Of course, there was also the scratchy feeling of sin.
How could he do this?
How could he show up and ask people to risk their lives for him? How could he be so selfish?
Thirty-three.
They looked at each other.
• • •
The house was pale, almost sick-looking, with an iron gate and a brown spit-stained door.
From his pocket, he pulled out the key. It did not sparkle but lay dull and limp in his hand. For a moment, he squeezed it, half expecting it to come leaking toward his wrist. It didn’t. The metal was hard and flat, with a healthy set of teeth, and he squeezed it till it pierced him.
Slowly, then, the struggler leaned forward, his cheek against the wood, and he removed the key from his fist.
PART FOUR
the standover man
featuring:
the accordionist—a promise keeper—a good girl—
a jewish fist fighter—the wrath of rosa—a lecture—
a sleeper—the swapping of nightmares—
and some pages from the basement
THE ACCORDIONIST
(The Secret Life of Hans Hubermann)
There was a young man standing in the kitchen. The key in his hand felt like it was rusting into his palm. He didn’t speak anything like hello, or please help, or any other such expected sentence. He asked two questions.
QUESTION ONE
“Hans Hubermann?”
QUESTION TWO
“Do you still play the accordion?”
As he looked uncomfortably at the human shape before him, the young man’s voice was scraped out and handed across the dark like it was all that remained of him.
Papa, alert and appalled, stepped closer.
To the kitchen, he whispered, “Of course I do.”
It all dated back many years, to World War I.
They’re strange, those wars.
Full of blood and violence—but also full of stories that are equally difficult to fathom. “It’s true,” people will mutter. “I don’t care if you don’t believe me. It was that fox who saved my life,” or, “They died on either side of me and I was left standing there, the only one without a bullet between my eyes. Why me? Why me and not them?”
Hans Hubermann’s story was a little like that. When I found it within the book thief’s words, I realized that we passed each other once in a while during that period, though neither of us scheduled a meeting. Personally,