The Book Thief

THE TRILOGY

While Liesel worked, Rudy ran.

He did laps of Hubert Oval, ran around the block, and he raced almost everyone from the bottom of Himmel Street to Frau Diller’s, giving varied head starts.

On a few occasions when Liesel was helping Mama in the kitchen, Rosa would look out the window and say, ‘What’s that little Saukerl up to this time? All that running out there.’

Liesel would move to the window. ‘At least he hasn’t painted himself black again.’

‘Well that’s something, isn’t it?’

RUDY’S REASONS

‘Four gold medals,’ he said to Liesel one afternoon, when she did laps with him at Hubert Oval. ‘Like Jesse Owens back in thirty-six.’

‘You’re not still obsessed with him, are you?’

Rudy’s feet rhymed with his breathing. ‘Not really, but it would be nice, wouldn’t it? It would show all those bastards who said I was crazy. They’d see that I wasn’t so stupid after all.’

‘But can you really win all four events?’

They slowed to a stop at the end of the track, and Rudy placed his hands on his hips. ‘I have to.’

For six weeks he trained, and when the day of the carnival arrived in mid-August, the sky was hot-sunned and cloudless. The grass was overrun with Hitler Youths, parents, and a glut of brown-shirted leaders. Rudy Steiner was in peak condition.

‘Look,’ he pointed out. ‘There’s Deutscher.’

Through the clusters of crowd, the blond epitome of Hitler Youth standards was giving instructions to two members of his division. They were nodding and occasionally stretching. One of them shielded his eyes from the sun like a salute.

‘You want to say hello?’ Liesel asked.

‘No thanks. I’ll do that later.’

When I’ve won.

The words were not spoken, but they were definitely there, somewhere between Rudy’s blue eyes and Deutscher’s advisory hands.

There was the obligatory march around the ground.

The anthem.

Heil Hitler.

Only then could they begin.

When Rudy’s age group was called for the 1500, Liesel wished him luck in a typically German manner.

‘Hals und Beinbruch, Saukerl.’

She’d told him to break his neck and leg.

Boys collected themselves on the far side of the circular field. Some stretched, some focused, and the rest were there because they had to be.

Next to Liesel, Rudy’s mother, Barbra, sat with her youngest children. A thin blanket was brimming with kids and loosened grass. ‘Can you see Rudy?’ she asked them. ‘He’s the one on the far left.’ Barbra Steiner was a kind woman whose hair always carried the look of being recently combed.

‘Where?’ said one of the girls. Probably Bettina, the youngest. ‘I can’t see him at all.’

‘That last one. No, not there. There.’

They were still in the identification process when the starter’s gun gave off its smoke and sound. The small Steiners ran to the fence.

For the first lap, a group of seven boys led the field. On the second it dropped to five, and on the next lap, four. Rudy was the fourth runner on every lap until the last. A man on the right was saying that the boy coming second looked the best. He was the tallest. ‘You wait,’ he told his nonplussed wife. ‘With two hundred left, he’ll break away.’ The man was wrong.

A gargantuan, brown-shirted official informed the group that there was one lap to go. He certainly wasn’t suffering under the ration system. He called out as the lead pack crossed the line, and it was not the second boy who accelerated, but the fourth. And he was two hundred metres early.

Rudy ran.

He did not look back at any stage.

Like a stretch of rope, he lengthened his lead until any thought of someone else winning snapped altogether. He took himself around the track as the three runners behind him fought amongst each other for the scraps. In the home straight, there was nothing but blond hair and space, and when he crossed the line he didn’t stop. He didn’t raise his arm. There wasn’t even a bent-over relief. He simply walked another twenty metres and eventually looked over his shoulder to watch the others cross the line.

On the way back to his family, he met first with his leaders, and then Franz Deutscher. They both nodded.

‘Steiner.’

‘Deutscher.’

‘Looks like all those laps I gave you paid off, huh?’

‘Looks like it.’

He would not smile until he’d won all four.

A POINT FOR LATER REFERENCE

For Liesel, there was the 400. She finished seventh, then fourth in her heat of the 200. All she could see up ahead were the hamstrings and bobbing ponytails of the girls in front. In the long jump, she enjoyed the sand packed around her feet more than any distance, and the shot-put wasn’t her greatest moment either. This day, she realised, was Rudy’s.

In the 400 final, he led from the back straight to the end, and he won the 200 only narrowly.

‘You getting tired?’ Liesel asked him. It was early afternoon by then.

‘Of course not.’ He was breathing heavily and stretching his calves. ‘What are you talking about, Saumensch? What the hell would you know?’

When the heats of the 100 were called, he rose slowly to his feet and followed the trail of adolescents towards the track. This time Liesel went after him. ‘Hey, Rudy.’ She pulled at his shirt sleeve. ‘Good luck.’

‘I’m not tired,’ he said.

‘I know.’

He winked at her.

He was tired.

In his heat, Rudy slowed to finish second, and after ten minutes of other races, the final was called. Two other boys had looked formidable, and Liesel had a feeling in her stomach that Rudy could not win this one. Tommy Muller, who’d finished second-last in his heat, stood with her at the fence. ‘He’ll win it,’ he informed her.

‘I know.’

No he won’t.

When the finalists reached the start line, Rudy dropped to his knees and began digging starting holes with his hands. A balding brown-shirt wasted no time in walking over and telling him to cut it out. Liesel watched the adult finger, pointing, and she could see the dirt falling to the ground as Rudy brushed his hands together.

When they were called forward, Liesel tightened her grip on the fence. One of the boys false-started; the gun was shot twice.

It was Rudy. Again, the official had words with him and the boy nodded. Once more and he was out.

Set for the second time, Liesel watched with concentration, and for the first few seconds, she could not believe what she was seeing. Another false start was recorded and it was the same athlete who had done it. In front of her, she created a perfect race, in which Rudy trailed but came home to win in the last ten metres. What she actually saw, however, was Rudy’s disqualification. He was escorted to the side of the track and was made to stand there, alone, as the remainder of boys stepped forward.

They lined up and raced.

A boy with rusty brown hair and a big stride won by at least five metres.

Rudy remained.

Later, when the day was complete and the sun was taken from Himmel Street, Liesel sat with her friend on the footpath.

They talked about everything else, from Franz Deutscher’s face after the 1500 to one of the eleven-year-old girls having a tantrum after losing the discus.

Before they proceeded to their respective homes, Rudy’s voice reached over and handed Liesel the truth. For a while, it sat on her shoulder, but a few thoughts later, it made its way to her ear.

RUDY’S VOICE

When the confession registered, Liesel asked the only question available. ‘But why, Rudy? Why did you do it?’

He was standing with a hand on his hip, and he did not answer. There was nothing but a knowing smile and a slow walk that lolled him home. They never talked about it again.

For Liesel’s part, she often wondered what Rudy’s answer might have been had she pushed him. Perhaps three medals had shown what he’d wanted to show, or he was afraid to lose that final race. In the end, the only explanation she allowed herself to hear was an inner teenage voice.

‘Because he isn’t Jesse Owens.’

Only when she got up to leave did she notice the three imitation-gold medals sitting next to her. She knocked on the Steiners’ door and held them out to him. ‘You forgot these.’

‘No I didn’t.’ He closed the door and Liesel took the medals home. She walked with them down to the basement and told Max about her friend, Rudy Steiner.

‘He truly is stupid,’ she concluded.

‘Clearly,’ Max agreed, but I doubt he was fooled.

They both started work then, Max in his sketch book, Liesel on The Dream Carrier. She was in the latter stages of the novel, where the young priest was doubting his faith after meeting a strange and elegant woman.

When she placed it face-down on her lap, Max asked when she thought she’d finish it.

‘A few days at the most.’

‘Then a new one?’

The book thief looked at the basement ceiling. ‘Maybe, Max.’ She closed the book and leaned back. ‘If I’m lucky.’

THE NEXT BOOK

No, the dictionary comes at the end of this small trilogy, and this is only the second instalment. This is the part where Liesel finishes The Dream Carrier and steals a story called A Song in the Dark. As always, it was taken from the mayor’s house. The only difference was that she made her way to the upper part of town alone. There was no Rudy that day.

It was a morning rich with both sun and frothy clouds.

Liesel stood in the mayor’s library with greed in her fingers and book titles at her lips. She was comfortable enough on this occasion to run her fingers along the shelves – a short replay of her original visit to the room – and she whispered many of the titles as she made her way along.

Under the Cherry Tree.

The Tenth Lieutenant.

Typically, many of the titles tempted her, but after a good minute or two in the room, she settled for A Song in the Dark, most likely because the book was green, and she did not yet own a book of that colour. The engraved writing on the cover was white, and there was a small insignia of a flute between the title and the name of the author. She climbed with it from the window, saying thanks on her way out.

Without Rudy, she felt a good degree of absence, but on that particular morning, for some reason, the book thief was happiest alone. She went about her work and read the book next to the Amper River, far enough away from the occasional headquarters of Viktor Chemmel and the previous gang of Arthur Berg. No-one came, no-one interrupted, and Liesel read four of the very short chapters of A Song in the Dark, and she was happy.

It was the pleasure and satisfaction.

Of good stealing.

A week later, the trilogy of happiness was completed.

In the last days of August, a gift arrived, or in actual fact, was noticed.

It was late afternoon. Liesel was watching Kristina Muller skipping on Himmel Street. Rudy Steiner skidded to a stop in front of her on his brother’s bike. ‘Do you have some time?’ he asked.

She shrugged. ‘For what?’

‘I think you’d better come.’ He dumped the bike and went to collect the other one from home. In front of her, Liesel watched the pedal spin.

They rode up to Grande Strasse, where Rudy stopped and waited.

‘Well,’ Liesel asked, ‘what is it?’

Rudy pointed. ‘Look closer.’

Gradually, they rode to a better position, behind a blue spruce tree. Through the prickly branches, Liesel noticed the closed window, and then the object leaning onto the glass.

‘Is that …?’

Rudy nodded.

They debated the issue for many minutes before they agreed it needed to be done. It had obviously been placed there intentionally, and if it was a trap, it was worth it.

Amongst the powdery-blue branches, Liesel said, ‘A book thief would do it.’

She dropped the bike, observed the street and crossed the yard. The shadows of clouds were buried amongst the dusky grass. Were they holes for falling into, or patches of extra darkness for hiding in? Her imagination sent her sliding down one of those holes into the evil clutches of the mayor himself. If nothing else, those thoughts distracted her and she was at the window more quickly than she’d hoped.

It was like The Whistler all over again.

Her nerves licked her palms.

Small streams of sweat rippled under her arms.

When she raised her head, she could read the title. The Complete Duden Dictionary and Thesaurus. Briefly, she turned to Rudy and mouthed the words. It’s a dictionary. He shrugged and held out his arms.

She worked methodically, sliding the window upwards, wondering how all of this would look from inside the house. She envisioned the sight of her thieving hand, reaching up, making the window rise until the book was felled. It seemed to surrender slowly, like a falling tree.

Got it.

There was barely a disturbance or sound.

The book simply tilted towards her and she took it with her free hand. She even closed the window, nice and smooth, then turned and walked, back across the potholes of clouds.

‘Nice,’ Rudy said as he gave her the bike.

‘Thank you.’

They rode towards the corner, where the day’s importance reached them. Liesel knew. It was that feeling again, of being watched. A voice pedalled inside her. Two laps.

Look at the window. Look at the window.

She was compelled.

Like an itch that demands a fingernail, she felt an intense desire to stop.

She placed her feet on the ground and turned to face the mayor’s house and the library window, and she saw. Certainly, she should have known this might happen, but she could not hide the shock that loitered inside when she witnessed the mayor’s wife standing behind the glass. She was transparent, but she was there. Her fluffy hair was as it always was, and her wounded eyes and mouth and expression held themselves up, for viewing.

Very slowly, she lifted her hand to the book thief on the street. A motionless wave.

In her state of shock, Liesel said nothing, to Rudy, or herself. She only steadied herself and raised her hand, to acknowledge the mayor’s wife in the window.

DUDEN DICTIONARY MEANING #2

On the way home, they stopped at the bridge and inspected the heavy black book. As Rudy flipped through the pages, he arrived at a letter. He picked it up and looked slowly towards the book thief. ‘It’s got your name on it.’

The river ran.

Liesel took hold of the paper.

THE LETTER

‘We’d better head home,’ Rudy suggested, but Liesel did not go.

‘Can you wait here for ten minutes?’

‘Of course.’

Liesel struggled back up to 8 Grande Strasse and sat on the familiar territory of the front entrance. The book was with Rudy, but she held the letter and rubbed her fingers on the folded paper as the steps grew heavier around her. She tried four times to knock on the daunting flesh of the door, but she could not bring herself to do it. The most she could accomplish was to place her knuckles gently on the warmness of the wood.

Again, her brother found her.

From the bottom of the steps, his knee healing nicely, he said, ‘Come on, Liesel, knock.’

As she made her second getaway, she could soon see the distant figure of Rudy at the bridge. The wind showered through her hair. Her feet swam with the pedals.

Liesel Meminger was a criminal.

But not because she’d stolen a handful of books through an open window.

You should have knocked, she thought, and although there was a good portion of guilt, there was also the juvenile trace of laughter.

As she rode, she tried to tell herself something.

You don’t deserve to be this happy, Liesel. You really don’t.

Can a person steal happiness? Or is it just another internal, infernal human trick?

Liesel shrugged away from all of her thoughts. She crossed the bridge and told Rudy to hurry up and not to forget the book.

They rode home on rusty bikes.

They rode home a couple of miles, from summer to autumn, and from a quiet night to the noisy breath of the bombing of Munich.