The Book Thief - Page 129
Again, I am sorry we could no longer keep your foster mother employed.
Lastly, I hope you find this dictionary and thesaurus useful as you read your stolen books.
Yours sincerely,
Ilsa Hermann
“We’d better head home,” Rudy suggested, but Liesel did not go.
“Can you wait here for ten minutes?”
“Of course.”
• • •
Liesel struggled back up to 8 Grande Strasse and sat on the familiar territory of the front entrance. The book was with Rudy, but she held the letter and rubbed her fingers on the folded paper as the steps grew heavier around her. She tried four times to knock on the daunting flesh of the door, but she could not bring herself to do it. The most she could accomplish was to place her knuckles gently on the warmness of the wood.
Again, her brother found her.
From the bottom of the steps, his knee healing nicely, he said, “Come on, Liesel, knock.”
As she made her second getaway, she could soon see the distant figure of Rudy at the bridge. The wind showered through her hair. Her feet swam with the pedals.
Liesel Meminger was a criminal.
But not because she’d stolen a handful of books through an open window.
You should have knocked, she thought, and although there was a good portion of guilt, there was also the juvenile trace of laughter.
As she rode, she tried to tell herself something.
You don’t deserve to be this happy, Liesel. You really don’t.
Can a person steal happiness? Or is it just another internal, infernal human trick?
Liesel shrugged away from her thoughts. She crossed the bridge and told Rudy to hurry up and not to forget the book.
They rode home on rusty bikes.
They rode home a couple of miles, from summer to autumn, and from a quiet night to the noisy breath of the bombing of Munich.
THE SOUND OF SIRENS
With the small collection of money Hans had earned in the summer, he brought home a secondhand radio. “This way,” he said, “we can hear when the raids are coming even before the sirens start. They make a cuckoo sound and then announce the regions at risk.”
He placed it on the kitchen table and switched it on. They also tried to make it work in the basement, for Max, but there was nothing but static and severed voices in the speakers.
In September, they did not hear it as they slept.
Either the radio was already half broken, or it was swallowed immediately by the crying sound of sirens.
A hand was shoved gently at Liesel’s shoulder as she slept.
Papa’s voice followed it in, afraid.
“Liesel, wake up. We have to go.”
There was the disorientation of interrupted sleep, and Liesel could barely decipher the outline of Papa’s face. The only thing truly visible was his voice.
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