The boy was gone.
Yes, the boy was gone, and I wish I could tell you that everything worked out for the younger Hans Hubermann, but it didn’t.
When he vanished from Himmel Street that day in the name of the Führer, he would hurtle through the events of another story, each step leading tragically to Russia.
To Stalingrad.
SOME FACTS ABOUT STALINGRAD
1. In 1942 and early '43, in that city, the sky was bleached bedsheet-white each morning.
2. All day long, as I carried the souls across it, that sheet was splashed with blood, until it was full and bulging to the earth.
3. In the evening, it would be wrung out and bleached again, ready for the next dawn.
4. And that was when the fighting was only during the day.
With his son gone, Hans Hubermann stood for a few moments longer. The street looked so big.
When he reappeared inside, Mama fixed her gaze on him, but no words were exchanged. She didn’t admonish him at all, which, as you know, was highly unusual. Perhaps she decided he was injured enough, having been labeled a coward by his only son.
For a while, he remained silently at the table after the eating was finished. Was he really a coward, as his son had so brutally pointed out? Certainly, in World War I, he considered himself one. He attributed his survival to it. But then, is there cowardice in the acknowledgment of fear? Is there cowardice in being glad that you lived?
His thoughts crisscrossed the table as he stared into it.
“Papa?” Liesel asked, but he did not look at her. “What was he talking about? What did he mean when …”
“Nothing,” Papa answered. He spoke quiet and calm, to the table. “It’s nothing. Forget about him, Liesel.” It took perhaps a minute for him to speak again. “Shouldn’t you be getting ready?” He looked at her this time. “Don’t you have a bonfire to go to?”
“Yes, Papa.”
The book thief went and changed into her Hitler Youth uniform, and half an hour later, they left, walking to the BDM headquarters. From there, the children would be taken to the town square in their groups.
Speeches would be made.
A fire would be lit.
A book would be stolen.
100 PERCENT PURE GERMAN SWEAT
People lined the streets as the youth of Germany marched toward the town hall and the square. On quite a few occasions Liesel forgot about her mother and any other problem of which she currently held ownership. There was a swell in her chest as the people clapped them on. Some kids waved to their parents, but only briefly—it was an explicit instruction that they march straight and don’t look or wave to the crowd.
When Rudy’s group came into the square and was instructed to halt, there was a discrepancy. Tommy Müller. The rest of the regiment stopped marching and Tommy plowed directly into the boy in front of him.
“Dummkopf!” the boy spat before turning around.
“I’m sorry,” said Tommy, arms held apologetically out. His face tripped over itself. “I couldn’t hear.” It was only a small moment, but it was also a preview of troubles to come. For Tommy. For Rudy.
At the end of the marching, the Hitler Youth divisions were allowed to disperse. It would have been near impossible to keep them all together as the bonfire burned in their eyes and excited them. Together, they cried one united “heil Hitler” and were free to wander. Liesel looked for Rudy, but once the crowd of children scattered, she was caught inside a mess of uniforms and high-pitched words. Kids calling out to other kids.
By four-thirty, the air had cooled considerably.
People joked that they needed warming up. “That’s all this trash is good for anyway.”
Carts were used to wheel it all in. It was dumped in the middle of the town square and dowsed with something sweet. Books and paper and other material would slide or tumble down, only to be thrown back onto the pile. From further away, it looked like something volcanic. Or something grotesque and alien that had somehow landed miraculously in the middle of town and needed to be snuffed out, and fast.
The applied smell leaned toward the crowd, who were kept at a good distance. There were well in excess of a thousand people, on the ground, on the town hall steps, on the rooftops that surrounded the square.