Page 61 - The Book Thief

in my chair when Kurt noticed you were gone. Everyones out looking for you.

Mr. Steiner was a remarkably polite man under normal circumstances.
Discovering one of his children smeared charcoal black on a summer evening
was not what he considered normal circumstances. The boy is crazy, he
muttered, although he conceded that with six kids, something like this was
bound to happen. At least one of them had to be a bad egg. Right now, he was
looking at it, waiting for an explanation. Well?

Rudy panted, bending down and placing his hands on his knees. I was being
Jesse Owens. He answered as though it was the most natural thing on earth to be
doing. There was even something implicit in his tone that suggested something
along the lines of, What the hell does it look like? The tone vanished, however,
when he saw the sleep deprivation whittled under his fathers eyes.

Jesse Owens? Mr. Steiner was the type of man who was very wooden. His voice
was angular and true. His body was tall and heavy, like oak. His hair was like

splinters. What about him?

You know, Papa, the Black Magic one.

Ill give you black magic. He caught his sons ear between his thumb and
forefinger.

Rudy winced. Ow, that really hurts.

Does it? His father was more concerned with the clammy texture of charcoal
contaminating his fingers. He covered everything, didnt he? he thought. Its even
in his ears, for Gods sake. Come on.

On the way home, Mr. Steiner decided to talk politics with the boy as best he
could. Only in the years ahead would Rudy understand it all when it was too late
to bother understanding anything.

THE CONTRADICTORY POLITICS
OF ALEX STEINER
Point One: He was a member of the Nazi Party, but he did not
hate the Jews, or anyone else for that matter.