The Book Thief by Markus Zusak Read Free Book Online Page A

part of it as everything she witnessed firsthand.
    It was 1936. The
Olympics. Hitler’s games.
    Jesse Owens had
just completed the 4 × 100m relay and won his fourth gold medal. Talk that he
was subhuman because he was black and Hitler’s refusal to shake his hand were
touted around the world. Even the most racist Germans were amazed with the
efforts of Owens, and word of his feat slipped through the cracks. No one was
more impressed than Rudy Steiner.
    Everyone in his
family was crowded together in their family room when he slipped out and made
his way to the kitchen. He pulled some charcoal from the stove and gripped it
in the smallness of his hands. “Now.” There was a smile. He was ready.
    He smeared the
charcoal on, nice and thick, till he was covered in black. Even his hair
received a once-over.
    In the window,
the boy grinned almost maniacally at his reflection, and in his shorts and tank
top, he quietly abducted his older brother’s bike and pedaled it up the street,
heading for Hubert Oval. In one of his pockets, he’d hidden a few pieces of
extra charcoal, in case some of it wore off later.
    In Liesel’s
mind, the moon was sewn into the sky that night. Clouds were stitched around
it.
    The rusty bike
crumbled to a halt at the Hubert Oval fence line and Rudy climbed over. He
landed on the other side and trotted weedily up toward the beginning of the
hundred. Enthusiastically, he conducted an awkward regimen of stretches. He dug
starting holes into the dirt.
    Waiting for his
moment, he paced around, gathering concentration under the darkness sky, with
the moon and the clouds watching, tightly.
    “Owens is
looking good,” he began to commentate. “This could be his greatest victory
ever. . . .”
    He shook the imaginary
hands of the other athletes and wished them luck, even though he knew. They
didn’t have a chance.
    The starter
signaled them forward. A crowd materialized around every square inch of Hubert
Oval’s circumference. They were all calling out one thing. They were chanting
Rudy Steiner’s name—and his name was Jesse Owens.
    All fell silent.
    His bare feet
gripped the soil. He could feel it holding on between his toes.
    At the request
of the starter, he raised to crouching position—and the gun clipped a hole in
the night.
    For the first
third of the race, it was pretty even, but it was only a matter of time before
the charcoaled Owens drew clear and streaked away.
    “Owens in
front,” the boy’s shrill voice cried as he ran down the empty track, straight
toward the uproarious applause of Olympic glory. He could even feel the tape
break in two across his chest as he burst through it in first place. The
fastest man alive.
    It was only on
his victory lap that things turned sour. Among the crowd, his father was
standing at the finish line like the bogeyman. Or at least, the bogeyman in a
suit. (As previously mentioned, Rudy’s father was a tailor. He was rarely seen
on the street without a suit and tie. On this occasion, it was only the suit
and a disheveled shirt.)
    “Was ist los?”
he said to his
son when he showed up in all his charcoal glory. “What the hell is going on
here?” The crowd vanished. A breeze sprang up. “I was asleep in my chair when
Kurt noticed you were gone. Everyone’s out looking for you.”
    Mr. Steiner was
a remarkably polite man under normal circumstances. Discovering one of his
children smeared charcoal black on a summer evening was not what he considered
normal circumstances. “The boy is crazy,” he muttered, although he conceded
that with six kids, something like this was bound to happen. At least one of
them had to be a bad egg. Right now, he was looking at it, waiting for an
explanation. “Well?”
    Rudy panted,
bending down and placing his hands on his knees. “I was being Jesse Owens.” He
answered as though it was the most natural thing on earth to be doing. There
was even something