The Book Thief – by Markus Zusak

 

The ringmaster swung over toward Max, who stood alone in the challenger's corner. No robe. No entourage. Just a lonely young Jew with dirty breath, a naked chest, and tired hands and feet. Naturally, his shorts were gray. He too moved from foot to foot, but it was kept at a minimum to conserve energy. He'd done a lot of sweating in the gym to make the weight.

"The challenger!" sang the ringmaster. "Of," and he paused for effect, "Jewish blood." The crowd oohed, like human ghouls. "Weighing in at . . ."

The rest of the speech was not heard. It was overrun with the abuse from the bleachers, and Max watched as his opponent was derobed and came to the middle to hear the rules and shake hands.

"Guten Tag, Herr Hitler." Max nodded, but the Führer only showed him his yellow teeth, then covered them up again with his lips.

"Gentlemen," a stout referee in black pants and a blue shirt began. A bow tie was fixed to his throat. "First and foremost, we want a good clean fight." He addressed only the Führer now. "Unless, of course, Herr Hitler, you begin to lose. Should this occur, I will be quite willing to turn a blind eye to any unconscionable tactics you might employ to grind this piece of Jewish stench and filth into the canvas." He nodded, with great courtesy. "Is that clear?"

The Führer spoke his first word then. "Crystal."

To Max, the referee extended a warning. "As for you, my Jewish chum, I'd watch my step very closely if I were you. Very closely indeed," and they were sent back to their respective corners.

A brief quiet ensued.

The bell.

First out was the Führer, awkward-legged and bony, running at Max and jabbing him firmly in the face. The crowd vibrated, the bell still in their ears, and their satisfied smiles hurdled the ropes. The smoky breath of Hitler steamed from his mouth as his hands bucked at Max's face, collecting him several times, on the lips, the nose, the chin—and Max had still not ventured out of his corner. To absorb the punishment, he held up his hands, but the Führer then aimed at his ribs, his kidneys, his lungs. Oh, the eyes, the Führer's eyes. They were so deliciously brown—like Jews' eyes—and they were so determined that even Max stood transfixed for a moment as he caught sight of them between the healthy blur of punching gloves.

There was only one round, and it lasted hours, and for the most part, nothing changed.

The Führer pounded away at the punching-bag Jew.

Jewish blood was everywhere.

Like red rain clouds on the white-sky canvas at their feet.

Eventually, Max's knees began to buckle, his cheekbones silently moaned, and the Führer's delighted face still chipped away, chipped away, until depleted, beaten, and broken, the Jew flopped to the floor.

First, a roar.

Then silence.

The referee counted. He had a gold tooth and a plethora of nostril hair.

Slowly, Max Vandenburg, the Jew, rose to his feet and made himself upright. His voice wobbled. An invitation. "Come on, Führer, " he said, and this time, when Adolf Hitler set upon his Jewish counterpart, Max stepped aside and plunged him into the corner. He punched him seven times, aiming on each occasion for only one thing.

The mustache.

With the seventh punch, he missed. It was the Führer's chin that sustained the blow. All at once, Hitler hit the ropes and creased forward, landing on his knees. This time, there was no count. The referee flinched in the corner. The audience sank down, back to their beer. On his knees, the Führer tested himself for blood and straightened his hair, right to left. When he returned to his feet, much to the approval of the thousand-strong crowd, he edged forward and did something quite strange. He turned his back on the Jew and took the gloves from his fists.

The crowd was stunned.

"He's given up," someone whispered, but within moments, Adolf Hitler was standing on the ropes, and he was addressing the arena.

"My fellow Germans," he called, "you can see something here tonight, can't you?" Bare-chested, victory-eyed, he pointed over at Max. "You can see that what we face is something far more sinister and powerful than we ever imagined. Can you see that?"

They answered. "Yes, Führer."

"Can you see that this enemy has found its ways—its despicable ways—through our armor, and that clearly, I cannot stand up here alone and fight him?" The words were visible. They dropped from his mouth like jewels. "Look at him! Take a good look." They looked. At the bloodied Max Vandenburg. "As we speak, he is plotting his way into your neighborhood. He's moving in next door. He's infesting you with his family and he's about to take you over. He—" Hitler glanced at him a moment, with disgust. "He will soon own you, until it is he who stands not at the counter of your grocery shop, but sits in the back, smoking his pipe. Before you know it, you'll be working for him at minimum wage while he can hardly walk from the weight in his pockets. Will you simply stand there and let him do this? Will you stand by as your leaders did in the past, when they gave your land to everybody else, when they sold your country for the price of a few signatures? Will you stand out there, powerless? Or"—and now he stepped one rung higher—"will you climb up into this ring with me?"

Max shook. Horror stuttered in his stomach.

Adolf finished him. "Will you climb in here so that we can defeat this enemy together?"

In the basement of 33 Himmel Street, Max Vandenburg could feel the fists of an entire nation. One by one they climbed into the ring and beat him down. They made him bleed. They let him suffer. Millions of them—until one last time, when he gathered himself to his feet . . .

He watched the next person climb through the ropes. It was a girl, and as she slowly crossed the canvas, he noticed a tear torn down her left cheek. In her right hand was a newspaper.

"The crossword," she gently said, "is empty," and she held it out to him.

Dark.

Nothing but dark now.

Just basement. Just Jew.

 

The New Dream: A Few Nights Later

It was afternoon. Liesel came down the basement steps. Max was halfway through his push-ups.

She watched awhile, without his knowledge, and when she came and sat with him, he stood up and leaned back against the wall. "Did I tell you," he asked her, "that I've been having a new dream lately?"

Liesel shifted a little, to see his face.

"But I dream this when I'm awake." He motioned to the glowless kerosene lamp. "Sometimes I turn out the light. Then I stand here and wait."

"For what?"

Max corrected her. "Not for what. For whom."

For a few moments, Liesel said nothing. It was one of those conversations that require some time to elapse between exchanges. "Who do you wait for?"

Max did not move. "The Führer." He was very matter-of-fact about this. "That's why I'm in training."

"The push-ups?"

"That's right." He walked to the concrete stairway. "Every night, I wait in the dark and the Führer comes down these steps. He walks down and he and I, we fight for hours."

Liesel was standing now. "Who wins?"

At first, he was going to answer that no one did, but then he noticed the paint cans, the drop sheets, and the growing pile of newspapers in the periphery of his vision. He watched the words, the long cloud, and the figures on the wall.

"I do," he said.

It was as though he'd opened her palm, given her the words, and closed it up again.

Under the ground, in Molching, Germany, two people stood and spoke in a basement. It sounds like the beginning of a joke:

"There's a Jew and a German standing in a basement, right? . . ."

This, however, was no joke.

 

The Painters: Early June

Another of Max's projects was the remainder of Mein Kampf. Each page was gently stripped from the book and laid out on the floor to receive a coat of paint. It was then hung up to dry and replaced between the front and back covers. When Liesel came down one day after school, she found Max, Rosa, and her papa all painting the various pages. Many of them were already hanging from a drawn-out string with pegs, just as they must have done for The Standover Man.

All three people looked up and spoke.

"Hi, Liesel."

"Here's a brush, Liesel."

"About time, Saumensch. Where have you been so long?"

As she started painting, Liesel thought about Max Vandenburg fighting the Führer, exactly as he'd explained it.

BASEMENT VISIONS, JUNE 1941

Punches are thrown, the crowd climbs out of

the walls. Max and the Führer fight for their

lives, each rebounding off the stairway.

There's blood in the Führer's mustache, as

well as in his part line, on the right side

of his head. "Come on, Führer," says the

Jew. He waves him forward. "Come on, Führer. "

 

When the visions dissipated and she finished her first page, Papa winked at her. Mama castigated her for hogging the paint. Max examined each and every page, perhaps watching what he planned to produce on them. Many months later, he would also paint over the cover of that book and give it a new title, after one of the stories he would write and illustrate inside it.

That afternoon, in the secret ground below 33 Himmel Street, the Hubermanns, Liesel Meminger, and Max Vandenburg prepared the pages of The Word Shaker.

It felt good to be a painter.

 

The Showdown: June 24

Then came the seventh side of the die. Two days after Germany invaded Russia. Three days before Britain and the Soviets joined forces.

Seven.

You roll and watch it coming, realizing completely that this is no regular die. You claim it to be bad luck, but you've known all along that it had to come. You brought it into the room. The table could smell it on your breath. The Jew was sticking out of your pocket from the outset. He's smeared to your lapel, and the moment you roll, you know it's a seven—the one thing that somehow finds a way to hurt you. It lands. It stares you in each eye, miraculous and loathsome, and you turn away with it feeding on your chest.

Just bad luck.

That's what you say.

Of no consequence.

That's what you make yourself believe—because deep down, you know that this small piece of changing fortune is a signal of things to come. You hide a Jew. You pay. Somehow or other, you must.

In hindsight, Liesel told herself that it was not such a big deal. Perhaps it was because so much more had happened by the time she wrote her story in the basement. In the great scheme of things, she reasoned that Rosa being fired by the mayor and his wife was not bad luck at all. It had nothing whatsoever to do with hiding Jews. It had everything to do with the greater context of the war. At the time, though, there was most definitely a feeling of punishment.

The beginning was actually a week or so earlier than June 24. Liesel scavenged a newspaper for Max Vandenburg as she always did. She reached into a garbage can just off Munich Street and tucked it under her arm. Once she delivered it to Max and he'd commenced his first reading, he glanced across at her and pointed to a picture on the front page. "Isn't this whose washing and ironing you deliver?"

Liesel came over from the wall. She'd been writing the word argumentsix times, next to Max's picture of the ropy cloud and the dripping sun. Max handed her the paper and she confirmed it. "That's him."

When she went on to read the article, Heinz Hermann, the mayor, was quoted as saying that although the war was progressing splendidly, the people of Molching, like all responsible Germans, should take adequate measures and prepare for the possibility of harder times. "You never know," he stated, "what our enemies are thinking, or how they will try to debilitate us."

A week later, the mayor's words came to nasty fruition. Liesel, as she always did, showed up at Grande Strasse and read from The Whistler on the floor of the mayor's library. The mayor's wife showed no signs of abnormality (or, let's be frank, no additional signs) until it was time to leave.

This time, when she offered Liesel The Whistler, she insisted on the girl taking it. "Please." She almost begged. The book was held out in a tight, measured fist. "Take it. Please, take it."

Liesel, touched by the strangeness of this woman, couldn't bear to disappoint her again. The gray-covered book with its yellowing pages found its way into her hand and she began to walk the corridor. As she was about to ask for the washing, the mayor's wife gave her a final look of bathrobed sorrow. She reached into the chest of drawers and withdrew an envelope. Her voice, lumpy from lack of use, coughed out the words. "I'm sorry. It's for your mama."

Liesel stopped breathing.

She was suddenly aware of how empty her feet felt inside her shoes. Something ridiculed her throat. She trembled. When finally she reached out and took possession of the letter, she noticed the sound of the clock in the library. Grimly, she realized that clocks don't make a sound that even remotely resembles ticking, tocking. It was more the sound of a hammer, upside down, hacking methodically at the earth. It was the sound of a grave. If only mine was ready now, she thought—because Liesel Meminger, at that moment, wanted to die. When the others had canceled, it hadn't hurt so much. There was always the mayor, his library, and her connection with his wife. Also, this was the last one, the last hope, gone. This time, it felt like the greatest betrayal.

How could she face her mama?

For Rosa, the few scraps of money had still helped in various alleyways. An extra handful of flour. A piece of fat.

Ilsa Hermann was dying now herself—to get rid of her. Liesel could see it somewhere in the way she hugged the robe a little tighter. The clumsiness of sorrow still kept her at close proximity, but clearly, she wanted this to be over. "Tell your mama," she spoke again. Her voice was adjusting now, as one sentence turned into two. "That we're sorry." She started shepherding the girl toward the door.

Liesel felt it now in the shoulders. The pain, the impact of final rejection.

That's it? she asked internally. You just boot me out?

Slowly, she picked up her empty bag and edged toward the door. Once outside, she turned and faced the mayor's wife for the second to last time that day. She looked her in the eyes with an almost savage brand of pride. "Danke schön," she said, and Ilsa Hermann smiled in a rather useless, beaten way.

"If you ever want to come just to read," the woman lied (or at least the girl, in her shocked, saddened state, perceived it as a lie), "you're very welcome."

At that moment, Liesel was amazed by the width of the doorway. There was so much space. Why did people need so much space to get through the door? Had Rudy been there, he'd have called her an idiot—it was to get all their stuff inside.

"Goodbye," the girl said, and slowly, with great morosity, the door was closed.

Liesel did not leave.

For a long time, she sat on the steps and watched Molching. It was neither warm nor cool and the town was clear and still. Molching was in a jar.

She opened the letter. In it, Mayor Heinz Hermann diplomatically outlined exactly why he had to terminate the services of Rosa Hubermann. For the most part, he explained that he would be a hypocrite if he maintained his own small luxuries while advising others to prepare for harder times.

When she eventually stood and walked home, her moment of reaction came once again when she saw the STEINER-SCHNEIDERMEISTERsign on Munich Street. Her sadness left her and she was overwhelmed with anger. "That bastard mayor," she whispered. "That pathetic woman." The fact that harder times were coming was surely the best reason for keeping Rosa employed, but no, they fired her. At any rate, she decided, they could do their own blasted washing and ironing, like normal people. Like poor people.

In her hand, The Whistler tightened.

"So you give me the book," the girl said, "for pity—to make yourself feel better. . . ." The fact that she'd also been offered the book prior to that day mattered little.

She turned as she had once before and marched back to 8 Grande Strasse. The temptation to run was immense, but she refrained so that she'd have enough in reserve for the words.

When she arrived, she was disappointed that the mayor himself was not there. No car was slotted nicely on the side of the road, which was perhaps a good thing. Had it been there, there was no telling what she might have done to it in this moment of rich versus poor.

Two steps at a time, she reached the door and banged it hard enough to hurt. She enjoyed the small fragments of pain.

Evidently, the mayor's wife was shocked when she saw her again. Her fluffy hair was slightly wet and her wrinkles widened when she noticed the obvious fury on Liesel's usually pallid face. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out, which was handy, really, for it was Liesel who possessed the talking.

"You think," she said, "you can buy me off with this book?" Her voice, though shaken, hooked at the woman's throat. The glittering anger was thick and unnerving, but she toiled through it. She worked herself up even further, to the point where she needed to wipe the tears from her eyes. "You give me this Saumensch of a book and think it'll make everything good when I go and tell my mama that we've just lost our last one? While you sit here in your mansion?"

The mayor's wife's arms.

They hung.

Her face slipped.

Liesel, however, did not buckle. She sprayed her words directly into the woman's eyes.

"You and your husband. Sitting up here." Now she became spiteful. More spiteful and evil than she thought herself capable.

The injury of words.

Yes, the brutality of words.

She summoned them from someplace she only now recognized and hurled them at Ilsa Hermann. "It's about time," she informed her, "that you do your own stinking washing anyway. It's about time you faced the fact that your son is dead. He got killed! He got strangled and cut up more than twenty years ago! Or did he freeze to death? Either way, he's dead! He's dead and it's pathetic that you sit here shivering in your own house to suffer for it. You think you're the only one?"

Immediately.

Her brother was next to her.

He whispered for her to stop, but he, too, was dead, and not worth listening to.

He died in a train.

They buried him in the snow.

Liesel glanced at him, but she could not make herself stop. Not yet.

"This book," she went on. She shoved the boy down the steps, making him fall. "I don't want it." The words were quieter now, but still just as hot. She threw The Whistler at the woman's slippered feet, hearing the clack of it as it landed on the cement. "I don't want your miserable book. . . ."

Now she managed it. She fell silent.

Her throat was barren now. No words for miles.

Her brother, holding his knee, disappeared.

After a miscarriaged pause, the mayor's wife edged forward and picked up the book. She was battered and beaten up, and not from smiling this time. Liesel could see it on her face. Blood leaked from her nose and licked at her lips. Her eyes had blackened. Cuts had opened up and a series of wounds were rising to the surface of her skin. All from the words. From Liesel's words.

Book in hand, and straightening from a crouch to a standing hunch, Ilsa Hermann began the process again of saying sorry, but the sentence did not make it out.

Slap me, Liesel thought. Come on, slap me.

Ilsa Hermann didn't slap her. She merely retreated backward, into the ugly air of her beautiful house, and Liesel, once again, was left alone, clutching at the steps. She was afraid to turn around because she knew that when she did, the glass casing of Molching had now been shattered, and she'd be glad of it.

As her last orders of business, she read the letter one more time, and when she was close to the gate, she screwed it up as tightly as she could and threw it at the door, as if it were a rock. I have no idea what the book thief expected, but the ball of paper hit the mighty sheet of wood and twittered back down the steps. It landed at her feet.

"Typical," she stated, kicking it onto the grass. "Useless."

On the way home this time, she imagined the fate of that paper the next time it rained, when the mended glass house of Molching was turned upside down. She could already see the words dissolving letter by letter, till there was nothing left. Just paper. Just earth.

At home, as luck would have it, when Liesel walked through the door, Rosa was in the kitchen. "And?" she asked. "Where's the washing?"

"No washing today," Liesel told her.

Rosa came and sat down at the kitchen table. She knew. Suddenly, she appeared much older. Liesel imagined what she'd look like if she untied her bun, to let it fall out onto her shoulders. A gray towel of elastic hair.

"What did you do there, you little Saumensch?" The sentence was numb. She could not muster her usual venom.

"It was my fault," Liesel answered. "Completely. I insulted the mayor's wife and told her to stop crying over her dead son. I called her pathetic. That was when they fired you. Here." She walked to the wooden spoons, grabbed a handful, and placed them in front of her. "Take your pick."

Rosa touched one and picked it up, but she did not wield it. "I don't believe you."

Liesel was torn between distress and total mystification. The one time she desperately wanted a Watschen and she couldn't get one! "It's my fault."

"It's not your fault," Mama said, and she even stood and stroked Liesel's waxy, unwashed hair. "I know you wouldn't say those things."

"I said them!"

"All right, you said them."

As Liesel left the room, she could hear the wooden spoons clicking back into position in the metal jar that held them. By the time she reached her bedroom, the whole lot of them, the jar included, were thrown to the floor.

Later, she walked down to the basement, where Max was standing in the dark, most likely boxing with the Führer.

"Max?" The light dimmed on—a red coin, floating in the corner. "Can you teach me how to do the push-ups?"

Max showed her and occasionally lifted her torso to help, but despite her bony appearance, Liesel was strong and could hold her body weight nicely. She didn't count how many she could do, but that night, in the glow of the basement, the book thief completed enough push-ups to make her hurt for several days. Even when Max advised her that she'd already done too many, she continued.

In bed, she read with Papa, who could tell something was wrong. It was the first time in a month that he'd come in and sat with her, and she was comforted, if only slightly. Somehow, Hans Hubermann always knew what to say, when to stay, and when to leave her be. Perhaps Liesel was the one thing he was a true expert at.

"Is it the washing?" he asked.

Liesel shook her head.

Papa hadn't shaved for a few days and he rubbed the scratchy whiskers every two or three minutes. His silver eyes were flat and calm, slightly warm, as they always were when it came to Liesel.

When the reading petered out, Papa fell asleep. It was then that Liesel spoke what she'd wanted to say all along.

"Papa," she whispered, "I think I'm going to hell."

Her legs were warm. Her knees were cold.

She remembered the nights when she'd wet the bed and Papa had washed the sheets and taught her the letters of the alphabet. Now his breathing blew across the blanket and she kissed his scratchy cheek.

"You need a shave," she said.

"You're not going to hell," Papa replied.

For a few moments, she watched his face. Then she lay back down, leaned on him, and together, they slept, very much in Munich, but somewhere on the seventh side of Germany's die.