All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel(21)

Werner risks no questions. With every heartbeat comes a sharp longing to run.

They approach the gate of the largest house in the colony, a house he has seen a thousand times but never so close. A large crimson flag, heavy with rainwater, hangs from the sill of an upstairs window.

The corporal raps on a rear door. A maid in a high-waisted dress takes their coats, expertly flips off the water, and hangs them on a brass-footed rack. The kitchen smells of cake.

The corporal steers Werner into a dining room where a narrow-faced woman with three fresh daisies stuck through her hair sits in a chair turning the pages of a magazine. “Two wet ducks,” she says, and looks back at her magazine. She does not ask them to sit.

A thick red carpet sucks at the soles of Werner’s brogues; electric bulbs burn in a chandelier above the table; roses twine across the wallpaper. A fire smolders in the fireplace. On all four walls hang framed tintypes of glowering ancestors. Is this where they arrest boys whose sisters listen to foreign radio stations? The woman turns pages of her magazine, one after another. Her fingernails are bright pink.

A man comes down the stairs wearing an extremely white shirt. “Christ, he is little, isn’t he?” he says to the lance corporal. “You’re the famous radio repairman?” The man’s thick black hair looks lacquered to his skull. “Rudolf Siedler,” he says. He dismisses the corporal with a slight wag of his chin.

Werner tries to exhale. Herr Siedler buttons his cuffs and examines himself in a smoky mirror. His eyes are profoundly blue. “Well. Not a long-winded boy, are you? There’s the offending device.” He points to a massive American Philco in the adjacent room. “Two fellows have looked at it already. Then we heard about you. Worth a try, right? She”—he nods at the woman—“is desperate to hear her program. News bulletins too, of course.”

He says this in such a way that Werner understands the woman does not really wish to listen to news bulletins. She does not look up. Herr Siedler smiles as if to say: You and I, son, we know history takes a longer course, don’t we? His teeth are very small. “Take your time with it.”

Werner squats in front of the set and tries to calm his nerves. He switches it on, waits for the tubes to warm, then runs the dial carefully down the band, right to left. He runs the knob back toward the right. Nothing.

It is the finest radio he has ever laid hands on: an inclined control panel, magnetic tuning, big as an icebox. Ten-tube, all-wave, superheterodyne, with fancy gadrooned moldings and a two-tone walnut cabinet. It has shortwave, wide frequencies, a big attenuator—this radio costs more than everything at Children’s House put together. Herr Siedler could probably hear Africa if he wanted to.

Green and red spines of books line the walls. The lance corporal is gone. In the next room, Herr Siedler stands in a pool of lamplight, talking into a black telephone.

They are not arresting him. They merely want him to fix this radio.

Werner unscrews the backing and peers inside. The tubes are all intact, and nothing looks amiss. “All right,” he mumbles to himself. “Think.” He sits cross-legged; he examines the circuitry. The man and the woman and the books and the rain recede until there is only the radio and its tangle of wires. He tries to envision the bouncing pathways of electrons, the signal chain like a path through a crowded city, RF signal coming in here, passing through a grid of amplifiers, then to variable condensers, then to transformer coils . . .

He sees it. There are two breaks in one of the resistance wires. Werner peers over the top of the set: to his left, the woman reads her magazine; to his right, Herr Siedler speaks into the telephone. Every so often Herr Siedler runs his thumb and finger along the crease in his pin-striped trousers, sharpening it.

Could two men have missed something so simple? It feels like a gift. So easy! Werner rewinds the resistance track and splices the wires and plugs in the radio. When he turns it on, he half expects fire to leap out of the machine. Instead: the smoky murmur of a saxophone.

At the table the woman puts down her magazine and sets all ten fingers on her cheeks. Werner climbs out from behind the radio. For a moment his mind is clear of all feeling save triumph.

“He fixed it just by thinking!” the woman exclaims. Herr Siedler covers the mouthpiece of the telephone receiver and looks over. “He sat there like a little mouse and thought, and in half a minute it was fixed!” She flourishes her brilliant fingernails and breaks into childlike laughter.

Herr Siedler hangs up the phone. The woman crosses into the sitting room and kneels in front of the radio—she is barefoot, and her smooth white calves show beneath the hem of her skirt. She rotates the knob. There is a sputter, then a torrent of bright music. The radio produces a vivid, full sound: Werner has never heard another like it.

“Oh!” Again she laughs.

Werner gathers his tools. Herr Siedler stands in front of the radio and seems about to pat him on the head. “Outstanding,” he says. He ushers Werner to the dining table and calls for the maid to bring cake. Immediately it appears: four wedges on a plain white plate. Each is dusted with confectioners’ sugar and topped by a dollop of whipped cream. Werner gapes. Herr Siedler laughs. “Cream is forbidden. I know. But”—he puts a forefinger to his lips—“there are ways around such things. Go on.”

Werner takes a piece. Powdered sugar cascades down his chin. In the other room the woman twists the dial, and voices sermonize from the speaker. She listens awhile, then applauds, kneeling there in her bare feet. The stern faces in the tintypes stare down.