The Book Thief Read Online Free PDF Page B

Weingartners
were apparently stupid people with a constantly molting
Saumensch
of a
cat. “Do you know how long it takes me to get rid of all that fur? It’s
everywhere!”
    Helena Schmidt
was a rich widow. “That old cripple—sitting there just wasting away. She’s
never had to do a day’s work in all her life.”
    Rosa’s greatest
disdain, however, was reserved for 8 Grande Strasse. A large house, high on a
hill, in the upper part of Molching.
    “This one,”
she’d pointed out to Liesel the first time they went there, “is the mayor’s
house. That crook. His wife sits at home all day, too mean to light a fire—it’s
always freezing in there. She’s crazy.” She punctuated the words. “Absolutely.
Crazy.” At the gate, she motioned to the girl. “You go.”
    Liesel was
horrified. A giant brown door with a brass knocker stood atop a small flight of
steps. “What?”
    Mama shoved her.
“Don’t you ‘what’ me,
Saumensch.
Move it.”
    Liesel moved it.
She walked the path, climbed the steps, hesitated, and knocked.
    A bathrobe
answered the door.
    Inside it, a
woman with startled eyes, hair like fluff, and the posture of defeat stood in
front of her. She saw Mama at the gate and handed the girl a bag of washing.
“Thank you,” Liesel said, but there was no reply. Only the door. It closed.
    “You see?” said
Mama when she returned to the gate. “This is what I have to put up with. These
rich bastards, these lazy swine . . .”
    Holding the
washing as they walked away, Liesel looked back. The brass knocker eyed her
from the door.
    When she
finished berating the people she worked for, Rosa Hubermann would usually move
on to her other favorite theme of abuse. Her husband. Looking at the bag of
washing and the hunched houses, she would talk, and talk, and talk. “If your
papa was any good,” she informed Liesel
every
time they walked through
Molching, “I wouldn’t have to do this.” She sniffed with derision. “A painter!
Why marry that
Arschloch
? That’s what they told me—my family, that is.”
Their footsteps crunched along the path. “And here I am, walking the streets
and slaving in my kitchen because that
Saukerl
never has any work. No
real work, anyway. Just that pathetic accordion in those dirt holes every
night.”
    “Yes, Mama.”
    “Is that all
you’ve got to say?” Mama’s eyes were like pale blue cutouts, pasted to her
face.
    They’d walk on.
    With Liesel
carrying the sack.
    At home, it was
washed in a boiler next to the stove, hung up by the fireplace in the living
room, and then ironed in the kitchen. The kitchen was where the action was.
    “Did you hear that?”
Mama asked her nearly every night. The iron was in her fist, heated from the
stove. Light was dull all through the house, and Liesel, sitting at the kitchen
table, would be staring at the gaps of fire in front of her.
    “What?” she’d
reply. “What is it?”
    “That was that
Holtzapfel.” Mama was already out of her seat. “That
Saumensch
just spat
on our door again.”
    It was a
tradition for Frau Holtzapfel, one of their neighbors, to spit on the
Hubermanns’ door every time she walked past. The front door was only meters
from the gate, and let’s just say that Frau Holtzapfel had the distance—and the
accuracy.
    The spitting was
due to the fact that she and Rosa Hubermann were engaged in some kind of
decade-long verbal war. No one knew the origin of this hostility. They’d
probably forgotten it themselves.
    Frau Holtzapfel
was a wiry woman and quite obviously spiteful. She’d never married but had two
sons, a few years older than the Hubermann offspring. Both were in the army and
both will make cameo appearances by the time we’re finished here, I assure you.
    In the spiteful
stakes, I should also say that Frau Holtzapfel was thorough with her spitting,
too. She never neglected to
spuck
on the door of number thirty-three and