Page 475 - The Book Thief

On ground level, her face was a prune. Her eyes were the dark blue of a vein.

And her prediction was accurate.

In the heart of summer, Molching was delivered a sign of things to come. It
moved into sight like it always did. First the bobbing head of a soldier and the
gun poking at the air above him. Then the ragged chain of clinking Jews.

The only difference this time was that they were brought from the opposite
direction. They were taken through to the neighboring town of Nebling to scrub
the streets and do the cleanup work that the army refused to do. Late in the day,
they were marched back to camp, slow and tired, defeated.

Again, Liesel searched for Max Vandenburg, thinking that he could easily have
ended up in Dachau without being marched through Molching. He was not there.
Not on this occasion.

Just give it time, though, for on a warm afternoon in August, Max would most

certainly be marched through town with the rest of them. Unlike the others,
however, he would not watch the road. He would not look randomly into the
Fhrers German grand-stand.

A FACT REGARDING
MAX VANDENBURG
He would search the faces on Munich
Street for a book-thieving girl.

On this occasion, in July, on what Liesel later calculated as the ninety-eighth day
of her papas return, she stood and studied the moving pile of mournful
Jewslooking for Max. If nothing else, it alleviated the pain of simply watching.

Thats a horrible thought, she would write in her Himmel Street basement, but
she knew it to be true. The pain of watching them. What about their pain? The
pain of stumbling shoes and torment and the closing gates of the camp?

They came through twice in ten days, and soon after, the anonymous, prune-