“Crucified Christ” was the most common reaction to Max Vandenburg’s stories, usually followed by a question.
QUESTIONS LIKE
How long did you stay in that room?
Where is Walter Kugler now?
Do you know what happened to your family?
Where was the snorer traveling to?
A 10-3 losing record!
Why would you keep fighting him?
When Liesel looked back on the events of her life, those nights in the living room were some of the clearest memories she had. She could see the burning light on Max’s eggshell face and even taste the human flavor of his words. The course of his survival was related, piece by piece, as if he were cutting each part out of him and presenting it on a plate.
“I’m so selfish.”
W
hen he said that, he used his forearm to shield his face. “Leaving people behind. Coming here. Putting all of you in danger …” He dropped everything out of him and started pleading with them. Sorrow and desolation were clouted across his face. “I’m sorry. Do you believe me? I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m—!”
His arm touched the fire and he snapped it back.
They all watched him, silent, until Papa stood and walked closer. He sat next to him.
“Did you burn your elbow?”
One evening, Hans, Max, and Liesel were sitting in front of the fire. Mama was in the kitchen. Max was reading Mein Kampf again.
“You know something?” Hans said. He leaned toward the fire. “Liesel’s actually a good little reader herself.” Max lowered the book. “And she has more in common with you than you might think.” Papa checked that Rosa wasn’t coming. “She likes a good fistfight, too.”
“Papa!”
Liesel, at the high end of eleven, and still rake-skinny as she sat against the wall, was devastated. “I’ve never been in a fight!”
“Shhh,” Papa laughed. He waved at her to keep her voice down and tilted again, this time to the girl. “Well, what about the hiding you gave Ludwig Schmeikl, huh?”
“I never—” She was caught. Further denial was useless. “How did you find out about that?”
“I saw his papa at the Knoller.”
Liesel held her face in her hands. Once uncovered again, she asked the pivotal question. “Did you tell Mama?”
“Are you kidding?” He winked at Max and whispered to the girl, “You’re still alive, aren’t you?”
That night was also the first time Papa played his accordion at home for months. It lasted half an hour or so until he asked a question of Max.
“Did you learn?”
The face in the corner watched the flames. “I did.” There was a considerable pause. “Until I was nine. At that age, my mother sold the music studio and stopped teaching. She kept only the one instrument but gave up on me not long after I resisted the learning. I was foolish.”
“No,” Papa said. “You were a boy.”
During the nights, both Liesel Meminger and Max Vandenburg would go about their other similarity. In their separate rooms, they would dream their nightmares and wake up, one with a scream in drowning sheets, the other with a gasp for air next to a smoking fire.
Sometimes, when Liesel was reading with Papa close to three o’clock, they would both hear the waking moment of Max. “He dreams like you,” Papa would say, and on one occasion, stirred by the sound of Max’s anxiety, Liesel decided to get out of bed. From listening to his history, she had a good idea of what he saw in those dreams, if not the exact part of the story that paid him a visit each night.