The Book Thief

DOMINOES AND DARKNESS

In the words of Rudy’s youngest sisters, there were two monsters sitting in the kitchen. Their voices kneaded methodically at the door as three of the Steiner children played dominoes on the other side. The remaining three listened to the radio in the bedroom, oblivious. Rudy hoped this had nothing to do with what had happened at school the previous week. It was something he refused to tell Liesel and did not talk about at home.

A GREY AFTERNOON, A SMALL SCHOOL OFFICE

When the fourth game of dominoes was completed, Rudy began to stand them up in lines, creating patterns that wound their way across the living-room floor. As was his habit, he also left a few gaps, in case the rogue finger of a sibling interfered, which it usually did.

‘Can I knock them down, Rudy?’

‘No.’

‘What about me?’

‘No. We all are.’

He made three separate formations that led to the same tower of dominoes in the middle. Together, they would watch everything that was so carefully planned collapse, and they would all smile, at the beauty of destruction.

The kitchen voices were becoming louder now, each heaping itself upon the other to be heard. Different sentences fought for attention until one person, previously silent, came between them.

‘No,’ she said. It was repeated. ‘No.’ Even when the rest of them resumed their arguments, they were silenced again by the same voice, but now it gained momentum. ‘Please,’ Barbra Steiner begged them. ‘Not my boy.’

‘Can we light a candle, Rudy?’

It was something their father had often done with them. He would turn out the light and they’d watch the dominoes fall in the candlelight. It somehow made the event grander, a greater spectacle.

His legs were aching anyway. ‘Let me find a match.’

The light switch was at the door.

Quietly, he walked towards it with the matchbox in one hand, the candle in the other.

From the other side, the three men and one woman climbed to the hinges. ‘The best scores in the class,’ said one of the monsters. Such depth and dryness. ‘Not to mention his athletic ability.’ Damn it, why did he have to win all those races at the carnival?

Deutscher.

Damn that Franz Deutscher!

But then he understood.

This was not Franz Deutscher’s fault, but his own. He’d wanted to show his past tormentor what he was capable of, but he also wanted to prove himself to everyone. Now everyone was in the kitchen.

He lit the candle and switched off the light.

‘Ready?’

‘But I’ve heard what happens there.’ That was the unmistakable, oaky voice of his father.

‘Come on, Rudy, hurry up.’

‘Yes, but understand, Herr Steiner, this is all for a greater purpose. Think of the opportunities your son can have. This is really a privilege.’

‘Rudy, the candle’s dripping.’

He waved them away, waiting again for Alex Steiner. He came.

‘Privileges? Like running barefoot through the snow? Like jumping from ten-metre platforms into a metre of water?’

Rudy’s ear was pressed to the door now. Candle wax melted onto his hand.

‘Rumours.’ The arid voice, low and matter-of-fact, had an answer for everything. ‘Our school is one of the finest ever established. It’s better than world class. We’re creating an elite group of German citizens …’

Rudy could listen no longer.

He scraped the candle wax from his hand and drew back from the splice of light that came through the crack in the door. When he sat down, the flame went out. Too much movement. Darkness flowed in. The only light available was a white rectangular stencil, the shape of the kitchen door.

He struck another match and reignited the candle. The sweet smell of fire and carbon.

Rudy and his sisters each tapped a different domino and they watched them fall until the tower in the middle was brought to its knees. The girls cheered.

Kurt, his older brother, arrived in the room.

‘They look like dead bodies,’ he said.

‘What?’

Rudy peered up at the dark face, but Kurt did not answer. He’d noticed the arguing from the kitchen. ‘What’s going on in there?’

It was one of the girls who answered. The youngest, Bettina. She was five. ‘There are two monsters,’ she said. ‘They’ve come for Rudy.’

Again, the human child. So much cannier.

Later, when the coat men left, the two boys, one seventeen, the other fourteen, found the courage to face the kitchen.

They stood in the doorway. The light punished their eyes.

It was Kurt who spoke. ‘Are they taking him?’

Their mother’s forearms were flat on the table. Her palms were facing up.

Alex Steiner raised his head.

It was heavy.

His expression was sharp and definite, freshly cut.

A wooden hand wiped at the splinters of his fringe, and he made several attempts to speak.

‘Papa?’

But Rudy did not walk towards his father.

He sat at the kitchen table and took hold of his mother’s facing-up hand.

Alex and Barbra Steiner would not disclose what was said while the dominoes were falling like dead bodies in the lounge room. If only Rudy had kept listening at the door, just for another few minutes …

He told himself in the weeks to come – or in actual fact, pleaded with himself – that if he’d heard the rest of the conversation that night, he’d have entered the kitchen much earlier. ‘I’ll go,’ he’d have said. ‘Please, take me, I’m ready now.’

If he’d intervened, it might have changed everything.

THREE POSSIBILITIES

The cruelty of fate, however, did not allow Rudy Steiner to enter the kitchen at the opportune moment.

He’d returned to his sisters and the dominoes.

He sat down.

Rudy Steiner wasn’t going anywhere.