The Book Thief

THE SOUND OF SIRENS

With the small collection of money Hans had earned in the summer, he brought home a second-hand radio. ‘This way,’ he said, ‘we can hear when the raids are coming even before the sirens start. They make a cuckoo sound and then announce the regions at risk.’

He placed it on the kitchen table and switched it on. They also tried to make it work in the basement, for Max, but there was nothing but static and severed voices in the speakers.

In September, they did not hear it as they slept.

Either the radio was already half-broken, or it was swallowed immediately by the crying sound of sirens.

A hand was shoved gently at Liesel’s shoulder as she slept.

Papa’s voice followed it in, afraid.

‘Liesel, wake up. We have to go.’

There was the disorientation of interrupted sleep, and Liesel could barely decipher the outline of Papa’s face. The only thing truly visible was his voice.

In the hallway, they stopped.

‘Wait,’ said Rosa.

Through the dark, they rushed to the basement.

The lamp was lit.

Max edged out from behind the paint tins and dust sheets. His face was tired and he hitched his thumbs nervously into his trousers. ‘Time to go, huh?’

Hans walked to him. ‘Yes, time to go.’ He shook his hand and slapped his arm. ‘We’ll see you when we get back, right?’

‘Of course.’

Rosa hugged him, as did Liesel.

‘Goodbye, Max.’

Weeks earlier, they’d already discussed whether they should all stay together in their own basement, or if the three of them should go down the road, to a family by the name of Fiedler. It was Max who convinced them. ‘They said it’s not deep enough here. I’ve already put you in enough danger.’

Hans had nodded. ‘It’s a shame we can’t take you with us. It’s a disgrace.’

‘It’s how it is.’

Outside, the sirens howled at the houses, and the people came running, hobbling and recoiling as they exited their homes. Night watched. Some people watched it back, trying to find the tin-can planes as they drove across the sky.

Himmel Street was a procession of tangled people, all wrestling with their most precious possessions. In some cases it was a baby. In others, a stack of photo albums or a wooden box. Liesel carried her books, between her arm and her ribs. Frau Holtzapfel was heaving a suitcase, labouring on the footpath with bulbous eyes and small-stepped feet.

Papa, who’d forgotten everything – even his accordion – rushed back to her and rescued the suitcase from her grip. ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph, what have you got in here?’ he asked. ‘An anvil?’

Frau Holtzapfel advanced alongside him. ‘The necessities.’

The Fiedlers lived six houses down. They were a family of four, all with wheat-coloured hair and good German eyes. More importantly, they had a nice, deep basement. Twenty-two people crammed themselves into it, including the Steiner family, Frau Holtzapfel, Pfiffikus, a young man, and a family named Jenson. In the interest of a civil environment, Rosa Hubermann and Frau Holtzapfel were kept separated, though some things were above petty arguments.

One light globe dangled from the ceiling and the room was dank and cold. Jagged walls jutted out and poked people in the back as they stood and spoke. The muffled sound of sirens leaked in from somewhere. They could hear a distorted version of them that somehow found a way inside. Although creating considerable apprehension about the quality of the shelter, at least they could hear the three sirens that would signal the end of the raid, and safety. They didn’t need a Luftschutzwarte – an air-raid supervisor.

It wasn’t long before Rudy found Liesel and was standing next to her. His hair was pointing at something on the ceiling. ‘Isn’t this great?’

She couldn’t resist some sarcasm. ‘It’s lovely.’

‘Ah, come on, Liesel, don’t be like that. What’s the worst that can happen, apart from all of us being flattened or fried, or whatever bombs do?’

Liesel looked around, gauging the faces. She started compiling a list of who was most afraid.

THE HITLIST

Frau Holtzapfel’s eyes were trapped open. Her wiry frame was stooped forward, and her mouth was a circle. Herr Fiedler busied himself by asking people, sometimes repeatedly, how they were feeling. The young man, Rolf Schultz, kept to himself in the corner, speaking silently at the air around him, castigating it. His hands were cemented into his pockets. Rosa rocked back and forth, ever so gently. ‘Liesel,’ she whispered, ‘come here.’ She held the girl from behind, tightening her grip. She sang a song but it was so quiet that Liesel could not make it out. The notes were born on her breath, and they died at her lips. Next to them, Papa remained quiet and motionless. At one point, he placed his warm hand on Liesel’s cool skull. You’ll live, it said, and it was right.

To their left, Alex and Barbra Steiner stood with the younger of their children, Bettina and Emma. The two girls were attached to their mother’s right leg. The oldest boy, Kurt, stared ahead in a perfect Hitler Youth stance, holding the hand of Karin, who was tiny, even for her seven years. The ten-year-old, Anna-Marie, played with the pulpy surface of the cement wall.

On the other side of the Steiners were Pfiffikus and the Jenson family.

Pfiffikus kept himself from whistling.

The bearded Mr Jenson held his wife tightly, and their two kids drifted in and out of silence. Occasionally they niggled each other, but they held back when it came to the beginning of true argument.

After ten minutes or so, what was most prominent in the cellar was a kind of non-movement. Their bodies were welded together and only their feet changed position or pressure. Stillness was shackled to their faces. They watched each other and waited.

DUDEN DICTIONARY MEANING #3

From other shelters, there were stories of singing Deutschland über Alles or of people arguing amongst the staleness of their own breath. No such things happened in the Fiedler shelter. In that place, there was only fear and apprehension, and the dead song at Rosa Hubermann’s cardboard lips.

Not long before the sirens signalled the end, Alex Steiner – the man with the immovable, wooden face – coaxed the kids from his wife’s legs. He was able to reach out and grapple for his son’s free hand. Kurt, still stoic and full of stare, tightened his grip gently on the hand of his sister. Soon, everyone in the cellar was holding the hand of another, and the group of Germans stood in a lumpy circle. The cold hands melted amongst the warm ones, and in some cases, the feeling of another human pulse was transported. It came through the layers of pale, stiffened skin. Some of them closed their eyes, waiting for their final demise, or hoping for a sign that the raid was finally over.

Did they deserve any better, these people?

How many had actively persecuted others, high on the scent of Hitler’s gaze, repeating his sentences, his paragraphs, his opus? Was Rosa Hubermann responsible? The hider of a Jew? Or Hans? Did they all deserve to die? The children?

The answer to each of these questions interests me very much, though I cannot allow them to seduce me. I only know that all of those people would have sensed me that night, excluding the youngest of the children. I was the suggestion. I was the advice, my imagined feet walking into the kitchen and down the corridor.

As is often the case with humans, when I read about them in the book thief’s words, I pitied them, though not as much as I felt for the ones I scooped up from various camps in that time. The Germans in basements were pitiable, surely, but at least they had a chance. That basement was not a washroom. They were not sent there for a shower. For those people, life was still achievable.

In the uneven circle, the minutes soaked by.

Liesel held Rudy’s hand, and her mama’s.

Only one thought saddened her.

Max.

How would Max survive if the bombs arrived on Himmel Street?

Around her, she examined the Fiedlers’ basement. It was much sturdier and considerably deeper than the one at 33 Himmel Street.

Silently, she asked her papa.

Are you thinking about him, too?

Whether the silent question registered or not, he gave the girl a quick nod. It was followed a few minutes later by the three sirens of temporary peace.

The people at 45 Himmel Street sank with relief.

Some clenched their eyes and opened them again.

A cigarette was passed around.

Just as it made its way to Rudy Steiner’s lips it was snatched away by his father. ‘Not you, Jesse Owens.’

The children hugged their parents, and it took many minutes for all of them to fully realise that they were alive, and that they were going to be alive. Only then did their feet climb the stairs, to Herbert Fiedler’s kitchen.

Outside, a procession of people made its way silently along the street. Many of them looked up and thanked God for their lives.

When the Hubermanns made it home, they headed directly to the basement, but it seemed that Max was not there. The lamp was small and orange and they could not see him or hear an answer.

‘Max?’

‘He’s disappeared.’

‘Max, are you there?’

‘I’m here.’

They originally thought the words had come from behind the dust sheets and paint tins, but Liesel was first to see him, in front of them. His jaded face was camouflaged amongst the painting materials and fabric. He was sitting with stunned eyes and lips.

When they walked across, he spoke again.

‘I couldn’t help it,’ he said.

It was Rosa who replied. She crouched down to face him. ‘What are you talking about, Max?’

‘I …’ He struggled to answer. ‘When everything was quiet, I went up to the corridor and the curtain in the living room was open just a crack … I could see outside. I watched, only for a few seconds.’ He had not seen the outside world for twenty-two months.

There was no anger or reproach.

It was Papa who spoke.

‘How did it look?’

Max lifted his head, with great sorrow, and great astonishment. ‘There were stars,’ he said. ‘They burned my eyes.’

Four of them.

Two people on their feet. The other two remained seated.

All had seen a thing or two that night.

This place was the real basement. This was the real fear. Max gathered himself and stood to move back behind the sheets. He wished them goodnight, but he didn’t make it beneath the stairs. With Mama’s permission, Liesel stayed with him till morning, reading A Song in the Dark as he sketched and wrote in his book.

From a Himmel Street window, he wrote, the stars set fire to my eyes.