A Guided Tour of Suffering: Analyzing Survival in Markus Zusak’s

Scheisse!‎It was not the mayor’s wife, but the mayor himself who stood before her. In her hurry, Liesel had neglected to‎notice the car that sat out front, on the street.‎Mustached and black-suited, the man spoke. “Can I help you?”‎Liesel could say nothing. Not yet. She was bent over, short of air, and fortunately, the woman arrived when‎she’d at least partially recovered. Ilsa Hermann stood behind her husband, to the side.‎“I forgot,” Liesel said. She lifted the bag and addressed the mayor’s wife. Despite the forced labor of breath, she‎fed the words through the gap in the doorway—between the mayor and the frame— to the woman. Such was‎her effort to breathe that the words escaped only a few at a time. “I forgot . . . I mean, I just . . . wanted,” she‎said, “to . . . thank you.”‎The mayor’s wife bruised herself again. Coming forward to stand beside her husband, she nodded very faintly,‎waited, and closed the door.‎It took Liesel a minute or so to leave.‎She smiled at the steps.Now for a change of scenery.‎We’ve both had it too easy till now, my friend, don’t you think? How about we forget Molching for a minute or‎two?‎It will do us some good.‎Also, it’s important to the story.‎We will travel a little, to a secret storage room, and we will see what we see.‎A GUIDED TOUR OF SUFFERING‎To your left,‎perhaps your right,‎perhaps even straight ahead, ‎you find a small black room.‎In it sits a Jew.‎He is scum. ‎He is starving.‎He is afraid.‎Please—try not to look away.‎A few hundred miles northwest, in Stuttgart, far from book thieves, mayors’ wives, and Himmel Street, a man‎was sitting in the dark. It was the best place, they decided. It’s harder to find a Jew in the dark.‎He sat on his suitcase, waiting. How many days had it been now?‎He had eaten only the foul taste of his own hungry breath for what felt like weeks, and still, nothing.‎Occasionally voices wandered past and sometimes he longed for them to knuckle the door, to open it, to drag‎him out, into the unbearable light. For now, he could only sit on his suitcase couch, hands under his chin, his‎elbows burning his thighs.‎There was sleep, starving sleep, and the irritation of half awakeness, and the punishment of the floor.‎Ignore the itchy feet.‎Don’t scratch the soles.‎And don’t move too much.‎Just leave everything as it is, at all cost. It might be time to go soon. Light like a gun. Explosive to the eyes. It‎might be time to go. It might be time, so wake up. Wake up now, Goddamn it! Wake up.‎The door was opened and shut, and a figure was crouched over him. The hand splashed at the cold waves of his‎clothes and the grimy currents beneath. A voice came down, behind it.“Max,” it whispered. “Max, wake up.”‎His eyes did not do anything that shock normally describes. No snapping, no slapping, no jolt. Those things‎happen when you wake from a bad dream, not when you wake into one. No, his eyes dragged themselves open,‎from darkness to dim. It was his body that reacted, shrugging upward and throwing out an arm to grip the air.‎The voice calmed him now. “Sorry it’s taken so long. I think people have been watching me. And the man with‎the identity card took longer than I thought, but—” There was a pause. “It’s yours now. Not great quality, but‎hopefully good enough to get you there if it comes to that.” He crouched down and waved a hand at the‎suitcase. In his other hand, he held something heavy and flat. “Come on—off.” Max obeyed, standing and‎scratching. He could feel the tightening of his bones. “The card is in this.” It was a book. “You should put the‎map in here, too, and the directions. And there’s a key—taped to the inside cover.” He clicked open the case as‎quietly as he could and planted the book like a bomb. “I’ll be back in a few days.”‎He left a small bag filled with bread, fat, and three small carrots. Next to it was a bottle of water. There was no‎apology. “It’s the best I could do.”‎Door open, door shut.‎Alone again.‎What came to him immediately then was the sound.‎Everything was so desperately noisy in the dark when he was alone. Each time he moved, there was the sound‎of a crease. He felt like a man in a paper suit.‎The food.‎Max divided the bread into three parts and set two aside. The one in his hand he immersed himself in, chewing‎and gulping, forcing it down the dry corridor of his throat. The fat was cold and hard, scaling its way down,‎occasionally holding on. Big swallows tore them away and sent them below.‎Then the carrots.‎Again, he set two aside and devoured the third. The noise was astounding. Surely, the Führer himself could‎hear the sound of the orange crush in his mouth. It broke his teeth with every bite. When he drank, he was quite‎positive that he was swallowing them. Next time, he advised himself, drink first.‎Later, to his relief, when the echoes left him and he found the courage to check with his fingers, each tooth was‎still there, intact. He tried for a smile, but it didn’t come. He could only imagine a meek attempt and a mouthful‎of broken teeth. For hours, he felt at them.‎He opened the suitcase and picked up the book.‎He could not read the title in the dark, and the gamble of striking a match seemed too great right now.‎When he spoke, it was the taste of a whisper.‎“Please,” he said. “Please.”He was speaking to a man he had never met. As well as a few other important details, he knew the man’s name.‎Hans Hubermann. Again, he spoke to him, to the distant stranger. He pleaded.‎“Please.”So there you have it.‎You’re well aware of exactly what was coming to Himmel Street by the end of 1940.‎I know.‎You know.‎Liesel Meminger, however, cannot be put into that category.‎For the book thief, the summer of that year was simple. It consisted of four main elements, or attributes. At‎times, she would wonder which was the most powerful.‎AND THE NOMINEES ARE . . .‎1. Advancing through The Shoulder Shrug every night.‎2. Reading on the floor of the mayor’s library.‎3. Playing soccer on Himmel Street.‎4. The seizure of a different stealing opportunity.‎The Shoulder Shrug, she decided, was excellent. Each night, when she calmed herself from her nightmare, she‎was soon pleased that she was awake and able to read. “A few pages?” Papa asked her, and Liesel would nod.‎Sometimes they would complete a chapter the next afternoon, down in the basement.‎The authorities’ problem with the book was obvious. The protagonist was a Jew, and he was presented in a‎positive light. Unforgivable. He was a rich man who was tired of letting life pass him by—what he referred to‎as the shrugging of the shoulders to the problems and pleasures of a person’s time on earth.‎In the early part of summer in Molching, as Liesel and Papa made their way through the book, this man was‎traveling to Amsterdam on business, and the snow was shivering outside. The girl loved that— the shivering‎snow. “That’s exactly what it does when it comes down,” she told Hans Hubermann. They sat together on the‎bed, Papa half asleep and the girl wide awake.‎Sometimes she watched Papa as he slept, knowing both more and less about him than either of them realized.‎She often heard him and Mama discussing his lack of work or talking despondently about Hans going to see‎their son, only to discover that the young man had left his lodging and was most likely already on his way to‎war.‎“Schlaf gut, Papa,” the girl said at those times. “Sleep well,” and she slipped around him, out of bed, to turn off‎the light.‎The next attribute, as I’ve mentioned, was the mayor’s library.‎To exemplify that particular situation, we can look to a cool day in late June. Rudy, to put it mildly, was‎incensed.‎