Like most misery, it started with apparent happiness.
THE JOY OF CIGARETTES
Toward the end of 1939, Liesel had settled into life in Molching pretty well. She still had nightmares about her brother and missed her mother, but there were comforts now, too.
She loved her papa, Hans Hubermann, and even her foster mother, despite the abusages and verbal assaults. She loved and hated her best friend, Rudy Steiner, which was perfectly normal. And she loved the fact that despite her failure in the classroom, her reading and writing were definitely improving and would soon be on the verge of something respectable. All of this resulted in at least some form of contentment and would soon be built upon to approach the concept of Being Happy.
THE KEYS TO HAPPINESS
1. Finishing The Grave Digger’s Handbook.
2. Escaping the ire of Sister Maria.
3. Receiving two books for Christmas.
• • •
December 17.
She remembered the date well, as it was exactly a week before Christmas.
As usual, her nightly nightmare interrupted her sleep and she was woken by Hans Hubermann. His hand he
ld the sweaty fabric of her pajamas. “The train?” he whispered.
Liesel confirmed. “The train.”
She gulped the air until she was ready, and they began reading from the eleventh chapter of The Grave Digger’s Handbook. Just past three o’clock, they finished it, and only the final chapter, “Respecting the Graveyard,” remained. Papa, his silver eyes swollen in their tiredness and his face awash with whiskers, shut the book and expected the leftovers of his sleep. He didn’t get them.
The light was out for barely a minute when Liesel spoke to him across the dark.
“Papa?”
He made only a noise, somewhere in his throat.
“Are you awake, Papa?”
“Ja.”
Up on one elbow. “Can we finish the book, please?”
There was a long breath, the scratchery of hand on whiskers, and then the light. He opened the book and began. “‘Chapter Twelve: Respecting the Graveyard.’”
They read through the early hours of morning, circling and writing the words she did not comprehend and turning the pages toward daylight. A few times, Papa nearly slept, succumbing to the itchy fatigue in his eyes and the wilting of his head. Liesel caught him out on each occasion, but she had neither the selflessness to allow him to sleep nor the hide to be offended. She was a girl with a mountain to climb.
Eventually, as the darkness outside began to break up a little, they finished. The last passage looked like this:
We at the Bayern Cemetery Association hope that we have informed and entertained you in the workings, safety measures, and duties of grave digging. We wish you every success with your career in the funerary arts and hope this book has helped in some way.
When the book closed, they shared a sideways glance. Papa spoke.
“We made it, huh?”
Liesel, half-wrapped in blanket, studied the black book in her hand and its silver lettering. She nodded, dry-mouthed and early-morning hungry. It was one of those moments of perfect tiredness, of having conquered not only the work at hand, but the night who had blocked the way.
Papa stretched with his fists closed and his eyes grinding shut, and it was a morning that didn’t dare to be rainy. They each stood and walked to the kitchen, and through the fog and frost of the window, they were able to see the pink bars of light on the snowy banks of Himmel Street’s rooftops.
“Look at the colors,” Papa said. It’s hard not to like a man who not only notices the colors, but speaks them.