distance cough and two obliterated legs. How do you console a man who has seen such things? Could you tell him the Fhrer was proud of him, that the Fhrer loved him for what he did in Stalingrad? How could you even dare? You can only let him do the talking. The dilemma, of course, is that such people save their most important words for after, when the surrounding humans are unlucky enough to find them. A note, a sentence, even a question, or a letter, like on Himmel Street in July 1943.

MICHAEL HOLTZAPFEL THE LAST GOODBYE Dear Mama, Can you ever forgive me? I just couldnt stand it any longer. Im meeting Robert. I dont care what the damn Catholics say about it. There must be a place in heaven for those who have been where I have been. You might think I dont love you because of what Ive done, but I do. Your Michael

It was Hans Hubermann who was asked to give Frau Holtzapfel the news. He stood on her threshold and she must have seen it on his face. Two sons in six months.

The morning sky stood blazing behind him as the wiry woman made her way past. She ran sobbing to the gathering farther up on Himmel Street. She said the name Michael at least two dozen times, but Michael had already answered. According to the book thief, Frau Holtzapfel hugged the body for nearly an hour. She then returned to the blinding sun of Himmel Street and sat herself down. She could no longer walk.

From a distance, people observed. Such a thing was easier from far away.

Hans Hubermann sat with her.

He placed his hand on hers, as she fell back to the hard ground.

He allowed her screams to fill the street.

Much later, Hans walked with her, with painstaking care, through her front gate, and into the house. And no matter how many times I try to see it differently, I cant pull it off. . . .

When I imagine that scene of the distraught woman and the tall silver-eyed man, it is still snowing in the kitchen of 31 Himmel Street.

THE WAR MAKER

There was the smell of a freshly cut coffin. Black dresses. Enormous suitcases under the eyes. Liesel stood like the rest, on the grass. She read to Frau Holtzapfel that same afternoon. The Dream Carrier, her neighbors favorite.

It was a busy day all around, really.

JULY 27, 1943

Michael Holtzapfel was buried and the book thief read to the bereaved. The Allies bombed Hamburgand on that subject, its lucky Im somewhat miraculous. No one else could carry close to forty-five thousand people in such a short amount of time. Not in a million human years.

The Germans were starting to pay in earnest by then. The Fhrer s pimply little knees were starting to shake.

Still, Ill give him something, that Fhrer.

He certainly had an iron will.

There was no slackening off in terms of war-making, nor was there any scaling back on the extermination and punishment of a Jewish plague. While most of the camps were spread throughout Europe, there were some still in existence in Germany itself.

In those camps, many people were still made to work, and walk.

Max Vandenburg was one such Jew.