All the Light We Cannot See: a novel

We live in exceptional times.
He wonders if Jutta has forgiven him. Her letters consist mostly of banalities—
we are busy;
Frau Elena says hello
—or else arrive in his bunkroom so full of censor marks that their meaning
has disintegrated. Does she grieve over his absence? Or has she calcified her feelings, protected
herself, as he is learning to do?
Volkheimer, like Hauptmann, seems full of contradictions. To the other boys, the Giant is a brute,
an instrument of pure strength, and yet sometimes, when Hauptmann is away in Berlin, Volkheimer
will disappear into the doctor’s office and return with a Grundig tube radio and hook up the
shortwave antenna and fill the lab with classical music. Mozart, Bach, even the Italian Vivaldi.
The more sentimental, the better. The huge boy will lean back in a chair, so that it makes squeaking
protestations beneath his bulk, and let his eyelids slip to half-mast.
Why always triangles? What is the purpose of the transceiver they are building? What two
points does Hauptmann know, and why does he need to know the third?
“It’s only numbers, cadet,” Hauptmann says, a favorite maxim. “Pure math. You have to
accustom yourself to thinking that way.”
Werner tries out various theories on Frederick, but Frederick, he’s learning, moves about as if in
the grip of a dream, his trousers too big around the waist, the hems already falling out. His eyes are
both intense and vague; he hardly seems to realize when he misses targets in marksmanship. Most
nights Frederick murmurs to himself before falling asleep: bits of poems, the habits of geese, bats
he’s heard swooping past the windows.
Birds, always birds.
“. . . now, arctic terns, Werner, they fly from the south pole to the north pole, true navigators of
the globe, probably the most migratory creatures ever to live, seventy thousand kilometers a
year . . .”

---

A metallic wintery light settles over the stables and vineyard and rifle range, and songbirds
streak over the hills, great scattershot nets of passerines on their way south, a migratory
throughway running right over the spires of the school. Once in a while a flock descends into one
of the huge lindens on the grounds and seethes beneath its leaves.
Some of the senior boys, sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds, cadets who are allowed freer access
to ammunition, develop a fondness for firing volleys into the trees to see how many birds they can
hit. The tree looks uninhabited and calm; then someone fires, and its crown shatters in all
directions, a hundred birds exploding into flight in a half second, shrieking as though the whole
tree has flown apart.
In the dormitory window one night, Frederick rests his forehead against the glass. “I hate them. I
hate them for that.”
The dinner bell rings, and everyone trots off, Frederick coming in last with his taffy-colored
hair and wounded eyes, bootlaces trailing. Werner washes Frederick’s mess tin for him; he shares
homework answers, shoe polish, sweets from Dr. Hauptmann; they run next to each other during
field exercises. A brass pin weighs lightly on each of their lapels; one hundred and fourteen
hobnailed boots spark against pebbles on the trail. The castle with its towers and battlements
looms below them like some misty vision of foregone glory. Werner’s blood gallops through his
ventricles, his thoughts on Hauptmann’s transceiver, on solder, fuses, batteries, antennas; his boot
and Frederick’s touch the ground at the exact same moment.

---

SSG35 A NA513 NL WUX
DUPLICATE OF TELEPHONED TELEGRAM
10 DECEMBER 1940
M. DANIEL LEBLANC
SAINT-MALO FRANCE
= RETURN TO PARIS END OF MONTH = TRAVEL SECURELY =

---

Bath
O
ne final burst of frenetic gluing and sanding, and Marie-Laure’s father has completed the model
of Saint-Malo. It is unpainted, imperfect, striped with a half-dozen different types of wood, and
missing details. But it’s complete enough for his daughter to use if she must: the irregular polygon
of the island framed by ramparts, each of its eight hundred and sixty-five buildings in place.
He feels ragged. For weeks logic has been failing him. The stone the museum has asked him to
protect is not real. If it were, the museum would have sent men already to collect it. Why then,
when he puts a magnifying glass to it, do its depths reveal tiny daggers of flames? Why does he
hear footfalls behind him when there are none? And why does he find himself entertaining the
brainless notion that the stone he carries in the linen sachet in his pocket has brought him
misfortune, has put Marie-Laure in danger, may indeed have precipitated the whole invasion of
France?
Idiotic. Ludicrous.
He has tried every test he can think of without involving another soul.
Tried folding it between pieces of felt and striking it with a hammer—it did not shatter.
Tried scratching it with a halved pebble of quartz—it did not scratch.
Tried holding it to candle flame, drowning it, boiling it. He has hidden the jewel under the
mattress, in his tool case, in his shoe. For several hours one night, he tucked it into Madame
Manec’s geraniums in a window flower box, then convinced himself the geraniums were wilting
and dug the stone out.
This afternoon a familiar face looms in the train station, maybe four or five back in the queue.
He has seen this man before, pudgy, sweating, multi-chinned. They lock eyes; the man’s gaze slides
away.
Etienne’s neighbor. The perfumer.
Weeks ago, while taking measurements for the model, the locksmith saw this same man atop the
ramparts pointing a camera out to sea. Not a man to trust, Madame Manec said. But he is just a man
waiting in line to buy a ticket.
Logic. The principles of validity. Every lock has its key.
For more than two weeks, the director’s telegram has echoed in his head. Such a maddeningly
ambiguous choice for that final directive—