When she woke up screaming, Liesel knew immediately that on this occasion, something had changed. A smell leaked out from under the sheets, warm and sickly. At first, she tried convincing herself that nothing had happened, but as Papa came closer and held her, she cried and admitted the fact in his ear.
“Papa,” she whispered, “Papa,” and that was all. He could probably smell it.
He lifted her gently from the bed and carried her into the washroom. The moment came a few minutes later.
“We take the sheets off,” Papa said, and when he reached under and pulled at the fabric, something loosened and landed with a thud. A black book with silver writing on it came hurtling out and landed on the floor, between the tall man’s feet.
He looked down at it.
He looked at the girl, who timidly shrugged.
Then he read the title, with concentration, aloud: “The Grave Digger’s Handbook.”
So that’s what it’s called, Liesel thought.
A patch of silence stood among them now. The man, the girl, the book. He picked it up and spoke soft as cotton.
A 2 A.M. CONVERSATION
“Is this yours?”
“Yes, Papa.”
“Do you want to read it?”
Again, “Yes, Papa.”
A tired smile. Metallic eyes, melting.
“Well, we’d better read it, then.”
Four years later, when she came to write in the basement, two thoughts struck Liesel about the trauma of wetting the bed. First, she felt extremely lucky that it was Papa who discovered the book. (Fortunately, when the sheets had been washed previously, Rosa had made Liesel strip the bed and make it up. “And be quick about it, Saumensch! Does it look like we’ve got all day?”) Second, she was clearly proud of Hans Hubermann’s part in her education. You wouldn’t think it, she wrote, but it was not so much the school who helped me to read. It was Papa. People think he’s not so smart, and it’s true that he doesn’t read too fast, but I would soon learn that words and writing actually saved his life once. Or at least, words and a man who taught him the accordion …
• • •
“First things first,” Hans Hubermann said that night. He washed the sheets and hung them up. “Now,” he said upon his return. “Let’s get this midnight class started.”
The yellow light was alive with dust.
Liesel sat on cold clean sheets, ashamed, elated. The thought of bed-wetting prodded her, but she was going to read. She was going to read the book.
The excitement stood up in her.
Visions of a ten-year-old reading genius were set alight.
If only it was that easy.
“To tell you the truth,” Papa explained upfront, “I am not such a good reader myself.”
But it didn’t matter that he read slowly. If anything, it might have helped that his own reading pace was slower than average. Perhaps it would cause less frustration in coping with the girl’s lack of ability.
Still, initially, Hans appeared a little uncomfortable holding the book and looking through it.
When he came over and sat next to her on the bed, he leaned back, his legs angling over the side. He examined the book again and dropped it on the blanket. “Now why would a nice girl like you want to read such a thing?”
Again, Liesel shrugged. Had the apprentice been reading the complete works of Goethe or any other such luminary, that was what would have sat in front of them. She attempted to explain. “I—when … It was sitting in the snow, and—” The soft-spoken words fell off the side of the bed, emptying to the floor like powder.
Papa knew what to say, though. He always knew what to say.