The Book Thief

THE SMELL OF FRIENDSHIP

It continued.

Over the next few weeks and into summer, the midnight class began at the end of each nightmare. There were two more bed-wetting occurrences, but Hans Hubermann merely repeated his previous clean-up heroics and got down to the task of reading, sketching and reciting. In the morning’s early hours, quiet voices were loud.

On a Thursday, just after three p.m., Mama told Liesel to get ready to come with her and deliver some ironing. Papa had other ideas.

He walked into the kitchen and said, ‘Sorry, Mama, she’s not going with you today.’

Mama didn’t even bother looking up from the washing bag. ‘Who asked you, Arschloch? Come on, Liesel.’

‘She’s reading,’ he said. Papa handed Liesel a steadfast smile and a wink. ‘With me. I’m teaching her. We’re going to the Amper – upstream, where I used to practise the accordion.’

Now he had her attention.

Mama placed the washing on the table and worked herself up to the appropriate level of cynicism. ‘What did you say?’

‘I think you heard me, Rosa.’

Mama laughed. ‘What the hell could you teach her?’ A cardboard grin. Uppercut words. ‘Like you could read so much, you Saukerl.’

The kitchen waited. Papa counter-punched. ‘We’ll take your ironing for you.’

‘You filthy—’ She stopped. The words propped in her mouth as she considered it. ‘Be back before dark.’

‘We can’t read in the dark, Mama,’ Liesel said.

‘What was that, Saumensch?’

‘Nothing, Mama.’

Papa grinned and pointed at the girl. ‘Book, sandpaper, pencil,’ he ordered her, ‘and accordion!’ once she was already gone. Soon, they were on Himmel Street, carrying the words, the music, the washing.

As they walked towards Frau Diller’s, they turned round a few times to see if Mama was still at the gate, checking on them. She was. At one point she called out, ‘Liesel, hold that ironing straight! Don’t crease it!’

‘Yes, Mama!’

A few steps later: ‘Liesel, are you dressed warm enough?!’

‘What did you say?’

‘Saumensch dreckigs, you never hear anything! Are you dressed warm enough? It might get cold later!’

Around the corner, Papa bent down to do up a shoelace. ‘Liesel,’ he asked, ‘could you roll me a cigarette?’

Nothing would give her greater pleasure.

Once the ironing was delivered, they made their way back to the Amper River, which flanked the town. It worked its way past, pointing in the direction of Dachau, the concentration camp.

There was a wooden-planked bridge.

They sat maybe thirty metres down from it, in the grass, writing the words and reading them aloud, and when darkness was near, Hans pulled out the accordion. Liesel looked at him and listened, though she did not immediately notice the perplexed expression on her papa’s face that evening as he played.

PAPA’S FACE

There had been a change in him. A slight shift.

She saw it but didn’t realise until later, when everything came together. She didn’t see him watching as he played, having no idea that Hans Hubermann’s accordion was a story. In the times ahead, that story would arrive at 33 Himmel Street in the early hours of morning, wearing ruffled shoulders and a shivering jacket. It would carry a suitcase, a book, and two questions. A story. Story after story. Story within story.

For now, there was only the one as far as Liesel was concerned, and she was enjoying it.

She settled into the long arms of grass, lying back.

She closed her eyes and her ears held the notes.

There were, of course, some problems as well. A few times, Papa nearly yelled at her. ‘Come on, Liesel,’ he’d say. ‘You know this word, you know it!’ Just when progress seemed to be flowing well, somehow things would become lodged.

When the weather was good, they’d go to the Amper in the afternoon. In bad weather it was the basement. This was mainly on account of Mama. At first, they tried in the kitchen, but there was no way.

‘Rosa,’ Hans said to her at one point. Quietly, his words cut off one of her sentences. ‘Could you do me a favour?’

She looked up from the stove. ‘What?’

‘I’m asking you. I’m begging you, could you please shut your mouth for just five minutes?’

You can imagine the reaction.

They ended up in the basement.

There was no lighting there, so they took a kerosene lamp, and slowly, between school and home, from the river to the basement, from the good days to the bad, Liesel was learning to read and write.

‘Soon,’ Papa told her, ‘you’ll be able to read that awful graves book with your eyes closed.’

‘And I can get out of that midget class.’

She spoke those words with a grim kind of ownership.

In one of their basement sessions, Papa dispensed with the sandpaper (it was running out fast) and pulled out a brush. There were no luxuries in the Hubermann household but there was an oversupply of paint, and it became more than useful for Liesel’s learning. Papa would say a word and the girl would have to spell it aloud and then paint it on the wall, as long as she got it right. After a month, the wall was recoated. A fresh cement page.

Some nights after working in the basement, Liesel would sit crouched in the bath and hear the same utterances from the kitchen.

‘You stink,’ Mama would say to Hans. ‘Like cigarettes and kerosene.’

Sitting in the water, she imagined the smell of it, mapped out on her papa’s clothes. More than anything, it was the smell of friendship, and she could find it on herself, too. Liesel loved that smell. She would sniff her arm and smile as the water cooled around her.