THE RIB-CAGE PLANES
Her hand was sore by page three.
Words are so heavy, she thought, but as the night wore on, she was able to complete eleven pages.
PAGE 1 I try to ignore it, but I know this all started with the train and the snow and my coughing brother. I stole my first book that day. It was a manual for digging graves and I stole it on my way to Himmel Street ….
She fell asleep down there, on a bed of drop sheets, with the paper curling at the edges, up on the taller paint can. In the morning, Mama stood above her, her chlorinated eyes questioning.
“Liesel,” she said, “what on earth are you doing down here?”
“I’m writing, Mama.”
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.” Rosa stomped back up the steps. “Be back up in five minutes or you get the bucket treatment. Verstehst?”
“I understand.”
Every night, Liesel made her way down to the basement. She kept the book with her at all times. For hours, she wrote, attempting each night to complete ten pages of her life. There was so much to consider, so many things in danger of being left out. Just be patient, she told herself, and with the mounting pages, the strength of her writing fist grew.
Sometimes she wrote about what was happening in the basement at the time of writing. She had just finished the moment when Papa had slapped her on the church steps and how they’d “heil Hitlered” together. Looking
across, Hans Hubermann was packing the accordion away. He’d just played for half an hour as Liesel wrote.
PAGE 42 Papa sat with me tonight. He brought the accordion down and sat close to where Max used to sit. I often look at his fingers and face when he plays. The accordion breathes.
There are lines on his cheeks. They look drawn on, and for some reason, when I see them, I want to cry. It is not for any sadness or pride. I just like the way they move and change. Sometimes I think my papa is an accordion. When he looks at me and smiles and breathes, I hear the notes.
After ten nights of writing, Munich was bombed again. Liesel was up and was asleep in the basement. She did not hear the cuckoo or the sirens, and she was holding the book in her sleep when Papa came to wake her. “Liesel, come.” She took The Book Thief and each of her other books, and they fetched Frau Holtzapfel.
PAGE 175 A book floated down the Amper River.
A boy jumped in, caught up to it, and held it in his right hand. He grinned. He stood waist-deep in the icy, Decemberish water.
“How about a kiss, Saumensch?” he said.
By the next raid, on October 2, she was finished. Only a few dozen pages remained blank and the book thief was already starting to read over what she’d written. The book was divided into ten parts, all of which were given the title of books or stories and described how each affected her life.
Often, I wonder what page she was up to when I walked down Himmel Street in the dripping-tap rain, five nights later. I wonder what she was reading when the first bomb dropped from the rib cage of a plane.
Personally, I like to imagine her looking briefly at the wall, at Max Vandenburg’s tightrope cloud, his dripping sun, and the figures walking toward it. Then she looks at the agonizing attempts of her paint-written spelling. I see the Führer coming down the basement steps with his tied- together boxing gloves hanging casually around his neck. And the book thief reads, rereads, and rereads her last sentence, for many hours.
THE BOOK THIEF—LAST LINE
I have hated the words and
I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right.
Outside, the world whistled. The rain was stained.
