All the Light We Cannot See: a novel

Out?
say Volkheimer’s lips. He shakes his head. 
There is no other way out.

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Three

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June 1940

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Château
T
wo days after fleeing Paris, Marie-Laure and her father enter the town of Evreux. Restaurants are
either boarded up or thronged. Two women in evening gowns hunch hip to hip on the cathedral
steps. A man lies facedown between market stalls, unconscious or worse.
No mail service. Telegraph lines down. The most recent newspaper is thirty-six hours old. At
the prefecture, a queue for gasoline coupons snakes out the door and around the block.
The first two hotels are full. The third will not unlock the door. Every so often the locksmith
catches himself glancing over his shoulder.
“Papa,” Marie-Laure is mumbling. Bewildered. “My feet.”
He lights a cigarette: three left. “Not much farther now, Marie.”
On the western edge of Evreux, the road empties and the countryside levels out. He checks and
rechecks the address the director has given him. 
Monsieur François Giannot. 9 rue St. Nicolas.
But Monsieur Giannot’s house, when they reach it, is on fire. In the windless dusk, sullen heaps of
smoke pump upward through the trees. A car has crashed into a corner of the gatehouse and torn the
gate off its hinges. The house—or what remains of it—is grand: twenty French windows in the
facade, big freshly painted shutters, manicured hedges out front. 
Un château.
“I smell smoke, Papa.”
He leads Marie-Laure up the gravel. His rucksack—or perhaps it is the stone deep inside—
seems to grow heavier with each step. No puddles gleam in the gravel, no fire brigade swarms out
front. Twin urns are toppled on the front steps. A burst chandelier sprawls across the entry stairs.
“What is burning, Papa?”
A boy comes toward them out of the smoky twilight, no older than Marie-Laure, streaked with
ash, pushing a wheeled dining cart through the gravel. Silver tongs and spoons hanging from the
cart chime and clank, and the wheels clatter and wallow. A little polished cherub grins at each
corner.
The locksmith says, “Is this the house of François Giannot?”
The boy acknowledges neither question nor questioner as he passes.
“Do you know what happened to—?”
The clanging of the cart recedes.
Marie-Laure yanks the hem of his coat. “Papa, please.”
In her coat against the black trees, her face looks paler and more frightened than he has ever
seen it. Has he ever asked so much of her?
“A house has burned, Marie. People are stealing things.”
“What house?”
“The house we have come so far to reach.”
Over her head, he can see the smoldering remains of door frames glow and fade with the
passage of the breeze. A hole in the roof frames the darkening sky.
Two more boys emerge from the soot carrying a portrait in a gilded frame, twice as tall as they
are, the visage of some long-dead great-grandfather glowering at the night. The locksmith holds up
his palms to delay them. “Was it airplanes?”
One says, “There’s plenty more inside.” The canvas of the painting ripples.
“Do you know the whereabouts of Monsieur Giannot?”

---

The other says, “Ran off yesterday. With the rest. London.”
“Don’t tell him anything,” says the first.
The boys jog down the driveway with their prize and are swallowed by the gloom.
“London?” whispers Marie-Laure. “The friend of the director is in London?”
Sheets of blackened paper scuttle past their feet. Shadows whisper in the trees. A ruptured
melon lolls in the drive like an amputated head. The locksmith is seeing too much. All day, mile
after mile, he let himself imagine they would be greeted with food. Little potatoes with hot cores
into which he and Marie-Laure would plunge forkfuls of butter. Shallots and mushrooms and hard-
boiled eggs and béchamel. Coffee and cigarettes. He would hand Monsieur Giannot the stone, and
Giannot would pull brass lorgnettes out of his breast pocket and fit their lenses over his calm eyes
and tell him: real or fake. Then Giannot would bury it in the garden or conceal it behind a hidden
panel somewhere in his walls, and that would be that. Duty fulfilled.