Mama announced the day’s priority. She sat at the table and said, “Now listen, Liesel. Papa’s going to tell you something today.” This was serious—she didn’t even say Saumensch. It was a personal feat of abstinence. “He’ll talk to you and you have to listen. Is that clear?”
The girl was still swallowing.
“Is that clear, Saumensch?”
That was better.
The girl nodded.
When she reentered the bedroom to fetch her clothes, the body in the opposite bed had turned and curled up. It was no longer a straight log but a kind of Z shape, reaching diagonally from corner to corner. Zigzagging the bed.
She could see his face now, in the tired light. His mouth was open and his skin was the color of eggshells. Whiskers coated his jaw and chin, and his ears were hard and flat. He had a small but misshapen nose.
“Liesel!”
She turned.
“Move it!”
She moved, to the washroom.
Once changed and in the hallway, she realized she would not be traveling far. Papa was standing in front of the door to the basement. He smiled very faintly, lit the lamp, and led her down.
• • •
Among the mounds of drop sheets and the smell of paint, Papa told her to make herself comfortable. Ignited on the walls were the painted words, learned in the past. “I need to tell you some things.”
Liesel sat on top of a meter-tall heap of drop sheets, Papa on a fifteen-liter paint can. For a few minutes, he searched for the words. When they came, he stood to deliver them. He rubbed his eyes.
“Liesel,” he said quietly, “I was never sure if any of this would happen, so I never told you. About me. About the man upstairs.” He walked from one end of the basement to the other, the lamplight magnifying his shadow. It turned him into a giant on the wall, walking back and forth.
When he stopped pacing, his shadow loomed behind him, watching. Someone was always watching.
“You know my accordion?” he said, and there the story began.
He explained World War I and Erik Vandenburg, and then the visit to the fallen soldier’s wife. “The boy who came into the room that day is the man upstairs. Verstehst? Understand?”
The book thief sat and listened to Hans Hubermann’s story. It lasted a good hour, until the moment of truth, which involved a very obvious and necessary lecture.
“Liesel, you must listen.” Papa made her stand up and held her hand.
They faced the wall.
Dark shapes and the practice of words.
Firmly, he held her fingers.
“Remember the Führer’s birthday—when we walked home from the fire that night? Remember what you promised me?”
The girl concurred. To the wall, she said, “That I would keep a secret.”
“That’s right.” Between the hand-holding shadows, the painted words were scattered about, perched on their shoulders, resting on their heads, and hanging from their arms. “Liesel, if you tell anyone about the man up there, we will all be in big trouble.” He walked the fine line of scaring her into oblivion and soothing her enough to keep her calm. He fed her the sentences and watched with his metallic eyes. Desperation and placidity. “At the very least, Mama and I will be taken away.” Hans was clearly worried that he was on the verge of frightening her too much, but he calculated the risk, preferring to err on the side of too much fear rather than not enough. The girl’s compliance had to be an absolute, immutable fact.
Toward the end, Hans Hubermann looked at Liesel Meminger and made certain she was focused.
He gave her a list of consequences.
“If you tell anyone about that man …”