All the Light We Cannot See: a novel

It is my favorite thing, I think, that I have ever seen. Sometimes I catch myself staring at
it and forget my duties. It seems big enough to contain everything anyone could ever feel.
Say hello to Frau Elena and the children who are left.

---

“Clair de Lune”
T
onight they work a section of the old city tucked against the southern ramparts. Rain falls so
lightly that it seems indistinguishable from fog. Werner sits in the back of the Opel; Volkheimer
drowses on the bench behind him. Bernd is up on the parapet with the first transceiver under a
poncho. He has not keyed his handset in hours, which means he is asleep. The only light comes
from the amber filament inside Werner’s signal meter.
The spectrum is all static and then it is not.
Madame Labas sends word that her daughter is pregnant. Monsieur Ferey sends love to his
cousins at Saint-Vincent.
A great gust of static shears past. The voice is like something from a long-ago dream. A half
dozen more words flutter through Werner in that Breton accent: 
Next broadcast Thursday 2300.
Fifty-six seventy-two something
. . . memory coming at Werner like a six-car train out of the
darkness, the quality of the transmission and the tenor of the voice matching in every respect the
broadcasts of the Frenchman he used to hear, and then a piano plays three single notes, followed by
a pair, the chords rising peacefully, each a candle leading deeper into a forest . . . The recognition
is immediate. It is as if he has been drowning for as long as he can remember and somebody has
fetched him up for air.
Just behind Werner, Volkheimer’s eyelids remain closed. Through the separator between the
shell and cab, he can see the motionless shoulders of the Neumanns. Werner covers the meter with
his hand. The song unspools, grows louder, and he waits for Bernd to key his microphone, to say
he has heard.
But nothing comes. Everyone is asleep. And yet hasn’t the little shell in which he and
Volkheimer sit gone electric?
Now the piano makes a long, familiar run, the pianist playing different scales with each hand—
what sounds like three hands, four—the harmonies like steadily thickening pearls on a strand, and
Werner sees six-year-old Jutta lean toward him, Frau Elena kneading bread in the background, a
crystal radio in his lap, the cords of his soul not yet severed.
The piano rills through its finishing measures, and then the static wallops back.
Did they hear? Can they hear his heart hammering right now against his ribs? There’s the rain,
falling lightly past the high houses. There’s Volkheimer, his chin resting on the acreage of his chest.
Frederick said we don’t have choices, don’t own our lives, but in the end it was Werner who
pretended there were no choices, Werner who watched Frederick dump the pail of water at his feet
—
I will not—
Werner who stood by as the consequences came raining down. Werner who watched
Volkheimer wade into house after house, the same ravening nightmare recurring over and over and
over.
He removes the headset and eases past Volkheimer to open the back door. Volkheimer opens one
eye, huge, golden, lionlike. He says, “
Nichts? 
”
Werner looks up at the stone houses arrayed wall to wall, tall and aloof, their faces damp, their
windows dark. No lamplight anywhere. No antennas. The rain falls so softly, almost soundlessly,
but to Werner it roars.
He turns. “
Nichts,
” he says. Nothing.

---

Antenna
A
n Austrian antiair lieutenant installs a detachment of eight at the Hotel of Bees. Their cook heats
oatmeal and bacon in the hotel kitchen while the other seven take apart walls on the fourth floor
with sledgehammers. Volkheimer chews slowly, glancing up every now and then to study Werner.