Yes, an illustrious career.
I should hasten to admit, however, that there was a considerable hiatus between the first stolen book and the
second. Another noteworthy point is that the first was stolen from snow and the second from fire. Not to omit
that others were also given to her. All told, she owned fourteen books, but she saw her story as being made up
predominantly of ten of them. Of those ten, six were stolen, one showed up at the kitchen table, two were made
for her by a hidden Jew, and one was delivered by a soft, yellow-dressed afternoon.
When she came to write her story, she would wonder exactly when the books and the words started to mean not
just something, but everything. Was it when she first set eyes on the room with shelves and shelves of them? Or
when Max Vandenburg arrived on Himmel Street carrying handfuls of suffering and Hitler’s Mein Kampf ?
Was it reading in the shelters? The last parade to Dachau? Was it The Word Shaker? Perhaps there would never
be a precise answer as to when and where it occurred. In any case, that’s getting ahead of myself. Before we
make it to any of that, we first need to tour Liesel Meminger’s beginnings on Himmel Street and the art of
saumensching:
Upon her arrival, you could still see the bite marks of snow on her hands and the frosty blood on her fingers.
Everything about her was undernourished. Wirelike shins. Coat hanger arms. She did not produce it easily, but
when it came, she had a starving smile.
Her hair was a close enough brand of German blond, but she had dangerous eyes. Dark brown. You didn’t
really want brown eyes in Germany around that time. Perhaps she received them from her father, but she had no
way of knowing, as she couldn’t remember him. There was really only one thing she knew about her father. It
was a label she did not understand.
A STRANGE WORD
Kommunist
She’d heard it several times in the past few years.
“Communist.”
There were boardinghouses crammed with people, rooms filled with questions. And that word. That strange
word was always there somewhere, standing in the corner, watching from the dark. It wore suits, uniforms. No
matter where they went, there it was, each time her father was mentioned. She could smell it and taste it. She
just couldn’t spell or understand it. When she asked her mother what it meant, she was told that it wasn’t
important, that she shouldn’t worry about such things. At one boardinghouse, there was a healthier woman who
tried to teach the children to write, using charcoal on the wall. Liesel was tempted to ask her the meaning, but it
never eventuated. One day, that woman was taken away for questioning. She didn’t come back.
When Liesel arrived in Molching, she had at least some inkling that she was being saved, but that was not a
comfort. If her mother loved her, why leave her on someone else’s doorstep? Why? Why?The fact that she knew the answer—if only at the most basic level—seemed beside the point. Her mother was
constantly sick and there was never any money to fix her. Liesel knew that. But that didn’t mean she had to
accept it. No matter how many times she was told that she was loved, there was no recognition that the proof
was in the abandonment. Nothing changed the fact that she was a lost, skinny child in another foreign place,
with more foreign people. Alone.
The Hubermanns lived in one of the small, boxlike houses on Himmel Street. A few rooms, a kitchen, and a
shared outhouse with neighbors. The roof was flat and there was a shallow basement for storage. It was
supposedly not a basement of adequate depth. In 1939, this wasn’t a problem. Later, in ’42 and ’43, it was.
When air raids started, they always needed to rush down the street to a better shelter.
In the beginning, it was the profanity that made an immediate impact. It was so vehement and prolific. Every
second word was either Saumensch or Saukerl or Arschloch. For people who aren’t familiar with these words, I
should explain. Sau, of course, refers to pigs. In the case of Saumensch, it serves to castigate, berate, or plain
humiliate a female. Saukerl (pronounced “saukairl”) is for a male. Arschloch can be translated directly into
“asshole.” That word, however, does not differentiate between the sexes. It simply is.
“Saumensch, du dreckiges!” Liesel’s foster mother shouted that first evening when she refused to have a bath.
“You filthy pig! Why won’t you get undressed?” She was good at being furious. In fact, you could say that
Rosa Hubermann had a face decorated with constant fury. That was how the creases were made in the
cardboard texture of her complexion.
Liesel, naturally, was bathed in anxiety. There was no way she was getting into any bath, or into bed for that
matter. She was twisted into one corner of the closetlike washroom, clutching for the nonexistent arms of the
wall for some level of support. There was nothing but dry paint, difficult breath, and the deluge of abuse from
Rosa.
“Leave her alone.” Hans Hubermann entered the fray. His gentle voice made its way in, as if slipping through a
crowd. “Leave her to me.”
He moved closer and sat on the floor, against the wall. The tiles were cold and unkind.
“You know how to roll a cigarette?” he asked her, and for the next hour or so, they sat in the rising pool of
darkness, playing with the tobacco and the cigarette papers and Hans Hubermann smoking them.
When the hour was up, Liesel could roll a cigarette moderately well. She still didn’t have a bath.
SOME FACTS ABOUT
HANS HUBERMANN
He loved to smoke.
The main thing he enjoyed about smoking
was the rolling.
He was a painter by trade and played the piano
accordion. This came in handy, especially in winter,
when he could make a little money playing in the pubs
of Molching, like the Knoller.
He had already cheated me in one world war but
would later be put into another (as a perverse
kind of reward), where he would somehow
manage to avoid me again.To most people, Hans Hubermann was barely visible. An un-special person. Certainly, his painting skills were
excellent. His musical ability was better than average. Somehow, though, and I’m sure you’ve met people like
this, he was able to appear as merely part of the background, even if he was standing at the front of a line. He
was always just there. Not noticeable. Not important or particularly valuable.
The frustration of that appearance, as you can imagine, was its complete misleadence, let’s say. There most
definitely was value in him, and it did not go unnoticed by Liesel Meminger. (The human child—so much
cannier at times than the stupefyingly ponderous adult.) She saw it immediately.
His manner.
The quiet air around him.
When he turned the light on in the small, callous washroom that night, Liesel observed the strangeness of her
foster father’s eyes. They were made of kindness, and silver. Like soft silver, melting. Liesel, upon seeing those
eyes, understood that Hans Hubermann was worth a lot.
SOME FACTS ABOUT
ROSA HUBERMANN
She was five feet, one inch tall and wore her
browny gray strands of elastic hair in a bun.
To supplement the Hubermann income, she did
the washing and ironing for five of the wealthier
households in Molching.
Her cooking was atrocious.
She possessed the unique ability to aggravate
almost anyone she ever met.
But she did love Liesel Meminger.
Her way of showing it just happened to be strange.
It involved bashing her with wooden spoon and words
at various intervals.
When Liesel finally had a bath, after two weeks of living on Himmel Street, Rosa gave her an enormous, injuryinducing hug. Nearly choking her, she said, “ Saumensch, du dreckiges—it’s about time!”
After a few months, they were no longer Mr. and Mrs. Hubermann. With a typical fistful of words, Rosa said,
“Now listen, Liesel—from now on you call me Mama.” She thought a moment. “What did you call your real
mother?”
Liesel answered quietly. “Auch Mama—also Mama.”
“Well, I’m Mama Number Two, then.” She looked over at her husband. “And him over there.” She seemed to
collect the words in her hand, pat them together, and hurl them across the table. “That Saukerl, that filthy pig—
you call him Papa, verstehst? Understand?”
“Yes,” Liesel promptly agreed. Quick answers were appreciated in this household.
“Yes, Mama,” Mama corrected her. “Saumensch. Call me Mama when you talk to me.”At that moment, Hans Hubermann had just completed rolling a cigarette, having licked the paper and joined it
all up. He looked over at Liesel and winked. She would have no trouble calling him Papa Those first few months were definitely the hardest.
Every night, Liesel would nightmare.
Her brother’s face.
Staring at the floor.
She would wake up swimming in her bed, screaming, and drowning in the flood of sheets. On the other side of
the room, the bed that was meant for her brother floated boatlike in the darkness. Slowly, with the arrival of
consciousness, it sank, seemingly into the floor. This vision didn’t help matters, and it would usually be quite a
while before the screaming stopped.
Possibly the only good to come out of these nightmares was that it brought Hans Hubermann, her new papa,
into the room, to soothe her, to love her.
He came in every night and sat with her. The first couple of times, he simply stayed—a stranger to kill the
aloneness. A few nights after that, he whispered, “Shhh, I’m here, it’s all right.” After three weeks, he held her.
Trust was accumulated quickly, due primarily to the brute strength of the man’s gentleness, his thereness. The
girl knew from the outset that Hans Hubermann would always appear midscream, and he would not leave.
A DEFINITION NOT FOUND
IN THE DICTIONARY
Not leaving: an act of trust and love,
often deciphered by children
Hans Hubermann sat sleepy-eyed on the bed and Liesel would cry into his sleeves and breathe him in. Every
morning, just after two o’clock, she fell asleep again to the smell of him. It was a mixture of dead cigarettes,
decades of paint, and human skin. At first, she sucked it all in, then breathed it, until she drifted back down.
Each morning, he was a few feet away from her, crumpled, almost halved, in the chair. He never used the other
bed. Liesel would climb out and cautiously kiss his cheek and he would wake up and smile.
Some days Papa told her to get back into bed and wait a minute, and he would return with his accordion and
play for her. Liesel would sit up and hum, her cold toes clenched with excitement. No one had ever given her
music before. She would grin herself stupid, watching the lines drawing themselves down his face and the soft
metal of his eyes—until the swearing arrived from the kitchen.
“STOPTHATNOISE, SAUKERL!”
Papa would play a little longer.
He would wink at the girl, and clumsily, she’d wink back.
A few times, purely to incense Mama a little further, he also brought the instrument to the kitchen and played
through breakfast.