The Book Thief

THE IDIOT AND THE COAT MEN

On the night of the parade, the idiot sat in the kitchen, drinking bitter gulps of Holtzapfel’s coffee and hankering for a cigarette. He waited for the Gestapo, the soldiers, the police – for anyone – to take him away, as he felt he deserved. Rosa ordered him to come to bed. The girl loitered in the doorway. He sent them both away and spent the hours till morning with his head in his hands, waiting.

Nothing came.

Every unit of time carried with it the expected noise of knocking and threatening words.

They did not come.

The only sound was of himself.

‘What have I done?’ he whispered again.

‘God, I’d love a cigarette,’ he answered. He was all out.

Liesel heard the repeated sentences several times, and it took a lot to stay by the door. She’d have loved to comfort him, but she had never seen a man so devastated. There were no consolations that night. Max was gone, and Hans Hubermann was to blame.

The kitchen cupboards were the shape of guilt, and his palms were oily with the memory of what he’d done. They must be sweaty, Liesel thought, for her own hands were soaked to the wrists.

In her room, she prayed.

Hands and knees, forearms against the mattress.

‘Please, God, please let Max survive. Please, God please …’

Her suffering knees.

Her painful feet.

When first light appeared, she awoke and made her way back to the kitchen. Papa was asleep with his head parallel to the tabletop, and there was some saliva at the corner of his mouth. The smell of coffee was overpowering, and the image of Hans Hubermann’s stupid kindness was still in the air. It was like a number or an address. Repeat it enough times and it sticks.

Her first attempt to wake him was unfelt, but her second nudge of the shoulder brought his head from the table in an upward shock.

‘Are they here?’

‘No, Papa, it’s me.’

He finished the stale pool of coffee in his mug. His Adam’s apple lifted and sank. ‘They should have come by now. Why haven’t they come, Liesel?’

It was an insult.

They should have come by now and swept through the house, looking for any evidence of Jew-loving or treason, but it appeared that Max had left for no reason at all. He could have been asleep in the basement, or sketching in his book.

‘You can’t have known that they wouldn’t come, Papa.’

‘I should have known not to give the man some bread. I just didn’t think.’

‘Papa, you did nothing wrong.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

He stood and walked out the kitchen door, leaving it ajar. Lending even more insult to injury, it was going to be a lovely morning.

When four days had elapsed, Papa walked a long length of the Amper River. He brought back a small note and placed it on the kitchen table.

Another week passed, and still Hans Hubermann waited for his punishment. The welts on his back were turning to scars, and he spent the majority of his time walking around Molching. Frau Diller spat at his feet. Frau Holtzapfel, true to her word, had ceased spitting at the Hubermann door, but here was a handy replacement. ‘I knew it,’ the shopkeeper damned him. ‘You dirty Jew-lover.’

He walked obliviously on, and Liesel would often catch him at the Amper River, on the bridge. His arms rested on the rail and he leaned his upper body over the edge. Kids on bikes rushed past him, or they ran with loud voices and the slaps of feet on wood. None of it moved him in the slightest.

DUDEN DICTIONARY MEANING #8

‘Do you see him?’ he asked her one afternoon, when she leaned with him. ‘In the water there?’

The river was not running very fast. In the slow ripples, Liesel could see the outline of Max Vandenburg’s face. She could see his feathery hair and the rest of him. ‘He used to fight the Führer in our basement.’

‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph.’ Papa’s hands tightened on the splintery wood. ‘I’m an idiot.’

No, Papa.

You’re just a man.

The words came to her more than a year later, when she wrote in the basement, and she wished she’d thought of them at the time.

‘I am stupid,’ Hans Hubermann told his foster daughter. ‘And kind. Which makes the biggest idiot in the world. The thing is, I want them to come for me. Anything’s better than this waiting.’

Hans Hubermann needed vindication. He needed to know that Max Vandenburg had left his house for good reason.

Finally, after nearly three weeks of waiting, he thought his moment had come.

It was late.

Liesel was returning from Frau Holtzapfel’s when she saw the two men in their long black coats, and she ran inside.

‘Papa, Papa!’ She nearly wiped out the kitchen table. ‘Papa, they’re here!’

Mama came first. ‘What’s all this shouting about, Saumensch? Who’s here?’

‘The Gestapo.’

‘Hansie!’

He was already there, and he walked out of the house to greet them. Liesel wanted to join him but Rosa held her back and they watched from the window.

Papa was poised at the front gate. He fidgeted.

Mama tightened her grip on Liesel’s arms.

The men walked past.

Papa looked back at the window, alarmed, then made his way out of the gate. He called after them. ‘Hey! I’m right here. It’s me you want. I live in this one.’

The coat men only stopped momentarily and checked their notebooks. ‘No, no,’ they told him. Their voices were deep and bulky. ‘Unfortunately, you’re a little old for our purposes.’

They continued walking but they did not travel very far, stopping at number thirty-five and proceeding through the open gate.

‘Frau Steiner?’ they asked when the door was opened.

‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘We’ve come to talk to you about something.’

The coat men stood like jacketed columns on the threshold of the Steiners’ shoebox house.

For some reason, they’d come for the boy.

The coat men wanted Rudy.