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 Meminger—could 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 Führer,
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 Führer. Wie geht’s 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 Führer 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 boy’s 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 isn’t happening. This isn’t 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 can’t 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 you’ve 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 mother’s 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, it’s 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 Meminger’s
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 Liesel’s 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 couldn’t 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, Liesel’s 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 couldn’t be dead. He
couldn’t be dead. He couldn’t—
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.
A SMALL IMAGE, PERHAPS
TWENTY METERS AWAY
When the dragging was done, the mother and the girl stood and
breathed.
There was something black and rectangular lodged in the snow.
Only the girl saw it.
She bent down and picked it up and held it firmly in her fingers.
The book had silver writing on it.They held hands.
A final, soaking farewell was let go of, and they turned and left the
cemetery, looking back several times.
As for me, I remained a few moments longer.
I waved.
No one waved back.
Mother and daughter vacated the cemetery and made their way
toward the next train to Munich.
Both were skinny and pale.
Both had sores on their lips.
Liesel noticed it in the dirty, fogged-up window of the train when
they boarded just before midday. In the written words of the book
thief herself, the journey continued like everything had happened.
When the train pulled into the Bahnhof in Munich, the passengers slid
out as if from a torn package. There were people of every stature, but
among them, the poor were the most easily recognized. The
impoverished always try to keep moving, as if relocating might help.
They ignore the reality that a new version of the same old problem
will be waiting at the end of the trip—the relative you cringe to kiss.
I think her mother knew this quite well. She wasn’t delivering her
children to the higher echelons of Munich, but a foster home had
apparently been found, and if nothing else, the new family could at
least feed the girl and the boy a little better, and educate them
properly.
The boy.
Liesel was sure her mother carried the memory of him, slung over
her shoulder. She dropped him. She saw his feet and legs and body
slap the platform.
How could that woman walk?
Fascinating post, Martha!