All the Light We Cannot See: a novel

Next broadcast Thursday 2300.
Werner heard the voice everyone was listening for, and what did he do? Lied. Committed
treason. How many men might be in danger because of this? And yet when Werner remembers
hearing that voice, when he remembers that song flooding his head, he trembles with joy.
Half of northern France is in flames. The beaches are devouring men—Americans, Canadians,
Brits, Germans, Russians—and all through Normandy, heavy bombers pulverize country towns.
But out here in Saint-Malo, the dune grass grows long and blue; German sailors still run drills in
the harbor; gunners still stockpile ammunition in the tunnels beneath the fort at La Cité.
The Austrians at the Hotel of Bees use a crane to lower an 88-millimeter cannon onto a bastion
in the ramparts. They bolt the gun to a cruciform mount and cover it with camouflage tarps.
Volkheimer’s crew works two nights in a row, and Werner’s memory plays tricks on him.
Madame Labas sends word that her daughter is pregnant.
So how, children, does the brain, which lives without a spark of light, build for us a world full
of light?
If the Frenchman employs the same transmitter that used to reach all the way to Zollverein, the
antenna will be big. Or else there will be hundreds of yards of wire. Either way: something high,
something sure to be visible.
On the third night after hearing the broadcast—Thursday—Werner stands in the hexagonal
bathtub beneath the queen bee. With the shutters pushed open, he can look to his left over a jumble
of slate rooftops. Shearwaters skim the ramparts; sleeves of vapor enshroud the steeple.
Whenever Werner contemplates the old city, it is the chimneys that strike him. They are huge,
stacked in rows of twenty and thirty along each block. Not even Berlin had chimneys like that.
Of course. The Frenchman must be using a chimney.
He hurries down through the lobby and paces the rue des Forgeurs, then the rue de Dinan.
Staring up at shutters, gutter lines, looking for cables bracketed to bricks, anything that might give
the transmitter away. He walks up and down until his neck aches. He has been gone too long. He
will be upbraided. Volkheimer already senses something amiss. But then, right at 2300 hours,
Werner sees it, hardly one block from where they parked the Opel: an antenna sliding up alongside
a chimney. Not much wider than a broomstick.
It rises perhaps twelve meters and then unfolds as if by magic into a simple 
T
.
A high house on the edge of the sea. A spectacularly good location from which to broadcast.
From street level, the antenna is all but invisible. He hears Jutta’s voice: 
I bet he does these
broadcasts from a huge mansion, big as this whole colony, a place with a thousand rooms and a
thousand servants.
The house is tall and narrow, eleven windows in its facade. Splotched with
orange lichen, its foundation furred with moss. Number 4 on the rue Vauborel.
Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever.
He walks fast to the hotel, head down, hands in his pockets.

---

Big Claude
L
evitte the perfumer is flabby and plump, basted in his own self-importance. While he talks, von
Rumpel struggles to keep his balance; the intermingling of so many odors in this shop overwhelms.
In the course of the past week, he has had to make a show of trips to a dozen different garden
estates up and down the Breton coast, forcing his way into summer homes to hunt down paintings
and sculptures that either do not exist or do not interest him. All of it to justify his presence here.
Yes, yes, the perfumer is saying, his gaze flitting over von Rumpel’s insignia, a few years ago he
helped authorities apprehend an out-of-towner who was taking measurements of buildings. He only
did what he knew was right.
“Where was he living during those months, this Monsieur LeBlanc?”
The perfumer squints, calculating. His blue-ringed eyes trumpet one message: