All the Light We Cannot See: a novel

A real diamond,
his father used to say, 
is never
entirely free of inclusions. A real diamond is never perfect
.
Had he expected it to be real? To be kept precisely where he wished it would be? To win such a
victory in a single day?
Of course not.
One might think von Rumpel would be frustrated, but he is not. On the contrary, he feels quite
hopeful. The museum would never have commissioned such a high-quality fake if they did not
possess the real thing somewhere. Over the past weeks in Paris, in the hours between other tasks,
he has narrowed a list of seven lapidaries to three, then to one: a half-Algerian named Dupont who
came of age cutting opal. It appears Dupont was making money before the war by faceting spinels
into false diamonds for dowagers and baronesses. Also for museums.
One February midnight, von Rumpel lets himself into Dupont’s fastidious shop not far from
Sacré-Coeur. He examines a copy of Streeter’s 
Precious Stones and Gems;
drawings of cleavage
panes; trigonometric charts used for faceting. When he finds several painstaking iterations of a
mold that match exactly the size and pear-cut shape of the stone in the vault at the museum, he
knows he has his man.
At von Rumpel’s request, Dupont is furnished with forged food-ration tickets. Now von Rumpel
waits. He prepares his questions: Did you make other replicas? How many? Do you know who has
them now?
On the last day of February 1941, a dapper little Gestapo man comes to him with the news that
the unwitting Dupont has tried to use the forged tickets. He has been arrested. 
Kinderleicht:
child’s
play.
It’s an attractive and drizzly winter’s night, scraps of melting snow shored up against the edges
of the Place de la Concorde, the city looking ghostly, its windows jeweled with raindrops. A
close-cropped corporal checks von Rumpel’s identification and points him not to a cell but to a

---

high-ceilinged third-story office where a typist sits behind a desk. On the wall behind her, a
painted wisteria vine frays into a tangled modernist spray of color that makes von Rumpel uneasy.
Dupont is cuffed to a cheap dining chair in the center of the room. His face has the color and
polish of tropical wood. Von Rumpel expected a mélange of fear and indignation and hunger, but
Dupont sits upright. One of the lenses of his eyeglasses is already fractured, but otherwise he looks
well enough.
The typist twists her cigarette into an ashtray, a bright red smear of lipstick on its butt. The
ashtray is full: fifty stubs squashed in there, limbless, somehow gory.
“You can go,” says von Rumpel, nodding at her, and levels his attention on the lapidary.
“He cannot speak German, sir.”
“We will be fine,” he says in French. “Shut the door, please.”
Dupont looks up, some gland within him leaching courage into his blood. Von Rumpel does not
have to force the smile; it comes easily enough. He hopes for names, but all he needs is a number.

---

Dearest Marie-Laure—
We are in Germany now and it is fine. I’ve managed to find an angel who will try to get this
to you. The winter firs and alders are very beautiful here. And—you are not going to
believe this, but you will have to trust me—they serve us wonderful food. First-class: quail
and duck and stewed rabbit. Chicken legs and potatoes fried with bacon and apricot tarts.
Boiled beef with carrots. Coq au vin on rice. Plum tarts. Fruits and crème glacée. As much
as we can eat. I so look forward to the meals!
Be polite to your uncle and Madame too. Thank them for reading this to you. And know