school student. He was a gifted athlete, too.
For Liesel, there was the 400. She finished seventh, then fourth in her heat of the 200. All she
could see up ahead were the hamstrings and bobbing ponytails of the girls in front. In the long
jump, she enjoyed the sand packed around her feet more than any distance, and the shot put
wasn’t her greatest moment, either. This day, she realized, was Rudy’s.
In the 400 final, he led from the backstretch to the end, and he won the 200 only narrowly.
“You getting tired?” Liesel asked him. It was early afternoon by then.
“Of course not.” He was breathing heavily and stretching his calves. “What are you talking
about, Saumensch? What the hell would you know?”
When the heats of the 100 were called, he rose slowly to his feet and followed the trail of
adolescents toward the track. Liesel went after him. “Hey, Rudy.” She pulled at his
shirtsleeve. “Good luck.”
“I’m not tired,” he said.
“I know.”
He winked at her.
He was tired.
In his heat, Rudy slowed to finish second, and after ten minutes of other races, the final was
called. Two other boys had looked formidable, and Liesel had a feeling in her stomach that
Rudy could not win this one. Tommy M
with her at the fence. “He’ll win it,” he informed her.
“I know.”
No, he won’t.
When the finalists reached the starting line, Rudy dropped to his knees and began digging
starting holes with his hands. A balding brownshirt wasted no time in walking over and
telling him to cut it out. Liesel watched the adult finger, pointing, and she could see the dirt
falling to the ground as Rudy brushed his hands together.
When they were called forward, Liesel tightened her grip on the fence. One of the boys false-
started; the gun was shot twice. It was Rudy. Again, the official had words with him and the
boy nodded. Once more and he was out.
Set for the second time, Liesel watched with concentration, and for the first few seconds, she
could not believe what she was seeing. Another false start was recorded and it was the same
athlete who had done it. In front of her, she created a perfect race, in which Rudy trailed but
came home to win in the last ten meters. What she actually saw, however, was Rudy’s
disqualification. He was escorted to the side of the track and was made to stand there, alone,
as the remainder of boys stepped forward.
They lined up and raced.
A boy with rusty brown hair and a big stride won by at least five meters.
Rudy remained.
Later, when the day was complete and the sun was taken from Himmel Street, Liesel sat with
her friend on the footpath.
They talked about everything else, from Franz Deutscher’s face after the 1500 to one of the
eleven-year-old girls having a tantrum after losing the discus.
Before they proceeded to their respective homes, Rudy’s voice reached over and handed
Liesel the truth. For a while, it sat on her shoulder, but a few thoughts later, it made its way to
her ear.
RUDY’S VOICE
“I did it on purpose.”
When the confession registered, Liesel asked the only question available. “But why, Rudy?
Why did you do it?”
He was standing with a hand on his hip, and he did not answer. There was nothing but a
knowing smile and a slow walk that lolled him home. They never talked about it again.
For Liesel’s part, she often wondered what Rudy’s answer might have been had she pushed
him. Perhaps three medals had shown what he’d wanted to show, or he was afraid to lose that
final race. In the end, the only explanation she allowed herself to hear was an inner teenage
voice.
“Because he isn’t Jesse Owens.”
Only when she got up to leave did she notice the three imitation-gold medals sitting next to
her. She knocked on the Steiners’ door and held them out to him. “You forgot these.”
“No, I didn’t.” He closed the door and Liesel took the medals home. She walked with them
down to the basement and told Max about her friend Rudy Steiner.
“He truly is stupid,” she concluded.
“Clearly,” Max agreed, but I doubt he was fooled.
They both started work then, Max on his sketchbook, Liesel on The Dream Carrier. She was
in the latter stages of the novel, where the young priest was doubting his faith after meeting a
strange and elegant woman.
When she placed it facedown on her lap, Max asked when she thought she’d finish it.
“A few days at the most.”
“Then a new one?”
The book thief looked at the basement ceiling. “Maybe, Max.” She closed the book and
leaned back. “If I’m lucky.”
THE NEXT BOOK
It’s not the Duden Dictionary and
Thesaurus, as you might be expecting.
No, the dictionary comes at the end of this small trilogy, and this is only the second
installment. This is the part where Liesel finishes The Dream Carrier and steals a story called A Song in the Dark. As always, it was taken from the mayor’s house. The only difference was
that she made her way to the upper part of town alone. There was no Rudy that day.
It was a morning rich with both sun and frothy clouds.
Liesel stood in the mayor’s library with greed in her fingers and book titles at her lips. She
was comfortable enough on this occasion to run her fingers along the shelves—a short replay
of her original visit to the room—and she whispered many of the titles as she made her way
along.
Under the Cherry Tree.
The Tenth Lieutenant.
Typically, many of the titles tempted her, but after a good minute or two in the room, she
settled for A Song in the Dark, most likely because the book was green, and she did not yet
own a book of that color. The engraved writing on the cover was white, and there was a small
insignia of a flute between the title and the name of the author. She climbed with it from the
window, saying thanks on her way out.
Without Rudy, she felt a good degree of absence, but on that particular morning, for some
reason, the book thief was happiest alone. She went about her work and read the book next to
the Amper River, far enough away from the occasional headquarters of Viktor Chemmel and
the previous gang of Arthur Berg. No one came, no one interrupted, and Liesel read four of
the very short chapters of A Song in the Dark, and she was happy.
It was the pleasure and satisfaction.
Of good stealing.
A week later, the trilogy of happiness was completed.
In the last days of August, a gift arrived, or in fact, was noticed.
It was late afternoon. Liesel was watching Kristina M
Rudy Steiner skidded to a stop in front of her on his brother’s bike. “Do you have some
time?” he asked.
She shrugged. “For what?”
“I think you’d better come.” He dumped the bike and went to collect the other one from
home. In front of her, Liesel watched the pedal spin.
They rode up to Grande Strasse, where Rudy stopped and waited.
“Well,” Liesel asked, “what is it?”
Rudy pointed. “Look closer.”
Gradually, they rode to a better position, behind a blue spruce tree. Through the prickly
branches, Liesel noticed the closed window, and then the object leaning on the glass.
“Is that...?”
Rudy nodded.
They debated the issue for many minutes before they agreed it needed to be done. It had
obviously been placed there intentionally, and if it was a trap, it was worth it.
Among the powdery blue branches, Liesel said, “A book thief would do it.”
She dropped the bike, observed the street, and crossed the yard. The shadows of clouds were
buried among the dusky grass. Were they holes for falling into, or patches of extra darkness
for hiding in? Her imagination sent her sliding down one of those holes into the evil clutches
of the mayor himself. If nothing else, those thoughts distracted her and she was at the window
even quicker than she’d hoped.
It was like The Whistler all over again.
Her nerves licked her palms.
Small streams of sweat rippled under her arms.
When she raised her head, she could read the title. The Complete Duden Dictionary and
Thesaurus. Briefly, she turned to Rudy and mouthed the words, It’s a dictionary. He shrugged and held out his arms.
She worked methodically, sliding the window upward, wondering how all of this would look
from inside the house. She envisioned the sight of her thieving hand reaching up, making the
window rise until the book was felled. It seemed to surrender slowly, like a falling tree.
Got it.
There was barely a disturbance or sound.
The book simply tilted toward her and she took it with her free hand. She even closed the
window, nice and smooth, then turned and walked back across the potholes of clouds.
“Nice,” Rudy said as he gave her the bike.
“Thank you.”
They rode toward the corner, where the day’s importance reached them. Liesel knew. It was
that feeling again, of being watched. A voice pedaled inside her. Two laps.
Look at the window. Look at the window.
She was compelled.
Like an itch that demands a fingernail, she felt an intense desire to stop.
She placed her feet on the ground and turned to face the mayor’s house and the library
window, and she saw. Certainly, she should have known this might happen, but she could not
hide the shock that loitered inside when she witnessed the mayor’s wife, standing behind the
glass. She was transparent, but she was there. Her fluffy hair was as it always was, and her
wounded eyes and mouth and expression held themselves up, for viewing.
Very slowly, she lifted her hand to the book thief on the street. A motionless wave.
In her state of shock, Liesel said nothing, to Rudy or herself. She only steadied herself and
raised her hand to acknowledge the mayor’s wife, in the window.
DUDEN DICTIONARY MEANING #2
Verzeihung —Forgiveness:
To stop feeling anger,
animosity, or resentment.
Related words: absolution,
acquittal, mercy.
On the way home, they stopped at the bridge and inspected the heavy black book. As Rudy
flipped through the pages, he arrived at a letter. He picked it up and looked slowly toward the
book thief. “It’s got your name on it.”
The river ran.
Liesel took hold of the paper.
THE LETTER
Dear Liesel,
I know you find me pathetic and loathsome (look that word up if you don’t know it), but I
must tell you that I am not so stupid as to not see your footprints in the library. When I
noticed the first book missing, I thought I had simplymisplaced it, but then I saw the
outlines of some feet on the floor in certain patches of the light.
It made me smile.
I was glad that you took what was rightfully yours. I then made the mistake of thinking that
would be the end of it.
When you came back, I should have been angry, but I wasn’t. I could hear you the last
time, but I decided to leave you alone. You only ever take one book, and it will take a
thousand visits till all of them are gone. My only hope is that one day you will knock on the
front door and enter the libraryin the more civilized manner.
Again, I am sorry we could no longer keep your foster mother employed.
Lastly, I hope you find this dictionary and thesaurus useful as you read your stolen books.
Yours sincerely,
Ilsa Hermann
“We’d better head home,” Rudy suggested, but Liesel did not go.
“Can you wait here for ten minutes?”
“Of course.”
Liesel struggled back up to 8 Grande Strasse and sat on the familiar territory of the front
entrance. The book was with Rudy, but she held the letter and rubbed her fingers on the
folded paper as the steps grew heavier around her. She tried four times to knock on the
daunting flesh of the door, but she could not bring herself to do it. The most she could
accomplish was to place her knuckles gently on the warmness of the wood.
Again, her brother found her.
From the bottom of the steps, his knee healing nicely, he said, “Come on, Liesel, knock.”
As she made her second getaway, she could soon see the distant figure of Rudy at the bridge.
The wind showered through her hair. Her feet swam with the pedals.
Liesel Meminger was a criminal.
But not because she’d stolen a handful of books through an open window.
You should have knocked, she thought, and although there was a good portion of guilt, there
was also the juvenile trace of laughter.
As she rode, she tried to tell herself something.
You don’t deserve to be this happy, Liesel. You really don’t.
Can a person steal happiness? Or is it just another internal, infernal human trick?
Liesel shrugged away from her thoughts. She crossed the bridge and told Rudy to hurry up
and not to forget the book.
They rode home on rusty bikes.
They rode home a couple of miles, from summer to autumn, and from a quiet night to the
noisy breath of the bombing of Munich.
THE SOUND OF SIRENS
With the small collection of money Hans had earned in the summer, he brought home a
secondhand radio. “This way,” he said, “we can hear when the raids are coming even before
the sirens start. They make a cuckoo sound and then announce the regions at risk.”
He placed it on the kitchen table and switched it on. They also tried to make it work in the
basement, for Max, but there was nothing but static and severed voices in the speakers.
In September, they did not hear it as they slept.
Either the radio was already half broken, or it was swallowed immediately by the crying
sound of sirens.
A hand was shoved gently at Liesel’s shoulder as she slept.
Papa’s voice followed it in, afraid.
“Liesel, wake up. We have to go.”
There was the disorientation of interrupted sleep, and Liesel could barely decipher the outline
of Papa’s face. The only thing truly visible was his voice.
In the hallway, they stopped.
“Wait,” said Rosa.
Through the dark, they rushed to the basement.
The lamp was lit.
Max edged out from behind the paint cans and drop sheets. His face was tired and he hitched
his thumbs nervously into his pants. “Time to go, huh?”
Hans walked to him. “Yes, time to go.” He shook his hand and slapped his arm. “We’ll see
you when we get back, right?”
“Of course.”
Rosa hugged him, as did Liesel.
“Goodbye, Max.”
Weeks earlier, they’d discussed whether they should all stay together in their own basement
or if the three of them should go down the road, to a family by the name of Fiedler. It was
Max who convinced them. “They said it’s not deep enough here. I’ve already put you in
enough danger.”
Hans had nodded. “It’s a shame we can’t take you with us. It’s a disgrace.”
“It’s how it is.”
Outside, the sirens howled at the houses, and the people came running, hobbling, and
recoiling as they exited their homes. Night watched. Some people watched it back, trying to
find the tin-can planes as they drove across the sky.
Himmel Street was a procession of tangled people, all wrestling with their most precious
possessions. In some cases, it was a baby. In others, a stack of photo albums or a wooden box.
Liesel carried her books, between her arm and her ribs. Frau Holtzapfel was heaving a
suitcase, laboring on the footpath with bulbous eyes and small-stepped feet.
Papa, who’d forgotten everything—even his accordion—rushed back to her and rescued the
suitcase from her grip. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, what have you got in here?” he asked. “An
anvil?”
Frau Holtzapfel advanced alongside him. “The necessities.”
The Fiedlers lived six houses down. They were a family of four, all with wheat-colored hair
and good German eyes. More important, they had a nice, deep basement. Twenty-two people
crammed themselves into it, including the Steiner family, Frau Holtzapfel, Pfiffikus, a young
man, and a family named Jenson. In the interest of a civil environment, Rosa Hubermann and
Frau Holtzapfel were kept separated, though some things were above petty arguments.
One light globe dangled from the ceiling and the room was dank and cold. Jagged walls jutted
out and poked people in the back as they stood and spoke. The muffled sound of sirens leaked
in from somewhere. They could hear a distorted version of them that somehow found a way
inside. Although creating considerable apprehension about the quality of the shelter, at least
they could hear the three sirens that would signal the end of the raid and safety. They didn’t
need a Luftschutzwart—an air-raid supervisor.
It wasn’t long before Rudy found Liesel and was standing next to her. His hair was pointing
at something on the ceiling. “Isn’t this great?”
She couldn’t resist some sarcasm. “It’s lovely.”
“Ah, come on, Liesel, don’t be like that. What’s the worst that can happen, apart from all of
us being flattened or fried or whatever bombs do?”
Liesel looked around, gauging the faces. She started compiling a list of who was most afraid.
THE HIT LIST
1. Frau Holtzapfel
2. Mr. Fiedler
3. The young man
4. Rosa Hubermann
Frau Holtzapfel’s eyes were trapped open. Her wiry frame was stooped forward, and her
mouth was a circle. Herr Fiedler busied himself by asking people, sometimes repeatedly, how
they were feeling. The young man, Rolf Schultz, kept to himself in the corner, speaking
silently at the air around him, castigating it. His hands were cemented into his pockets. Rosa
rocked back and forth, ever so gently. “Liesel,” she whispered, “come here.” She held the girl
from behind, tightening her grip. She sang a song, but it was so quiet that Liesel could not
make it out. The notes were born on her breath, and they died at her lips. Next to them, Papa
remained quiet and motionless. At one point, he placed his warm hand on Liesel’s cool skull.
You’ll live, it said, and it was right.
To their left, Alex and Barbara Steiner stood with the younger of their children, Emma and
Bettina. The two girls were attached to their mother’s right leg. The oldest boy, Kurt, stared
ahead in a perfect Hitler Youth stance, holding the hand of Karin, who was tiny, even for her
seven years. The ten-year-old, Anna-Marie, played with the pulpy surface of the cement wall.
On the other side of the Steiners were Pfiffikus and the Jenson family.
Pfiffikus kept himself from whistling.
The bearded Mr. Jenson held his wife tightly, and their two kids drifted in and out of silence.
Occasionally they pestered each other, but they held back when it came to the beginning of
true argument.
After ten minutes or so, what was most prominent in the cellar was a kind of nonmovement.
Their bodies were welded together and only their feet changed position or pressure. Stillness
was shackled to their faces. They watched each other and waited.
DUDEN DICTIONARY MEANING #3
Angst —Fear:
An unpleasant, often strong
emotion caused by anticipation
or awareness of danger.
Related words: terror, horror,
panic, fright, alarm.
From other shelters, there were stories of singing Alles” or of people arguing amid the staleness of their own breath. No such things happened in the Fiedler
shelter. In that place, there was only fear and apprehension, and the dead song at Rosa
Hubermann’s cardboard lips.
Not long before the sirens signaled the end, Alex Steiner—the man with the immovable,
wooden face—coaxed the kids from his wife’s legs. He was able to reach out and grapple for
his son’s free hand. Kurt, still stoic and full of stare, took it up and tightened his grip gently
on the hand of his sister. Soon, everyone in the cellar was holding the hand of another, and the
group of Germans stood in a lumpy circle. The cold hands melted into the warm ones, and in
some cases, the feeling of another human pulse was transported. It came through the layers of
pale, stiffened skin. Some of them closed their eyes, waiting for their final demise, or hoping
for a sign that the raid was finally over.
Did they deserve any better, these people?
How many had actively persecuted others, high on the scent of Hitler’s gaze, repeating his
sentences, his paragraphs, his opus? Was Rosa Hubermann responsible? The hider of a Jew?
Or Hans? Did they all deserve to die? The children?
The answer to each of these questions interests me very much, though I cannot allow them to
seduce me. I only know that all of those people would have sensed me that night, excluding
the youngest of the children. I was the suggestion. I was the advice, my imagined feet walking
into the kitchen and down the corridor.
As is often the case with humans, when I read about them in the book thief’s words, I pitied
them, though not as much as I felt for the ones I scooped up from various camps in that time.
The Germans in basements were pitiable, surely, but at least they had a chance. That
basement was not a washroom. They were not sent there for a shower. For those people, life
was still achievable.
In the uneven circle, the minutes soaked by.
Liesel held Rudy’s hand, and her mama’s.
Only one thought saddened her.
Max.
How would Max survive if the bombs arrived on Himmel Street?
Around her, she examined the Fiedlers’ basement. It was much sturdier and considerably
deeper than the one at 33 Himmel Street.
Silently, she asked her papa.
Are you thinking about him, too?
Whether the silent question registered or not, he gave the girl a quick nod. It was followed a
few minutes later by the three sirens of temporary peace.
The people at 45 Himmel Street sank with relief.
Some clenched their eyes and opened them again.
A cigarette was passed around.
Just as it made its way to Rudy Steiner’s lips, it was snatched away by his father. “Not you,
Jesse Owens.”
The children hugged their parents, and it took many minutes for all of them to fully realize
that they were alive, and that they were going to be alive. Only then did their feet climb the
stairs, to Herbert Fiedler’s kitchen.
Outside, a procession of people made its way silently along the street. Many of them looked
up and thanked God for their lives.
When the Hubermanns made it home, they headed directly to the basement, but it seemed that
Max was not there. The lamp was small and orange and they could not see him or hear an
answer.
“Max?”
“He’s disappeared.”
“Max, are you there?”
“I’m here.”
They originally thought the words had come from behind the drop sheets and paint cans, but
Liesel was first to see him, in front of them. His jaded face was camouflaged among the
painting materials and fabric. He was sitting there with stunned eyes and lips.
When they walked across, he spoke again.
“I couldn’t help it,” he said.
It was Rosa who replied. She crouched down to face him. “What are you talking about,
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