Even if she be not harmed, her heart may fail her in so much and so many horrors; and hereafter she may suffer--both in waking, from her nerves, and in sleep, from her dreams.
The events of Himmel Street were far behind her, but the book thief still had the images fresh in her head of that
night. During the day, she would busy herself with working, cooking, cleaning and occasionally writing but, during the night, when she had no control over the thoughts that passed her mind, as she lay unconscious in bed, the horrors would resurface.
Rudy, his eyes closed, the dust on his face and the rips in his clothes. He could be sleeping, thought Lisel. She hoped that he was, somewhere. Sleeping tightly with nothing else to hurt him. Mama, her last goodbye unheard, her last soup not cherished and her last insults to Lisel ignored. In her dreams, Lisel saw the memory of her lying on the floor in the rubble, unresponsive to the words that Lisel had said. And Papa, the accordion player, the Jew hider, the only one who would comfort her at night, not a man who died with no fight. Lisel hated to think as Papa as another man killed, another man dead in Nazi Germany. But he was. And they were all gone. Yet Lisel had survived.
The nightmares often ended with Lisel screaming, waking up in a dark room with no Papa to read for her, only Frau Hermann to stand awkwardly above her, tell her it was okay. But Frau Hermann knew better than anyone else that Lisel was not okay.
Max Vandenburg was another one with nightmares. Scars from lashes of the whip were still fresh and sore on the young man's body. He would sleep through the images on his head of starving friends, of sounds of gunfire. He had since given up trying to wake up to get away from them. Being awake was just as bad. That man he walked past on the street, wasn't he the old man whose starved corpse was left lying on the floor? And the eyes of that middle aged woman. They looked so much like the woman who was held tightly to her three children when they were sorted into their blocks. And then the things that other people couldn't see. The man with his ribs showing through his skin, sat on the floor crying. How could Max be the only one seeing him?
Max was walking. He had been walking for a long time. And he knew where he was walking to. Molching. Himmel Street. Now that he was free, now that he was not a wanted man, he would go and see the Rosa and Hand, Lisel and the boy that she always talked about. When he was tired and falling down, he only needed to think about them and he would be straight back up, walking at a faster pace than before.
However, Max Vandenburg did not know that the place he was walking to was destroyed and never to be completely whole again. People would try to build it back after a long time, and there was sometimes hope for the street, but it never turned out right in the end. Metaphorically, the young man was walking towards the rest of his life.
