How could that woman walk?
How could she move?
That’s the sort of thing I’ll never know, or comprehend—what humans are capable of.
She picked him up and continued walking, the girl clinging now to her side.
Authorities were met and questions of lateness and the boy raised their vulnerable heads. Liesel remained in the corner of the small, dusty office as her mother sat with clenched thoughts on a very hard chair.
There was the chaos of goodbye.
It was a goodbye that was wet, with the girl’s head buried into the woolly, worn shallows of her mother’s coat. There had been some more dragging.
Quite a way beyond the outskirts of Munich, there was a town called Molching, said best by the likes of you and me as “Molking.” That’s where they were taking her, to a street by the name of Himmel.
A TRANSLATION
Himmel = Heaven
Whoever named Himmel Street certainly had a healthy sense of irony. Not that it was a living hell. It wasn’t. But it sure as hell wasn’t heaven, either.
Regardless, Liesel’s foster parents were waiting.
The Hubermanns.
They’d been expecting a girl and a boy and would be paid a small allowance for having them. Nobody wanted to be the one to tell Rosa Hubermann that the boy didn’t survive the trip. In fact, no one ever really wanted to tell her anything. As far as dispositions go, hers wasn’t really enviable, although she had a good record with foster kids in the past. Apparently, she’d straightened a few out.
For Liesel, it was a ride in a car.
She’d never been in one before.
There was the constant rise and fall of her stomach, and the futile hopes that they’d lose their way or change their minds. Among it all, her thoughts couldn’t help turning toward her mother, back at the Bahnhof, waiting to leave again. Shivering. Bundled up in that useless coat. She’d be eating her nails, waiting for the train. The platform would be long and uncomfortable—a slice of cold cement. Would she keep an eye out for the approximate burial site of her son on the return trip? Or would sleep be too heavy?
The car moved on, with Liesel dreading the last, lethal turn.
The day was gray, the color of Europe.
Curtains of rain were drawn around the car.
“Nearly there.” The foster care lady, Frau Heinrich, turned around and smiled. “Dein neues Heim. Your new home.”
Liesel made a clear circle on the dribbled glass and looked out.
A PHOTO OF HIMMEL STREET
The buildings appear to be glued together, mostly small houses and apartment blocks that look nervous.
There is murky snow spread out like carpet.
There is concrete, empty hat-stand trees, and gray air.
A man was also in the car. He remained with the girl while Frau Heinrich disappeared inside. He never spoke. Liesel assumed he was there to make sure she wouldn’t run away or to force her inside if she gave them any trouble. Later, however, when the trouble did start, he simply sat there and watched. Perhaps he was only the last resort, the final solution.
After a few minutes, a very tall man came out. Hans Hubermann, Liesel’s foster father. On one side of him was th
e medium-height Frau Heinrich. On the other was the squat shape of Rosa Hubermann, who looked like a small wardrobe with a coat thrown over it. There was a distinct waddle to her walk. Almost cute, if it wasn’t for her face, which was like creased-up cardboard and annoyed, as if she was merely tolerating all of it. Her husband walked straight, with a cigarette smoldering between his fingers. He rolled his own.
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