The Book Thief

THE 98TH DAY

For the first ninety-seven days after Hans Hubermann’s return in April 1943, everything was fine. On many occasions he was pensive about the thought of his son fighting in Stalingrad, but he hoped that some of his luck was in the boy’s blood.

On his third night at home, he played the accordion in the kitchen. A promise was a promise. There was music, soup and jokes, and the laughter of a fourteen-year-old girl.

‘Saumensch,’ Mama warned her, ‘stop laughing so loud. His jokes aren’t that funny. And they’re filthy, too …’

After a week, Hans resumed his service, travelling into the city to one of the army offices. He said that there was a good supply of cigarettes and food there, and sometimes he was able to bring home some biscuits or extra jam. It was like the good old days. A minor air raid in May. A Heil Hitler here or there and everything was fine.

Until the ninety-eighth day.

A SMALL STATEMENT BY AN OLD WOMAN

It was the same old lady who announced the Jews the first time Liesel saw them. On ground level, her face was a prune, only it was paper-white. Her eyes were the dark blue of a vein. And her prediction was accurate.

In the heart of summer, Molching was delivered a sign of things to come. It moved into sight like it always did. First the bobbing head of a soldier and the gun poking at the air above him. Then the ragged chain of clinking Jews.

The only difference this time was that they were brought from the opposite direction. They were taken through to the neighbouring town of Nebling to scrub the streets and do the clean-up work that the army refused to do. Late in the day, they were marched back to camp, slow and tired, defeated.

Again, Liesel searched for Max Vandenburg, thinking that he could easily have ended up in Dachau without being marched through Molching. He was not there. Not on this occasion.

Just give it time, though, for on a warm afternoon in August, Max would most certainly be marched through town with the rest of them. Unlike the others, however, he would not watch the road. He would not look randomly into the Führer’s German grandstand.

A FACT REGARDING MAX VANDENBURG

On this occasion, in July, on what Liesel later calculated as the ninety-eighth day of her papa’s return, she stood and studied the moving pile of mournful Jews – looking for Max. If nothing else, it alleviated the pain of simply watching.

That’s a horrible thought, she would write in her Himmel Street basement, but she knew it to be true. The pain of watching them. What about their pain? The pain of stumbling shoes and torment and the closing gates of the camp?

They came through twice in ten days, and soon after, the anonymous, prune-faced woman on Munich Street was proven absolutely correct. Suffering had most definitely come, and if they could blame the Jews as a warning or prologue, they should have blamed the Führer and his quest for Russia as the actual cause – for when Himmel Street woke later in July, a returned soldier was discovered to be dead. He was hanging from one of the rafters in a laundry up near Frau Diller’s. Another human pendulum. Another clock, stopped.

The careless owner had left the door open.

JULY 24, 6:03 A.M.

So many people chased after me in that time, calling my name, asking me to take them with me. Then there was the small percentage who called me casually over and whispered with their tightened voices.

‘Have me,’ they said, and there was no stopping them. They were frightened, no question, but they were not afraid of me. It was a fear of mucking it up and having to face themselves again, and facing the world, and the likes of you.

There was nothing I could do.

They had too many ways, they were too resourceful – and when they did it too well, whatever their chosen method, I was in no position to refuse.

Michael Holtzapfel knew what he was doing.

He killed himself for wanting to live.

Of course, I did not see Liesel Meminger at all that day. As is usually the case, I advised myself that I was far too busy to remain on Himmel Street to listen to the screams. It’s bad enough when people catch me red-handed, so I took the usual decision to make my exit, into the breakfast-coloured sun.

I did not hear the detonation of an old man’s voice when he found the hanging body, nor the sound of running feet and jaw-dropped gasps when other people arrived. I did not hear a skinny man with a moustache mutter, ‘Crying shame, a damn shame …’

I did not see Frau Holtzapfel laid out flat on Himmel Street, her arms out wide, her screaming face in total despair. No, I didn’t discover any of that until I came back a few months later and read something called The Book Thief. It was explained to me that in the end, Michael Holtzapfel was worn down not by his injured hand or any other injury, but by the guilt of living.

In the lead-up to his death, the girl had realised that he wasn’t sleeping, that each night was like poison. I often imagine him lying awake, sweating in sheets of snow, or seeing visions of his brother’s severed legs. Liesel wrote that sometimes she almost told him about her own brother, like she did with Max, but there seemed a big difference between a long-distance cough and two obliterated legs. How do you console a man who has seen such things? Could you tell him the Führer was proud of him, that the Führer loved him for what he did in Stalingrad? How could you even dare? You can only let him do the talking. The dilemma, of course, is that such people save their most important words for after, when the surrounding humans are unlucky enough to find them. A note, a sentence, even a question, or a letter, like on Himmel Street in July 1943.

MICHAEL HOLTZAPFEL:

It was Hans Hubermann who was asked to give Frau Holtzapfel the news. He stood on her threshold and she must have seen it on his face. Two sons in six months.

The morning sky stood blazing behind him as the wiry woman made her way past. She ran sobbing to the gathering further up on Himmel Street. She said the name Michael at least two dozen times, but Michael had already answered. According to the book thief, Frau Holtzapfel hugged the body for nearly an hour. She then returned to the blinding sun of Himmel Street and sat herself down. She could no longer walk.

From a distance, people observed. Such a thing was easier from far away.

Hans Hubermann sat with her.

He placed his hand on hers as she fell back, to the hard ground.

He allowed her screams to fill the street.

Much later, Hans walked with her, with painstaking care, through her front gate and into the house. And no matter how many times I try to see it differently, I can’t pull it off …

When I imagine that scene of the distraught woman and the tall silver-eyed man, it is still snowing in the kitchen of 31 Himmel Street.