She knew that person.
As the soldier swung his arm, she caught sight of a distressed Rudy Steiner in the gaps of the crowd. He was calling out. She could see his tortured face and yellow hair. “Liesel, get out of there!”
The book thief did not get out.
She closed her eyes and caught the next burning streak, and another, till her body hit the warm flooring of the road. It heated her cheek.
More words arrived, this time from the soldier.
“Steh’auf.”
The economical sentence was directed not to the girl but the Jew. It was elaborated on. “Get up, you dirty asshole, you Jewish whore-dog, get up, get up ….”
Max hoisted himself upright.
Just another push-up, Max.
Just another push-up on the cold basement floor.
His feet moved.
They dragged and he traveled on.
His legs staggered and his hands wiped at the marks of the whip, to soothe the stinging. When he tried to look again for Liesel, the soldier’s hands were placed upon his bloodied shoulders and pushed.
The boy arrived. His lanky legs crouched and he called over, to his left.
“Tommy, get out here and help me. We have to get her up. Tommy, hurry!” He lifted the book thief by her armpits. “Liesel, come on, you have to get off the road.”
When she was able to stand, she looked at the shocked, frozen-faced Germans, fresh out of their packets. At their feet, she allowed herself to collapse, but only momentarily. A graze struck a match on the side of her face, where she’d met the ground. Her pulse flipped it over, frying it on both sides.
Far down the road, she could see the blurry legs and heels of the last walking Jew.
Her face was burning and there was a dogged ache in her arms and legs—a numbness that was simultaneously painful and exhausting.
She stood, one last time.
Waywardly, she began to walk and then run down Munich Street, to haul in the last steps of Max Vandenburg.
“Liesel, what are you doing?!”
She escaped the grip of Rudy’s words and ignored the watching people at her side. Most of them were mute. Statues with beating hearts. Perhaps bystanders in the latter stages of a marathon. Liesel cried out again and was not heard. Hair was in her eyes. “Please, Max!”
After perhaps thirty meters, just as a soldier turned around, the girl was felled. Hands were clamped upon her from behind and the boy next door brought her down. He forced her knees to the road and suffered the penalty. He collected her punches as if they were presents. Her bony hands and elbows were accepted with nothing but a few short moans. He accumulated the loud, clumsy specks of saliva and tears as if they were lovely to his face, and more important, he was able to hold her down.
On Munich Street, a boy and girl were entwined.
They were twisted and comfortless on the road.
Together, they watched the humans disappear. They watched them dissolve, like moving tablets in the humid air.
CONFESSIONS
When the Jews were gone, Rudy and Liesel untangled and the book thief did not speak. There were no answers to Rudy’s questions.
Liesel did not go home, either. She walked forlornly to the train station and waited for her papa for hours. Rudy stood with her for the first twenty minutes, but since it was a good half day till Hans was due home, he fetched Rosa. On the way back, he told her what had happened, and when Rosa arrived, she asked nothing of the girl. She had already assembled the puzzle and merely stood beside her and eventually convinced her to sit down. They waited together.
When Papa found out, he dropped his bag, he kicked the Bahnhof air.