All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel(71)
“And you, Madame? What would you like to be?”
“Me?” Madame Manec’s knife pauses. Crickets sing in the cellar. “I think I would like to be the Blade.”
“The Blade?”
“Yes.” The perfume of the peaches makes a bright ruddy cloud.
“The Blade?” repeats Marie-Laure. Then they both start laughing.
Dear Werner,
Why don’t you write? XXXXCENSOR MARKS HEREXXXX XXXXCENSOR MARKS HEREXXXX The foundries run day and night and the stacks never stop smoking and it’s been cold here so everyone burns everything to stay warm. Sawdust, hard coal, soft coal, lime, garbage. War widows XXXXCENSOR MARKS HEREXXXX XXXXCENSOR MARKS HEREXXXX and every day there are more. I’m working at the laundry with the twins, Hannah and Susanne, and Claudia F?rster, you remember her, we’re mending tunics and trousers mostly. I’m getting better with a needle so at least I’m not pricking myself all the time. Right now I just finished my homework. Do you have homework? There are fabric shortages and people bring in slipcovers, curtains, old coats. Anything that can be used they say must be used. Just like all of us here. Ha. I found this under your old cot. Seems like you could use it.
Love,
Jutta
Inside the homemade envelope waits Werner’s childhood notebook, his handwriting across the cover: Questions. Across its pages swarm boyhood drawings, inventions: an electric bed heater he wanted to build for Frau Elena; a bicycle with chains to drive both wheels. Can magnets affect liquids? Why do boats float? Why do we feel dizzy when we spin?
A dozen empty pages at the back. Juvenile enough, presumably, to make it past the censor.
Around him sounds the din of boots, clatter of rifles. Stocks on the ground, barrels against the wall. Grab cups off hooks, plates off racks. Queue up for boiled beef. Over him breaks a wave of homesickness so acute that he has to clamp his eyes.
Alive Before You Die
Madame Manec goes into Etienne’s study on the fifth floor. Marie-Laure listens on the stairs.
“You could help,” Madame says. Someone—likely Madame—opens a window, and the bright air of the sea washes onto the landing, stirring everything: Etienne’s curtains, his papers, his dust, Marie-Laure’s longing for her father.
Etienne says, “Please, Madame. Close the window. They are rounding up blackout offenders.”
The window stays open. Marie-Laure creeps down another stair.
“How do you know whom they round up, Etienne? A woman in Rennes was given nine months in prison for naming one of her hogs Goebbels, did you know that? A palm reader in Cancale was shot for predicting de Gaulle would return in the spring. Shot!”
“Those are only rumors, Madame.”
“Madame Hébrard says that a Dinard man—a grandfather, Etienne—was given two years in prison for wearing the Cross of Lorraine under his collar. I heard they’re going to turn the whole city into a big ammunition dump.”
Her great-uncle laughs softly. “It all sounds like something a sixth-former would make up.”
“Every rumor carries a seed of truth, Etienne.”
All of Etienne’s adult life, Marie-Laure realizes, Madame Manec has tended his fears. Skirted them, mitigated them. She creeps down one more stair.
Madame Manec is saying, “You know things, Etienne. About maps, tides, radios.”
“It’s already too dangerous, all those women in my house. People have eyes, Madame.”
“Who?”
“The perfumer, for one.”
“Claude?” She snorts. “Little Claude is too busy smelling himself.”
“Claude is not so little anymore. Even I can see his family gets more than the others: more meat, more electricity, more butter. I know how such prizes are won.”
“Then help us.”
“I don’t want to make trouble, Madame.”
“Isn’t doing nothing a kind of troublemaking?”
“Doing nothing is doing nothing.”
“Doing nothing is as good as collaborating.”
The wind gusts. In Marie-Laure’s mind, it shifts and gleams, draws needles and thorns in the air. Silver then green then silver again.
“I know ways,” says Madame Manec.
“What ways? Whom have you put your trust in?”
“You have to trust someone sometime.”
“If your same blood doesn’t run in the arms and legs of the person you’re next to, you can’t trust anything. And even then. It’s not a person you wish to fight, Madame, it’s a system. How do you fight a system?”
“You try.”
“What would you have me do?”
“Dig out that old thing in the attic. You used to know more about radios than anyone in town. Anyone in Brittany, perhaps.”
“They’ve taken all the receivers.”
“Not all. People have hidden things everywhere. You’d only have to read numbers, is how I understand it, numbers on strips of paper. Someone—I don’t know who, maybe Harold Bazin—will bring them to Madame Ruelle, and she’ll collect them and bake the messages right into the bread. Right into it!” She laughs; to Marie-Laure, her voice sounds twenty years younger.
“Harold Bazin. You are trusting Harold Bazin? You are cooking secret codes into bread?”