“Oh.” A hand pulled him away. “Get used to it, Hubermann.”
For the rest of the shift, he threw himself into duty. He tried to ignore the distant echoes of calling people.
After perhaps two hours, he rushed from a building with the sergeant and two other men. He didn’t watch the ground and tripped. Only when he returned to his haunches and saw the others looking in distress at the obstacle did he realize.
The corpse was facedown.
It lay in a blanket of powder and dust, and it was holding its ears.
It was a boy.
Perhaps eleven or twelve years old.
Not far away, as they progressed along the street, they found a woman calling the name Rudolf. She was drawn to the four men and met them in the mist. Her body was frail and bent with worry.
“Have you seen my boy?”
“How old is he?” the sergeant asked.
“Twelve.”
Oh, Christ. Oh, crucified Christ.
They all thought it, but the sergeant could not bring himself to tell her or point the way.
As the woman tried to push past, Boris Schipper held her back. “We’ve just come from that street,” he assured her. “You won’t find him down there.”
The bent woman still clung to hope. She called over her shoulder as she half walked, half ran. “Rudy!”
Hans Hubermann thought of another Rudy then. The Himmel Street variety. Please, he asked into a sky he couldn’t see, let Rudy be safe. His thoughts naturally progressed to Liesel and Rosa and the Steiners, and Max.
When they made it to the rest of the men, he dropped down and lay on his back.
“How was it down there?” someone asked.
Papa’s lungs were full of sky.
A few hours later, when he’d washed and eaten and thrown up, he attempted to write a detailed letter home. His hands were uncontrollable, forcing him to make it short. If he could bring himself, the remainder would be told verbally, when and if he made it home.
To my dear Rosa and Liesel, he began.
It took many minutes to write those six words down.
THE BREAD EATERS
It had been a long and eventful year in Molching, and it was finally drawing to a close.
Liesel spent the last few months of 1942 consumed by thoughts of what she called three desperate men. She wondered where they were and what they were doing.
One afternoon, she lifted the accordion from its case and polished it with a rag. Only once, just before she put it away, did she take the step that Mama could not. She placed her finger on one of the keys and softly pumped the bellows. Rosa had been right. It only made the room feel emptier.
Whenever she met Rudy, she asked if there had been any word from his father. Sometimes he described to her in detail one of Alex Steiner’s letters. By comparison, the one letter her own papa had sent was somewhat of a disappointment.
Max, of course, was entirely up to her imagination.
It was with great optimism that she envisioned him walking alone on a deserted road. Once in a while she imagined him falling into a doorway of safety somewhere, his identity card enough to fool the right person.
The three men would turn up everywhere.