All the Light We Cannot See: a novel

Everyone is looking out for himself.
The first policeman snaps flesh off his apple with his teeth. Are they looking at her? To be so
close to them makes her feel faint. Etienne returns with both letters, and she can hear the men
passing the pages back and forth.
“Did he speak of anything before he left?”
“Of any particular activities or errands we should be aware of?”
Their French is good, very Parisian, but who knows where their loyalties lie? 
If your same
blood doesn’t run in the arms and legs of the person you’re next to, you can’t trust anything.

---

Everything feels compressed and submarine to Marie-Laure just then, as if the five of them have
been submerged into a murky aquarium overfull of fish, and their fins keep bumping as they shift
about.
She says, “My father is not a thief.”
Madame Manec’s hand squeezes hers.
Etienne says, “He seemed concerned for his job, for his daughter. For France, of course. Who
wouldn’t be?”
“Mademoiselle,” says the first man. He is talking directly to Marie-Laure. “Was there no
specific thing he mentioned?”
“Nothing.”
“He had many keys at the museum.”
“He turned in his keys before he left.”
“May we look at whatever he brought here with him?”
The second man adds, “His bags, perhaps?”
“He took his rucksack with him,” says Marie-Laure, “when the director asked him to return.”
“May we look anyway?”
Marie-Laure can feel the gravity in the room increase. What do they hope to find? She imagines
the radio equipment high above her: microphone, transceiver, all those dials and switches and
cables.
Etienne says, “You may.”
They go into every room. Third floor fourth fifth. On the sixth, they stand in her grandfather’s old
bedroom and open the huge wardrobe with its heavy doors and cross the hall and stand over the
model of Saint-Malo in Marie-Laure’s room and whisper to each other and then tromp back
downstairs.
They ask a total of one question: about three Free French flags rolled up in a second-floor
closet. Why does Etienne have them?
“You put yourself in jeopardy keeping those,” says the second policeman.
“You would not want the authorities to think you are terrorists,” says the first. “People have
been arrested for less.” Whether this is offered as favor or threat remains unclear. Marie-Laure
thinks: Do they mean Papa?
The policemen finish their search and say good night with perfect politeness and leave.
Madame Manec lights a cigarette.
Marie-Laure’s stew is cold.
Etienne fumbles with the fireplace grate. He shoves the flags one after another into the fire. “No
more. No more.” He says the second louder than the first. “Not here.”
Madame Manec’s voice: “They found nothing. There is nothing to find.”
The acrid smell of burning cotton fills the kitchen. Her great-uncle says, “You do what you like
with your life, Madame. You have always been there for me, and I will try to be there for you. But
you may no longer do these things in this house. And you may not do them with my great-niece.”

---

To My Dear Sister Jutta—
It is very difficult now. Even paper is hard to XXXXCENSOR MARKS HEREXXXX We
had XXXXCENSOR MARKS HEREXXXX no heat in the XXXXCENSOR MARKS
HEREXXXX. Frederick used to say there is no such thing as free will and that every
person’s path is predetermined for him just like XXXXCENSOR MARKS HEREXXXX and
that my mistake was that I XXXXCENSOR MARKS HEREXXXX XXXXCENSOR MARKS
HEREXXXX XXXXCENSOR MARKS HEREXXXX XXXXCENSOR MARKS HEREXXXX
XXXXCENSOR MARKS HEREXXXX XXXXCENSOR MARKS HEREXXXX XXXXCENSOR
MARKS HEREXXXX XXXXCENSOR MARKS HEREXXXX XXXXCENSOR MARKS
HEREXXXX XXXXCENSOR MARKS HEREXXXX XXXXCENSOR MARKS HEREXXXX
XXXXCENSOR MARKS HEREXXXX. I hope someday you can understand. Love to you and
Frau Elena too.
Sieg heil.

---

The Frog Cooks
I
n the weeks to come, Madame Manec is perfectly cordial; she walks with Marie-Laure to the
beach most mornings, takes her to the market. But she seems absent, asking how Marie-Laure and
Etienne are doing with perfect courtesy, saying good morning as if they are strangers. Often she
disappears for half a day.
Marie-Laure’s afternoons become longer, lonelier. One evening she sits at the kitchen table
while her great-uncle reads aloud.
The vitality which the snail’s eggs possess surpasses belief. We have seen certain species
frozen in solid blocks of ice, and yet regain their activity when subjected to the influences of
warmth.
Etienne pauses. “We should make supper. It doesn’t appear that Madame will be back tonight.”
Neither of them moves. He reads another page. 
They have been kept for years in pill boxes, and
yet on subjecting them to moisture, have crawled about appearing as well as ever . . . The shell
may be broken, and even portions of it removed, and yet after a certain lapse of time the injured