Nothing came.
Every unit of time carried with it the expected noise of knocking and threatening words.
They did not come.
The only sound was of himself.
“What have I done?” he whispered again.
“God, I’d love a cigarette,” he answered. He was all out.
Liesel heard the repeated sentences several times, and it took a lot to stay by the door. She’d have loved to comfort him, but she had never seen a man so devastated. There were no consolations that night. Max was gone, and Hans Hubermann was to blame.
The kitchen cupboards were the shape of guilt, and his palms were oily with the memory of what he’d done. They must be sweaty, Liesel thought, for her own hands were soaked to the wrists.
In her room, she prayed.
Hands and knees, forearms against the mattress.
“Please, God, please let Max survive. Please, God, please …”
Her suffering knees.
Her painful feet.
When first light appeared, she awoke and made her way back to the kitchen. Papa was asleep with his head parallel to the tabletop, and there was some saliva at the corner of his mouth. The smell of coffee was overpowering, and the image of Hans Hubermann’s stupid kindness was still in the air. It was like a number or an address. Repeat it enough times and it sticks.
Her first attempt to wake him was unfelt, but her second nudge of the shoulder brought his head from the table in an upward shock.
“Are they here?”
“No, Papa, it’s me.”
He finished the stale pool of coffee in his mug. His Adam’s apple lifted and sank. “They should have come by now. Why haven’t they come, Liesel?”
It was an insult.
They should have come by now and swept through the house, looking for any evidence of Jew loving or treason, but it appeared that Max had left for no reason at all. He could have been asleep in the basement or sketching in his book.
“You can’t have known that they wouldn’t come, Papa.”
“I should have known not to give the man some bread. I just didn’t think.”
“Papa, you did nothing wrong.”
“I don’t believe you.”
He stood and walked out the kitchen door, leaving it ajar. Lending even more insult to injury, it was going to be a lovely morning.
When four days had elapsed, Papa walked a long length of the Amper River. He brought back a small note and placed it on the kitchen table.
Another week passed, and still, Hans Hubermann waited for his punishment. The welts on his back were turning to scars, and he spent the majority of his time walking around Molching. Frau Diller spat at his feet. Frau Holtzapfel, true to her word, had ceased spitting at the Hubermanns’ door, but here was a handy replacement. “I knew it,” the shopkeeper damned him. “You dirty Jew lover.”
He walked obliviously on, and Liesel would often catch him at the Amper River, on the bridge. His arms rested on the rail and he leaned his upper body over the edge. Kids on bikes rushed past him, or they ran with loud voices and the slaps of feet on wood. None of it moved him in the slightest.
DUDEN DICTIONARY MEANING #8
Nachtrauern —Regret: