The Book Thief

In late February, when Liesel woke up in the early hours of the morning, a figure made its way into her bedroom. Typical of Max, it was as close as possible to a noiseless shadow.

Liesel, searching through the dark, could only vaguely sense the man coming towards her.

‘Hallo?’

There was no reply.

There was nothing but the near-silence of his feet, as he came closer to the bed and placed the pages on the floor, next to her socks. The pages crackled. Just slightly. One edge of them curled into the floor.

‘Hallo?’

This time there was a response.

She couldn’t tell exactly where the words came from. What mattered was that they reached her. They arrived and kneeled next to the bed.

‘A late birthday gift. Look in the morning. Goodnight.’

For a while, she drifted in and out of sleep, not sure any more whether she’d dreamed of Max coming in.

In the morning, when she woke and rolled over, she saw the pages sitting on the floor. She reached down and picked them up, listening to the paper as it rippled in her early-morning hands.

All my life, I’ve been scared of men standing over me …

As she turned them, the pages were noisy, like static around the written story.

Three days, they told me … and what did I find when I woke up?

There were the erased pages of Mein Kampf, gagging, suffocating under the paint as they turned.

It makes me understand that the best standover man I’ve ever known …

Liesel read and viewed Max Vandenburg’s gift three times, noticing a different brush line or word with each one. When the third reading was finished, she climbed as quietly as she could from her bed and walked to Mama and Papa’s room. The allocated space next to the fire was vacant.

As she thought about it, she realised it was actually appropriate, or even better – perfect – to thank him where the pages were made.

She walked down the basement steps. She saw an imaginary framed photo seep into the wall – a quiet-smiled secret.

No more than a few metres, it was a long walk to the drop sheets and the assortment of paint tins that shielded Max Vandenburg. She removed the sheets closest to the wall until there was a small corridor to look through.

The first part of him she saw was his shoulder, and through the slender gap, she slowly, painfully, inched her hand in until it rested there. His clothing was cool. He did not wake.

She could feel his breathing and his shoulder moving up and down ever so slightly. For a while she watched him. Then she sat and leaned back.

Sleepy air seemed to have followed her.

The scrawled words of practice stood magnificently on the wall by the stairs, jagged and childlike and sweet. They looked on as both the hidden Jew and the girl slept, hand to shoulder.

They breathed.

German and Jewish lungs.

Next to the wall, The Standover Man sat numbly and gratified, like a beautiful itch at Liesel Meminger’s feet.