Chapter Two: Whom did you let die?
The corridor was as clean and white as only a hospital could be.
Clean and white and cold.
Liesel stood in front of door number 13. Looked at the white and clean and cold wood.
Black numbers were wounding it. It bleed.
Slowly Liesel rose her hand. Placed it on the cold flesh of the door. She took a deep breath before she knocked. Three times.
"Herein."
Liesel opened. The room was small.
There was only place for a desk, a chair and a lonely bed with a lonely boy in it.
He looked up when Liesel came in, and smiled.
Black hair, blue eyes, skin as white as everything in the hospital.
"Hallo", he said.
"Hallo", Liesel answered.
She stretched her hand, in his direction.
"Liesel. Liesel Meminger."
He took it.
"My name is Rudy Schneider."
Rudy…
"Oh."
Liesel had to sit down.
"Have you never heard Rudy before?", asked Rudy, amused.
"Doch. I did."
Too many times.
I wish I never had.
"You are the one who saved my life."
Liesel looked up. Rudy was smiling.
"I remember you."
"Unsinn. I just asked a man to call the ambulance."
"A few minutes more and I wouldn't live anymore. I owe you my life."
"You owe me nothing."
"Yes I do", said Rudy, but very quietly.
A few minutes, perhaps as long as Rudy would have survived without the ambulance, both remained silent.
"There's something which don't leave my mind…"
Rudy spoke again. Listen to him, Liesel.
"… something you said before I lost consciousness. Something I don't understand…"
"Was denn?"
Rudy spoke to the blanket now.
"You said you won't let me die. Not me too…"
He looked into her eyes now.
"Whom did you let die?"
Liesel counted them. Silently.
They were all standing outside. At the window.
Max stood at the right. His back leaned against the glass. He glanced over his shoulder to her.
The place at the left side was given to her brother, her mother and the father she'd never known.
The man Liesel called her Papa was standing in the middle, his wife and the real Rudy, the one with the lemon hair, next to him. He was smoking a cigarette, and smiled.
They were all smiling. The land of Death seemed to be a happy place.
"Liesel?"
She almost forgot the piece of coal next to her.
She didn't look at him when she spoke.
"You have to be mistaken. I didn't say anything like this."
She was far, far away when she said this.
Rudy noticed that. And he wanted to bring her back. So he talked.
"I heard you're living at the mayor's house. Is he your Papa?"
Mein Papa ist tot.
The sentence sounded unreal in her ears, although she didn't say it now.
She heard it often enough in her mind. She said it too often, to herself, in all the sleepless lonely nights. Waiting for him.
Er kommt. Bestimmt.
I will awake and everything was just a bad dream. And he will sit next to me. He will come.
Nein, er kommt nicht. Nie mehr.
Mein Papa ist tot…
"He is not.", she said to Rudy, looking out the window.
"Why are you living at his house then?"
It was snowing outside. Why were the snowflakes burning?
Liesel didn't answer.
"Liesel?"
"I don't want to talk about it."
"Are you all right?"
"I don't want to talk about it, Saukerl!"
Liesel was shocked about herself. Had she really called a stranger Saukerl?
"Wie bitte?"
Rudy wasn't understanding anything.
Liesel stood up.
"Tut mir leid. I'm sorry. I think I should go home now."
Which home?
Tell me, Liesel, where are you going?
To the mayor's house? This is not your home, never will be, and you know that.
The people who were your home are dead.
And the place you called home is a pile of ash.
Where are you going, Liesel?
Shut up.
She left.
It wasn't snowing anymore.
But there was a long cloud like a rope, and she remembered how she danced on it, together with Max.
He was there, on the cloud, but he wasn't alone.
All the people Liesel loved were sitting there, all were waving, all were smiling, and all of them were dead.