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One
simple question
into her ear.
“What about the loaves, Uncle?”
“I will go. I should have been going all along.”
On the mornings of the fourth and fifth of August, Etienne stands at the front door mumbling to
himself, then pushes open the gate and goes out. Soon afterward, the bell under the third-floor table
rings and he comes back in and throws both dead bolts and stands in the foyer breathing as though
he has passed through a gauntlet of a thousand dangers.
Aside from the bread, they have almost nothing to eat. Dried peas. Barley. Powdered milk. A
last few tins of Madame Manec’s vegetables. Marie-Laure’s thoughts gallop like bloodhounds
over the same questions. First those policemen two years ago:
Mademoiselle, was there no
specific thing he mentioned?
Then this limping sergeant major with a dead voice.
Just tell me if
your father left anything with you or spoke about carrying something for the museum.
Papa leaves. Madame Manec leaves. She remembers the voices of their neighbors in Paris when
she lost her eyesight:
Like they’re cursed.
She tries to forget the fear, the hunger, the questions. She must live like the snails, moment to
moment, centimeter to centimeter. But on the afternoon of the sixth of August, she reads the
following lines to Etienne on the davenport in his study:
Was it true that Captain Nemo never left
the
Nautilus?
Often I had not seen him for weeks on end. What was he doing during that time?
Wasn’t it possible that he was carrying out some secret mission completely unknown to me?
She snaps shut the book. Etienne says, “Don’t you want to find out if they’re going to escape this
time?” But Marie-Laure is reciting in her head the strange third letter from her father, the last one
she received.
Remember your birthdays? How there were always two things on the table when you
woke? I’m sorry it turned out like this. If you ever wish to understand, look inside
Etienne’s house, inside the house. I know you will do the right thing. Though I wish the gift
were better.
Mademoiselle, was there no specific thing he mentioned?
May we look at whatever he brought here with him?
He had many keys at the museum.
It’s not the transmitter. Etienne is wrong. It was not the radio the German was interested in. It
was something else, something he thought only she might know about. And he heard what he
wanted to hear. She answered his one question after all.
Just a dumb model of this town.
Which is why he walked away.
Look inside Etienne’s house.
“What’s wrong?” asks Etienne.
Inside the house.
“I need to rest,” she announces, and scrambles up the stairs two at a time, shuts her bedroom
door, and thrusts her fingers into the miniature city. Eight hundred and sixty-five buildings. Here,
near a corner, waits the tall narrow house at Number 4 rue Vauborel. Her fingers crawl down the
facade, find the recess in the front door. She presses inward, and the house slides up and out. When
she shakes it, she hears nothing. But the houses never made any noise when she shook them, did
they?
Even with her fingers trembling, it doesn’t take Marie-Laure long to solve it. Twist the chimney
ninety degrees, slide off the roof panels one two three.
A fourth door, and a fifth, on and on until you reach a thirteenth, a little locked door no
bigger than a shoe.
So,
asked the children,
how do you know it’s really there?
You have to believe the story.
She turns the little house over. A pear-shaped stone drops into her palm.
Numbers
A
llied bombs demolish the rail station. The Germans disable the harbor installations. Airplanes
slip in and out of clouds. Etienne hears that wounded Germans are pouring into Saint-Servan, that
Americans have captured Mont Saint-Michel, only twenty-five miles away, that liberation is a
matter of days. He makes it to the bakery just as Madame Ruelle unlocks the door. She ushers him
inside. “They want locations of flak batteries. Coordinates. Can you manage it?”
Etienne groans. “I have Marie-Laure. Why not you, Madame?”
“I don’t understand maps, Etienne. Minutes, seconds, declination adjustments? You know these
things. All you have to do is find them, plot them, and broadcast the coordinates.”
“I’ll have to walk around with a compass and a notepad. There’s no other way to do it. They’ll
shoot me.”
“It’s vital that they receive precise locations for the guns. Think how many lives it might save.
And you’ll have to do it tonight. There’s talk that tomorrow they will intern all the men in the city
between eighteen and sixty. That they’re going to check everyone’s papers, and every man of
fighting age, anyone who could be taking part in the resistance, will be imprisoned at Fort
National.”
The bakery reels; he is being caught in spiderwebs; they twist around his wrists and thighs,
crackle like burning paper when he moves. Every second he becomes more entangled. The bell
tied to the bakery door jingles, and someone enters. Madame Ruelle’s face seals over like the
visor of a knight clanging down.
He nods.
“Good,” she says, and tucks the loaf under his arm.
Sea of Flames
I
t is surfaced by hundreds of facets. Over and over she picks it up only to set it immediately down,
as though it burns her fingers. Her father’s arrest, the disappearance of Harold Bazin, the death of
Madame Manec—could this one rock be the cause of so much sorrow? She hears the wheezy,
wine-scented voice of old Dr. Geffard:
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