The Book Thief

Suits hung from the rails and the mannequins held their ridiculou

s poses. “I think that one likes you,” Liesel said after a while. It was her way of telling him it was time to keep going.

On Himmel Street, Rosa Hubermann and Barbara Steiner stood together on the footpath.

“Oh, Maria,” Liesel said. “Do they look worried?”

“They look mad.”

There were many questions when they arrived, mainly of the “Just where in the hell have you two been?” nature, but the anger quickly gave way to relief.

It was Barbara who pursued the answers. “Well, Rudy?”

Liesel answered for him. “He was killing the Führer,” she said, and Rudy looked genuinely happy for a long enough moment to please her.

“Bye, Liesel.”

Several hours later, there was a noise in the living room. It stretched toward Liesel in bed. She awoke and remained still, thinking ghosts and Papa and intruders and Max. There was the sound of opening and dragging, and then the fuzzy silence who followed. The silence was always the greatest temptation.

Don’t move.

She thought that thought many times, but she didn’t think it enough.

Her feet scolded the floor.

Air breathed up her pajama sleeves.

She walked through the corridor darkness in the direction of silence that had once been noisy, toward the thread of moonlight standing in the living room. She stopped, feeling the bareness of her ankles and toes. She watched.

It took longer than she expected for her eyes to adjust, and when they did, there was no denying the fact that Rosa Hubermann was sitting on the edge of the bed with her husband’s accordion tied to her chest. Her fingers hovered above the keys. She did not move. She didn’t even appear to be breathing.

The sight of it propelled itself to the girl in the hallway.

A PAINTED IMAGE

Rosa with Accordion.

Moonlight on Dark.

5'1? × Instrument × Silence.

Liesel stayed and watched.

Many minutes dripped past. The book thief’s desire to hear a note was exhausting, and still, it would not come. The keys were not struck. The bellows didn’t breathe. There was only the moonlight, like a long strand of hair in the curtain, and there was Rosa.

The accordion remained strapped to her chest. When she bowed her head, it sank to her lap. Liesel watched. She knew that for the next few days, Mama would be walking around with the imprint of an accordion on her body. There was also an acknowledgment that there was great beauty in what she was currently witnessing, and she chose not to disturb it.

She returned to bed and fell asleep to the vision of Mama and the silent music. Later, when she woke up from her usual dream and crept again to the hallway, Rosa was still there, as was the accordion.

Like an anchor, it pulled her forward. Her body was sinking. She appeared dead.

She can’t possibly be breathing in that position, Liesel thought, but when she made her way closer, she could hear it.

Mama was snoring again.

Who needs bellows, she thought, when you’ve got a pair of lungs like that?

Eventually, when Liesel returned to bed, the image of Rosa Hubermann and the accordion would not leave her. The book thief’s eyes remained open. She waited for the suffocation of sleep.