All the Light We Cannot See: a novel

Pipiry
flycatcher. Buff-breasted merganser. Red-cockaded woodpecker
. Many of them larger in the book
than in real life.
“Audubon,” Frederick says, “was an American. Walked the swamps and woods for years, back
when that whole country was just swamps and woods. He’d spend all day watching one individual
bird. Then he’d shoot it and prop it up with wires and sticks and paint it. Probably knew more than
any birder before or since. He’d eat most of the birds after he painted them. Can you imagine?”
Frederick’s voice trembles with ardency. Gazing up. “Those bright mists and your gun on your
shoulder and your eyes set firmly in your head?”
Werner tries to see what Frederick sees: a time before photography, before binoculars. And here
was someone willing to tramp out into a wilderness brimming with the unknown and bring back
paintings. A book not so much full of birds as full of evanescence, of blue-winged, trumpeting
mysteries.
He thinks of the Frenchman’s radio program, of Heinrich Hertz’s 
Principles of Mechanics—
doesn’t he recognize the thrill in Frederick’s voice? He says, “My sister would love this.”
“Father says we’re not supposed to have it. Says we have to keep it hidden up there behind the
basket because it’s American and was printed in Scotland. It’s just birds!”
The front door opens and footsteps clack across the foyer. Frederick hurries the volumes back
inside their slipcovers; he calls, “Mother?” and a woman wearing a green ski suit with white
stripes down the legs enters crying, “Fredde! Fredde!” She embraces her son and holds him back
with straight arms while she runs a fingertip over a mostly healed cut along his forehead. Frederick
looks off over her shoulder with a trace of panic on his face. Is he afraid that she’ll see he was
looking at the forbidden book? Or that she’ll be angry about his bruises? She does not say anything
but merely stares at her son, tangled in thoughts Werner cannot guess, then remembers herself.
“And you must be Werner!” The smile sweeps back onto her face. “Frederick has written lots
about you! Look at that hair! Oh, we adore guests.” She climbs the ladder and restores the heavy
Audubon volumes to their shelf one at a time, as though putting away something irritating. The
three of them sit at the vast oak table and Werner thanks her for the train ticket and she tells a story
about a man she “ran into just now, unbelievable really,” who apparently is a famous tennis player
and every now and then she reaches across and squeezes Frederick’s forearm. “You would have
been absolutely amazed,” she says more than once, and Werner studies his friend’s face to gauge
whether or not he would have been amazed, and Franny returns to set out wine and more
Rauchkäse and for an hour Werner forgets about Schulpforta, about Bastian and the black rubber
hose, about the Jewess upstairs—the 
things
these people have! A violin on a stand in the corner
and sleek furniture made from chromium steel and a brass telescope and a sterling silver chess set
behind glass and this magnificent cheese that tastes like smoke has been stirred into butter.
Wine glows sleepily in Werner’s stomach and sleet ticks down through the lindens when
Frederick’s mother announces that they are going out. “Tighten up your ties, won’t you?” She
applies powder beneath Frederick’s eyes and they walk to a bistro, the kind of restaurant Werner
has never dreamed of entering, and a boy in a white jacket, barely older than they are, brings more
wine.
A constant stream of diners come to their table to shake Werner’s and Frederick’s hands and ask
Frederick’s mother in low sycophantic voices about her husband’s latest advancement. Werner
notices a girl in the corner, radiant, dancing by herself, throwing her face to the ceiling. Eyes
closed. The food is rich, and every now and then Frederick’s mother laughs, and Frederick

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absently touches the makeup on his face while his mother says, “Well, Fredde has all the best there
at that school, all the best,” and seemingly every minute some new face comes along and kisses
Frederick’s mother on both cheeks and whispers in her ear. When Werner overhears Frederick’s
mother say to a woman, “Oh, the Schwartzenberger crone will be gone by year’s end, then we’ll
have the top floor,