through its eaten case.
• • •
They threw all of it upward.
When another piece of broken wall was removed, one of them saw the book thief’s hair.
The man had such a nice laugh. He was delivering a newborn child. “I can’t believe it—she’s alive!”
There was so much joy among the cluttering, calling men, but I could not fully share their enthusiasm.
Earlier, I’d held her papa in one arm and her mama in the other. Each soul was so soft.
Farther away, their bodies were laid out, like the rest. Papa’s lovely silver eyes were already starting to rust, and Mama’s cardboard lips were fixed half open, most likely the shape of an incomplete snore. To blaspheme like the Germans—Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.
The rescuing hands pulled Liesel out and brushed the crumbs of rubble from her clothes. “Young girl,” they said, “the sirens were too late. What were you doing in the basement? How did you know?”
What they didn’t notice was that the girl was still holding the book. She screamed her reply. A stunning scream of the living.
“Papa!”
A second time. Her face creased as she reached a higher, more panic-stricken pitch. “Papa, Papa!”
They passed her up as she shouted, wailed, and cried. If she was injured, she did not yet know it, for she struggled free and searched and called and wailed some more.
She was still clutching the book.
She was holding desperately on to the words who had saved her life.
THE NINETY-EIGHTH 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, traveling 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 cookies 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
On Munich Street, she said, “Jesus,
Mary, and Joseph, I wish they
wouldn’t bring them through. These
wretched Jews, they’re rotten luck.
They’re a bad sign. Every time I see
them, I know we’ll be ruined.”
It was the same old lady who announced the Jews the first time Liesel saw them. On ground level, her face was a prune. Her eyes were the dark blue of a vein. And her prediction was accurate.