The Book Thief

THE GATES OF THIEVERY

She remained on the steps, waiting for Papa, watching the stray ash and the corpse of collected books. Everything was sad. Orange and red embers looked like rejected lollies, and most of the crowd had vanished. She’d seen Frau Diller leave (very satisfied), and Pfiffikus (white hair, a Nazi uniform, the same dilapidated shoes and a triumphant whistle). Now there was nothing but cleaning up, and soon, no-one would even imagine it had happened.

But you could smell it.

‘What are you doing?’

Hans Hubermann arrived at the church steps.

‘Hi, Papa.’

‘You were supposed to be in front of the town hall.’

‘Sorry, Papa.’

He sat down next to her, halving his tallness on the concrete and taking a piece of Liesel’s hair. His fingers adjusted it gently behind her ear. ‘Liesel, what’s wrong?’

For a while, she said nothing. She was making calculations, despite already knowing.

A SMALL ADDITION

The Führer.

He was the they that Hans and Rosa Hubermann were talking about that evening when she first wrote to her mother. She knew it, but she had to ask.

‘Is my mother a communist?’ Staring. Straight ahead. ‘They were always asking her things, before I came here.’

Hans edged forward a little, forming the beginnings of a lie. ‘I have no idea – I never met her.’

‘Did the Führer take her away?’

The question surprised them both, and it forced Papa to stand up. He looked at the brown-shirted men taking to the pile of ash with shovels. He could hear them hacking into it. Another lie was growing in his mouth, but he found it impossible to let it out. He said, ‘I think he might have, yes.’

‘I knew it.’ The words were thrown at the steps and Liesel could feel the slush of anger, stirring hotly in her stomach. ‘I hate the Führer,’ she said. ‘I hate him.’

And Hans Hubermann?

What did he do? What did he say?

Did he bend down and embrace his foster daughter, as he wanted to? Did he tell her that he was sorry for what was happening to her, to her mother, for what had happened to her brother?

Not exactly.

He clenched his eyes. Then opened them. He slapped Liesel Meminger squarely in the face.

‘Don’t ever say that!’ His voice was quiet, but sharp.

As the girl shook and sagged on the steps, he sat next to her and held his face in his hands. It would be easy to say that he was just a tall man sitting poor-postured and shattered on some church steps, but he wasn’t. At the time, Liesel had no idea that her foster father, Hans Hubermann, was caught in one of the most dangerous dilemmas a German citizen could face. Not only that, he’d been facing it for close to a year.

‘Papa?’

The surprise in her voice rushed her, and it rendered her useless. She wanted to run but couldn’t. The hands were gone from Papa’s face now as he found the resolve to speak again.

‘You can say that in our house,’ he said, looking gravely at Liesel’s cheek. ‘But you never say it on the street, at school, at the BDM, never!’ He stood in front of her and lifted her by the triceps. He shook her. ‘Do you hear me?’

With her eyes trapped wide open, Liesel nodded her compliance.

It was, in actual fact, a rehearsal for a future lecture, when all of Hans Hubermann’s worst fears arrived on Himmel Street later that year, in the early hours of a November morning.

‘Good.’ He placed her back down. ‘Now, let us try …’ At the bottom of the steps, Papa stood erect and cocked his arm. Forty-five degrees. ‘Heil Hitler.’

Liesel stood up and also raised her arm. With absolute misery, she repeated it. ‘Heil Hitler.’ It was quite a sight – an eleven-year-old girl, trying not to cry on the church steps, saluting the Führer as the voices over Papa’s shoulder chopped and beat at the dark shape in the background.

‘Are we still friends?’

Perhaps a quarter of an hour later, Papa held a cigarette olive branch in his palm – the paper and tobacco he’d just received.

Without a word, Liesel reached gloomily across and proceeded to roll it.

For quite a while, they sat there together.

Smoke climbed over Papa’s shoulder.

After another ten minutes, the gates of thievery would open just a crack, and Liesel Meminger would widen them a little further and squeeze through.

TWO QUESTIONS

As Liesel would discover, a good thief requires many things.

Stealth. Nerve. Speed.

More important than any of those things, however, was one final requirement.

Luck.

Actually.

Forget the ten minutes.

The gates open now.