Page 97 - The Book Thief

DEAD LETTERS

Flash forward to the basement, September 1943.

A fourteen-year-old girl is writing in a small dark-covered book. She is bony but
strong and has seen many things. Papa sits with the accordion at his feet.

He says, You know, Liesel? I nearly wrote you a reply and signed your mothers
name. He scratches his leg, where the plaster used to be. But I couldnt. I couldnt
bring myself.

Several times, through the remainder of January and the entirety of February
1940, when Liesel searched the mailbox for a reply to her letter, it clearly broke
her foster fathers heart. Im sorry, he would tell her. Not today, huh? In hindsight,
she saw that the whole exercise had been pointless. Had her mother been in a
position to do so, she would have already made contact with the foster care
people, or directly with the girl, or the Hubermanns. But there had been nothing.

To lend insult to injury, in mid-February, Liesel was given a letter from another
ironing customer, the Pfaffelhrvers, from Heide Strasse. The pair of them stood
with great tallness in the doorway, giving her a melancholic regard. For your
mama, the man said, handing her the envelope. Tell her were sorry. Tell her
were sorry.

That was not a good night in the Hubermann residence.

Even when Liesel retreated to the basement to write her fifth letter to her mother
(all but the first one yet to be sent), she could hear Rosa swearing and carrying
on about those Pfaffelhrver Arschlcher and that lousy Ernst Vogel.

Feuer sollns brunzen fr einen Monat! she heard her call out. Translation: They
should all piss fire for a month!

Liesel wrote.

When her birthday came around, there was no gift. There was no gift because