All the Light We Cannot See: a novel

Travel securely.
Does it mean to bring the stone or
leave it behind? Bring Marie-Laure or leave her behind? Travel by train? Or by some other,
theoretically more secure means?
And what if, the locksmith considers, the telegram was not sent from the director at all?
Round and round the questions run. When it is his turn at the window, he buys a ticket for a
single passenger on the morning train to Rennes and then on to Paris and walks the narrow, sunless
streets back to the rue Vauborel. He will go do this and then it will be over. Back to work, staff the
key pound, lock things away. In a week, he will ride unburdened back to Brittany and collect
Marie-Laure.
For supper Madame Manec serves stew and baguettes. Afterward he leads Marie-Laure up the
rickety flights of stairs to the third-floor bath. He fills the big iron tub and turns his back as she
undresses. “Use as much soap as you’d like,” he says. “I bought extra.” The train ticket remains
folded in his pocket like a betrayal.

---

She lets him wash her hair. Over and over Marie-Laure trawls her fingers through the suds, as
though trying to gauge their weight. There has always been a sliver of panic in him, deeply buried,
when it comes to his daughter: a fear that he is no good as a father, that he is doing everything
wrong. That he never quite understood the rules. All those Parisian mothers pushing buggies
through the Jardin des Plantes or holding up cardigans in department stores—it seemed to him that
those women nodded to each other as they passed, as though each possessed some secret
knowledge that he did not. How do you ever know for certain that you are doing the right thing?
There is pride, too, though—pride that he has done it alone. That his daughter is so curious, so
resilient. There is the humility of being a father to someone so powerful, as if he were only a
narrow conduit for another, greater thing. That’s how it feels right now, he thinks, kneeling beside
her, rinsing her hair: as though his love for his daughter will outstrip the limits of his body. The
walls could fall away, even the whole city, and the brightness of that feeling would not wane.
The drain moans; the cluttered house crowds in close. Marie turns up her wet face. “You’re
leaving. Aren’t you?”
He is glad, just now, that she cannot see him.
“Madame told me about the telegram.”
“I won’t be long, Marie. A week. Ten days at most.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow. Before you wake.”
She leans over her knees. Her back is long and white and split by the knobs of her vertebrae.
She used to fall asleep holding his index finger in her fist. She used to sprawl with her books
beneath the key pound bench and move her hands like spiders across the pages.
“Am I to stay here?”
“With Madame. And Etienne.”
He hands her a towel and helps her climb onto the tile and waits outside while she puts on her
nightgown. Then he walks her up to the sixth floor and into their little room, though he knows she
does not need to be guided, and he sits on the edge of the bed and she kneels beside the model and
sets three fingers on the steeple of the cathedral.
He finds the hairbrush, does not bother turning on the lamp.
“Ten days, Papa?”
“At most.” The walls creak; the window between the curtains is black; the town prepares to
sleep. Somewhere out there, German U-boats glide above underwater canyons, and thirty-foot
squid ferry their huge eyes through the cold dark.
“Have we ever spent a night apart?”
“No.” His gaze flits through the unlit room. The stone in his pocket seems almost to pulse. If he
manages to sleep tonight, what will he dream?
“Can I go out while you are gone, Papa?”
“Once I get back. I promise.”
As tenderly as he can, he draws the brush through the damp strands of his daughter’s hair.
Between strokes, they can hear the sea wind rattle the window.
Marie-Laure’s hands whisper across the houses as she recites the names of the streets. “Rue des
Cordiers, rue Jacques Cartier, rue Vauborel.”
He says, “You’ll know them all in a week.”
Marie-Laure’s fingers rove to the outer ramparts. The sea beyond. “Ten days,” she says.
“At most.”

---

Weakest (#2)
D
ecember sucks the light from the castle. The sun hardly clears the horizon before sinking away.
Snow falls once, twice, then stays locked over the lawns. Has Werner ever seen snow this white,
snow that was not fouled immediately with ash and coal dust? The only emissaries from the
outside world are the occasional songbird who lands in the lindens beyond the quadrangle, blown
astray by distant storm or battle or both, and two callow-faced corporals who come into the
refectory every week or so—always after the prayer, always just as the boys have placed the first
morsel of dinner in their mouths—to pass beneath the blazonry and stop behind a cadet and
whisper in his ear that his father has been killed in action.
Other nights a prefect yells