The Book Thief Part 68

the book thief featuring:

the end of a world-the ninety-eighth day-

a war maker-way of the words-a catatonic girl-

confessions-ilsa hermann's little black book-

some rib-cage planes-and a mountain range of rubble

THE END OF THE WORLD (Part I) Again, I offer you a glimpse of the end. Perhaps it's 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 hasn't quite managed. The first drops were cool. I felt them on my hands as I stood outside Frau Diller's.

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 serious-looking Fhrer was bashed and beaten on the shattered floor. Yet he smiled, in that serious way of his. He knew something we all didn't know. But I knew something he didn't 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 bas.e.m.e.nt 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 sh.e.l.ls 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.

Pa.s.sED 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 thief's hair.

The man had such a nice laugh. He was delivering a newborn child. "I can't believe it-she's alive!"

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

Earlier, I'd 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. Papa's lovely silver eyes were already starting to rust, and Mama's cardboard lips were fixed half open, most likely the shape of an incomplete snore. To blaspheme like the Germans-Jesus, 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 bas.e.m.e.nt? How did you know?"

What they didn't 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 pa.s.sed 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 Hubermann's 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 boy's 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 aren't that funny. And they're 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.

BY AN OLD WOMAN.

On Munich Street, she said, "Jesus,