Page 472 - The Book Thief
P. 472
a very serious-looking Fhrer was bashed and beaten on the shattered floor. Yet
he smiled, in that serious way of his. He knew something we all didnt know. But
I knew something he didnt know. All while people slept.
Rudy Steiner slept. Mama and Papa slept. Frau Holtzapfel, Frau Diller. Tommy
Mller. All sleeping. All dying.
Only one person survived.
She survived because she was sitting in a basement reading through the story of
her own life, checking for mistakes. Previously, the room had been declared too
shallow, but on that night, October 7, it was enough. The shells of wreckage
cantered down, and hours later, when the strange, unkempt silence settled itself
in Molching, the local LSE could hear something. An echo. Down there,
somewhere, a girl was hammering a paint can with a pencil.
They all stopped, with bent ears and bodies, and when they heard it again, they
started digging.
PASSED ITEMS, HAND TO HAND
Blocks of cement and roof tiles.
A piece of wall with a dripping
sun painted on it. An unhappy-
looking accordion, peering
through its eaten case.
They threw all of it upward.
When another piece of broken wall was removed, one of them saw the book
thiefs hair.
The man had such a nice laugh. He was delivering a newborn child. I cant
believe itshes alive!
There was so much joy among the cluttering, calling men, but I could not fully
