No more than a few meters, it was a long walk to the drop sheets and the assortment of paint cans that shielded Max Vandenburg. She removed the sheets closest to the wall until there was a small corridor to look through.
The first part of him she saw was his shoulder, and through the slender gap, she slowly, painfully, inched her hand in until it rested there. His clothing was cool. He did not wake.
She could feel his breathing and his shoulder moving up and down ever so slightly. For a while, she watched him. Then she sat and leaned back.
Sleepy air seemed to have followed her.
The scrawled words of practice stood magnificently on the wall by the stairs, jagged and childlike and sweet. They looked on as both the hidden Jew and the girl slept, hand to shoulder.
They breathed.
German and Jewish lungs.
Next to the wall, The Standover Man sat, numb and gratified, like a beautiful itch at Liesel Meminger’s feet.
PART FIVE
the whistler
featuring:
a floating book—the gamblers—a small ghost—
two haircuts—rudy’s youth—losers and sketches—
a whistler and some shoes—three acts of stupidity—
and a frightened boy with frozen legs
THE FLOATING BOOK (Part I)
A book floated down the Amper River.
A boy jumped in, caught up to it, and held it in his right hand. He grinned.
He stood waist-deep in the icy, Decemberish water.
“How about a kiss, Saumensch?” he said.
The surrounding air was a lovely, gorgeous, nauseating cold, not to mention the concrete ache of the water, thickening from his toes to his hips.
How about a kiss?
How about a kiss?
Poor Rudy.
A SMALL ANNOUNCEMENT
ABOUT RUDY STEINER
He didn’t deserve to die the way he did.
In your visions, you see the sloppy edges of paper still stuck to his fingers. You see a shivering blond fringe. Preemptively, you conclude, as I would, that Rudy died that very same day, of hypothermia. He did not. Recollections like those merely remind me that he was not deserving of the fate that met him a little under two years later.
On many counts, taking a boy like Rudy was robbery—so much life, so much to live for—yet somehow, I’m certain he would have loved to see the frightening rubble and the swelling of the sky on the night he passed away. He’d have cried and turned and smiled if only he could have seen the book thief on her hands and knees, next to his decimated body. He’d have been glad to witness her kissing his dusty, bomb-hit lips.
Yes, I know it.