The Book Thief
THE RIBCAGE PLANES
Her hand was sore by page three.
Words are so heavy, she thought, but as the night wore on, she was able to complete eleven pages.
PAGE 1
I try to ignore it, but I know this all
started with the train and the snow and my
coughing brother. I stole my first book that
day. It was a manual for digging graves and
I stole it on my way to Himmel Street …
She fell asleep down there, on a bed of dust sheets, with the paper curling at the edges, up on the taller paint tin. In the morning Mama stood above her, her chlorinated eyes questioning.
‘Liesel,’ she said, ‘what on earth are you doing down here?’
‘I’m writing, Mama.’
‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph.’ Rosa stomped back up the steps. ‘Be back up in five minutes or you get the bucket treatment. Verstehst?’
‘I understand.’
Every night, Liesel made her way down to the basement. She kept the book with her at all times. For hours she wrote, attempting each night to complete ten pages of her life. There was so much to consider, so many things in danger of being left out. Just be patient, she told herself, and with the mounting pages, the strength of her writing fist grew. She even replicated The Word Shaker and The Standover Man, tracing over the pictures and copying the words, even pointing out that Mein Kampf had often bled through. The first sketches she ever saw in Max’s book also made an appearance – to tell the story exactly as she remembered it.
Sometimes, she wrote about what was happening in the basement at the time of writing. She had just finished the moment when Papa had slapped her on the church steps and how they’d Heil Hitlered together. Looking across, Hans Hubermann was packing the accordion away. He’d just played for half an hour as Liesel wrote.
PAGE 42
Papa sat with me tonight. He brought the
accordion down and sat close to where Max
used to sit. I often look at his fingers and
face when he plays. The accordion breathes.
There are lines on his cheeks. They look drawn
on, and for some reason, when I see them,
I want to cry. It is not for any sadness or
pride. I just like the way they move and
change. Sometimes I think my papa is an
accordion. When he looks at me and smiles
and breathes, I hear the notes.
After ten nights of writing, Munich was bombed again. Liesel was up to page 102 and was asleep in the basement. She did not hear the cuckoo or the sirens, and she was holding the book in her sleep when Papa came to wake her. ‘Liesel, come.’ She took The Book Thief and each of her other books, and they fetched Frau Holtzapfel.
PAGE 175
A book floated down the Amper River. A
boy jumped in, caught up to it and held
it in his right hand. He grinned. He stood
waist deep in the icy, Decemberish water.
‘How about a kiss, Saumensch?’ he said.
By the next raid, on October 2, she was finished. Only a few dozen pages remained blank and the book thief was already starting to read over what she’d written. The book was divided into ten parts, all of which were given the title of books or stories and described how each affected her life.
Often, I wonder what page she was up to when I walked down Himmel Street in the dripping-tap rain, five nights later. I wonder what she was reading when the first bomb dropped from the ribcage of a plane.
Personally, I like to imagine her looking briefly at the wall, at Max Vandenburg’s tightrope cloud, his dripping sun and the figures walking towards it. Then she looks at the agonising attempts of her paint-written spelling. I see the Führer coming down the basement steps with his tied-together boxing gloves hanging casually around his neck. And the book thief reads, re-reads and re-reads her last sentence, for many hours.
THE BOOK THIEF – LAST LINE
I have hated the words and
I have loved them, and I
hope I have made them right.
Outside, the world whistled. The rain was stained.