THE SITUATION OF HANS AND ROSA HUBERMANN

Exactly what kind of people Hans and Rosa Hubermann were was not the easiest problem to solve. Kind people? Ridiculously ignorant people? People of questionable sanity?

In fact, frightfully sticky.

Mama ordered Liesel away.

"As you can see, we have a visitor." She could only just make out the shape of Hans Hubermann's tallness in the dark. "He'll sleep in here tonight."

"Bett, Saumensch." The voice calm but firm. Highly unusual.

What was easier to define was their predicament.

When a Jew shows up at your place of residence in the early hours of morning, in the very birthplace of Nazism, you're likely to experience extreme levels of discomfort. Anxiety, disbelief, paranoia. Each plays its part, and each leads to a sneaking suspicion that a less than heavenly consequence awaits. The fear is shiny. Ruthless in the eyes.

Very sticky indeed.

Papa came in a few minutes later and lifted the covers on the vacant bed.

"Yes, Papa."

"Alles gut, Liesel? Is everything good?"

The surprising point to make is that despite this iridescent fear glowing as it did in the dark, they somehow resisted the urge for hysteria.

"Everything good?"

A few minutes later, Max Vandenburg was in the room, noiseless and opaque. The man did not breathe. He did not move. Yet, somehow, he traveled from the doorway to the bed and was under the covers.

"Yes, Papa."

It was Papa again, talking this time to Max.

The reply floated from his mouth, then molded itself like a stain to the ceiling. Such was his feeling of shame. "Yes. Thank you." He said it again, when Papa made his way over to his customary position in the chair next to Liesel's bed. "Thank you."

The voice at the end of it informed her that she would not be attending school that day. Apparently, she was sick.

Another hour passed before Liesel fell asleep.

She slept hard and long.

A hand woke her just after eight-thirty the next morning.

When she awoke completely, she watched the stranger in the bed opposite. The blanket showed only a nest of lopsided hair at the top, and there was not a sound, as if he'd somehow trained himself even to sleep more quietly. With great care, she walked the length of him, following Papa to the hall.

That was better.

The girl was still swallowing.

"Liesel!"

She turned.

She could see his face now, in the tired light. His mouth was open and his skin was the color of eggshells. Whiskers coated his jaw and chin, and his ears were hard and flat. He had a small but misshapen nose.

There was food and the sound of eating.

The girl nodded.

When she reentered the bedroom to fetch her clothes, the body in the opposite bed had turned and curled up. It was no longer a straight log but a kind of Z shape, reaching diagonally from corner to corner. Zigzagging the bed.

"Is that clear, Saumensch?"

For the first time ever, the kitchen and Mama were dormant. It was a kind of bemused, inaugural silence. To Liesel's relief, it lasted only a few minutes.

Mama announced the day's priority. She sat at the table and said, "Now listen, Liesel. Papa's going to tell you something today." This was serious -- she didn't even say Saumensch. It was a personal feat of abstinence. "He'll talk to you and you have to listen. Is that clear?"

She moved, to the washroom.

Among the mounds of drop sheets and the smell of paint, Papa told her to make herself comfortable. Ignited on the walls were the painted words, learned in the past. "I need to tell you some things."

"Move it!"

Once changed and in the hallway, she realized she would not be traveling far. Papa was standing in front of the door to the basement. He smiled very faintly, lit the lamp, and led her down.

"Liesel," he said quietly, "I was never sure if any of this would happen, so I never told you. About me. About the man upstairs." He walked from one end of the basement to the other, the lamplight magnifying his shadow. It turned him into a giant on the wall, walking back and forth.

When he stopped pacing, his shadow loomed behind him, watching. Someone was always watching.

"You know my accordion?" he said, and there the story began.

Liesel sat on top of a meter-tall heap of drop sheets, Papa on a fifteen-liter paint can. For a few minutes, he searched for the words. When they came, he stood to deliver them. He rubbed his eyes.

"Liesel, you must listen." Papa made her stand up and held her hand.

He explained World War I and Erik Vandenburg, and then the visit to the fallen soldier's wife. "The boy who came into the room that day is the man upstairs. Verstehst? Understand?"

The book thief sat and listened to Hans Hubermann's story. It lasted a good hour, until the moment of truth, which involved a very obvious and necessary lecture.

They faced the wall.

Dark shapes and the practice of words.

Firmly, he held her fingers.

"Remember the Fuhrer's birthday -- when we walked home from the fire that night? Remember what you promised me?"

The girl concurred. To the wall, she said, "That I would keep a secret."

"That's right." Between the hand-holding shadows, the painted words were scattered about, perched on their shoulders, resting on their heads, and hanging from their arms. "Liesel, if you tell anyone about the man up there, we will all be in big trouble." He walked the fine line of scaring her into oblivion and soothing her enough to keep her calm. He fed her the sentences and watched with his metallic eyes. Desperation and placidity. "At the very least, Mama and I will be taken away." Hans was clearly worried that he was on the verge of frightening her too much, but he calculated the risk, preferring to err on the side of too much fear rather than not enough. The girl's compliance had to be an absolute, immutable fact.

"If you tell anyone about that man…"

And that did it.

The shock made a hole in her, very neat, very precise.

Her teacher.

"For starters," he said, "I will take each and every one of your books -- and I will burn them." It was callous. "I'll throw them in the stove or the fireplace." He was certainly acting like a tyrant, but it was necessary. "Understand?"

"Next." He had to remain hard, and he needed to strain for it. "They'll take you away from me. Do you want that?"

He gave her a list of consequences.

Tears welled.

What mattered was that all were punishable.

"Yes, Papa."

Toward the end, Hans Hubermann looked at Liesel Meminger and made certain she was focused.

Rudy.

It didn't matter whom.

She was crying now, in earnest. "Nein."

The girl began to sob so uncontrollably that Papa was dying to pull her into him and hug her tight. He didn't. Instead, he squatted down and watched her directly in the eyes. He unleashed his quietest words so far. "Verstehst du mich?" Do you understand me?"

"Good." His grip on her hand tightened. "They'll drag that man up there away, and maybe Mama and me, too -- and we will never, ever come back."

"I understand, Papa, I do."

The girl nodded. She cried, and now, defeated, broken, her papa held her in the painted air and the kerosene light.

Upstairs, when they returned, they found Mama sitting in the kitchen, alone and pensive. When she saw them, she stood and beckoned Liesel to come over, noticing the dried-up tears that streaked her. She brought the girl into her and heaped a typically rugged embrace around her body. "Alles gut, Saumensch?"

Her voice was muffled against his body, and they stayed like that for a few minutes, Liesel with squashed breath and Papa rubbing her back.

She didn't need an answer.

Everything was good.

But it was awful, too.