The Book Thief

That last time.
That red sky . . .
How does a book thief end up kneeling and howling and flanked by a manmade heap of ridiculous, greasy, cooked-up rubble?
Years earlier, the start was snow.
The time had come. For one.
A SPECTACULARLY TRAGIC MOMENT
A train was moving quickly.
It was packed with humans.
A six-year-old boy died in the third carriage.
The book thief and her brother were traveling down toward Munich, where
they would soon be given over to foster parents. We now know, of course,
that the boy didn’t make it.
HOW IT HAPPENED
There was an intense spurt of coughing.
Almost an inspired spurt.
And soon after nothing.
When the coughing stopped, there was nothing but the nothingness of life
moving on with a shuffle or a near-silent twitch. A suddenness found its
way onto his lips then, which were a corroded brown color and peeling, like
old paint. In desperate need of redoing.
Their mother was asleep.
I entered the train.
My feet stepped through the cluttered aisle and my palm was over his
mouth in an instant.
No one noticed.
The train galloped on.
Except the girl.
With one eye open, one still in a dream, the book thief also known as Liesel
Memingercould see without question that her younger brother, Werner, was
now sideways and dead.
His blue eyes stared at the floor.
Seeing nothing.
Prior to waking up, the book thief was dreaming about the Fuhrer, Adolf
Hitler. In the dream, she was attending a rally at which he spoke, looking at
the skull-colored part in his hair and the perfect square of his mustache. She
was listening contentedly to the torrent of words spilling from his mouth.
His sentences glowed in the light. In a quieter moment, he actually
crouched down and smiled at her. She returned the smile and said, Guten
Tag, Herr Fuhrer. Wie gehts dir heut? She hadn’t learned to speak too well, or
even to read, as she had rarely frequented school. The reason for that she
would find out in due course.
Just as the Fuhrer was about to reply, she woke up.
It was January 1939. She was nine years old, soon to be ten.
Her brother was dead.
One eye open.
One still in a dream.
It would be better for a complete dream, I think, but I really have no control
over that.
The second eye jumped awake and she caught me out, no doubt about it. It
was exactly when I knelt down and extracted his soul, holding it limply in
my swollen arms. He warmed up soon after, but when I picked him up
originally, the boys spirit was soft and cold, like ice cream. He started
melting in my arms. Then warming up completely. Healing.
For Liesel Meminger, there was the imprisoned stiffness of movement and
the staggered onslaught of thoughts. Es stimmt nicht. This isnt happening.
This isnt happening.
And the shaking.
Why do they always shake them?
Yes, I know, I know, I assume it has something to do with instinct. To stem
the flow of truth. Her heart at that point was slippery and hot, and loud, so
loud so loud.
Stupidly, I stayed. I watched.
Next, her mother.
She woke her up with the same distraught shake.
If you cant imagine it, think clumsy silence. Think bits and pieces of
floating despair. And drowning in a train.
Snow had been falling consistently, and the service to Munich was forced to
stop due to faulty track work. There was a woman wailing. A girl stood
numbly next to her.
In panic, the mother opened the door.
She climbed down into the snow, holding the small body.
What could the girl do but follow?
As youve been informed, two guards also exited the train. They discussed
and argued over what to do. The situation was unsavory to say the least. It
was eventually decided that all three of them should be taken to the next
township and left there to sort things out.
This time, the train limped through the snowed-in country.
It hobbled in and stopped.
They stepped onto the platform, the body in her mothers arms.
They stood.
The boy was getting heavy.
Liesel had no idea where she was. All was white, and as they remained at
the station, she could only stare at the faded lettering of the sign in front of
her. For Liesel, the town was nameless, and it was there that her brother,
Werner, was buried two days later. Witnesses included a priest and two
shivering grave diggers.
AN OBSERVATION
A pair of train guards.
A pair of grave diggers.
When it came down to it, one of them called the shots.
The other did what he was told.
The question is, what if the other is a lot more than one?
Mistakes, mistakes, its all I seem capable of at times.
For two days, I went about my business. I traveled the globe as always,
handing souls to the conveyor belt of eternity. I watched them trundle
passively on. Several times, I warned myself that I should keep a good
distance from the burial of Liesel Memingers brother. I did not heed my
advice.
From miles away, as I approached, I could already see the small group of
humans standing frigidly among the wasteland of snow. The cemetery
welcomed me like a friend, and soon, I was with them. I bowed my head.
Standing to Liesels left, the grave diggers were rubbing their hands together
and whining about the snow and the current digging conditions. So hard
getting through all the ice, and so forth. One of them couldnt have been
more than fourteen. An apprentice. When he walked away, after a few
dozen paces, a black book fell innocuously from his coat pocket without his
knowledge.
A few minutes later, Liesels mother started leaving with the priest. She was
thanking him for his performance of the ceremony.
The girl, however, stayed.
Her knees entered the ground. Her moment had arrived.
Still in disbelief, she started to dig. He couldnt be dead. He couldnt be dead.
He couldnt
Within seconds, snow was carved into her skin.
Frozen blood was cracked across her hands.
Somewhere in all the snow, she could see her broken heart, in two pieces.
Each half was glowing, and beating under all that white. She realized her
mother had come back for her only when she felt the boniness of a hand on
her shoulder. She was being dragged away. A warm scream filled her throat