Page 272 - The Book Thief

SKETCHES

If the summer of 1941 was walling up around the likes of Rudy and Liesel, it
was writing and painting itself into the life of Max Vandenburg. In his loneliest
moments in the basement, the words started piling up around him. The visions
began to pour and fall and occasionally limp from out of his hands.

He had what he called just a small ration of tools:

A painted book.

A handful of pencils.

A mindful of thoughts.

Like a simple puzzle, he put them together.

Originally, Max had intended to write his own story.

The idea was to write about everything that had happened to himall that had led
him to a Himmel Street basementbut it was not what came out. Maxs exile
produced something else entirely. It was a collection of random thoughts and he
chose to embrace them. They felt true. They were more real than the letters he

wrote to his family and to his friend Walter Kugler, knowing very well that he
could never send them. The desecrated pages of Mein Kampf were becoming a
series of sketches, page after page, which to him summed up the events that had
swapped his former life for another. Some took minutes. Others hours. He
resolved that when the book was finished, hed give it to Liesel, when she was
old enough, and hopefully, when all this nonsense was over.

From the moment he tested the pencils on the first painted page, he kept the
book close at all times. Often, it was next to him or still in his fingers as he slept.

One afternoon, after his push-ups and sit-ups, he fell asleep against the basement
wall. When Liesel came down, she found the book sitting next to him, slanted
against his thigh, and curiosity got the better of her. She leaned over and picked