Page 209 - The Book Thief

get going.

True to Papas words, and even Mamas now, she was a good girl. She kept her
mouth shut everywhere she went. The secret was buried deep.

She town-walked with Rudy as she always did, listening to his jabbering.
Sometimes they compared notes from their Hitler Youth divisions, Rudy
mentioning for the first time a sadistic young leader named Franz Deutscher. If
Rudy wasnt talking about Deutschers intense ways, he was playing his usual
broken record, providing renditions and re-creations of the last goal he scored in
the Himmel Street soccer stadium.

I know, Liesel would assure him. I was there.

So what?

So I saw it, Saukerl.

How do I know that? For all I know, you were probably on the ground
somewhere, licking up the mud I left behind when I scored.

Perhaps it was Rudy who kept her sane, with the stupidity of his talk, his lemon-
soaked hair, and his cockiness.

He seemed to resonate with a kind of confidence that life was still nothing but a
jokean endless succession of soccer goals, trickery, and a constant repertoire of
meaningless chatter.

Also, there was the mayors wife, and reading in her husbands library. It was cold
in there now, colder with every visit, but still Liesel could not stay away. She

would choose a handful of books and read small segments of each, until one
afternoon, she found one she could not put down. It was called The Whistler. She
was originally drawn to it because of her sporadic sightings of the whistler of
Himmel Street Pfiffikus. There was the memory of him bent over in his coat and
his appearance at the bonfire on the Fhrers birthday.

The first event in the book was a murder. A stabbing. A Vienna street. Not far
from the Stephansdomthe cathedral in the main square.