During that week, Max had cut out a collection of pages from Mein Kampf and painted over them in white. He then hung them up with pegs on some string, from one end of the basement to the other. When they were all dry, the hard part began. He was educated well enough to get by, but he was certainly no writer, and no artist. Despite this, he formulated the words in his head till he could recount them without error. Only then, on the paper that had bubbled and humped under the stress of drying paint, did he begin to write the story. It was done with a small black paintbrush.

"No, Saumensch," Mama told her each time she volunteered. There was always a new excuse. "How about you do something useful in here for a change, like finish the ironing? You think carrying it around town is so special? Try ironing it!" You can do all manner of underhanded nice things when you have a caustic reputation. It worked.

For a week, Liesel was kept from the basement at all cost. It was Mama and Papa who made sure to take down Max's food.

He calculated that he needed thirteen pages, so he painted forty, expecting at least twice as many slipups as successes. There were practice versions on the pages of the Molching Express, improving his basic, clumsy artwork to a level he could accept. As he worked, he heard the whispered words of a girl. "His hair," she told him, "is like feathers."

When he was finished, he used a knife to pierce the pages and tie them with string. The result was a thirteen-page booklet that went like this:

The Standover Man.

For some reason, when I was a boy, I liked to fight. A lot of the time, I lost. Another boy. Sometimes with blood falling from his nose, would be standing over me.

I suppose my first standover man was my father, but he vanished before I could remember him.

All my life, I've been scared of men standing over me.

But there is one strange thing. The girl says I look like something else.

I slept there for a long time. Three days, they told me… and what did I find when I woke up? Not a man, but someone else, standing over me.

When I was hiding, I dreamed of a certain man. The hardest was when I travelled to find him.

Out of sheer luck and many footsteps, I made it.

Many years later, I needed to hide. I tried not to sleep because I was afraid of who might be there when I woke up. But I was lucky. It was always my friend.

As time passed by, the girl and I realised we had things in common. TRAIN, DREAMS, FISTS.

There was no reply.

VALUABLE VALUABLE VALUABLE VALUABLE DAYLIGHT WATER MOVEMENT DAYLIGHT DAYLIGHT

Now I think we are friends, this girl and me. On her birthday. it was she who gave a gift -- to me. It makes me understand that the best standover man I've ever known is not a man at all…

In late February, when Liesel woke up in the early hours of morning, a figure made its way into her bedroom. Typical of Max, it was as close as possible to a noiseless shadow.

There was nothing but the near silence of his feet as he came closer to the bed and placed the pages on the floor, next to her socks. The pages crackled. Just slightly. One edge of them curled into the floor.

Now I Live in a basement. Bad dreams still live in my sleep. One night, after my usual nightmare, a shadow stood above me. She said, "Tell me what you dream of." So I did.

In return, she explained what her own dreams were made of.

Liesel, searching through the dark, could only vaguely sense the man coming toward her.

"Hello?"

"A late birthday gift. Look in the morning. Good night."

Liesel read and viewed Max Vandenburg's gift three times, noticing a different brush line or word with each one. When the third reading was finished, she climbed as quietly as she could from her bed and walked to Mama and Papa's room. The allocated space next to the fire was vacant.

For a while, she drifted in and out of sleep, not sure anymore whether she'd dreamed of Max coming in.

In the morning, when she woke and rolled over, she saw the pages sitting on the floor. She reached down and picked them up, listening to the paper as it rippled in her early-morning hands.

Three days, they told me… and what did I find when I woke up?

All my life, I've been scared of men standing over me…

As she turned them, the pages were noisy, like static around the written story.

She couldn't tell exactly where the words came from. What mattered was that they reached her. They arrived and kneeled next to the bed.

This time there was a response.

"Hello?"

There were the erased pages of Mein Kampf, gagging, suffocating under the paint as they turned.

It makes me understand that the best standover man I've ever known…

No more than a few meters, it was a long walk to the drop sheets and the assortment of paint cans that shielded Max Vandenburg. She removed the sheets closest to the wall until there was a small corridor to look through.

The scrawled words of practice stood magnificently on the wall by the stairs, jagged and childlike and sweet. They looked on as both the hidden Jew and the girl slept, hand to shoulder.

She walked down the basement steps. She saw an imaginary framed photo seep into the wall -- a quiet-smiled secret.

As she thought about it, she realized it was actually appropriate, or even better -- perfect -- to thank him where the pages were made.

The first part of him she saw was his shoulder, and through the slender gap, she slowly, painfully, inched her hand in until it rested there. His clothing was cool. He did not wake.

She could feel his breathing and his shoulder moving up and down ever so slightly. For a while, she watched him. Then she sat and leaned back.

Sleepy air seemed to have followed her.

Next to the wall, The Standover Man sat, numb and gratified, like a beautiful itch at Liesel Meminger's feet.

German and Jewish lungs.

They breathed.