Mark Reads ‘The Book Thief’: Chapters 55-56

In the fifty-fifth and fifty-sixth chapters of The Book Thief, the inevitable bout of terror, fear, and destruction begins its arrival in Molching, threatening to tear apart the family at 33 Himmel Street. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to read The Book Thief.

Well, it had to happen sometime, right?

CH. 55: THE SOUND OF SIRENS

Just the name of the chapter alone set me on edge. I knew what it meant, what it referred to. The sirens announcing the dropping of bombs. I suppose this book has been building slowly to what we read in these two chapters and what will inevitably take up the remainder of the book. The second great world war is now coming to the front steps of 33 Himmel Drive.

I want to say that I’m glad that Zusak never portrays the bombs falling as some sinister force, as if the perpetrators are evil entities bent on destroying German citizens just for the hell of it. On the flip side, he also doesn’t ignore the terror and doom that these bombings wrought on the citizens of Germany. I mean, it’s a tough line to skirt, clearly, and so far, he’s doing a fine job of being realistic without being unfair to the history of it all.

So much of what’s frightening in these two chapters is how the terror relies almost solely on sound. Sound actually ties in a bunch of what happens, as well, starting off with it. Hans uses some of the money from his extra painting jobs to buy the family a secondhand radio so they can hear news about any raids before the sirens start. Unfortunately, things start off with a lack of sound, as no one wakes up until the sirens go off in September.

Very much like the chapters where Max is nearly found during the NSDAP inspections, reading through the two bombings was an exercise in restraint. Last time, I read through so quickly just to see if Max was found that I missed a lot of great stuff Zusak stuck into that section. I had to read it a second and third time just to catch what I did, so I made point that if this happened again, I would try to slow down and read every word.

YEAH, THAT DIDN’T HAPPEN. I blazed through these chapters in maybe five minutes, and, at the time I’m writing this, I’ve now read these chapters four times. Part of it is because I know I didn’t hold in a single moment aside from the beginning and the end the first time around, but what happens specifically in chapter fifty-six is just….good lord. Ok, STOP JUMPING AHEAD, MARK. GOSH.

Moving back to the first “bombing.” Hans wakes up Liesel and the family starts to head out when Rosa stops them, heading down to the basement instead.

Max edged out from behind the paint cans and drop sheets. His face was tired and he hitched his thumbs nervously into his pants. “Time to go, huh?”

Hans walked to him. “Yes, time to go.” He shook his hand and slapped his arm. “We’ll see you when we get back, right?”

“Of course.”

Rosa hugged him, as did Liesel.

“Goodbye, Max.”

I completely believed that this would be it, that this was when they’d all say goodbye to Max forever. Even though it’s not, there are so many small, heartbreaking moments like this littered throughout these two chapters that feel like epic goodbyes or grand statements of terror and loss. I’d like to chalk that up to Zusak’s matter-of-fact tone, the way he uses these abrupt sentences to state reality to us, and we know we can’t argue with it. It’s just the way it is.

And so the Hubermanns and Liesel quickly exit the house, moving along to their designated bomb shelter, along the way observing the procession of fear that strings along Himmel Street, people clutching whatever possession were deemed the most important and allowed to survive the inevitable destruction that was to come.

Papa, who’d forgotten everything–even his accordion–rushed back to her and rescued the suitcase from her grip. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, what have you got in here?” he asked. “An anvil?”

Frau Holtzapfel advanced alongside him. “The necessities.”

YEAH THIS WOULD TOTALLY BE ME. I’m sorry, my records are totally necessary, Hans, and I have to take my Hogwarts LEGO set because it’s basically limited edition, and I could probably sell my seven inch collection later for, like, a million dollars, and look, I know they’re heavy, but it’s the FULL collection of Calvin & Hobbes cartoons, and the artist commentary really accents the whole thing.

Ok. Right.

Six houses down, the three arrive at their designated shelter, lucky enough to get a deep basement that fits twenty-two people. The amount of people simultaneously adds a bit of comfort to the situation and accents the terror of it all, too. Liesel notices this after joking with Rudy; she’s able to get a read on the people in the basement and in that tiny place, it’s hard to hide your fear. Even though there are those more afraid than her mother, Liesel knows that she’s not seen Rosa like this before:

Rosa rocked back and forth, ever so gently. “Liesel,” she whispered, “come here.” She held the girl from behind, tightening her grip. She sang a song, but it was so quiet that Liesel could not make it out. The notes were born on her breath, and they died at her lips.

That makes ME scared. It’s a moment where Rosa is probably intending to comfort Liesel, but she ends up doing the opposite. Maybe Rosa is just trying to comfort herself, too. Aside from the occasional slight talking from a few kids, specifically a brother and sister who start to pester each other, this entire first bombing scene is absolutely silent. Everyone is just waiting for the three alarms:

After ten minutes or so, what was most prominent in the cellar was a kind of nonmovement. Their bodies were welded together and only their feet changed position or pressure. Stillness was shackled to their faces. They watched each other and waited.

The silence is just too much for me. I’d want some sort of noise in this situation. (This is why I like the next time….oh christ, jumping ahead again.) The silence wouldn’t comfort me, but this specific shelter finds a different way to cope.

Soon, everyone in the cellar was holding the hand of another, and the group of Germans stood in a lumpy circle. The cold hands melted into the warm ones, and in some cases, the feeling of another human pulse was transported. It came through the layers of pale, stiffened skin. Some of them closed their eyes, waiting for their final demise, or hoping for a sign that the raid was finally over.

Death also takes some time to comment on the situation in relation to the world at large, and I think it’s an interesting point that he makes:

Did they deserve any better, these people? How many had actively persecuted others, high on the scent of Hitler’s gaze, repeating his sentences, his paragraphs, his opus? Was Rosa Hubermann responsible? The hider of a Jew? Or Hans? Did they all deserve to die? The children?

I thought that this could quickly go down a problematic path, but Death qualifies his statement by specifying the Hubermanns and the children, suggesting that the whole war was awful for people on both sides. However, Death makes it a point to specify that while the war was difficult for many Germans, it was not the same for the Jews:

As if often the case with humans, when I read about them in the book thief’s words, I pitied them, though not as much as I felt for the ones I scooped up from various camps in that time. The Germans in the basements were pitiable, surely, but at least they had a chance. That basement was not a washroom. They were not sent there for a shower. For these people, life was still achievable.

I’m glad this distinction is made so clearly, that the balance of power is not at all the same, that hiding in a basement implies survival, while the plight of the Jew in Nazi Germany did not.

After returning home when the three alarms go off, the three residents of 33 Himmel Street immediately head down to the basement, to see if Max is ok, despite that no bombs ever fell. When the find him, sitting on the floor with a weird face, he confesses that he did something foolish:

“I…” He struggled to answer. “When everything was quiet, I went up to the corridor and the curtain in the living room was open just a crack…I could see outside. I watched, only for a few seconds.” He had not see the outside world for twenty-two months.

My god, I didn’t realize he’d been in the basement for nearly two years straight. I actually think that if he was going to do this, during a bombing was probably the best time. Who would be out in the street?

There was no anger or reproach.

It was Papa who spoke.

“How did it look?”

Max lifted his head, with great sorrow and great astonishment. “There were stars,” he said. “They burned my eyes.”

There it is, again, that thing that Zusak does, that way he lays things out so simply, and we just have to deal with them. IT HURTS SOMETIMES. Ugh, Max. Please survive. Please make it through this.

CH. 56: THE SKY STEALER

It’s not that much longer before the second raid comes, and unfortunately, it is not a mistake or a drill. The way that Zusak rushes narratively to get the trio of non-Jews into the Fielders’ basement suggests the urgency of the situation; he spends no real time setting things up. There’s no goodbye to Max (that somehow seems worse in hindsight), and once they all settle in to the basement shelter, Liesel knows that everyone is afraid. The children begin to cry, sensing their parents’ fear, and then the bombs begin to fall:

Even from the cellar, they could vaguely hear the tune of bombs. Air pressure shoved itself down like a ceiling, as if to mash the earth. A bite was taken of Molching’s empty streets.

How close were the bombs falling? I wondered. How close to the center of destruction was that house on Himmel Street? Would Max risk death yet again?

Rosa, once more, freaks both Liesel and myself out with her silent actions in the basement:

Although they were right next to each other, Liesel was forced to call out, “Mama?” Again, “Mama, you’re squashing my hand!”

“What?”

“My hand!”

She’s completely oblivious, and that’s scary, because Rosa is NEVER oblivious. NEVER. Good god.

Liesel….bless her heart. WE ARE TRULY ~SOULMATES~. As I said before, I can’t deal with unbearable silence these days, and if an awkward quiet fills a room or a moment, I’m the one these days who breaks it. Liesel does just there here, picking up The Whistler from her pile of books and reading aloud. It’s comforting to her and it breaks the awful silence in the room.

When she turned to page two, it was Rudy who noticed. He paid direct attention to what Liesel was reading, and he tapped his brother and his sisters, telling them to do the same. Hans Hubermann came closer and called out, and soon, a quietness started bleeding through the crowded basement. By page three, everyone was silent but Liesel.

She didn’t dare look up, but she could feel their frightened eyes hanging on to her as she hauled the words in and breathed them out. A voice played the notes inside. This, it said, is your accordion.

The sound of the turning page carved them in half.

Liesel read on.

This is a transformative scene for Liesel, a huge chunk of character growth plopped into an otherwise tense and frightening scene, and it’s a manifestation of her love for words being brought out as a form of collective comfort for the entire group. Liesel has shared her word love with Hans, with Max, with Rosa, and just a bit with Rudy. But now, all twenty-two people in the Fielding basement learn what Liesel is good at and they take comfort in the regularity of her voice and the flow of the words.

The youngest kids were soothed by her voice, and everyone else saw visions of the whistler running from the crime scene. Liesel did not. The book thief saw only 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 period and the next capitol letter, there was also Max. She remembered reading to him when he was sick. Is he in the basement? she wondered. Or is he stealing a glimpse of the sky again?

This is probably the first time I’ve ever read someone vocalization the way I detach words from their meaning when reading aloud, and I do the same thing very, very often when I’m writing. Words, to me, have physical properties, and sometimes, when I have the chance to use two words that mean that same thing, I’ll use the one that looks the best. Writing has always been a very visual thing for me, both in terms of the images I want to create and in the words that fall to the page. Why do you think I bold and italicize so much? It’s a look, a feeling, to the way a word appears when my eyes grace it.

Seriously, to each of you who begged me to read this book…thank you. This is spectacular.

Only when the sirens leaked into the cellar again did someone interrupt her. “We’re safe,” said Mr. Jenson.

“Shhh!” said Frau Holtzapfel.

Liesel looked up. “There are only two paragraphs till the end of the chapter,” she said, and she continued reading with no fanfare or added speed. Just the words.

Just amazing. I’m at a loss for any more creative ways to describe this. It’s fascinating and revealing and is such a unique celebration of words. Funny that I feel so speechless.

As the adults thank Liesel on their way out of that cramped, word-filled basement, gracious that her voice was able to do what it did during that unbearable time, they all spill out on the street, anxious to see the damage done by the bombs. Surprisingly, they find their neighborhood untouched.

Back at 33 Himmel Street, in the other basement, Rosa beams with pride as she relates the story to Max about Liesel just did, and Max finds inspiration in the story:

As Liesel stood in a corner of the basement, Max watched her and rubbed a hand along his jaw. Personally, I think that was the moment he conceived the next body of work for his sketchbook.

The Word Shaker.

He imagined the girl reading in the shelter. He must have watched her literally handing out the words. However, as always, he must also have seen the shadow of Hitler. He could probably already hear his footsteps coming toward Himmel Street and the basement, for later.

They’ve survived, as Zusak points out, but these moments are clouded by a silent horror, a realization of an inevitable event that will soon come to sweep them away:

Max, Hans, and Rosa I cannot account for, but I know that Liesel Meminger was thinking that if the bombs ever landed on Himmel Street, not only did Max have less chance of survival than everyone else, but he would die completely alone.

A gutting, matter-of-fact end to a horrifying chapter. Zusak’s diction reminds us of the futility to fight this all, and the reality of the loneliness that Max, the basement Jew, would probably always live in.

Ugh.