get rid of all that fur? It’s everywhere!”
Helena Schmidt was a rich widow. “That old cripple—sitting there
just wasting away. She’s never had to do a day’s work in all her life.”
Rosa’s greatest disdain, however, was reserved for 8 Grande
Strasse. A large house, high on a hill, in the upper part of Molching.
“This one,” she’d pointed out to Liesel the first time they went
there, “is the mayor’s house. That crook. His wife sits at home all day,
too mean to light a fire—it’s always freezing in there. She’s crazy.”
She punctuated the words. “Absolutely. Crazy.” At the gate, she
motioned to the girl. “You go.”
Liesel was horrified. A giant brown door with a brass knocker stood
atop a small flight of steps. “What?”
Mama shoved her. “Don’t you ‘what’ me, Saumensch. Move it.”
Liesel moved it. She walked the path, climbed the steps, hesitated,
and knocked.
A bathrobe answered the door.
Inside it, a woman with startled eyes, hair like fluff, and the
posture of defeat stood in front of her. She saw Mama at the gate and
handed the girl a bag of washing. “Thank you,” Liesel said, but there
was no reply. Only the door. It closed.
“You see?” said Mama when she returned to the gate. “This is what
I have to put up with. These rich bastards, these lazy swine …”
Holding the washing as they walked away, Liesel looked back. The
brass knocker eyed her from the door.
When she finished berating the people she worked for, Rosa
Hubermann would usually move on to her other favorite theme of
abuse. Her husband. Looking at the bag of washing and the hunched
houses, she would talk, and talk, and talk. “If your papa was any
good,” she informed Liesel every time they walked through Molching,
“I wouldn’t have to do this.” She sniffed with derision. “A painter!
Why marry that Arschloch? That’s what they told me—my family, that is.” Their footsteps crunched along the path. “And here I am, walking
the streets and slaving in my kitchen because that Saukerl never has
any work. No real work, anyway. Just that pathetic accordion in
those dirt holes every night.”
“Yes, Mama.”
“Is that all you’ve got to say?” Mama’s eyes were like pale blue
cutouts, pasted to her face.
They’d walk on.
With Liesel carrying the sack.
At home, it was washed in a boiler next to the stove, hung up by
the fireplace in the living room, and then ironed in the kitchen. The
kitchen was where the action was.
“Did you hear that?” Mama asked her nearly every night. The iron
was in her fist, heated from the stove. Light was dull all through the
house, and Liesel, sitting at the kitchen table, would be staring at the
gaps of fire in front of her.
“What?” she’d reply. “What is it?”
“That was that Holtzapfel.” Mama was already out of her seat.
“That Saumensch just spat on our door again.”
It was a tradition for Frau Holtzapfel, one of their neighbors, to spit
on the Hubermanns’ door every time she walked past. The front door
was only meters from the gate, and let’s just say that Frau Holtzapfel
had the distance—and the accuracy.
The spitting was due to the fact that she and Rosa Hubermann were
engaged in some kind of decade-long verbal war. No one knew the
origin of this hostility. They’d probably forgotten it themselves.
Frau Holtzapfel was a wiry woman and quite obviously spiteful.
She’d never married but had two sons, a few years older than the
Hubermann offspring. Both were in the army and both will make
cameo appearances by the time we’re finished here, I assure you.
In the spiteful stakes, I should also say that Frau Holtzapfel was door of number thirty-three and say, “Schweine!” each time she
walked past. One thing I’ve noticed about the Germans:
They seem very fond of pigs.
A SMALL QUESTION AND
ITS ANSWER
And who do you think was made to clean the spit off the door
each night?
Yes—you got it.
When a woman with an iron fist tells you to get out there and clean
spit off the door, you do it. Especially when the iron’s hot.
It was all just part of the routine, really.
Each night, Liesel would step outside, wipe the door, and watch the
sky. Usually it was like spillage—cold and heavy, slippery and gray—
but once in a while some stars had the nerve to rise and float, if only
for a few minutes. On those nights, she would stay a little longer and
wait.
“Hello, stars.”
Waiting.
For the voice from the kitchen.
Or till the stars were dragged down again, into the waters of the
German sky.As with most small towns, Molching was filled with characters. A
handful of them lived on Himmel Street. Frau Holtzapfel was only
one cast member.
The others included the likes of these:
* Rudy Steiner—the boy next door who was obsessed with the
black American athlete Jesse Owens.
* Frau Diller—the staunch Aryan corner-shop owner.
* Tommy Müller—a kid whose chronic ear infections had resulted
in several operations, a pink river of skin painted across his face, and
a tendency to twitch.
* A man known primarily as “Pfiffikus”—whose vulgarity made
Rosa Hubermann look like a wordsmith and a saint.
On the whole, it was a street filled with relatively poor people,
despite the apparent rise of Germany’s economy under Hitler. Poor
sides of town still existed.
As mentioned already, the house next door to the Hubermanns was
rented by a family called Steiner. The Steiners had six children. One
of them, the infamous Rudy, would soon become Liesel’s best friend,
and later, her partner and sometime catalyst in crime. She met him on
the street.
A few days after Liesel’s first bath, Mama allowed her out, to play
with the other kids. On Himmel Street, friendships were made
outside, no matter the weather. The children rarely visited each other’s homes, for they were small and there was usually very little in
them. Also, they conducted their favorite pastime, like professionals,
on the street. Soccer. Teams were well set. Garbage cans were used to
mark out the goals.
Being the new kid in town, Liesel was immediately shoved between
one pair of those cans. (Tommy Müller was finally set free, despite
being the most useless soccer player Himmel Street had ever seen.)
It all went nicely for a while, until the fateful moment when Rudy
Steiner was upended in the snow by a Tommy Müller foul of
frustration.
“What?!” Tommy shouted. His face twitched in desperation. “What
did I do?!”
A penalty was awarded by everyone on Rudy’s team, and now it
was Rudy Steiner against the new kid, Liesel Meminger.
He placed the ball on a grubby mound of snow, confident of the
usual outcome. After all, Rudy hadn’t missed a penalty in eighteen
shots, even when the opposition made a point of booting Tommy
Müller out of goal. No matter whom they replaced him with, Rudy
would score.
On this occasion, they tried to force Liesel out. As you might
imagine, she protested, and Rudy agreed.
“No, no.” He smiled. “Let her stay.” He was rubbing his hands
together.
Snow had stopped falling on the filthy street now, and the muddy
footprints were gathered between them. Rudy shuffled in, fired the
shot, and Liesel dived and somehow deflected it with her elbow. She
stood up grinning, but the first thing she saw was a snowball
smashing into her face. Half of it was mud. It stung like crazy.
“How do you like that?” The boy grinned, and he ran off in pursuit
of the ball.
“Saukerl,” Liesel whispered. The vocabulary of her new home was
catching on fast.
Brilliantly fascinating, Martha!