The Book Thief

THE AGELESS BROTHER

Liesel Meminger was a few weeks short of fourteen.

Her papa was still away.

She’d completed three more reading sessions with a devastated woman. On many nights, she’d watched Rosa sit with the accordion and pray with her chin on top of the bellows.

Now, she thought, it’s time. Usually, it was stealing that cheered her up, but on this day, it was giving something back.

She reached under her bed and removed the plate. As quickly as she could, she cleaned it in the kitchen and made her way out. It felt nice to be walking up through Molching. The air was sharp and flat, like the Watschen of a sadistic teacher or nun. Her shoes were the only sound on Munich Street.

As she crossed the river, a rumour of sunshine stood behind the clouds.

At 8 Grande Strasse, she walked up the steps, left the plate by the front door and knocked, and by the time the door was opened, the girl was around the corner. Liesel did not look back, but she knew that if she did, she’d have found her brother at the bottom of the steps again, his knee completely healed. She could even hear his voice.

‘That’s better, Liesel.’

It was with great sadness that she realised that her brother would be six for ever, but when she held that thought, she also made an effort to smile.

She remained at the Amper River, at the bridge, where Papa used to stand and lean.

She smiled and smiled, and when it all came out, she walked home and her brother never climbed into her sleep again. In many ways, she would miss him, but she could never miss his deadly eyes on the floor of the train, or the sound of a cough that killed.

The book thief lay in bed that night, and the boy only came before she closed her eyes. He was one member of a cast, for Liesel was always visited in that room. Her papa stood and called her half a woman. Max was writing The Word Shaker in the corner. Rudy was naked by the door. Occasionally, her mother stood on a bedside train platform. And far away, in the room that stretched like a bridge to a nameless town, her brother Werner played in the cemetery snow.

From down the hall, like a metronome for the visions, Rosa snored, and Liesel lay awake surrounded, but also remembering a quote from her most recent book.

THE LAST HUMAN STRANGER, PAGE 38

When morning came, the visions were gone and she could hear the quiet recital of words in the living room. Rosa was sitting with the accordion, praying.

‘Make them come back alive,’ she repeated. ‘Please, Lord, please. All of them.’ Even the wrinkles around her eyes were joining hands.

The accordion must have ached her, but she remained.

Rosa would never tell Hans about these moments, but Liesel believed that it must have been those prayers that helped Papa survive the LSE’s accident in Essen. If they didn’t help, they certainly can’t have hurt.