The Book Thief

DEAD LETTERS

Flash forward, to the basement, September 1943.

A fourteen-year-old girl is writing into a small dark-covered book. She is bony but strong and has seen many things. Papa sits with the accordion at his feet.

He says, ‘You know, Liesel? I nearly wrote you a reply and signed your mother’s name.’ He scratches his leg, where the plaster used to be. ‘But I couldn’t. I couldn’t bring myself.’

Several times, through the remainder of January and the entirety of February, when Liesel searched the letterbox for a reply to her letter, it clearly broke her foster father’s heart. ‘I’m sorry,’ he would tell her. ‘Not today, huh?’ In hindsight, she saw that the whole exercise had been pointless. Had her mother been in a position to do so, she would have already made contact with the foster care people, or directly with the girl, or the Hubermanns. But there had been nothing.

To lend insult to injury, in mid-February Liesel was given a letter from another ironing customer, the Pfaffelhürvers, from Heide Street. The pair of them stood with great tallness in the doorway, giving her a melancholic regard. ‘For your mama,’ the man said, handing her the envelope. ‘Tell her we’re sorry. Tell her we’re sorry.’

That was not a good night in the Hubermann residence.

Even when Liesel retreated to the basement to write her fifth letter to her mother (all but one of them yet to be sent), she could hear Rosa swearing and carrying on about those Pfaffelhürver Arschlöcher, and that lousy Ernst Vogel.

‘Feuer soll’n’s brunzen für einen Monat!’ she heard her call out. Translation: ‘They should all piss fire for a month!’

Liesel wrote.

When her birthday came around, there was no gift. There was no gift because there was no money, and, at the time, Papa was out of tobacco.

‘I told you.’ Mama pointed a finger at him. ‘I told you not to give her both books at Christmas. But no. Did you listen? Of course not!’

‘I know!’ He turned quietly to the girl. ‘I’m sorry, Liesel. We just can’t afford it.’

Liesel didn’t mind. She didn’t whinge or moan, or stamp her feet. She simply swallowed the disappointment and decided on one calculated risk – a present from herself. She would gather all of the accrued letters to her mother, stuff them into one envelope, and she would use just a tiny portion of the washing and ironing money to mail it. Then, of course, she would take the Watschen, most likely in the kitchen, and she would not make a sound.

Three days later, the plan came to fruition.

‘Some of it’s missing.’ Mama counted the money a fourth time, with Liesel over at the stove. It was warm there and it cooked the fast flow of her blood. ‘What happened, Liesel?’

She lied. ‘They must have given me less than usual.’

‘Did you count it?’

She broke. ‘I spent it, Mama.’

Rosa came closer. This was not a good sign. She was very close to the wooden spoons. ‘You what?’

Before she could answer, the wooden spoon came down on Liesel Meminger’s body like the gait of God. Red marks like footprints, and they burned. From the floor, when it was over, the girl actually looked up and explained.

There was pulse and yellow light, all together. Her eyes blinked. ‘I mailed my letters.’

What came to her then was the dustiness of the floor, the feeling that her clothes were more next to her than on her, and the sudden realisation that this would all be for nothing – that her mother would never write back and she would never see her again. The reality of this gave her a second Watschen. It stung her, and it did not stop for many minutes.

Above her, Rosa appeared to be smudged, but she soon clarified as her cardboard face loomed closer. Dejected, she stood there in all her plumpness, holding the wooden spoon at her side like a club. She reached down and leaked a little. ‘I’m sorry, Liesel.’

Liesel knew her well enough to understand that it was not for the hiding.

The red marks grew larger, in patches on her skin, as she lay there, in the dust and the dirt, and the dim light. Her breathing calmed, and a stray yellow tear trickled down her face. She could feel herself against the floor. A forearm, a knee. An elbow. A cheek. A calf muscle.

The floor was cold, especially against her cheek, but she was unable to move.

She would never see her mother again.

For nearly an hour, she remained spread out under the kitchen table, till Papa came home and played the accordion. Only then did she sit up and start to recover.

When she wrote about that night, she held no animosity towards Rosa Hubermann at all, or to her mother for that matter. To her they were only victims of circumstance. The only thought that continually recurred was the yellow tear. Had it been dark, she realised, that tear would have been black.

‘But it was dark,’ she told herself.

No matter how many times she tried to imagine that scene with the light that she knew had been there, she had to struggle to visualise it. She was beaten in the dark, and she had remained there, on a cold, dark kitchen floor. Even Papa’s music was the colour of darkness.

Even Papa’s music.

The strange thing was that she was vaguely comforted by that thought, rather than distressed by it.

The dark, the light.

What was the difference?

Nightmares had reinforced themselves in each, as the book thief began to truly understand how things were, and how they would always be. If nothing else, she could prepare herself. Perhaps that’s why on the Führer’s birthday, when the answer to the question of her mother’s suffering showed itself completely, she was able to react, despite her perplexity and rage.

Liesel Meminger was ready.

Happy birthday, Herr Hitler.

Many happy returns.