Mark Reads ‘The Book Thief’: Chapters 60-62

In the sixtieth through sixty-second chapters of The Book Thief, as Hans deals with the guilt of his actions during the parade, and Rudy is dealt his own unfortunate hand as well. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to read The Book Thief.

Just when I think it can’t get worse…

CH. 60: THE IDIOT AND THE COAT MEN

On the night of the parade, the idiot sat in the kitchen, drinking bitter gulps of Holtzapfel’s coffee and hankering for a cigarette. He waited for the Gestapo, the soldiers, the police—for anyone—to take him away, as he felt he deserved. Rosa ordered him to come to bed. The girl loitered in the doorway. He sent them both away and spent the hours till morning with his head in his hands, waiting.

Nothing came.

I didn’t think that Zusak would back up the story to give us these moments after the parade, instead forcing us to imagine and deal with the repercussions of Hans’s act of kindness. I almost wish he had done that, because reading Hans’s gradual mental break is disheartening, especially since we know that what he did was moral and right. All that Hans is left with is his own guilt.

Every unit of time carried with it the expected noise of knocking and threatening words.

They did not come.

The only sound was of himself.

The degree of his heartbreak and disappointment is so severe that Hans does not act to shield Liesel from his darker side. It’s always been there, but throughout this book, those moments were in private, or they were shielded in distractions and happy statements. Hans is beyond that now, and this disturbs Liesel:

She’d have loved to comfort him, but she had never seen a man so devastated. There were no consolations that night. Max was gone, and Hans Hubermann was to blame.

The kitchen cupboards were the shape of guilt, and his palms were oily with the memory of what he’d done. They must be sweaty, Liesel thought, for her own hands were soaked to the wrists.

I really can’t believe how calm and hopeful the house at 33 Himmel Street used to be, but in the course of a couple chapters, that now seems so long ago. It feels like years have passed in minutes.

I simply cannot believe that Max is gone.

The unbearable wait begins. It’s worse than the Nazi in the basement and worse than the bombs falling from the air. At least there was some hope left. It doesn’t feel like there is anymore. It’s just time: whatever is left before the Gestapo arrives.

Days pass and Hans begins to realize that maybe Max did not need to leave at all. Four days after the incident at the parade, as promised, Hans heads out to the pre-arranged meeting point along the Amper, returning with an unsigned note that spells out the horrifying reality in no uncertain terms.

Max is definitely gone.

Those four days turn into ten days and Hans awaits the inevitable. Or, what at least seemed inevitable, that is now denying an appearance to Hans Hubermann. Liesel becomes increasingly concerned for his mental state:

He walked obliviously on, and Liesel would often catch him at the Amper River, on the bridge. His arms rested on the rail and he leaned his upper body over the edge. Kids on bikes rushed past him, or they ran with loud voices and the slaps of feet on wood. None of it moved him in the slightest.

To see her father so unmoved and unresponsive is jarring for Liesel, who knows her father by his playful accordion and his poetic words and his zest for the tiniest of details. But Hans cannot be comforted by anything but the justification for Max leaving 33 Himmel Street. Any visit by the NSDAP or the Gestapo would give him the comfort to know that, despite having made a colossal mistake, he had done right because of it.

It takes three more weeks for the men in the long black coats to arrive in Molching, on Himmel Street, and when Liesel spots them, she rushes home to tell her Papa. As he heads outside, preparing himself for the inevitable that has eluded him for over a month, he is bewildered as the two Gestapo men walk right by him.

Papa looked back at the window, alarmed, then made his way out of the gate. He called after them. “Hey! I’m right here. It’s me you want. I live in this one.

The coat men only stopped momentarily and checked their notebooks. “No, no,” they told him. Their voices were deep and bulky. “Unfortunately, you’re a little old for our purposes.”

What????? What the hell?

They continued walking, but they did not travel very far, stopping at number thirty-five and proceeding through the open gate.

“Frau Steiner?” they asked when the door was opened.

“Yes, that’s right.”

“We’ve come to talk to you about something.”

WHAT THE HOLY GODDAMN HELL IS GOING ON. WHY. WHY ARE THEY AT THE STEINERS.

The coat men stood like jacketed columns on the threshold of the Steiners’ shoe-box house.

For some reason, they’d come for the boy.

The coat men wanted Rudy.

NO. FUCK YOU. NO. WHAT THE HELL.

PART EIGHT

the word shaker
featuring:

more heartbreak

I just can’t. I JUST CAN’T.

CH. 61: DOMINOES AND DARKNESS

Unbeknownst to all of us, there was a separate set of men heading for Himmel Street that had absolutely nothing to do with Max Vandenburg or Hans Hubermann.

I feel like a brick just got thrown into my face.

In the words of Rudy’s youngest sisters, there were two monsters sitting in the kitchen. Their voices kneaded methodically at the door as three of the Steiner children played dominoes on the other side. The remaining three listened to the radio in the bedroom, oblivious. Rudy hoped this had nothing to do with what had happened at school the previous week. It was something he had refused to tell Liesel and did not talk about at home.

That’s when Death, who has given us Rudy’s LAST moment of his life, decides to give us this information after that: Rudy was examined, naked, with two other boys at school. It has to be for some sort of recruitment, I think, and that’s horrifying. Is this how Rudy gets into a situation where he is bombed? It has to be. There’s no escaping this; this has to be how Rudy gets taken away from home.

The domino metaphor feels blatant, but it’s still a fitting one: The dominoes that lead to Rudy’s death are just about to fall:

The kitchen voices were becoming louder now, each heaping itself upon the other to be heard. Different sentences fought for attention until one person, previously silent, came between them.

“No,” she said. It was repeated. “No.” Even when the rest of them resumed their arguments, they were silenced again by the same voice, but now it gained momentum. “Please,” Barbara Steiner begged them. “Not my boy.”

It’s then that the grand, tragic irony of the entire situation is slowly revealed. The men in dark coats are asking for Rudy because he’s a good student and one of the finest athletes in his entire class, maybe even school. Rudy realizes that all the work he put into showing Franz Deutscher that he was not to be ignored got him precisely that…except other people noticed as well. As Rudy’s parents fight to ensure their son doesn’t go, one of the men reveal where Rudy is headed:

The arid voice, low and matter-of-fact, had an answer for everything. “Our school is one of the finest ever established. It’s better than world-class. We’re creating an elite group of German citizens in the name of the Führer. …”

Jesus christ. The master race. Rudy, completely terrified at the thought that he’s going to be taken away from his family, stops listening to the conversation through the door, surrounding himself with the darkness of the room. After the men leave, only then can he coax himself to leave the room and face his parents, who are so shocked and heartbroken that they’re driven to silence.

But death hints at something so much grander here, something that unsettles me because of how much it reveals. Weeks later, Rudy realized that when he willingly chose to stop listening to the conversation his parents were having with the men in the long coats, he missed out on the most pivotal part of the conversation, the part that would have inspired him to get up and leave with those Gestapo men that second rather than face what would eventually happen.

If he’d intervened, it might have changed everything.

* * * THREE POSSIBILITIES * * *
1. Alex Steiner wouldn’t have suffered the same
punishment as Hans Hubermann.
2. Rudy would have gone away to school.
3. And just maybe, he would have lived.

Instead, Rudy refuses to go, which means he doesn’t die because of the school. But of course, my brain goes straight to the obvious question:

What happens to Hans Hubermann?

CH. 62: THE THOUGHT OF RUDY NAKED

Well, that’s an awkward chapter title, isn’t?

I think Zusak deals with the childhood (and for some of us, lifelong) shame that comes with the naked body really well in this chapter, and I could easily place myself into the same situation. We had to have these weird physical tests when I was in seventh grade that involved any number of tasks, from sit-ups to push ups to how long it took us to run a mile. All of this culminated with having to stand in the coach’s office while he made you take off your clothes and another doctor would examine your genitals, then hold them, then make you cough, and ABSOLUTELY NONE OF THIS WAS EVER EXPLAINED TO YOU. I don’t even know why they do that TO THIS VERY DAY.

I’ve never been very comfortable with my naked body, so this chapter is SO UNIQUELY TERRIFYING TO ME. Having to do so at Rudy’s age AND with two classmates in the room as you?

Both Rudy and the other boy, Olaf Spiegel, had started undressing now as well, but they were nowhere near the perilous position of Jürgen Schwarz. The boy was shaking. He was a year younger than the two, but taller. When his underpants came down, it was with abject humiliation that he stood in the small, cool office. His self-respect was around his ankles.

GPOM. GPOM. GPOM. Just reading this makes me SO NERVOUS ALREADY.

“Arms out now.” A cough. “I said arms out.” A horrendous hail of coughing.

As humans do, the boys looked constantly at each other for some sign of sympathy. None was there. All three pried their hands from their penises and held out their arms. Rudy did not feel like he was part of a master race.

I shouldn’t, but I laughed at that. The predicament isn’t all that funny, but there’s something about the way Rudy views absurdity like this:

The examination was completed and he managed to perform his first nude “heil Hitler.” In a perverse kind of way, he conceded that it didn’t feel half bad.

Just when I start to feel good about the things Rudy thinks and says, my brain just has to remind me that we’re seeing the beginning of his end right now. This examination, which probably seemed inconsequential to Rudy at the time, is going to determine his fate.

At the very least, Rudy is anxious about the whole thing, finally telling Liesel in great detail what happened that day in school, and how he fears what’s to become of him. Liesel is frightened, too, but not for the same reason:

She would lie in bed, missing Max, wondering where he was, praying that he was alive, but somewhere, standing among all of it, was Rudy.

He glowed in the dark, completely naked.

There was great dread in that vision, especially the moment when he was forced to remove his hands. It was disconcerting to say the least, but for some reason, she couldn’t stop thinking about it.

I think that this is the first time that I’m completely stumped by a vision or a metaphor. I can’t imagine what this means beyond the obvious, which is that Liesel can’t conceive of the thought of Rudy being naked, so she obsesses about it. Still, maybe it’s a bit of foreshadowing to come. I don’t know. What do you think, readers?