All the Light We Cannot See: a novel

Is it right to do something only
because everyone else is doing it?
Something in Werner’s soul shuts its scaly eyes, and the little
professor raises his pistol and fires it into the sky.
Volkheimer leaps immediately into a squat, his head coming around as the hounds release
toward him, and Werner’s heart feels as if it has been blown to pieces in his chest.
Volkheimer’s arms come up as the dogs charge him, but they know him; they are leaping on him
in play, barking and scampering, and Werner watches the huge boy throw off the dogs as if they
were housecats. Dr. Hauptmann laughs. His pistol smokes, and he takes a long drink from his flask
and passes it to Werner, and Werner puts it to his lips. He has pleased his professor after all; the
transceivers work; he is out in the luminous, starlit night feeling the stinging glow of brandy flow
into his gut—
“This,” says Hauptmann, “is what we’re doing with the triangles.”
The dogs circle and duck and romp. Hauptmann relieves himself beneath the trees. Volkheimer
trudges toward Werner lugging the big KX transmitter; he grows ever larger; he rests a huge
mittened hand on Werner’s cap.
“It’s only numbers,” he says, quietly enough that Hauptmann cannot hear.
“Pure math, cadet,” adds Werner, mimicking Hauptmann’s clipped accent. He presses his gloved
fingertips together, all five to five. “You have to accustom yourself to thinking that way.”
It is the first time Werner has heard Volkheimer laugh, and his countenance changes; he becomes
less menacing and more like a benevolent, humongous child. More like the person he becomes
when he listens to music.
All the next day the pleasure of his success lingers in Werner’s blood, the memory of how it
seemed almost holy to him to walk beside big Volkheimer back to the castle, down through the
frozen trees, past the rooms of sleeping boys ranked like gold bars in strongrooms—Werner felt an
almost fatherly protectiveness for the others as he undressed beside his bunk, as lumbering
Volkheimer continued on toward the dormitories of the upperclassmen, an ogre among angels, a
keeper crossing a field of gravestones at night.

---

Proposal
M
arie-Laure sits in her customary spot in the corner of the kitchen, closest to the fireplace, and
listens to the friends of Madame Manec complain.
“The price of mackerel!” says Madame Fontineau.” You’d think they had to sail to Japan for it!”
“I cannot remember,” says Madame Hébrard, the postmistress, “what a proper plum tastes like.”
“And these ridiculous shoe ration coupons,” says Madame Ruelle, the baker’s wife. “Theo has
number 3,501 and they haven’t even called 400!”
“It’s not just the brothels on the rue Thévenard anymore. They’re giving all the summer
apartments to the freelancers.”
“Big Claude and his wife are getting extra fat.”
“Damned 
Boches
have their lights on all day!”
“I cannot bear one more night stuck indoors with my husband.”
Nine of them sit around the square table, knees pressed to knees. Ration card restrictions,
abysmal puddings, the deteriorating quality of fingernail varnish—these are crimes they feel in
their souls. To hear so many of them in a room together confuses and excites Marie-Laure: they are
giddy when they should be serious, somber after jokes; Madame Hébrard cries over the
nonavailability of Demerara sugar; another woman’s complaint about tobacco disintegrates
midsentence into hysterics about the phenomenal size of the perfumer’s backside. They smell of
stale bread, of stuffy living rooms crammed with dark titanic Breton furnishings.
Madame Ruelle says, “So the Gautier girl wants to get married. The family has to melt all its
jewelry to get the gold for the wedding ring. The gold gets taxed thirty percent by occupation
authorities. Then the jeweler’s work is taxed another thirty percent. By the time they’ve paid him,
there’s no ring left!”
The exchange rate is a farce, the price of carrots indefensible, duplicity lives everywhere.
Eventually Madame Manec deadbolts the kitchen door and clears her throat. The women fall quiet.
“We’re the ones who make their world run,” Madame Manec says. “You, Madame Guiboux,
your son repairs their shoes. Madame Hébrard, you and your daughter sort their mail. And you,
Madame Ruelle, your bakery makes much of their bread.”
The air stretches tight; Marie-Laure has the sense that they are watching someone slide onto thin
ice or hold a palm over a flame.
“What are you saying?”
“That we do something.”
“Put bombs in their shoes?”
“Poop in the bread dough?”
Brittle laughter.
“Nothing so bold as all that. But we could do smaller things. Simpler things.”
“Like what?”
“First I need to know if you’re willing.”
A charged silence ensues. Marie-Laure can feel them all poised there. Nine minds swinging
slowly around. She thinks of her father—imprisoned for what?—and aches.
Two women leave, claiming obligations involving grandchildren. Others tug at their blouses and
rattle their chairs as though the temperature of the kitchen has gone up. Six remain. Marie-Laure

---

sits among them, wondering who will cave, who will tattle, who will be the bravest. Who will lie
on her back and let her last breath curl up to the ceiling as a curse upon the invaders.

---

You Have Other Friends
“L
ook out, Pusswood,” Martin Burkhard yells as Frederick crosses the quad. “I’m coming for you
tonight!” He convulses his pelvis maniacally.
Someone defecates on Frederick’s bunk. Werner hears Volkheimer’s voice: