The Book Thief

ONE TOOLKIT, ONE BLEEDER, ONE BEAR

Since his father’s recruitment to the army the previous October, Rudy’s anger had been growing nicely. The news of Hans Hubermann’s return was all he needed to take it a few steps further. He did not tell Liesel about it. There was no complaining that it wasn’t fair. His decision was to act.

He carried a metal case up Himmel Street at the typical thieving time of darkening afternoon.

RUDY’S TOOLKIT

Liesel saw him from the kitchen window – his purposeful steps and committed face, exactly like the day he’d gone to find his father. He gripped the handle with as much force as he could, and his movements were stiff with rage.

The book thief dropped the towel she was holding and replaced it with a single thought.

He’s going stealing.

She ran out to meet him.

‘Rudy, where are you going?’

Rudy simply continued walking and spoke through the cold air in front of him. Close to Tommy Muller’s apartment block, he said, ‘You know something, Liesel, I was thinking. You’re not a thief at all,’ and he didn’t give her a chance to reply. ‘That woman lets you in. She even leaves you biscuits, for Christ’s sake. I don’t call that stealing. Stealing is what the army does. Taking your father, and mine.’ He kicked a stone and it clanged against a gate. He walked faster. ‘All those rich Nazis up there, on Grande Strasse, Gelb Strasse, Heide Strasse.’

Liesel could concentrate on nothing but keeping up. They’d already passed Frau Diller’s and were well onto Munich Street. ‘Rudy —’

‘How does it feel, anyway?’

‘How does what feel?’

‘When you take one of those books?’

At that moment, she chose to keep still. If he wanted an answer, he’d have to come back, and he did. ‘Well?’ But again, it was Rudy who answered, before Liesel could even open her mouth. ‘It feels good, doesn’t it? To steal something back.’

Liesel forced her attention to the toolkit, trying to slow him down. ‘What have you got in there?’

He bent over and opened it up.

Everything appeared to make sense but the teddy bear.

As they kept walking, Rudy explained the toolkit at length, and what he would do with each item. For example, the hammers were for smashing windows and the towel was to wrap them up, to quell the sound.

‘And the teddy bear?’

It belonged to Anna-Marie Steiner and was no bigger than one of Liesel’s books. The fur was shaggy and worn. The eyes and ears had been sewn back on repeatedly, but it was friendly-looking none the less.

‘That,’ answered Rudy, ‘is the one masterstroke. That’s if a kid walks in while I’m inside. I’ll give it to them to calm them down.’

‘And what do you plan to steal?’

He shrugged. ‘Money, food, jewellery. Whatever I can get my hands on.’ It sounded simple enough.

It wasn’t until fifteen minutes later, when Liesel watched the sudden silence on his face, that she realised Rudy wasn’t stealing anything. The commitment had disappeared, and although he still watched the imagined glory of stealing, she could see that now he was not believing it. He was trying to believe it, and that’s never a good sign. His criminal greatness was unfurling before his eyes, and as the footsteps slowed and they watched the houses, Liesel’s relief was pure and sad inside her.

It was Gelb Street.

On the whole, the houses sat dark and huge.

Rudy took off his shoes and held them with his left hand. He held the toolkit with his right.

Between the clouds, there was a moon. Perhaps a mile of light.

‘What am I waiting for?’ he asked, but Liesel didn’t reply. Again, Rudy opened his mouth, but without any words. He placed the toolkit on the ground and sat on it.

His socks grew cold and wet.

‘Lucky there’s another pair in the toolkit,’ Liesel suggested, and she could see him trying not to laugh, despite himself.

Rudy moved across and faced the other way, and there was room for Liesel now as well.

The book thief and her best friend sat back-to-back on a patchy red toolkit in the middle of the street. Each facing a different way, they remained for quite a while. When they stood up and went home, Rudy changed his socks and left the previous ones on the road. A gift, he decided, for Gelb Street.

THE SPOKEN TRUTH OF RUDY STEINER

A few weeks later, the toolkit ended up being good for at least something. Rudy cleared it of screwdrivers and hammers and chose instead to store in it many of the Steiners’ valuables for the next air-raid. The only item that remained was the teddy bear.

On March 9, Rudy exited the house with it when the sirens made their presence felt again in Molching.

While the Steiners rushed down Himmel Street, Michael Holtzapfel was knocking furiously at Rosa Hubermann’s door. When she and Liesel came out, he handed them his problem. ‘My mother,’ he said, and the plums of blood were still on his bandage. ‘She won’t come out. She’s sitting at the kitchen table.’

As the weeks had worn on, Frau Holtzapfel had not yet begun to recover. When Liesel came to read, the woman spent most of the time staring at the window. Her words were quiet, close to motionless. All brutality and reprimand were wrested from her face. It was usually Michael who said goodbye to Liesel or gave her the coffee and thanked her. Now this.

Rosa moved into action.

She waddled swiftly through the gate and stood in the open doorway. ‘Holtzapfel!’ There was nothing but sirens and Rosa. ‘Holtzapfel, get out here, you miserable old swine!’ Tact had never been Rosa Hubermann’s strong point. ‘If you don’t come out we’re all going to die here on the street!’ She turned and viewed the helpless figures on the footpath. A siren had just finished wailing. ‘What now?’

Michael shrugged, disoriented, perplexed. Liesel dropped her bag of books and faced him. She shouted at the commencement of the next siren. ‘Can I go in?’ But she didn’t wait for the answer. She ran the short distance of the path and shoved past Mama.

Frau Holtzapfel was unmoved at the table.

What do I say? Liesel thought.

How do I get her to move?

When the sirens took another breath, she heard Rosa calling out. ‘Just leave her, Liesel, we have to go! If she wants to die, that’s her business,’ but then the sirens resumed. They reached down and tossed the voice away.

Now it was only noise and girl and wiry woman.

‘Frau Holtzapfel, please!’

Much like her conversation with Ilsa Hermann on the day of the biscuits, a multitude of words and sentences were at her fingertips. The difference was that today there were bombs. Today it was slightly more urgent.

THE OPTIONS

She went with the last sentence, calling the words directly through the sirens. Her hands were planted on the table.

The woman looked up and made her decision. She didn’t move.

Liesel left. She withdrew herself from the table and rushed from the house.

Rosa held open the gate and they started running to number forty-five. Michael Holtzapfel remained stranded on Himmel Street, mute.

‘Come on!’ Rosa implored him, but the returned soldier hesitated. He was just about to make his way back inside when something turned him round. His mutilated hand was the only thing attached to the gate and, shamefully, he dragged it free and followed.

They all looked back several times, but there was still no Frau Holtzapfel.

The road seemed so wide, and when the final siren evaporated into the air, the last three people on Himmel Street made their way into the Fiedlers’ basement.

‘What took you so long?’ Rudy asked. He was holding the toolkit.

Liesel placed her bag of books on the ground and sat on them. ‘We were trying to get Frau Holtzapfel.’

Rudy looked around. ‘Where is she?’

‘At home. In the kitchen.’

In the far corner of the shelter, Michael was hunched and shivery. ‘I should have stayed,’ he said, ‘I should have stayed, I should have stayed …’ His voice was close to noiseless but his eyes were louder than ever. They beat furiously in their sockets as he squeezed his injured hand and the blood overran the bandage.

It was Rosa who stopped him.

‘Please, Michael, it’s not your fault.’

But the young man with only a few remaining fingers on his right hand was inconsolable. He crouched in Rosa’s eyes.

‘Tell me something,’ he said, ‘because I don’t understand …’ He fell back and sat against the wall. ‘Tell me, Rosa, how she can sit there ready to die while I still want to live?’ The blood thickened. ‘Why do I want to live? I shouldn’t want to, but I do.’

The young man wept uncontrollably for many minutes, with Rosa’s hand on his shoulder. The rest of the people watched. He could not make himself stop even when the basement door opened and shut and Frau Holtzapfel entered the shelter.

Her son looked up.

Rosa stepped away.

When they came together, Michael apologised. ‘Mama, I’m sorry, I should have stayed with you.’

Frau Holtzapfel didn’t hear. She only sat with her son and lifted his bandaged hand. ‘You’re bleeding again,’ she said, and with everyone else, they sat and waited.

Liesel reached into her bag and rummaged amongst the books.

THE BOMBING OF MUNICH,

The majority of children slept and didn’t hear the sirens of renewed safety. Their parents woke them or carried them up the basement steps, into the world of darkness.

Far away, fires were burning and I had picked up just over two hundred murdered souls.

I was on my way to Molching for one more.

Himmel Street was clear.

The sirens had been held off for many hours, just in case there was another threat and to allow the smoke to make its way into the atmosphere.

It was Bettina Steiner who noticed the small fire and the sliver of smoke further down, close to the Amper River. It trailed into the sky and the girl held up her finger. ‘Look.’

The girl might have seen it first, but it was Rudy who reacted. In his haste, he did not relinquish his grip on the toolkit as he sprinted to the bottom of Himmel Street, took a few side roads and entered the trees. Liesel was next (having surrendered her books to a heavily protesting Rosa), and then a smattering of people from several shelters along the way.

‘Rudy, wait!’

Rudy did not wait.

Liesel could only see the toolkit in certain gaps in the trees as he made his way through to the dying glow and the misty plane. It sat smoking in the clearing by the river. The pilot had tried to land there.

Within twenty metres, Rudy stopped.

Just as I arrived myself, I noticed him standing there, recovering his breath.

The limbs of trees were scattered in the dark.

Twigs and needles were littered around the plane like fire fuel. To their left, three gashes were burned into the earth. The runaway tick-tock of cooling metal sped up the minutes and seconds till they were standing there for what felt like hours. The growing crowd was assembling behind them, their breath and sentences sticking to Liesel’s back.

‘Well,’ said Rudy, ‘should we take a look?’

He stepped through the remainder of trees to where the body of the plane was fixed to the ground. Its nose was in the running water and the wings were left crookedly behind.

Rudy circled slowly, from the tail and around to the right.

‘There’s glass,’ he said. ‘The windscreen is everywhere.’

Then he saw the body.

Rudy Steiner had never seen a face so pale.

‘Don’t come, Liesel,’ but Liesel came.

She could see the barely conscious face of the enemy pilot as the tall trees watched and the river ran. The plane let out a few more coughs and the head inside tilted from left to right. He said something they could obviously not understand.

‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph,’ Rudy whispered. ‘He’s alive.’

The toolkit bumped the side of the plane and brought with it the sound of more human voices and feet.

The glow of fire was gone and the morning was still and black. Only the smoke was in its way, but it, too, would soon be exhausted.

The wall of trees kept the colour of a burning Munich at bay. By now, the boy’s eyes had adjusted not only to the darkness, but to the face of the pilot. The eyes were like coffee stains, and gashes were ruled across his cheeks and chin. A ruffled uniform sat, unruly, across his chest.

Despite Rudy’s advice, Liesel came even closer, and I can promise you that we recognised each other at that exact moment.

I know you, I thought.

There was a train and a coughing boy. There was snow and a distraught girl.

You’ve grown, I thought, but I recognise you.

She did not back away or try to fight me, but I know that something told the girl I was there. Could she smell my breath? Could she hear my cursed, circular heartbeat, revolving like the crime it is in my deathly chest? I don’t know, but she knew me and she looked me in my face and she did not look away.

As the sky began to charcoal towards light, we both moved on. We both observed the boy as he reached into his toolkit again and searched through some picture frames to pull out a small, stuffed, yellow toy.

Carefully, he climbed to the dying man.

He placed the smiling teddy bear cautiously onto the pilot’s shoulder. The tip of its ear touched his throat.

The dying man breathed it in. He spoke. In English, he said, ‘Thank you.’ His straight-line cuts opened as he spoke, and a small drop of blood rolled crookedly down his throat.

‘What?’ Rudy asked him. ‘Was hast du gesagt? What did you say?’

Unfortunately, I beat him to the answer. The time was there and I was reaching into the cockpit. I slowly extracted the pilot’s soul from his ruffled uniform and rescued him from the broken plane. The crowd played with the silence as I made my way through. I jostled free.

Above me, the sky eclipsed – just a last moment of darkness – and I swear I could see a black signature in the shape of a swastika. It loitered untidily above.

‘Heil Hitler,’ I said, but I was well into the trees by then. Behind me, a teddy bear was resting on the shoulder of a corpse. A lemon candle stood below the branches. The pilot’s soul was in my arms.

It’s probably fair to say that in all the years of Hitler’s reign, no person was able to serve the Führer as loyally as me. A human doesn’t have a heart like mine. The human heart is a line, whereas my own is a circle, and I have the endless ability to be in the right place at the right time. The consequence of this is that I’m always finding humans at their best and worst. I see their ugliness and their beauty, and I wonder how the same thing can be both. Still, they have one thing that I envy. Humans, if nothing else, have the good sense to die.