All the Light We Cannot See: a novel

Decency does not
matter to them.
“Bed-shitter,” spits a boy, “bring me my boots.”
Frederick pretends not to hear.
Night after night Werner retreats into Hauptmann’s laboratory. Three times now they have gone
out into the snow to track down Volkheimer’s transmitter, and each time they have found him more
directly. During the most recent field test, Werner managed to set up the transceivers, find the
transmission, and plot Volkheimer’s location on the map in under five minutes. Hauptmann
promises trips to Berlin; he unrolls schematics from an electronics factory in Austria and says,
“Several ministries have demonstrated enthusiasm for our project.”
Werner is succeeding. He is being loyal. He is being what everybody agrees is good. And yet
every time he wakes and buttons his tunic, he feels he is betraying something.
One night he and Volkheimer trudge back through the slush, Volkheimer carrying the transmitter,
both receivers, and the folded antenna under one arm. Werner walks behind, content to be in his
shadow. The trees drip; their branches seem moments away from erupting into bloom. Spring. In
two more months Volkheimer will be given his commission and go to war.
They stop a moment so Volkheimer can rest, and Werner bends to examine one of the
transceivers, draws a little screwdriver from his pocket, and tightens a loose hinge plate.
Volkheimer looks down at him with great tenderness. “What you could be,” he says.
That night Werner climbs into bed and stares up at the underside of Frederick’s mattress. A
warm wind blows against the castle, and somewhere a shutter bangs and snowmelt trickles down
the long downspouts. As quietly as he can manage, he whispers, “Are you awake?”
Frederick leans over the side of his bunk, and for a moment in the nearly complete darkness
Werner believes they will finally say to each other what they have not been able to say.
“You could go home, you know, to Berlin. Leave this place.”
Frederick only blinks.
“Your mother wouldn’t mind. She’d probably like to have you around. Franny too. Just for a
month. Even a week. As soon as you leave, the cadets will let up, and by the time you return,
they’ll have moved on to someone else. Your father wouldn’t even have to know.”
But Frederick tips back into his bed and Werner can no longer see him. His voice comes
reflecting down from the ceiling.
“Maybe it’d be better if we aren’t friends anymore, Werner.” Too loud, dangerously loud. “I
know it’s a liability, walking with me, eating with me, always folding my clothes and shining my
boots and tutoring me. You have your studies to think of.”
Werner clenches his eyes. A memory of his attic bedroom swamps him: clicking of mouse feet in
the walls, sleet tapping the window. The ceiling so sloped he could stand only in the spot closest
to the door. And the feeling that somewhere just behind his vision, ranged like spectators in a
gallery, his mother and father and the Frenchman from the radio were all watching him through the
rattling window to see what he would do.

---

He sees Jutta’s crestfallen face, bent over the pieces of their broken radio. He has the sensation
that something huge and empty is about to devour them all.
“That’s not what I meant,” Werner says into his blanket. But Frederick says nothing more, and
both boys lie motionless a long time, watching the blue spokes of moonlight rotate through the
room.

---

Old Ladies’ Resistance Club
M
adame Ruelle, the baker’s wife—a pretty-voiced woman who smells mostly of yeast but also
sometimes of face powder or the sweet perfume of sliced apples—straps a stepladder to the roof
of her husband’s car and drives the Route de Carentan at dusk with Madame Guiboux and
rearranges road signs with a ratchet set. They return drunk and laughing to the kitchen of Number 4
rue Vauborel.
“Dinan is now twenty kilometers to the north,” says Madame Ruelle.
“Right in the middle of the sea!”
Three days later, Madame Fontineau overhears that the German garrison commander is allergic
to goldenrod. Madame Carré, the florist, tucks great fistfuls of it into an arrangement headed for the
château.
The women funnel a shipment of rayon to the wrong destination. They intentionally misprint a
train timetable. Madame Hébrard, the postmistress, slides an important-looking letter from Berlin
into her underpants, takes it home, and starts her evening fire with it.
They come spilling into Etienne’s kitchen with gleeful reports that someone has heard the
garrison commander sneezing, or that the dog shit placed on a brothel doorstep reached the target
of a German’s shoe bottom perfectly. Madame Manec pours sherry or cider or Muscadet; someone
sits stationed by the door to serve as sentry. Small and stooped Madame Fontineau boasts that she
tied up the switchboard at the château for an hour; dowdy and strapping Madame Guiboux says she
helped her grandsons paint a stray dog the colors of the French flag and sent it running through the
Place Chateaubriand.
The women cackle, thrilled. “What can I do?” asks the ancient widow Madame Blanchard. “I
want to do something.”
Madame Manec asks everyone to give Madame Blanchard their money. “You’ll get it back,” she
says, “don’t worry. Now, Madame Blanchard, you’ve had beautiful handwriting all your life. Take
this fountain pen of Master Etienne’s. On every five-franc note, I want you to write,