The Book Thief Part 30

To begin with, there was no sound of reply, but he soon sat up and searched the darkness.

With Papa still in her bedroom, Liesel sat on the other side of the fireplace from Max. Behind them, Mama loudly slept. She gave the snorer on the train a good run for her money.

The fire was nothing now but a funeral of smoke, dead and dying, simultaneously. On this particular morning, there were also voices.

THE SWAPPING OF NIGHTMARES.

The girl: "Tell me. What do you see when you dream like that?"

The Jew: "... I see myself turning around, and waving goodbye."

The girl: "I also have nightmares."

The Jew: "What do you see?"

The girl: "A train, and my dead brother."

The Jew: "Your brother?"

The girl: "He died when I moved here, on the way."

The girl and the Jew, together: "Ja-yes."

It would be nice to say that after this small breakthrough, neither Liesel nor Max dreamed their bad visions again. It would be nice but untrue. The nightmares arrived like they always did, much like the best player in the opposition when you've heard rumors that he might be injured or sick-but there he is, warming up with the rest of them, ready to take the field. Or like a timetabled train, arriving at a nightly platform, pulling the memories behind it on a rope. A lot of dragging. A lot of awkward bounces.

The only thing that changed was that Liesel told her papa that she should be old enough now to cope on her own with the dreams. For a moment, he looked a little hurt, but as always with Papa, he gave the right thing to say his best shot.

"Well, thank G.o.d." He halfway grinned. "At least now I can get some proper sleep. That chair was killing me." He put his arm around the girl and they walked to the kitchen.

As time progressed, a clear distinction developed between two very different worlds-the world inside 33 Himmel Street, and the one that resided and turned outside it. The trick was to keep them apart.

In the outside world, Liesel was learning to find some more of its uses. One afternoon, when she was walking home with an empty was.h.i.+ng bag, she noticed a newspaper poking out of a garbage can. The weekly edition of the Molching Express. She lifted it out and took it home, presenting it to Max. "I thought," she told him, "you might like to do the crossword to pa.s.s the time."

Max appreciated the gesture, and to justify her bringing it home, he read the paper from cover to cover and showed her the puzzle a few hours later, completed but for one word.

"d.a.m.n that seventeen down," he said.

In February 1941, for her twelfth birthday, Liesel received another used book, and she was grateful. It was called The Mud Men and was about a very strange father and son. She hugged her mama and papa, while Max stood uncomfortably in the corner.

"Alles Gute zum Geburtstag." He smiled weakly. "All the best for your birthday." His hands were in his pockets. "I didn't know, or else I could have given you something." A blatant lie-he had nothing to give, except maybe Mein Kampf, and there was no way he'd give such propaganda to a young German girl. That would be like the lamb handing a knife to the butcher.

There was an uncomfortable silence.

She had embraced Mama and Papa.

Max looked so alone.

Liesel swallowed.

And she walked over and hugged him for the first time. "Thanks, Max."

At first, he merely stood there, but as she held on to him, gradually his hands rose up and gently pressed into her shoulder blades.

Only later would she find out about the helpless expression on Max Vandenburg's face. She would also discover that he resolved at that moment to give her something back. I often imagine him lying awake all that night, pondering what he could possibly offer.

As it turned out, the gift was delivered on paper, just over a week later.

He would bring it to her in the early hours of morning, before retreating down the concrete steps to what he now liked to call home.

PAGES FROM THE BAs.e.m.e.nT.

For a week, Liesel was kept from the bas.e.m.e.nt at all cost. It was Mama and Papa who made sure to take down Max's food.

"No, Saumensch," Mama told her each time she volunteered. There was always a new excuse. "How about you do something useful in here for a change, like finish the ironing? You think carrying it around town is so special? Try ironing it!" You can do all manner of underhanded nice things when you have a caustic reputation. It worked.

During that week, Max had cut out a collection of pages from Mein Kampf and painted over them in white. He then hung them up with pegs on some string, from one end of the bas.e.m.e.nt to the other. When they were all dry, the hard part began. He was educated well enough to get by, but he was certainly no writer, and no artist. Despite this, he formulated the words in his head till he could recount them without error. Only then, on the paper that had bubbled and humped under the stress of drying paint, did he begin to write the story. It was done with a small black paintbrush.

The Standover Man.

He calculated that he needed thirteen pages, so he painted forty, expecting at least twice as many slipups as successes. There were practice versions on the pages of the Molching Express, improving his basic, clumsy artwork to a level he could accept. As he worked, he heard the whispered words of a girl. "His hair," she told him, "is like feathers."

When he was finished, he used a knife to pierce the pages and tie them with string. The result was a thirteen-page booklet that went like this: In late February, when Liesel woke up in the early hours of morning, a figure made its way into her bedroom. Typical of Max, it was as close as possible to a noiseless shadow.

Liesel, searching through the dark, could only vaguely sense the man coming toward her.

"h.e.l.lo?"

There was no reply.

There was nothing but the near silence of his feet as he came closer to the bed and placed the pages on the floor, next to her socks. The pages crackled. Just slightly. One edge of them curled into the floor.

"h.e.l.lo?"

This time there was a response.

She couldn't tell exactly where the words came from. What mattered was that they reached her. They arrived and kneeled next to the bed.

"A late birthday gift. Look in the morning. Good night."

For a while, she drifted in and out of sleep, not sure anymore whether she'd dreamed of Max coming in.

In the morning, when she woke and rolled over, she saw the pages sitting on the floor. She reached down and picked them up, listening to the paper as it rippled in her early-morning hands.

All my life, I've been scared of men standing over me ....

As she turned them, the pages were noisy, like static around the written story.

Three days, they told me ... and what did I find when I woke up?

There were the erased pages of Mein Kampf, gagging, suffocating under the paint as they turned.

It makes me understand that the best standover man I've ever known ...

Liesel read and viewed Max Vandenburg's gift three times, noticing a different brush line or word with each one. When the third reading was finished, she climbed as quietly as she could from her bed and walked to Mama and Papa's room. The allocated s.p.a.ce next to the fire was vacant.

As she thought about it, she realized it was actually appropriate, or even better-perfect-to thank him where the pages were made.

She walked down the bas.e.m.e.nt steps. She saw an imaginary framed photo seep into the wall-a quiet-smiled secret.

No more than a few meters, it was a long walk to the drop sheets and the a.s.sortment of paint cans that s.h.i.+elded Max Vandenburg. She removed the sheets closest to the wall until there was a small corridor to look through.

The first part of him she saw was his shoulder, and through the slender gap, she slowly, painfully, inched her hand in until it rested there. His clothing was cool. He did not wake.

She could feel his breathing and his shoulder moving up and down ever so slightly. For a while, she watched him. Then she sat and leaned back.

Sleepy air seemed to have followed her.

The scrawled words of practice stood magnificently on the wall by the stairs, jagged and childlike and sweet. They looked on as both the hidden Jew and the girl slept, hand to shoulder.

They breathed.

German and Jewish lungs.

Next to the wall, The Standover Man sat, numb and gratified, like a beautiful itch at Liesel Meminger's feet.

PART FIVE.

the whistler featuring:

a floating book-the gamblers-a small ghost-

two haircuts-rudy's youth-losers and sketches-

a whistler and some shoes-three acts of stupidity-

and a frightened boy with frozen legs

THE FLOATING BOOK (Part I) A book floated down the Amper River.