Her teacher.
Rudy.
It didn’t matter whom.
What mattered was that all were punishable.
“For starters,” he said, “I will take each and every one of your books—and I will burn them.” It was callous. “I’ll throw them in the stove or the fireplace.” He was certainly acting like a tyrant, but it was necessary. “Understand?”
The shock made a hole in her, very neat, very precise.
Tears welled.
“Yes, Papa.”
“Next.” He had to remain hard, and he needed to strain for it. “They’ll take you away from me. Do you want that?”
She was crying now, in earnest. “Nein.”
“Good.” His grip on her hand tightened. “They’ll drag that man up there away, and maybe Mama and me, too—and we will never, ever come back.”
And that did it.
The girl began to sob so uncontrollably that Papa was dying to pull her into him and hug her tight. He didn’t. Instead, he squatted down and watched her directly in the eyes. He unleashed his quietest words so far. “Verstehst du mich?” Do you understand me?”
The girl nodded. She cried, and now, defeated, broken, her papa held her in the painted air and the kerosene light.
“I understand, Papa, I do.”
Her voice was muffled against his body, and they stayed like that for a few minutes, Liesel with squashed breath and Papa rubbing her back.
Upstairs, when they returned, they found Mama sitting in the kitchen, alone and pensive. When she saw them, she stood and beckoned Liesel to come over, noticing the dried-up tears that streaked her. She brought the girl into her and heaped a typically rugged embrace around her body. “Alles gut, Saumensch?”
She didn’t need an answer.
Everything was good.
But it was awful, too.
THE SLEEPER
Max Vandenburg slept for three days.
In certain excerpts of that sleep, Liesel watched him. You might say that by the third day it became an obsession, to check on him, to see if he was still breathing. She could now interpret his signs of life, from the movement of his lips, his gathering beard, and the twigs of hair that moved ever so slightly when his head twitched in the dream state.
Often, when she stood over him, there was the mortifying thought that he had just woken up, his eyes splitting open to view her—to watch her watching. The idea of being caught out plagued and enthused her at the same time. She dreaded it. She invited it. Only when Mama called out to her could she drag herself away, simultaneously soothed and disappointed that she might not be there when he woke.
Sometimes, close to the end of the marathon of sleep, he spoke.
There was a recital of murmured names. A checklist.
Isaac. Aunt Ruth. Sarah. Mama. Walter. Hitler.
Family, friend, enemy.
They were all under the covers with him, and at one point, he appeared to be struggling with himself. “Nein,” he whispered. It was repeated seven times. “No.”
Liesel, in the act of watching, was already noticing the similarities between this stranger and herself. They both arrived in a state of agitation on Himmel Street. They both nightmared.