The cardplayer. The snows of Stalingrad

THE CARDPLAYER

 
 Around the time Liesel and Rudy were eating the cookies, the resting men of the LSE were playing cards in a town not far from Essen. Theyd just completed the long trip from Stuttgart and were gambling for cigarettes. Reinhold Zucker was not a happy man.
 
 Hes cheating, I swear it, he muttered. They were in a shed that served as their barracks and Hans Hubermann had just won his third consecutive hand. Zucker threw his cards down in disgust and combed his greasy hair with a threesome of dirty fingernails.
 

SOME FACTS ABOUT
 REINHOLD ZUCKER
 He was twenty-four. When he won a round
 of cards, he gloatedhe would hold the
 thin cylinders of tobacco to his nose and
 breathe them in. The smell of victory,
 he would say. Oh, and one more thing.
 He would die with his mouth open.
 

 
 Unlike the young man to his left, Hans Hubermann didnt gloat when he won. He was even generous enough to give each colleague one of his cigarettes back and light it for him. All but Reinhold Zucker took up the invitation. He snatched at the offering and flung it back to the middle of the turned-over box. I dont need your charity, old man. He stood up and left.
 
 Whats wrong with him? the sergeant inquired, but no one cared enough to answer. Reinhold Zucker was just a twenty-four-year-old boy who could not play cards to save his life.
 
 Had he not lost his cigarettes to Hans Hubermann, he wouldnt have despised him. If he hadnt despised him, he might not have taken his place a few weeks later on a fairly innocuous road.
 
 One seat, two men, a short argument, and me.
 
 It kills me sometimes, how people die.
 
 
 
  

THE SNOWS OF STALINGRAD

 
 In the middle of January 1943, the corridor of Himmel Street was its dark, miserable self. Liesel shut the gate and made her way to Frau Holtzapfels door and knocked. She was surprised by the answerer.
 
 Her first thought was that the man must have been one of her sons, but he did not look like either of the brothers in the framed photos by the door. He seemed far too old, although it was difficult to tell. His face was dotted with whiskers and his eyes looked painful and loud. A bandaged hand fell out of his coat sleeve and cherries of blood were seeping through the wrapping.
 
 Perhaps you should come back later.
 
 Liesel tried to look past him. She was close to calling out to Frau Holtzapfel, but the man blocked her.
 
 Child, he said. Come back later. Ill get you. Where are you from?
 
 More than three hours later, a knock arrived at 33 Himmel Street and the man stood before her. The cherries of blood had grown into plums.
 
 Shes ready for you now.
 
 Outside, in the fuzzy gray light, Liesel couldnt help asking the man what had happened to his hand. He blew some air from his nostrils a single syllablebefore his reply. Stalingrad.
 
 Sorry? He had looked into the wind when he spoke. I couldnt hear you.
 
 He answered again, only louder, and now, he answered the question fully. Stalingrad happened to my hand. I was shot in the ribs and I had three of my fingers blown off. Does that answer your question? He placed his uninjured hand in his pocket and shivered with contempt for the German wind. You think its cold here?
 
 Liesel touched the wall at her side. She couldnt lie. Yes, of course.
 
 The man laughed. This isnt cold. He pulled out a cigarette and placed it in his mouth. One-handed, he tried to light a match. In the dismal weather, it would have been difficult with both hands, but with just the one, it was impossible. He dropped the matchbook and swore.
 
 Liesel picked it up.
 
 She took his cigarette and put it in her mouth. She, too, could not light it.
 
 You have to suck on it, the man explained. In this weather, it only lights when you suck. Verstehst?
 
 She gave it another go, trying to remember how Papa did it. This time, her mouth filled with smoke. It climbed her teeth and scratched her throat, but she restrained herself from coughing.
 
 Well done. When he took the cigarette and breathed it in, he reached out his uninjured hand, his left. Michael Holtzapfel.
 
 Liesel Meminger.
 
 Youre coming to read to my mother?
 
 Rosa arrived behind her at that point, and Liesel could feel the shock at her back. Michael? she asked. Is that you?
 
 Michael Holtzapfel nodded. Guten Tag, Frau Hubermann. Its been a long time.
 
 You look so. . .
 
 Old?
 
 Rosa was still in shock, but she composed herself. Would you like to come in? I see you met my foster daughter. . . . Her voice trailed off as she noticed the bloodied hand.
 
 My brothers dead, said Michael Holtzapfel, and he could not have delivered the punch any better with his one usable fist. For Rosa staggered. Certainly, war meant dying, but it always shifted the ground beneath a persons feet when it was someone who had once lived and breathed in close proximity. Rosa had watched both of the Holtzapfel boys grow up.
 
 The oldened young man somehow found a way to list what happened without losing his nerve. I was in one of the buildings we used for a hospital when they brought him in. It was a week before I was coming home. I spent three days of that week sitting with him before he died. . . .
 
 Im sorry. The words didnt seem to come from Rosas mouth. It was someone else standing behind Liesel Meminger that evening, but she did not dare to look.
 
 Please. Michael stopped her. Dont say anything else. Can I take the girl to read? I doubt my mother will hear it, but she said for her to come.
 
 Yes, take her.
 
 They were halfway down the path when Michael Holtzapfel remembered himself and returned. Rosa? There was a moment of waiting while Mama rewidened the door. I heard your son was there. In Russia. I ran into someone else from Molching and they told me. But Im sure you knew that already.
 
 Rosa tried to prevent his exit. She rushed out and held his sleeve. No. He left here one day and never came back. We tried to find him, but then so much happened, there was. . .
 
 Michael Holtzapfel was determined to escape. The last thing he wanted to hear was yet another sob story. Pulling himself away, he said, As far as I know, hes alive. He joined Liesel at the gate, but the girl did not walk next door. She watched Rosas face. It lifted and dropped in the same moment.
 
 Mama?
 
 Rosa raised her hand. Go.
 
 Liesel waited.
 
 I said go.
 
 When she caught up to him, the returned soldier tried to make conversation. He must have regretted his verbal mistake with Rosa, and he tried to bury it beneath some other words. Holding up the bandaged hand, he said, I still cant get it to stop bleeding. Liesel was actually glad to enter the Holtzapfels kitchen. The sooner she started reading, the better.
 
 Frau Holtzapfel sat with wet streams of wire on her face.
 
 Her son was dead.
 
 But that was only the half of it.
 
 She would never really know how it occurred, but I can tell you without question that one of us here knows. I always seem to know what happened when there was snow and guns and the various confusions of human language.
 
 When I imagine Frau Holtzapfels kitchen from the book thiefs words, I dont see the stove or the wooden spoons or the water pump, or anything of the sort. Not to begin with, anyway. What I see is the Russian winter and the snow falling from the ceiling, and the fate of Frau Holtzapfels second son.
 
 His name was Robert, and what happened to him was this.
 

A SMALL WAR STORY
 His legs were blown off at the
 shins and he died with his
 brother watching in a cold,
 stench-filled hospital.
 

 
 It was Russia, January 5, 1943, and just another icy day. Out among the city and snow, there were dead Russians and Germans everywhere. Those who remained were firing into the blank pages in front of them. Three languages interwove. The Russian, the bullets, the German.
 
 As I made my way through the fallen souls, one of the men was saying, My stomach is itchy. He said it many times over. Despite his shock, he crawled up ahead, to a dark, disfigured figure who sat streaming on the ground. When the soldier with the wounded stomach arrived, he could see that it was Robert Holtzapfel. His hands were caked in blood and he was heaping snow onto the area just above his shins, where his legs had been chopped off by the last explosion. There were hot hands and a red scream.
 
 Steam rose from the ground. The sight and smell of rotting snow.
 
 Its me, the soldier said to him. Its Pieter. He dragged himself a few inches closer.
 
 Pieter? Robert asked, a vanishing voice. He must have felt me nearby.
 
 A second time. Pieter?
 
 For some reason, dying men always ask questions they know the answer to. Perhaps its so they can die being right.
 
 The voices suddenly all sounded the same.
 
 Robert Holtzapfel collapsed to his right, onto the cold and steamy ground.
 
 Im sure he expected to meet me there and then.
 
 He didnt.
 
 Unfortunately for the young German, I did not take him that afternoon. I stepped over him with the other poor souls in my arms and made my way back to the Russians.
 
 Back and forth, I traveled.
 
 Disassembled men.
 
 It was no ski trip, I can tell you.
 
 As Michael told his mother, it was three very long days later that I finally came for the soldier who left his feet behind in Stalingrad. I showed up very much invited at the temporary hospital and flinched at the smell.
 
 A man with a bandaged hand was telling the mute, shock-faced soldier that he would survive. Youll soon be going home, he assured him.
 
 Yes, home, I thought. For good.
 
 Ill wait for you, he continued. I was going back at the end of the week, but Ill wait.
 
 In the middle of his brothers next sentence, I gathered up the soul of Robert Holtzapfel.
 
 Usually I need to exert myself, to look through the ceiling when Im inside, but I was lucky in that particular building. A small section of the roof had been destroyed and I could see straight up. A meter away, Michael Holtzapfel was still talking. I tried to ignore him by watching the hole above me. The sky was white but deteriorating fast. As always, it was becoming an enormous drop sheet. Blood was bleeding through, and in patches, the clouds were dirty, like footprints in melting snow.
 
 Footprints? you ask.
 
 Well, I wonder whose those could be.
 
 In Frau Holtzapfels kitchen, Liesel read. The pages waded by unheard, and for me, when the Russian scenery fades in my eyes, the snow refuses to stop falling from the ceiling. The kettle is covered, as is the table. The humans, too, are wearing patches of snow on their heads and shoulders.
 
 The brother shivers.
 
 The woman weeps.
 
 And the girl goes on reading, for thats why shes there, and it feels good to be good for something in the aftermath of the snows of Stalingrad.