The Book Thief

PAGES FROM THE BASEMENT

For a week, Liesel was kept from the basement at all costs. It was Mama and Papa who made sure to take down Max’s food.

‘No, Saumensch,’ Mama told her each time she volunteered. There was always a new excuse. ‘How about you do something useful in here for a change, like finish the ironing? You think carrying it around town is so special? Try ironing it!’ You can do all manner of underhanded nice things when you have a caustic reputation. It worked.

During that week, Max had cut out a collection of pages from Mein Kampf and painted over them in white. He then hung them up with pegs on some string, from one end of the basement to the other. When they were all dry, the hard part began. He was educated well enough to get by, but he was certainly no writer, and no artist. Despite this, he formulated the words in his head till he could recount them without error. Only then, on the paper that had bubbled and humped under the stress of drying paint, did he begin to write the story. It was done with a small, black paintbrush.

The Standover Man.

He calculated that he needed thirteen pages, so he painted forty, expecting at least twice as many slip-ups as successes. There were practice versions on the pages of the Molching Express, improving his basic, clumsy artwork to a level he could accept. As he worked, he heard the whispered words of a girl. ‘His hair,’ she told him repeatedly, ‘is like feathers.’

When he was finished, he used a knife to pierce the pages and tie them with string. The result was a thirteen-page booklet that went like this: