The Book Thief

They did not say hello.

It was more like edges.

The door creaked, the girl came in, and she stood before him, looking at the bowl. “Is Mama forcing it down your throat?”

He nodded, content, fatigued. “It was very good, though.”

“Mama’s soup? Really?”

It was not a smile he gave her. “Thank you for the presents.” More just a slight tear of the mouth. “Thank you for the cloud. Your papa explained that one a little further.”

After an hour, Liesel also made an attempt on the truth. “We didn’t know what we’d do if you’d died, Max. We—”

It didn’t take him long. “You mean, how to get rid of me?”

“I’m sorry.”

“No.” He was not offended. “You were right.” He played weakly with the ball. “You were right to think that way. In your situation, a dead Jew is just as dangerous as a live one, if not worse.”

“I also dreamed.” In detail, she explained it, with the soldier in her grip. She was on the verge of apologizing again when Max intervened.

“Liesel.” He made her look at him. “Don’t ever apologize to me. It should be me who apologizes to you.” He looked at everything she’d brought him. “Look at all this. These gifts.” He held the button in his hand. “And Rosa said you read to me twice every day, sometimes three times.” Now he looked at the curtains as if he could see out of them. He sat up a little higher and paused for a dozen silent sentences. Trepidation found its way onto his face and he made a confession to the girl. “Liesel?” He moved slightly to the right. “I’m afraid,” he said, “of falling asleep again.”

Liesel was resolute. “Then I’ll read to you. And I’ll slap your face if you start dozing off. I’ll close the book and shake you till you wake up.”

That afternoon, and well into the night, Liesel read to Max Vandenburg. He sat in bed and absorbed the words, awake this time, until just after ten o’clock. When Liesel took a quick rest from The Dream Carrier, she looked over the book and Max was asleep. Nervously, she nudged him with it. He awoke.

Another three times, he fell asleep. Twice more, she woke him.

For the next four days, he woke up every morning in Liesel’s bed, then next to the fireplace, and eventually, by mid-April, in the basement. His health had improved, the beard was gone, and small scraps of weight had returned.

In Liesel’s inside world, there was great relief in that time. Outside, things were starting to look shaky. Late in March, a place called Lübeck was hailed with bombs. Next in line would be Cologne, and soon enough, many more German cities, including Munich.

Yes, the boss was at my shoulder.

“Get it done, get it done.”

The bombs were coming—and so was I.

DEATH’S DIARY: COLOGNE

The fallen hours of May 30.

I’m sure Liesel Meminger was fast asleep when more than a thousand bomber planes flew toward a place known as Köln. For me, the result was five hundred people or thereabouts. Fifty thousand others ambled homelessly around the ghostly piles of rubble, trying to work out which way was which, and which slabs of broken home belonged to whom.

Five hundred souls.

I carried them in my fingers, like suitcases. Or I’d throw them over my shoulder. It was only the children I carried in my arms.

By the time I was finished, the sky was yellow, like burning newspaper. If I looked closely, I could see the words, reporting headlines, commentating on the progress of the war and so forth. How I’d have loved to pull it all down, to screw up the newspaper sky and toss it away. My arms ached and I couldn’t afford to burn my fingers. There was still so much work to be done.

As you might expect, many people died instantly. Others took a while longer. There were several more places to go, skies to meet and souls to collect, and when I came back to Cologne later on, not long after the final planes, I managed to notice a most unique thing.

I was carrying the charred soul of a teenager when I looked gravely up at what was now a sulfuric sky. A group of ten-year-old girls was close by. One of them called out.

“What’s that?”

Her arm extended and her finger pointed out the black, slow object, falling from above. It began as a black feather, lilting, floating. Or a piece of ash. Then it grew larger. The same girl—a redhead with period freckles—spoke once again, this time more emphatically. “What is that?”