The Germans were starting to pay in earnest by then. The Führer’s pimply little knees were starting to shake.
Still, I’ll give him something, that Führer.
He certainly had an iron will.
There was no slackening off in terms of war-making, nor was there any scaling back on the extermination and punishment of a Jewish plague. While most of the camps were spread throughout Europe, there were some still in existence in Germany itself.
In those camps, many people were still made to work, and walk.
Max Vandenburg was one such Jew.
WAY OF THE WORDS
It happened in a small town of Hitler’s heartland.
The flow of more suffering was pumped nicely out, and a small piece of it had now arrived.
Jews were being marched through the outskirts of Munich, and one teenage girl somehow did the unthinkable and made her way through to walk with them. When the soldiers pulled her away and threw her to the ground, she stood up again. She continued.
The morning was warm.
Another beautiful day for a parade.
The soldiers and Jews made their way through several towns and were arriving now in Molching. It was possible that more work needed to be done in the camp, or several prisoners had died. Whatever the reason, a new batch of fresh, tired Jews was being taken on foot to Dachau.
As she always did, Liesel ran to Munich Street with the usual band of onlookers.
• • •
“Heil Hitler!”
She could hear the first soldier from far up the road and made her way toward him through the crowd, to meet the procession. The voice amazed her. It made the endless sky into a ceiling just above his head, and the words bounced back, landing somewhere on the floor of limping Jewish feet.
Their eyes.
They watched the moving street, one by one, and when Liesel found a good vantage point, she stopped and studied them. She raced through the files of face after face, trying to match them to the Jew who wrote The Standover Man and The Word Shaker.
Feathery hair, she thought.
No, hair like twigs. That’s what it looks like when it hasn’t been washed. Look out for hair like twigs and swampy eyes and a kindling beard.
God, there were so many of them.
So many sets of dying eyes and scuffing feet.
Liesel searched them and it was not so much a recognition of facial features that gave Max Vandenburg away. It was how the face was acting—also studying the crowd. Fixed in concentration. Liesel felt herself pausing as she found the only face looking directly into the German spectators. It examined them with such purpose that people on either side of the book thief noticed and pointed him out.
“What’s he looking at?” said a male voice at her side.
The book thief stepped onto the road.
Never had movement been such a burden. Never had a heart been so definite and big in her adolescent chest.
She stepped forward and said, very quietly, “He’s looking for me.”
Her voice trailed off and fell away, inside. She had to refind it—reaching far down, to learn to speak again and call out his name.
Max.