They were losing in Russia.
Their cities were being bombed.
More people were needed, as were ways of attaining them, and in most cases, the worst possible jobs would be given to the worst possible people.
As her eyes scanned the paper, Liesel could see through the punched letter holes to the wooden table. Words like compulsory and duty were beaten into the page. Saliva was triggered. It was the urge to vomit. “What is this?”
Papa’s answer was quiet. “I thought I taught you to read, my girl.” He did not speak with anger or sarcasm. It was a voice of vacancy, to match his face.
Liesel looked now to Mama.
Rosa had a small rip beneath her right eye, and within the minute, her cardboard face was broken. Not down the center, but to the right. It gnarled down her cheek in an arc, finishing at her chin.
TWENTY MINUTES LATER:
A GIRL ON HIMMEL STREET
She looks up. She speaks in a whisper. “The sky is soft today, Max. The clouds are so soft and sad, and …” She looks away and crosses her arms. She thinks of her papa going to war and grabs her jacket at each side of her body. “And it’s cold, Max. It’s so cold ….”
Five days later, when she continued her habit of looking at the weather, she did not get a chance to see the sky.
Next door, Barbara Steiner was sitting on the front step with her neatly combed hair. She was smoking a cigarette and shivering. On her way over, Liesel was interrupted by the sight of Kurt. He came out and sat with his mother. When he saw the girl stop, he called out.
“Come on, Liesel. Rudy will be out soon.”
After a short pause, she continued walking toward the step.
Barbara smoked.
A wrinkle of ash was teetering at the end of the cigarette. Kurt took it, ashed it, inhaled, then gave it back.
When the cigarette was done, Rudy’s mother looked up. She ran a hand through her tidy lines of hair.
“Our papa’s going, too,” Kurt said.
Quietness then.
A group of kids was kicking a ball, up near Frau Diller’s.
“When they come and ask you for one of your children,” Barbara Steiner explained, to no one in particular, “you’re supposed to say yes.”
THE PROMISE KEEPER’S WIFE
THE BASEMENT, 9 A.M.
Six hours till goodbye:
“I played an accordion, Liesel. Someone else’s.” He closes his eyes: “It brought the house down.”
Not counting the glass of champagne the previous summer, Hans Hubermann had not consumed a drop of alcohol for a decade. Then came the night before he left for training.
He made his way to the Knoller with Alex Steiner in the afternoon and stayed well into the evening. Ignoring the warnings of their wives, both men drank themselves into oblivion. It didn’t help that the Knoller’s owner, Dieter Westheimer, gave them free drinks.
Apparently, while he was still sober, Hans was invited to the stage to play the accordion. Appropriately, he played the infamous “Gloomy Sunday”—the anthem of suicide from Hungary—and although he aroused all the sadness for which the song was renowned, he brought the house down. Liesel imagined the scene of it, and the sound. Mouths were full. Empty beer glasses were streaked with foam. The bellows sighed and the song was over. People clapped. Their beer-filled mouths cheered him back to the bar.
When they managed to find their way home, Hans couldn’t get his key to fit the door. So he knocked. Repeatedly.
“Rosa!”