it was nice to be fought off in that dark little room.
I even managed a short, closed-eyed pause of
serenity before I made my way out.
On the fifth day, there was much excitement when Max opened his eyes, if only for a few moments. What he predominantly saw (and what a frightening version it must have been close-up) was Rosa Hubermann, practically slinging an armful of soup into his mouth. “Swallow,” she advised him. “Don’t think. Just swallow.” As soon as Mama handed back the bowl, Liesel tried to see his face again, but there was a soup-feeder’s backside in the way.
“Is he still awake?”
When she turned, Rosa did not have to answer.
After close to a week, Max woke up a second time, on this occasion with Liesel and Papa in the room. They were both watching the body in the bed when there was a small groan. If it’s possible, Papa fell upward, out of the chair.
“Look,” Liesel gasped. “Stay awake, Max, stay awake.”
He looked at her briefly, but there was no recognition. The eyes studied her as if she were a riddle. Then gone again.
“Papa, what happened?”
Hans dropped, back to the chair.
Later, he suggested that perhaps she should read to him. “Come on, Liesel, you’re such a good reader these days—even if it’s a mystery to all of us where that book came from.”
“I told you, Papa. One of the nuns at school gave it to me.”
Papa held his hands up in mock-protest. “I know, I know.” He sighed, from a height. “Just …” He chose his words gradually. “Don’t get caught.” This from a man who’d stolen a Jew.
From that day on, Liesel read The Whistler aloud to Max as he occupied her bed. The one frustration was that she kept having to skip whole chapters on account of many of the pages being stuck together. It had not dried well. Still, she struggled on, to the point where she was nearly three-quarters of the way through it. The book was 396 pages.
In the outside world, Liesel rushed from school each day in the hope that Max was feeling better. “Has he woken up? Has he eaten?”
“Go back out,” Mama begged her. “You’re chewing a hole in my stomach with all this talking. Go on. Get out there and play soccer, for God’s sake.”
“Yes, Mama.” She was about to open the door. “But you’ll come and get me if he wakes up, won’t you? Just make something up. Scream out like I’ve done something wrong. Start swearing at me. Everyone will believe it, don’t worry.”
Even Rosa had to smile at that. She placed her knuckles on her hips and explained that Liesel wasn’t too old yet to avoid a Watschen for talking in such a way. “And score a goal,” she threatened, “or don’t come home at all.”
“Sure, Mama.”
“Make that two goals, Saumensch!”
“Yes, Mama.”
“And stop answering back!”
Liesel considered, but she ran onto the street, to oppose Rudy on the mud-slippery road.
“About time, ass scratcher.” He welcomed her in the customary way as they fought for the ball. “Where have you been?”
Half an hour later, when the ball was squashed by the rare passage of a car on Himmel Street, Liesel had found her first present for Max Vandenburg. After judging it irreparable, all of the kids walked home in disgust, leaving the ball twitching on the cold, blist
ered road. Liesel and Rudy remained stooped over the carcass. There was a gaping hole on its side like a mouth.
“You want it?” Liesel asked.
Rudy shrugged. “What do I want with this squashed shit heap of a ball? There’s no chance of getting air into it now, is there?”
“Do you want it or not?”