All the Light We Cannot See: a novel

See obstacles as

---

opportunities, Reinhold. See obstacles as inspirations.
“Is there somewhere,” he says, “we can
talk?”
The assistant director’s office occupies a dusty third-floor corner that overlooks the gardens:
walnut-paneled, underheated, decorated with pinned butterflies and beetles in alternating frames.
On the wall behind his half-ton desk hangs the only image: a charcoal portrait of the French
biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck.
The assistant director sits behind the desk, and von Rumpel sits in front with his basket between
his feet. The mineralogist stands. A long-necked secretary brings tea.
Hublin says, “We are always acquiring, yes? All across the world, industrialization endangers
mineral deposits. We collect as many types of minerals as exist. To a curator, none is superior to
any other.”
Von Rumpel laughs. He appreciates that they are trying to play the game. But don’t they
understand that the winner has already been determined? He sets down his cup of tea and says, “I
would like to see your most protected specimens. I am most specifically interested in a specimen I
believe you have only recently brought out from your vaults.”
The assistant director sweeps his left hand through his hair and releases a blizzard of dandruff.
“Sergeant Major, the minerals you’ve seen have aided discoveries in electrochemistry, in the
fundamental laws of mathematical crystallography. The role of a national museum is to operate
above the whims and fashions of collectors, to safeguard for future generations the—”
Von Rumpel smiles. “I will wait.”
“You misunderstand us, monsieur. You have seen everything we can show you.”
“I will wait to see what you cannot show me.”
The assistant director peers into his tea. The mineralogist shifts from foot to foot; he appears to
be wrestling with an interior fury. “I am quite gifted at waiting,” von Rumpel says in French. “It is
my one great skill. I was never much good at athletics or mathematics, but even as a boy, I
possessed unnatural patience. I would wait with my mother while she got her hair styled. I would
sit in the chair and wait for hours, no magazine, no toys, not even swinging my legs back and forth.
All the mothers were very impressed.”
Both Frenchmen fidget. Beyond the door of the office, what ears listen? “Please sit if you’d
like,” von Rumpel says to Hublin, and pats the chair next to him. But Hublin does not sit. Time
passes. Von Rumpel swallows the last of his tea and sets the cup very carefully on the edge of the
assistant director’s desk. Somewhere an electric fan whirs to life, runs awhile, and shuts down.
Hublin says, “It’s not clear what we’re waiting for, Sergeant Major.”
“I’m waiting for you to be truthful.”
“If I might—”
“Stay,” says von Rumpel. “Sit. I’m sure if one of you were to call out instructions, the
mademoiselle who looks like a giraffe will hear, will she not?”
The assistant director crosses and recrosses his legs. By now it is past noon. “Perhaps you
would like to see the skeletons?” tries the assistant director. “The Hall of Man is quite spectacular.
And our zoological collection is beyond—”
“I would like to see the minerals you do not reveal to the public. One in particular.”
Hublin’s throat splotches pink and white. He does not take a seat. The assistant director seems
resigned to an impasse and pulls a thick perfect-bound stack of paper from a drawer and begins to
read. Hublin shifts as if to leave, but von Rumpel merely says, “Please, stay until we have
resolved this.”
Waiting, thinks von Rumpel, is a kind of war. You simply tell yourself that you must not lose.

---

The assistant director’s telephone rings, and he reaches to pick it up, but von Rumpel holds up a
hand, and the phone rings ten or eleven times and then falls quiet. What might be a full half hour
passes, Hublin staring at his shoelaces, the assistant director making occasional notes in his
manuscript with a silver pen, von Rumpel remaining completely motionless, and then there is a
distant tapping on the door.
“Gentlemen?” comes the voice.
Von Rumpel calls, “We are fine, thank you.”
The assistant director says, “I have other matters to attend to, Sergeant Major.”
Von Rumpel does not raise his voice. “You will wait here. Both of you. You will wait here with
me until I see what I have come to see. And then we will all go back to our important jobs.”
The mineralogist’s chin trembles. The fan starts again, then dies. A five-minute timer, guesses
von Rumpel. He waits for it to start and die one more time. Then he lifts his basket into his lap. He
points to the chair. His voice is gentle. “Sit, Professor. You will be more comfortable.”
Hublin does not sit. Two o’clock out in the city, and bells toll in a hundred churches. Walkers
down on the paths. The last of autumn’s leaves spiraling to earth.
Von Rumpel unrolls the napkin across his lap, lifts out the cheese. He breaks the bread slowly,
sending a rich cascade of crust onto his napkin. As he chews, he can almost hear their guts
rumbling. He offers them nothing. When he finishes, he wipes the corners of his mouth. “You read
me wrong, messieurs. I am not an animal. I am not here to raze your collections. They belong to all
of Europe, to all of humanity, do they not? I am here only for something small. Something smaller
than the bone of your kneecaps.” He looks at the mineralogist as he says it. Who looks away,
crimson.
The assistant director says, “This is absurd, Sergeant Major.”
Von Rumpel folds his napkin and places it back in the basket and sets the basket on the ground.
He licks the tip of his finger and picks the crumbs off his tunic one by one. Then he looks directly
at the assistant director. “The Lycée Charlemagne, is that right? On the rue Charlemagne?”
The skin around the assistant director’s eyes stretches.
“Where your daughter goes to school?” Von Rumpel turns in his chair. “And the College
Stanislas, isn’t it, Dr. Hublin? Where your twin sons attend? On the rue Notre-Dame des Champs?
Wouldn’t those handsome boys be preparing to walk home right now?”
Hublin sets his hands on the back of the empty chair beside him, and his knuckles become very
white.
“One with a violin and the other a viola, am I correct? Crossing all those busy streets. That is a
long walk for ten-year-old boys.”
The assistant director is sitting very upright. Von Rumpel says, “I know it is not here, messieurs.
Not even the lowest janitor would be so stupid as to leave the diamond here. But I would like to
see where you have kept it. I would like to know what sort of place you believe is safe enough.”
Neither of the Frenchmen says anything. The assistant director resumes looking at his
manuscript, though it is clear to von Rumpel that he is no longer reading. At four o’clock the
secretary raps on the door and again von Rumpel sends her away. He practices concentrating only
on blinking. Pulse in his neck. Tock tock tock tock. Others, he thinks, would do this with less
finesse. Others would use scanners, explosives, pistol barrels, muscle. Von Rumpel uses the
cheapest of materials, only minutes, only hours.
Five bells. The light leaches out of the gardens.
“Sergeant Major, please,” says the assistant director. His hands flat on his desk. Looking up
now. “It is very late. I must relieve myself.”

---

“Feel free.” Von Rumpel gestures with one hand at a metal trash can beside the desk.
The mineralogist wrinkles his face. Again the phone rings. Hublin chews his cuticles. Pain
shows in the assistant director’s face. The fan whirs. Out in the gardens, the daylight unwinds from
the trees and still von Rumpel waits.
“Your colleague,” he says to the mineralogist, “he’s a logical man, isn’t he? He doubts the
legends. But you, you seem more fiery. You don’t want to believe, you tell yourself not to believe.
But you do believe.” He shakes his head. “You’ve held the diamond. You’ve felt its power.”
“This is ridiculous,” says Hublin. His eyes roll like a frightened colt’s. “This is not civilized
behavior. Are our children safe, Sergeant Major? I demand that you let us determine if our children
are safe.”
“A man of science, and yet you believe the myths. You believe in the might of reason, but you
also believe in fairy tales. Goddesses and curses.”
The assistant director inhales sharply. “Enough,” he says. “Enough.”
Von Rumpel’s pulse soars: has it already happened? So easily? He could wait two more days,
three, while ranks of men broke against him like waves.
“Are our children safe, Sergeant Major?”
“If you wish them to be.”
“May I use the telephone?”
Von Rumpel nods. The assistant director reaches for the handset, says “Sylvie” into it, listens
awhile, then sets it down. The woman enters with a ring of keys. From a drawer inside the
assistant director’s desk, she produces another key on a chain. Simple, elegant, long-shafted.
A small locked door at the back of the main-floor gallery. It takes two keys to open it, and the
assistant director seems inexperienced with the lock. They lead von Rumpel down a corkscrewing
stone staircase; at the bottom, the assistant director unlocks a second gate. They wind through
warrens of hallways, past a warder who drops his newspaper and sits ramrod straight as they
pass. In an unassuming storeroom filled with dropcloths and pallets and crates, behind a sheet of
plywood, the mineralogist reveals a simple combination safe that the assistant director opens
rather easily.
No alarms. Only the one guard.
Inside the safe is a second, far more interesting box. It is heavy enough that it requires both the
assistant director and the mineralogist to lift it out.
Elegant, its joinery invisible. No brand name, no combination dial. It is presumably hollow but
with no discernible hinges, no nails, no attachment points; it looks like a solid block of highly
polished wood. Custom work.
The mineralogist fits a key into a tiny, almost invisible hole on the bottom; when it turns, two
more tiny keyholes open on the opposite side. The assistant director inserts matching keys into
those holes; they unlock what looks like five different shafts.
Three overlapping cylinder locks, each dependent on the next.
“Ingenious,” whispers von Rumpel.
The entire box falls gently open.
Inside sits a small felt bag.
He says, “Open it.”
The mineralogist looks at the assistant director. The assistant director picks up the bag and
unties its throat and upends a wrapped bundle into his palm. With a single finger, he nudges apart
the folds. Inside lies a blue stone as big as a pigeon’s egg.

---

The Wardrobe
T
ownspeople who violate blackout are fined or rounded up for questioning, though Madame
Manec reports that at the Hôtel-Dieu, lamps burn all night long, and German officers go stumbling
in and out at every hour, tucking in shirts and adjusting trousers. Marie-Laure keeps herself awake,
waiting to hear her uncle stir. Finally she hears the door across the hall tick open and feet brush the
boards. She imagines a storybook mouse creeping out from its hole.
She climbs out of bed, trying not to wake her father, and crosses into the hall. “Uncle,” she
whispers. “Don’t be afraid.”
“Marie-Laure?” His very smell like that of coming winter, a tomb, the heavy inertia of time.
“Are you well?”
“Better.”
They stand on the landing. “There was a notice,” says Marie-Laure. “Madame has left it on your
desk.”
“A notice?”
“Your radios.”
He descends to the fifth floor. She can hear him sputtering. Fingers traveling across his newly
empty shelves. Old friends gone. She prepares for shouts of anger but catches half-hyperventilated
nursery rhymes instead: . . .