The suffering faces of depleted men and women reached across to them, pleading not so much for help—they were beyond that—but for an explanation. Just something to subdue this confusion.
Their feet could barely rise above the ground.
Stars of David were plastered to their shirts, and misery was attached to them as if assigned. “Don’t forget your misery …” In some cases, it grew on them like a vine.
At their side, the soldiers also made their way past, ordering them to hurry up and to stop moaning. Some of those soldiers were only boys. They had the Führer in their eyes.
As she watched all of this, Liesel was certain that these were the poorest souls alive. That’s what she wrote about them. Their gaunt faces were stretched with torture. Hunger ate them as they continued forward, some of them watching the ground to avoid the people on the side of the road. Some looked appealingly at those who had come to observe their humiliation, this prelude to their deaths. Others pleaded for someone, anyone, to step forward and catch them in their arms.
No one did.
Whether they watched this parade with pride, temerity, or shame, nobody came forward to interrupt it. Not yet.
Once in a while a man or woman—no, they were not men and women; they were Jews—would find Liesel’s face among the crowd. They would meet her with their defeat, and the book thief could do nothing but watch them back in a long, incurable moment before they were gone again. She could only hope they could read the depth of sorrow in her face, to recognize that it was true, and not fleeting.
I have one of you in my basement! she wanted to say. We built a snowman together! I gave him thirteen presents when he was sick!
Liesel said nothing at all.
What good would it be?
She understood that she was utterly worthless to these people. They could not be saved, and in a few minutes, she would see what would happen to those who might try to help them.
In a small gap in the procession, there was a man, older than the others.
He wore a beard and torn clothes.
His eyes were the color of agony, and weightless as he was, he was too heavy for his legs to carry.
Several times, he fell.
The side of his face was flattened against the road.
On each occasion, a soldier stood above him. “Steh’ auf,” he called down. “Stand up.”
The man rose to his knees and fought his way up. He walked on.
Every time he caught up sufficiently to the back of the line, he would soon lose momentum and stumble again to the ground. There were more behind him—a good truck’s worth—and they threatened to overtake and trample him.
The ache in his arms was unbearable to watch as they shook, trying to lift his body. They gave way one more time before he stood and took another group of steps.
He was dead.
The man was dead.
Just give him five more minutes and he would surely fall into the German gutter and die. They would all let him, and they would all watch.
Then, one human.
Hans Hubermann.
• • •
It happened so quickly.
The hand that held firmly on to Liesel’s let it drop to her side as the man came struggling by. She felt her palm slap her hip.
Papa reached into his paint cart and pulled something out. He made his way through the people, onto the road.