All the Light We Cannot See: a novel

But I am letting myself be carried away by reveries which I must now put aside,
writes
Aronnax. 
Enough of these phantasies.
All day Marie-Laure lies on her stomach and reads. Logic, reason, pure science: these, Aronnax
insists, are the proper ways to pursue a mystery. Not fables and fairy tales. Her fingers walk the
tightropes of sentences; in her imagination, she walks the decks of the speedy two-funneled frigate
called the 
Abraham Lincoln.
She watches New York City recede; the forts of New Jersey salute
her departure with cannons; channel markers bob in the swells. A lightship with twin beacons
glides past as America recedes; ahead wait the great glittering prairies of the Atlantic.

---

The Principles of Mechanics
A
vice minister and his wife visit Children’s House. Frau Elena says they are touring orphanages.
Everyone washes; everyone behaves. Maybe, the children whisper, they are considering
adopting. The oldest girls serve pumpernickel and goose liver on the house’s last unchipped plates
while the portly vice minister and his severe-looking wife inspect the parlor like lords come to
tour some distasteful gnomish cottage. When supper is ready, Werner sits at the boys’ end of the
table with a book in his lap. Jutta sits with the girls at the opposite end, her hair frizzed and
snarled and bright white, so she looks as if she has been electrified.
Bless us O Lord and these Thy gifts
. Frau Elena adds a second prayer for the vice minister’s
benefit. Everyone falls to eating.
The children are nervous; even Hans Schilzer and Herribert Pomsel sit quietly in their brown
shirts. The vice minister’s wife sits so upright that it seems as if her spine is hewn from oak.
Her husband says, “And each of the children contributes?”
“Certainly. Claudia, for instance, made the bread basket. And the twins prepared the livers.”
Big Claudia Förster blushes. The twins bat their eyelashes.
Werner’s mind drifts; he is thinking about the book in his lap, 
The Principles of Mechanics
by
Heinrich Hertz. He discovered it in the church basement, water-stained and forgotten, decades old,
and the rector let him bring it home, and Frau Elena let him keep it, and for several weeks Werner
has been fighting through the thorny mathematics. Electricity, Werner is learning, can be static by
itself. But couple it with magnetism, and suddenly you have movement—waves. Fields and
circuits, conduction and induction. Space, time, mass. The air swarms with so much that is
invisible! How he wishes he had eyes to see the ultraviolet, eyes to see the infrared, eyes to see
radio waves crowding the darkening sky, flashing through the walls of the house.
When he looks up, everyone is staring at him. Frau Elena’s eyes are alarmed.
“It’s a book, sir,” announces Hans Schilzer. He tugs it out of Werner’s lap. The volume is heavy
enough that he needs both hands to hold it up.
Several creases sharpen in the forehead of the vice minister’s wife. Werner can feel his cheeks
flush.
The vice minister extends a pudgy hand. “Give it here.”
“Is it a Jew book?” says Herribert Pomsel. “It’s a Jew book, isn’t it?”
Frau Elena looks as if she’s about to speak, then thinks better of it.
“Hertz was born in Hamburg,” says Werner.
Jutta announces out of nowhere, “My brother is so quick at mathematics. He’s quicker than every
one of the schoolmasters. Someday he’ll probably win a big prize. He says we’ll go to Berlin and
study under the great scientists.”
The younger children gape; the oldest children snicker. Werner stares hard into his plate. The
vice minister frowns as he turns pages. Hans Schilzer kicks Werner in the shin and coughs.
Frau Elena says, “Jutta, that’s enough.”
The vice minister’s wife takes a forkful of liver and chews and swallows and touches her
napkin to each corner of her mouth. The vice minister sets down