The Book Thief

Only later would she find out about the helpless expression on Max Vandenburg’s face. She would also discover that he resolved at that moment to give her something back. I often imagine him lying awake all that night, pondering what he could possibly offer.

As it turned out, the gift was delivered on paper, just over a week later.

He would bring it to her in the early hours of morning, before retreating down the concrete steps to what he now liked to call home.

PAGES FROM THE BASEMENT

For a week, Liesel was kept from the basement at all cost. It was Mama and Papa who made sure to take down Max’s food.

“No, Saumensch,” Mama told her each time she volunteered. There was always a new excuse. “How about you do something useful in here for a change, like finish the ironing? You think carrying it around town is so special? Try ironing it!” You can do all manner of underhanded nice things when you have a caustic reputation. It worked.

During that week, Max had cut out a collection of pages from Mein Kampf and painted over them in white. He then hung them up with pegs on some string, from one end of the basement to the other. When they were all dry, the hard part began. He was educated well enough to get by, but he was certainly no writer, and no artist. Despite this, he formulated the words in his head till he could recount them without error. Only then, on the paper that had bubbled and humped under the stress of drying paint, did he begin to write the story. It was done with a small black paintbrush.

The Standover Man.

He calculated that he needed thirteen pages, so he painted forty, expecting at least twice as many slipups as successes. There were practice versions on the pages of the Molching Express, improving his basic, clumsy artwork to a level he could accept. As he worked, he heard the whispered words of a girl. “His hair,” she told him, “is like feathers.”

When he was finished, he used a knife to pierce the pages and tie them with string. The result was a thirteen-page booklet that went like this:

In late February, when Liesel woke up in the early hours of morning, a figure made its way into her bedroom. Typical of Max, it was as close as possible to a noiseless shadow.

Liesel, searching through the dark, could only vaguely sense the man coming toward her.

“Hello?”

There was no reply.

There was nothing but the near silence of his feet as he came closer to the bed and placed the pages on the floor, next to her socks. The pages crackled. Just slightly. One edge of them curled into the floor.

“Hello?”

This time there was a response.

She couldn’t tell exactly where the words came from. What mattered was that they reached her. They arrived and kneeled next to the bed.

“A late birthday gift. Look in the morning. Good night.”

For a while, she drifted in and out of sleep, not sure anymore whether she’d dreamed of Max coming in.

In the morning, when she woke and rolled over, she saw the pages sitting on the floor. She reached down and picked them up, listening to the paper as it rippled in her early-morning hands.

All my life, I’ve been scared of men standing over me ….

As she turned them, the pages were noisy, like static around the written story.

Three days, they told me … and what did I find when I woke up?

There were the erased pages of Mein Kampf, gagging, suffocating under the paint as they turned.

It makes me understand that the best standover man I’ve ever known …

Liesel read and viewed Max Vandenburg’s gift three times, noticing a different brush line or word with each one. When the third reading was finished, she climbed as quietly as she could from her bed and walked to Mama and Papa’s room. The allocated space next to the fire was vacant.

As she thought about it, she realized it was actually appropriat

e, or even better—perfect—to thank him where the pages were made.

She walked down the basement steps. She saw an imaginary framed photo seep into the wall—a quiet-smiled secret.