candle and stares into the miniature rooftops and chimneys of the model at the foot of her bed. A
memory rises: Etienne was in a field east of the city with his brother.
It was the summer when
fireflies showed up in Saint-Malo, and their father was very excited, building long-handled nets
for his boys and giving them jars with wire to fasten over the tops, and Etienne and Henri raced
through the tall grass as the fireflies floated away from them, illuming on and off, always seeming
to
rise just beyond their reach, as if the earth were smoldering and these were sparks that their
footfalls had prodded free.
Henri had said he wanted to put so many beetles in his window that ships could see his bedroom
from miles away.
If there are fireflies this summer, they do not come down the rue Vauborel. Now it seems there
are only shadows and silence. Silence is the fruit of the occupation; it hangs in branches, seeps
from gutters.
Madame Guiboux, mother of the shoemaker, has left town. As has old Madame
Blanchard. So many windows are dark. It’s as if the city has become a library of books in an
unknown language, the houses great shelves of illegible volumes, the lamps all extinguished.
But there is the machine in the attic at work again. A spark in the night.
A faint clattering
rises from the alley, and Etienne peers through the shutters of Marie-Laure’s
bedroom, down six stories, and sees the ghost of Madame Manec standing there in the moonlight.
She holds out a hand, and sparrows land one by one on her arms, and she tucks each one into her
coat.
Loudenvielle
T
he Pyrenees gleam. A pitted moon stands on their crests as if impaled. Sergeant Major von
Rumpel takes a cab through platinum moonlight to a
commissariat
and stands across from a police
captain who continually drags the index and middle fingers of his left hand through his
considerable mustache.
The French police have made an arrest. Someone has burglarized the chalet of a prominent
donor with ties to the Natural History Museum in Paris, and the burglar has been apprehended with
a travel case stuffed with gems.
He waits a long time. The captain reviews the fingernails of his left hand, then his right, then his
left again. Von Rumpel is feeling very weak tonight, queasy really; the doctor says the treatments
are over, that they have made their assault on the tumor and now they must wait, but some mornings
he cannot straighten after he finishes tying his shoes.
A car arrives. The captain goes out to greet it. Von Rumpel watches through the window.
From the backseat, two policemen produce a frail-looking man in
a beige suit with a perfect
purple bruise around his left eye. Hands cuffed. A spattering of blood on his collar. As though he
has just left off playing a villain in some movie. The policemen shepherd the prisoner inside while
the captain removes a handbag from the car’s trunk.
Von Rumpel takes his white gloves from his pocket. The captain closes his office door, sets the
bag atop his desk, and pulls his blinds. Tilts the shade of his desk lamp. In a room somewhere
beyond, von Rumpel can hear a cell door clang shut. From the handbag the captain removes an
address book,
a stack of letters, and a woman’s compact. Then he plucks out a false bottom
followed by six velvet bundles.
He unwraps them one at a time. The first contains three gorgeous pieces of beryl: pink, fat,
hexagonal. Inside the second is a single cluster of aqua-colored Amazonite, gently striated with
white. Inside the third is a pear-cut diamond.
A thrill leaps into the tips of von Rumpel’s fingers.
From a pocket, the captain withdraws a
loupe, a look of naked greed blooming on his face. He examines the diamond for a long time,
turning it this way and that. Through von Rumpel’s mind sail visions of the Führermuseum,
glittering cases, bowers beneath pillars, jewels behind glass—and something else too:
a faint
power, like a low voltage, coming off the stone. Whispering to him, promising to erase his illness.
Finally the captain looks up, the impress of his loupe a tight pink circle around his eye. The
lamplight sets a gleam on his wet lips. He places the jewel back on the towel.
From the other side of the desk, von Rumpel picks up the diamond. Just the right weight. Cold in
his fingers, even through the cotton of the gloves. Deeply saturated with blue at its edges.
Does he believe?
Dupont has almost kindled a fire inside it. But with the lens to his eye, von Rumpel can see that
the stone is identical to the one he examined in the museum two years before. He sets the
reproduction back on the desk.
“But at the minimum,” the captain says in French, his face falling, “we must X-ray it, no?”
“Do whatever you’d like, by all means. I’ll take those letters, please.”
Before midnight he is at his hotel. Two fakes. This is progress. Two found, two left to find, and
one of the two must be real. For dinner, he orders wild boar cooked with fresh mushrooms. And a
full bottle of Bordeaux. Especially during wartime, such things remain important. They are what
separate the civilized man from the barbarian.
The hotel is drafty and the dining room is empty, but the waiter is excellent. He pours with grace
and steps away. Once in the glass, as dark as blood, the Bordeaux seems almost as though it is a
living thing. Von Rumpel takes pleasure in knowing that he is the
only person in the world who
will have the privilege of tasting it before it is gone.
Gray
D
ecember 1943. Ravines of cold sink between the houses. The only wood left to burn is green and
the whole city smells of wood smoke. Walking to the bakery, fifteen-year-old Marie-Laure is as
chilled as she has ever been. Indoors, it is little better. Stray snowflakes seem to drift through the
rooms, blown through gaps in the walls.
She listens to her great-uncle’s footfalls across the ceiling, and his voice—
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: 
