Pages from the basement

 
 For a week, Liesel was kept from the basement at all cost. It was Mama and Papa who made sure to take down Maxs food.
 
 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.
 
 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.
 
 The Standover Man.
 
 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:
 

 
 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.
 
 Liesel, searching through the dark, could only vaguely sense the man coming toward her.
 
 Hello?
 
 There was no reply.
 
 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.
 
 Hello?
 
 This time there was a response.
 
 She couldnt tell exactly where the words came from. What mattered was that they reached her. They arrived and kneeled next to the bed.
 
 A late birthday gift. Look in the morning. Good night.
 
 For a while, she drifted in and out of sleep, not sure anymore whether shed 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.
 
 All my life, Ive been scared of men standing over me. . . .
 
 As she turned them, the pages were noisy, like static around the written story.
 
 Three days, they told me. . . and what did I find when I woke up?
 
 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 Ive ever known. . .
 
 Liesel read and viewed Max Vandenburgs 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 Papas room. The allocated space next to the fire was vacant.
 
 As she thought about it, she realized it was actually appropriate, or even betterperfectto thank him where the pages were made.
 
 She walked down the basement steps. She saw an imaginary framed photo seep into the walla quiet-smiled secret.
 
 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 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.
 
 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.
 
 They breathed.
 
 German and Jewish lungs.
 
 Next to the wall, The Standover Man sat, numb and gratified, like a beautiful itch at Liesel Memingers feet.