It was a place nobody wanted to stay and look at, but almost everyone did. Shaped like a long, broken arm, the road contained several houses with lacerated windows and bruised walls. The Star of David was painted on their doors. Those houses were almost like lepers. At the very least, they were infected sores on the injured German terrain.
“Schiller Strasse,” Rudy said. “The road of yellow stars.”
At the bottom, some people were moving around. The drizzle made them look like ghosts. Not humans, but shapes, moving about beneath the lead-colored clouds.
“Come on, you two,” Kurt (the oldest of the Steiner children) called back, and Rudy and Liesel walked quickly toward him.
At school, Rudy made a special point of seeking Liesel out during the breaks. He didn’t care that others made noises about the new girl’s stupidity. He was there for her at the beginning, and he would be there later on, when Liesel’s frustration boiled over. But he wouldn’t do it for free.
THE ONLY THING WORSE THAN
A BOY WHO HATES YOU
A boy who loves you.
In late April, when they’d returned from school for the day, Rudy and Liesel waited on Himmel Street for the usual game of soccer. They were slightly early, and no other kids had turned up yet. The one person they saw was the gutter-mouthed Pfiffikus.
“Look there.” Rudy pointed.
A PORTRAIT OF PFIFFIKUS
He was a delicate frame.
He was white hair.
He was a black raincoat, brown pants, decomposing shoes, and a mouth—and what a mouth it was.
“Hey, Pfiffikus!”
As the distant figure turned, Rudy started whistling.
The old man simultaneously straightened and proceeded to swear with a ferocity that can only be described as a talent. No one seemed to know the real name that belonged to him, or at least if they did, they never used it. He was only called Pfiffikus because you give that name to someone who likes to whistle, which Pfiffikus most definitely did. He was constantly whistling a tune called the Radetzky March, and all the kids in town would call out to him and duplicate that tune. At that precise moment, Pfiffikus would abandon his usual walking style (bent forward, taking large, lanky steps, arms behind his raincoated back) and erect himself to deliver abuse. It was then that any impression of serenity was violently interrupted, for his voice was brimming with rage.
On this occasion, Liesel followed Rudy’s taunt almost as a reflex action.
“Pfiffikus!” she echoed, quickly adopting the appropriate cruelty that childhood seems to require. Her whistling was awful, but there was no time to perfect it.
He chased them, calling out. It started with “Geh’ scheissen!” and deteriorated rapidly from there. At first, he leveled his abuse only at the boy, but soon enough, it was Liesel’s turn.
“You little slut!” he roared at her. The words clobbered her in the back. “I’ve never seen you before!” Fancy calling a ten-year-old girl a slut. That was Pfiffikus. It was widely agreed that he and Frau Holtzapfel would have made a lovely couple. “Get back here!” were the last words Liesel and Rudy heard as they continued running. They ran until they were on Munich Street.
“Come on,” Rudy said, once they’d recovered their breath. “Just down here a little.”
He took her to Hubert Oval, the scene of the Jesse Owens incident, where they stood, hands in pockets. The track was stretched out in front of them. Only one thing could happen. Rudy started it. “Hundred meters,” he goaded her. “I bet you can’t beat me.”
Liesel wasn’t taking any of that. “I bet you I can.”
“What do you bet, you little Saumensch? Have you got any money?”
“Of course not. Do you?”
“No.” But Rudy had an idea. It was the lover boy coming out of him. “If I beat you, I get to kiss you.” He crouched down and began rolling up his trousers.
Liesel was alarmed, to put it mildly. “What do you want to kiss me for? I’m filthy.”
“So am I.” Rudy clearly saw no reason why a bit of filth should get in the way of things. It had been a while between baths for both of them.
She thought about it while examining the weedy legs of her opposition. They were about equal with her own. There’s no way he can beat me, she thought. She nodded seriously. This was business. “You can kiss me if you win. But if I win, I get out of being goalie at soccer.”