The Book Thief

THE ACCORDIONIST

(The Secret Life of Hans Hubermann)

There was a young man standing in the kitchen. The key in his hand felt like it was rusting into his palm. He didn’t speak anything like hello, or please help, or any other such expected sentence. He asked two questions.

QUESTION ONE

QUESTION TWO

As he looked uncomfortably at the human shape before him, the young man’s voice was scraped out and handed across the dark like it was all that remained of him.

Papa, alert and appalled, stepped closer.

To the kitchen, he whispered, ‘Of course I do.’

It all dated back many years, to the First World War.

They’re strange, those wars.

Full of blood and violence – but also full of stories that are equally difficult to fathom. ‘It’s true,’ people will mutter. ‘I don’t care if you don’t believe me. It was that fox who saved my life,’ or ‘They died either side of me and I was left standing there, the only one without a bullet between my eyes. Why me? Why me and not them?’

Hans Hubermann’s story was a little like that. When I found it amongst the book thief’s words, I realised that we passed each other once in a while during that period, though neither of us scheduled a meeting. Personally, I had a lot of work to do. As for Hans, I think he was doing his best to avoid me.

The first time we were in the vicinity of each other, Hans was twenty-two years old, fighting the French. The majority of young men in his platoon were eager to fight. Hans wasn’t so sure. I had taken a few of them along the way, but you could say I never even came close to touching Hans Hubermann. He was either too lucky, or he deserved to live, or there was a good reason for him to live.

In the army, he didn’t stick out at either end. He ran in the middle, climbed in the middle, and he could shoot straight enough so as not to affront his superiors. Nor did he excel enough to be one of the first chosen to run straight at me.

A SMALL BUT NOTEWORTHY NOTE

He’d been in the fight for almost six months when he ended up in France, where, at face value, a strange event saved his life. Another perspective would suggest that in the nonsense of war, it made perfect sense.

On the whole, his time in the Great War had astonished him from the moment he entered the army. It was like a serial. Day after day after day. After day:

The conversation of bullets.

Resting men.

The best dirty jokes in the world.

Cold sweat – that malignant little friend – outstaying its welcome in the armpits and trousers.

He enjoyed the card games the most, followed by the few games of chess, despite being thoroughly pathetic at it. And the music. Always the music.

It was a man a year older than himself – a German Jew named Erik Vandenburg – who taught him to play the accordion. The two of them gradually became friends due to the fact that neither of them was terribly interested in fighting. They preferred cigarette-rolling to rolling in snow and mud. They preferred shooting craps to shooting bullets. A firm friendship was built on gambling, smoking and music, not to mention a shared desire for survival. The only trouble with this was that Erik Vandenburg would later be found in several pieces on a grassy hill. His eyes were open and his wedding ring was stolen. I shovelled up his soul with the rest of them and we drifted away. The horizon was the colour of milk. Cold and fresh. Poured out, amongst the bodies.

All that was really left of Erik Vandenburg was a few personal items and the fingerprinted accordion. Everything but the instrument was sent home. It was considered too big. Almost with self-reproach, it sat on his makeshift bed at the base camp and was given to his friend, Hans Hubermann, who happened to be the only man to survive.

HE SURVIVED LIKE THIS

For that, he had Erik Vandenburg to thank. Or more to the point, Erik Vandenburg and the sergeant’s toothbrush.

That particular morning, not too long before they were leaving, Sergeant Stephan Schneider paced into the sleeping quarters and called everyone to attention. He was popular with the men for his sense of humour and practical jokes, but more so for the fact that he never followed anyone into the fire. He always went first.

On certain days he was inclined to enter the room of resting men and say something like, ‘Who comes from Pasing?’ or ‘Who’s good with their mathematics?’ or in the fateful case of Hans Hubermann, ‘Who’s got neat handwriting?’

No-one ever volunteered, not after the first time he did it. On that day, an eager young soldier named Philipp Schlink stood proudly up and said, ‘Yes, sir, I come from Pasing.’ He was promptly handed a toothbrush and told to clean the shithouse.

When the sergeant asked who had the best penmanship, you can surely understand why no-one was keen to step forward. They thought they might be first to receive a full hygiene inspection or scrub an eccentric lieutenant’s shit-trampled boots before they left.

‘Now come on,’ Schneider toyed with them. Slapped down with oil, his hair gleamed, though a small piece was always upright and vigilant, at the apex of his head. ‘At least one of you useless bastards must be able to write properly.’

In the distance there was gunfire.

It triggered a reaction.

‘Look,’ said Schneider, ‘this isn’t like the others. It will take all morning, maybe longer.’ He couldn’t resist a smile. ‘Schlink was polishing that shithouse while the rest of you were playing cards, but this time you’re going out there.’

Life or pride.

He was clearly hoping that one of his men would have the intelligence to take life.

Erik Vandenburg and Hans Hubermann glanced at each other. If someone stepped forward now, the platoon would make his life a living hell for the rest of their time together. No-one likes a coward. On the other hand, if someone was to be nominated …

Still no-one stepped forward, but a voice stooped out and ambled towards the sergeant. It sat at his feet, waiting for a good kicking. It said, ‘Hubermann, sir.’ The voice belonged to Erik Vandenburg. He obviously thought that today wasn’t the appropriate time for his friend to die.

The sergeant paced up and down the passage of soldiers.

‘Who said that?’

He was a superb pacer, Stephan Schneider – a small man who spoke, moved and acted in a hurry. As he strode up and down the two lines, Hans looked on, waiting for the news. Perhaps one of the nurses was sick and they needed someone to strip and replace bandages on the infected limbs of injured soldiers. Perhaps a thousand envelopes were to be licked and sealed and sent home with death notices in them.

At that moment, the voice was put forward again, moving a few others to make themselves heard. ‘Hubermann,’ they echoed. Erik even said, ‘Immaculate handwriting, sir, immaculate.’

‘It’s settled then.’ There was a circular, small-mouthed grin. ‘Hubermann. You’re it.’

The gangly young soldier made his way forward and asked what his duty might be.

The sergeant sighed. ‘The captain needs a few dozen letters written for him. He’s got terrible rheumatism in his fingers. Or arthritis. You’ll be writing them for him.’

This was no time to argue, especially when Schlink was sent to clean the toilets and the other one, Pflegger, nearly killed himself licking envelopes. His tongue was infection-blue.

‘Yes, sir,’ Hans nodded, and that was the end of it. His writing ability was dubious to say the least, but he considered himself lucky. He wrote the letters as best he could while the rest of the men went into battle.

None of them came back.

That was the first time Hans Hubermann escaped me. The Great War.

A second escape was still to come, in 1943, in Essen.

Two wars for two escapes.

Once young, once middle-aged.

Not many men are lucky enough to cheat me twice.

He carried the accordion with him during the entirety of the war.

When he tracked down the family of Erik Vandenburg in Stuttgart upon his return, Vandenburg’s wife informed him that he could keep it. Her apartment was littered with them, and it upset her too much to look at that one in particular. The others were reminder enough, as was her once shared profession of teaching it.

‘He taught me to play,’ Hans informed her, as though it might help.

Perhaps it did, for the devastated woman asked if he could play it for her, and she silently wept as he pressed the buttons and keys of a clumsy Blue Danube Waltz. It was her husband’s favourite.

‘You know,’ Hans explained to her, ‘he saved my life.’ The light in the room was small, and the air restrained. ‘He – if there’s anything you ever need …’ He slid a piece of paper with his name and address on it across the table. ‘I’m a painter by trade. I’ll paint your apartment for free, whenever you like.’ He knew it was useless compensation, but he offered anyway.

The woman took the paper, and not long after, a small child wandered in and sat on her lap.

‘This is Max,’ the woman said, but the boy was too young and shy to say anything. He was skinny, with soft hair, and his thick, murky eyes watched as the stranger played one more song in the heavy room. From face to face, he looked on as the man played and the woman wept. The different notes handled her eyes. Such sadness.

Hans left.

‘You never told me,’ he said to a dead Erik Vandenburg and the Stuttgart skyline. ‘You never told me you had a son.’

After a momentary, head-shaken stoppage, Hans returned to Munich, expecting never to hear from those people again. What he didn’t know was that his help would most definitely be needed, but not for painting, and not for another twenty years or so.

There were a few weeks before he started painting. In the good weather months, he worked vigorously, and even in winter he often said to Rosa that business might not have been pouring, but it would at least drizzle now and again.

For more than a decade, it all worked.

Hans Junior and Trudy were born. They grew up making visits to their papa at work, slapping paint on walls and cleaning brushes.

When Hitler rose to power in 1933, though, the painting business fell slightly awry. Hans didn’t join the NSDAP like the majority of people did. He put a lot of thought into his decision.

THE THOUGHT PROCESS OF HANS HUBERMANN

Once the persecution began, his work slowly dried up. It wasn’t too bad to begin with, but soon enough, he was losing customers. Handfuls of quotes seemed to vanish into the rising Nazi air.

He approached an old faithful named Herbert Bollinger – a man with a hemispheric waistline who spoke Hochdeutsch (he was from Hamburg) – when he saw him on Munich Street. At first the man looked down, past his girth, to the ground, but when his eyes returned to the painter, the question clearly made him uncomfortable. There was no reason for Hans to ask, but he did.

‘What’s going on, Herbert? I’m losing customers quicker than I can count.’

Bollinger didn’t flinch any more. Standing upright, he delivered the fact as a question of his own. ‘Well, Hans. Are you a member?’

‘Of what?’

But Hans Hubermann knew exactly what the man was talking about.

‘Come on, Hansie,’ Bollinger persisted. ‘Don’t make me spell it out.’

The tall painter waved him away and walked on.

As the years passed by, the Jews were being terrorised at random throughout the country, and in the spring of 1937, almost to his shame, Hans Hubermann finally submitted. He made some enquiries and applied to join the Party.

After lodging his form at the Nazi headquarters on Munich Street, he witnessed four men throw several bricks into a clothing store named Kleinman’s. It was one of the few Jewish shops that was still in operation in Molching. Inside, a small man was stuttering about, crushing the broken glass beneath his feet as he cleaned up. A star the colour of mustard was smeared to the door. In sloppy lettering, the words JEWISH FILTH were spilling over at their edges. The movement inside tapered from hurried to morose, then stopped altogether.

Hans moved closer and stuck his head inside. ‘Do you need some help?’

Mr Kleinman looked up. A dust-broom was fixed powerlessly to his hand. ‘No, Hans. Please. Go away.’ Hans had painted Joel Kleinman’s house the previous year. He remembered his three children. He could see their faces but couldn’t recall their names.

‘I will come tomorrow,’ he said, ‘and repaint your door.’

Which he did.

It was the second of two mistakes.

The first occurred immediately after the incident.

He returned to where he’d come from and drove his fist onto the door and then the window of the NSDAP. The glass shuddered but no-one replied. Everyone had packed up and gone home. A last member was further along Munich Street. When he heard the rattle of the glass, he noticed the painter.

He came back and asked what was wrong.

‘I can no longer join,’ Hans stated.

The man was shocked. ‘Why not?’

Hans looked at the knuckles of his right hand and swallowed. He could already taste the error, like a metal tablet in his mouth. ‘Forget it.’ He turned and walked home.

Words followed him.

‘You just think about it, Herr Hubermann. Let us know what you decide.’

He did not acknowledge them.

The following morning, as promised, he rose earlier than usual, but not early enough. The door at Kleinman’s Clothing was still moist with dew. Hans dried it. He managed to match the colour as close as humanly possible and gave it a good solid coat.

Innocuously, a man walked past.

‘Heil Hitler,’ he said.

‘Heil Hitler,’ Hans replied.

THREE SMALL BUT IMPORTANT FACTS

For the next year, Hans was lucky that he didn’t revoke his membership application officially. While many people were instantly approved, he was added to a waiting list, regarded with suspicion. Towards the end of 1938, when the Jews were cleared out completely after Kristallnacht, the Gestapo visited. They searched the house, and when nothing or no-one suspicious was found, Hans Hubermann was one of the fortunate:

He was allowed to stay.

What probably saved him was that people knew he was at least waiting for his application to be approved. For this, he was tolerated, if not endorsed as the competent painter he was.

Then there was his other saviour.

It was the accordion that most likely spared him from total ostracism. Painters there were, from all over Munich, but under the brief tutorage of Erik Vandenburg and nearly two decades of his own steady practice, there was no-one in Molching who could play exactly like him. It was a style not of perfection, but warmth. Even mistakes had a good feeling about them.

He Heil Hitlered when it was asked of him and he flew the flag on the right days. There was no apparent problem.

Then, on June 16, 1939 (the date was like cement now), just over six months after Liesel’s arrival on Himmel Street, an event occurred that altered the life of Hans Hubermann irreversibly.

It was a day in which he had some work.

He left the house at seven a.m. sharp.

He towed his paint cart behind him, oblivious to the fact that he was being followed.

When he arrived at the work site, a young stranger walked up to him. He was blond-haired and tall, and serious.

The pair watched each other.

‘Would you be Hans Hubermann?’

Hans gave him a single nod. He was reaching for a paintbrush. ‘Yes, I would.’

‘Do you play the accordion by any chance?’

This time Hans stopped, leaving the brush where it was. Again, he nodded.

The stranger rubbed his jaw, looked around him and then spoke with great quietness, yet great clarity. ‘Are you a man who likes to keep a promise?’

Hans took out two paint tins and invited him to sit down. Before he accepted the invitation, the young man extended his hand and introduced himself. ‘My name’s Kugler. Walter. I come from Stuttgart.’

They sat and talked quietly for fifteen minutes or so, arranging a meeting for later on, in the night.