All the Light We Cannot See: a novel

M. Etienne LeBlanc, age 63.
Mlle Marie-Laure LeBlanc, age 16.
All the dangers he is willing to endure. For the Reich. For himself.
No one stops him. No shells come whistling in. Sometimes the eye of a hurricane is the safest
place to be.

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What They Have
W
hen is it day and when night? Time seems better measured by flashes: Volkheimer’s field light
flicks off, flicks on.
Werner watches Volkheimer’s ash-dusted face in the reflected glow, his ministrations as he leans
over Bernd. 
Drink,
says Volkheimer’s mouth as he holds his canteen to Bernd’s lips, and shadows
lunge across the broken ceiling like a circle of wraiths preparing to feast.
Bernd twists his face away, panic in his eyes, and tries to examine his leg.
The flashlight switches off and the darkness rushes back.
In Werner’s duffel, he has his childhood notebook, his blanket, and dry socks. Three rations.
This is all the food they have. Volkheimer has none. Bernd has none. They have only two canteens
of water, each half-empty. Volkheimer has also discovered a bucket of paintbrushes in a corner
with some watery sludge in the bottom, but how desperate will they have to become to drink that?
Two stick grenades: Model 24s, one in each of the side pockets of Volkheimer’s coat. Hollow
wood handles on the bottom, high-explosive charges in a steel can on top—handheld bombs the
boys at Schulpforta called potato mashers. Twice already Bernd has begged Volkheimer to try one
on the impacted mess of the stairwell, to see if they can blast their way out. But to use a grenade
down here, in such close quarters, beneath rubble presumably littered with live 88-millimeter
shells, would be suicide.
Then there’s the rifle: Volkheimer’s bolt-action Karabiner 98K, loaded with five rounds.
Enough, thinks Werner. Plenty. They would need only three, one for each.
Sometimes, in the darkness, Werner thinks the cellar may have its own faint light, perhaps
emanating from the rubble, the space going a bit redder as the August day above them progresses
toward dusk. After a while, he is learning, even total darkness is not quite darkness; more than
once he thinks he can see his spread fingers when he passes them in front of his eyes.
Werner thinks of his childhood, the skeins of coal dust suspended in the air on winter mornings,
settling on windowsills, in the children’s ears, in their lungs, except down here in this hole, the
white dust is the inverse, as if he is trapped in some deep mine that is the same but also the
opposite of the one that killed his father.
Dark again. Light again. Volkheimer’s antic ash-dusted face materializes in front of Werner, his
rank insignia partially torn off one shoulder. With the beam of his field light, he shows Werner that
he is holding two bent screwdrivers and a box of electrical fuses. “The radio,” he says into
Werner’s good ear.
“Have you slept at all?”
Volkheimer turns the light onto his own face. 
Before we run out of battery,
says his mouth.
Werner shakes his head. The radio is hopeless. He wants to close his eyes, forget, give up. Wait
for the rifle barrel to touch his temple. But Volkheimer wants to make an argument that life is worth
living.
The filaments of the bulb inside his field light glow yellow: weaker already. Volkheimer’s
illuminated mouth is red against the blackness. 
We are running out of time,
his lips say. The
building groans. Werner sees green grass, crackling flies, sunlight. The gates of a summer estate
opening wide. When death comes for Bernd, it might as well come for him also. Save a second
trip.

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