The Book Thief

by Markus Zusak

People observe the colours of a day only at its beginnings and ends, but to me it’s quite clear that a day merges through a multitude of shades and intonations, with each passing moment. A single hour can consist of thousands of different colours. Waxy yellows, cloud-spat blues. Murky darknesses. In my line of work, I make it a point to notice them.

the sky was bleached bed-sheet white each morning. 2. All day long, as I carried the souls across it, that sheet was splashed with blood, until it was full and bulging to the earth. 3. In the evening, it would be wrung out and bleached again, ready for the next dawn.

But then, is there cowardice in the acknowledgement of fear? Is there cowardice in being glad that you lived?

When she looked up, the sky was crouching.

The silence began.

Waterfalls of words. A girl treading water.

The orange flames waved at the crowd as paper and print dissolved inside them. Burning words were torn from their sentences.

The smell – no, the stench – of guilt.

I shovelled up his soul with the rest of them and we drifted away. The horizon was the colour of milk. Cold and fresh. Poured out, amongst the bodies.

The fear is shiny. Ruthless in the eyes.

The girl began to sob so uncontrollably that Papa was dying to pull her into him and hug her tight. He didn’t. Instead, he squatted down and watched her directly in the eyes. He unleashed his quietest words so far. ‘Verstehst du mich? Do you understand me?’ The girl nodded. She cried, and now, defeated, shattered, her papa held her in the painted air and the kerosene light. ‘I understand, Papa, I do.’ Her voice was muffled against his body, and they stayed like that for a few minutes, Liesel with squashed breath, and Papa rubbing her back.

It was late afternoon, grey and gleaming, but it was only dirty-coloured light that was permitted entrance into the room. It was all the fabric of the curtains allowed. If you’re optimistic, think of it as bronze.

There was a queer strand in her voice, planed off and curly in her mouth.

She could see the burning light on Max’s eggshell face and even taste the human flavour of his words.

Or like a timetabled train, arriving at a nightly platform, pulling the memories behind it on a rope.

As the book quivered in her lap, the secret sat in her mouth. It made itself comfortable. It crossed its legs.

Although the front and back pages were streaked with black tears of print, she folded it neatly in half and tucked it under her arm.

‘The sky is blue today, Max, and there is a big long cloud, and it’s stretched out, like a rope. At the end of it, the sun is like a yellow hole …’ Max, at that moment, knew that only a child could have given him a weather report like that. On the wall, he painted a long, tightly knotted rope with a dripping yellow sun at the end of it, as if you could dive right into it. On the ropey cloud, he drew two figures – a thin girl and a withering Jew – and they were walking, arms balanced, towards that dripping sun. Beneath the picture, he wrote the following sentence. THE WALL-WRITTEN WORDS OF MAX VANDENBURG It was a Monday, and they walked on a tightrope to the sun.

It was when Liesel came down, however, that Max found himself most interested in life again. Initially, he tried to resist, but it was harder every day that the girl appeared, each time with a new weather report, either of pure blue sky, cardboard clouds or a sun that had broken through like God sitting down after he’d eaten too much for his dinner.

There was a giant length of a moment then, the eternity of split-second decision.

The leaf was dry and hard, like toasted bread, and there were hills and valleys all over its skin. Somehow, the leaf had made its way into the school hallway and into that closet. Like half a star with a stem. Liesel reached in and twirled it in her fingers.

Rain like grey pencil shavings.

There were several more places to go, skies to meet and souls to collect,

If only she could be so oblivious again, to feel such love without knowing it, mistaking it for laughter and bread with only the scent of jam spread out on top of it.

The book thief only saw the mechanics of the words – their bodies stranded on the paper, beaten down for her to walk on.

Somewhere, too, in the gaps between a full stop and the next capital letter, there was also Max.

When he looks at me and smiles and breathes, I hear the notes.