191007(61)〜200907(62)

 p.250〜p.296

 

 

CHAPTER THREE: JUNE 1940

 

 

 

WEAKEST

 

250

01  The warrant officer in charge of field exercises is the commandant, an overzealous schoolmaster named Bastian with an expensive walk and a round belly and a coat quivering with war medals.

02  His face is scarred from smallpox and his shoulders look as though they’ve been hewn from soft clay.

03  He wears hobnailed jackboots every second of everyday, and the cadets joke that he kicked his way out of the womb with them.

 

01  Bastian demands that they memorize maps, study the angle of the sun, cut their own belts from cowhide.

02  Every afternoon, whatever the weather, he stands in a field bawling state-sown dicta: 

03  “Prosperity depends on ferocity.

04  The only things that keep your precious grandmothers in their tea and cookies are the fists at the end of your arms.”

 

01 An antique pistol dangles from his belt; the most eager cadets look up at him with shining eyes.

02  To Werner, he looks capable of severe and chronic violence.

 

251

01  “The corps is a body,” he explains, twirling a length of rubber hose so that its tip whirs inches from a boy’s nose.

02  “No different from a man’s body.

03  Just as we ask you to each drive the weakness from own bodies, so you must also learn to drive the weaknesses from the corps.”

 

01  One October afternoon, Bastian plucks a pigeon-toed boy from the line.

02  “You’ll be the first.

03  Who are you?” 

 

01  “Backer, sir.”

 

01  “Backer. Tell us, Backer.

02  Who is the weakest member of this group?”

 

01  Werner quails.

02  He is smaller than every cadet in his year.

03  He tries to expand his chest, stand as tall as he can.

04  Backer’s gaze rakes across the rows.

05  “Him, sir?”

 

01  Werner exhales; Backer has chosen a boy far to Werner’s right, one of the few boys with black hair.

02  Ernst Somebody.

03  A safe enough choice: Ernst is in fact a slow runner.

04  A boy who has yet to grow into his horsey legs.

 

01  Bastian calls Ernst forward.

02  The boy’s bottom lip trembles as he turns to face the group. 

 

01  “Getting all weepy won’t help,” says Bastian, and gestures vaguely to the far end of the field, where a line of trees cuts across the weeds.

02  “You’ll have a ten-second head start.

03  Make it to me before they make it to you.

04  Got it?”

 

01  Ernst neither nods nor shakes his head.

02  Bastian feigns frustration.

03  “When I raise my left hand, you run.

 

251

01  When I raise my right hand, the rest of you fools run.”

02  Off Bastian waddles, rubber hose around his neck, pistol swinging at his side.

 

01  Sixty boys wait, breathing.

02  Werner thinks of Jutta with her opalescent hair and quick eyes and blunt manners: she wound never be mistaken for the weakest.

03  Ernst Somebody is shaking everywhere now, all the way down to his wrists and ankles.

04  When Bastian is maybe two hundred yards away, he turns and raises his left hand.

 

01  Ernst runs with his arms nearly straight and his legs wide and unhinged.

02  Bastian counts down from ten.

03  “Three,” yells his faraway voice.

04  “Two.  One.”

05  At zero, his right arm goes up and the group unleashes.

06  The dark-haired boy is at least fifty yards in front of them, but immediately the pack begins to gain. 

 

01  Hurrying, scampering, running hard, fifty-nine fourteen-year-olds chaise one.  

02  Werner keeps to the center of the group as it strings out, his heart beating in dark confusion, wondering where Frederick is, why they’re chasing this boy, and what they’re supposed to do if they catch him.

 

01  Except in some atavistic part of his brain, he knows exactly what they’ll do.

 

01  A few outrunners are exceptionally fast; they gain on the lone figure.

02  Ernst’s limbs, pump furiously, but he clearly is not accustomed to sprinting, and he loses steam.

 

253

01  The grass waves, the trees are transected by sunlight, the pack draws closer, and Werner feels annoyed:

02  Why could’t Ernst be faster?

03  Why hasn’t he practiced?

04  How did he make it through the entrance exams?

 

01  The fastest cadet is lunging for the back of the boy’s shirt.

02  He almost has him.

03  Black-haired Ernst is going to be caught, and Werner wonders if some part of him wants it to happen.

04  But the boy makes it to the commandant a split second before the others come pounding past.

 

 

 

 

MANDATORY SURRENDER

 

254

01  Marie-Laure has to badger her father three times before he’ll read the notice aloud: 

02  Members of the population must relinquish all radio receivers now in their possession.

03  Radio sets are to be delivered to 27 rue de Chartres before tomorrow noon.

04  Anyone failing to carry out this order will be arrested as a saboteur.

 

01  No one says anything  for a moment, and inside Marie-Laure, an old anxiety lumbers to its feet. 

02  “Is he ―― ?”

 

01  “In your grandfather’s old room,” says Madame Manec.

 

01  Tomorrow noon.

02  Half the house, thinks Marie-Laure, is taken up by wireless receivers and the parts that go into them.

 

01  Madame Manec raps on the door to Henri’s room and receives no reply.

02  In the afternoon they box up the equipment in Etienne’s study, Madame and Papa unplugging radios and rolling them into crates, Marie-Laure sitting on the davenport listening to the sets go off one by one: the old Radiola Five; a G.M.R Titan; a G.M.R. Orphee.

 

255

01  A Delco thirty-two-volt farm radio that Etienne had shipped all the way from the United States in 1922.

02  Her father wraps the largest in cardboard and uses an ancient wheeled dolly to thump it down the stairs.

03  Marie-Laure sits with her fingers going numb in her lap and thinks of the machine in the attic, its cables and switches.

04  A transmitter built to talk to ghosts.

05  Does it qualify as a radio receiver?

06  Should she mention it?

07  Do Papa and Madame Manec know?

08  They seem not to.

09  In the evening, fog moves into the city, trailing a cold, fishy smell, and they eat potatoes and carrots in the kitchen and Madame Manec leaves a dish outside Henri’s door and taps but the door does not open and the food remains untouched.

 

01  “What,” asks Marie-Laure, “will they do with the radios?”

02  “Send them to Germany,” says Papa.

03  “Or pitch them in the sea,” says Madame Manec.

04  “Come, child, drink your tea.

05  It’s not the end of the world.

06  I’ll put an extra blanket on your bed tonight.”

 

01  In the morning Etienne remains shut inside his brother’s room.

02  If he knows what is happening in his house, Marie-Laure cannot tell.

03  At ten A.M. her father starts wheeling loads to the rue de Chartres, one trip, two trips, three,

and when he comes back and loads the dolly with the last radio, Etienne still has not appeared.

 

256

01  Marie-Laure holds Madame Manec’s hand as she listens to the gate clang shut, to the cart’s axle bounce as her father pushes it down the rue Vauborel, and to the silence that reinstalls itself after he’s gone.

 

 

 

MUSEUM

 

257

01  Sergeant Major Reinhold von Rumpel wakes early.

02  He upholsters himself in his uniform, pockets his loupe and tweezers, rolls up his white gloves.

03  By six A.M. he’s in the hotel lobby in full dress, polish on his shoes, pistol case snapped shot.

04  The hotelkeeper brings him bread and cheese in a basket made from a dark wicker, covered nicely with a cotton napkin: everything shipshape.

 

01  There is great pleasure in being out in the city before the sun is up, streetlights glowing, the hum of a Parisian day commencing.

02  As he walks up the rue Cuvier and turns into the Jardin des Plantes, the trees look misty and significant: parasols held up just for him.

 

01  He likes being early.

 

01  At the entrance to the Grand Gallery, two night warders stiffen. 

02  They glance at the stripes on his collar patch and sleeves; the cords in their throats tighten.

03  A small man in black flannel comes down the staircase apologizing in German; he says he is the assistant director.

 

257

01  He did not expect the sergeant major for another hour.

 

01  “We can speak French,” says von Rumpel.

 

01  Behind him scurries a second man with eggshell skin and an evident terror of eye contact.

 

01  “We would be honored to show you the collections, Sergeant Major,” breathes the assistant director. 

02  “This is the mineralogist, Professor Hublin.”

03  Hublin blinks twice, gives the impression of a penned animal.

04  The pair of warders watch from the end of corridor.

 

01  “May I take your basket?”

 

01  “It’s no trouble.”

 

01 The Gallery of Mineralogy is so long, von Rumpel can hardly see the end of it.

02  In sections, display case after display case sits vacant, little shapes on their felted shelves marking the silhouettes of whatever has been removed.

03  Von Rumpel strolls with his basket on his arm, forgetting to do anything but look.

04  What treasures they left behind!

05  A gorgeous set of yellow topaz crystal on a gray matrix.

06  A great pink hunk of beryl like a crystallized brain.

07  A violet column of tourmaline from Madagascar that looks so rich he cannot resist the urge to stroke it.

08  Bournonite; apatite on muscovite, natural zircon in a spray of colors; dozens more minerals he  cannot name.

09  These men, he thinks, probably handle more gemstones in a week than he has seen in his lifetime.

 

259

01  Each piece is registered in huge organizational folios that have taken centuries to amass.

02  The pallid Hublin shows him pages.

03  “Louis XIII began the collection as a Cabinet of Medicines, jade for kidneys, clay for the stomach, and so on.

04  There were already two hundred thousand entries in the catalog by 1850, a priceless mineral heritage. . .”

 

01  Every now and then von Rumpel pulls his notebook from his pocket and makes a notation.

02  He takes his time.

03  When they reach the end, the assistant director laces his fingers across his belt.

04  “We hope you are impressed, Sergeant Major?

05  You enjoyed your tour?”

 

01  “Very much.”

02  The electric lights in the ceiling are far apart, and the silence in the huge place is oppressive.

03  “But,” he says, enunciating very slowly, “what about the collections that are not on public display? ”

 

01  The assistant director and the mineralogist exchange a glance.

02  “You have seen everything we can show you, Sergeant Major.”

 

01  Von Rumpel keeps his voice polite.

02  Civilized.

03  Paris is not Poland, after all.

04  Waves must be made carefully.

05  Things cannot simply be seized.

06  What did his father used to say?

07  See obstacles as opportunities, Reinhold.”

08  See obstacles as inspirations.

09  “Is there somewhere,” he says, “we can talk?” 

 

260

00  The assistant director’s office occupies a dusty third-floor corner that overlooks the gardens: walnut-paneled, underheated, decorated with pinned butterflies and beetles in alternating flames.

 

01  On the wall behind his half-ton desk hangs the only image: a charcoal portrait of the French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck.

02  The assistant director sits behind the desk, and von Rumpel sits in front with his basket between his feet.

03  The mineralogist stands.

04  A long-necked secretary brings tea.

 

01  Hublin says, “We are always acquiring, yes?

02  All across the world, industrialization endangers mineral deposits.

03  We collect as many types of minerals as exist.

04  To a curator, none is superior to any other.”

 

01  Von Rumpel laughs.

02  He appreciates that they are trying to play the game. 

03  But don’t they understand that the winner has already been determined?

04  He sets down his cup of tea and says, “I would like to see your most protected specimens.

05  I am most specifically interested in a specimen I believe you have only recently brought out from  your vaults.”

 

01  The assistant director sweeps his left hand through his hair and releases a blizzard of dandruff.

02  “Sergeant Major, the minerals you’ve seen have aided discoveries in electrochemistry, in the fundamental laws of mathematical crystallography.

03  The role of a national museum is to operate above the whims and fashions of correctors, the safeguard for future generations the ― ”

 

261

01  Von Rumpel smiles.

02  “I will wait.”

 

01  “You misunderstand us, monsieur.

02  You have seen everything we can show you.”

 

01  “I will wait to see what you cannot show me.”

 

01  The assistant director peers into his tea.

02  The mineralogist shifts from foot to foot; he appears to be wrestling with an interior fury.

03  “I am quite gifted at waiting,” von Rumpel says in French.

04  “It is my one great skill.

05  I was never much good at athletics or mathematics, but even as a boy, I possessed unnatural patience.

06  I would wait with my mother while she got her hair styled.

07  I would sit in the chair and wait for hours, no magazine, no toys, not even swinging my legs back and forth.

08  All the mothers were very impressed.”

 

01  Both French men fidget.

02  Beyond the door of the office, what ears listen?

03  “Please sit if you’d like,” von Rumpel says to Hublin, and pats the chair next to him.

04  But Hublin does not sit.

05  Time passes.

06  Von Rumpel swallows the last of his tea and sets the cup very carefully on the edge to the assistant director’s desk.

07  Somewhere an electric fan whirls to life, runs awhile, and shuts down.

 

01  Hublin says, “It’s not clear what we’re waiting for, Sergeant Major.”

 

01  “I’m waiting for you to be truthful.”

 

01  “If I might ―”

 

01  “Stay,” says von Rumpel.

02  “Sit.

03  I’m sure if one of you were to call out instructions, the mademoiselle who looks like a giraffe will hear, will she not?”

 

262

01  The assistant director crosses and recrosses his legs.

02  By now it is past noon.

03  “Perhaps you would like to see the skeletons,” tries the assistant director.

04  “The Hall of Man is quite spectacular.

05  And our zoological collection is beyond ―”

 

01  “I would like to see the minerals you do not reveal to the public.

02  One in particular.”

 

01  Hublin’s throat splotches pink and white.

02  He does not take a seat.

03  The assistant director seems resigned to an impasse and pulls a thick perfect-bound stack of paper from a drawer and begins to read.

04  Hublin shifts as if to leave, but von Rumpel merely says, “Please, stay until we have resolved this.”

 

01  Waiting, thinks von Rumpel, is a kind of war.

02  You simply tell yourself that you must not lose.

03  The assistant director’s telephone rings, and he reaches to pick it up, but von Rumpel holds up a hand, and the phone rings ten or eleven times and then falls quiet.

04  What might be a full half hour passes, Hublin staring at his shoelaces, the assistant director making occasional notes in his manuscript with a silver pen, von Rumpel remaining completely motionless, and then there is a distant tapping on the door.

 

01  “Gentlemen,” comes the voice.

 

01  Von Rumpel calls, “We are fine, thank you.”

 

01  The assistant director says, “I have other matters to attend to, Sergeant Major.”

 

263

01  Von Rumpel does not raise his voice. 

02  “You will wait here.

03  Both of you.

04  You will wait here with me until I see what I have come to see.

05  And then we will all go back to our important jobs.”

 

01  The mineralogist’s chin trembles.

02  The fan starts again, and dies.

03  A five-minute timer, guesses von Rumpel.

04  He waits for it to start and die one more time.

05  Then he lifts his basket into his lap.

06  He points to the chair.

07  His voice is gentle.

08  “Sit, Professor.

09  You will be more comfortable.”

 

01  Hublin does not sit.

02  Two o’clock out in the city, and bells toll in a hundred churches. 

03  Walkers down on the paths.

04  The last of autumn’s leaves spiraling to earth.

 

01  Von Rumpel unrolls the napkin across his lap, lifts out the cheese.

02  He breaks the bread slowly, sending a rich cascade of crust onto his napkin. 

03  As he chews, he can almost hear their guts rumbling.

04  He offers them nothing.

05  When he finishes, he wipes the corners of his mouth.

06  “You read me wrong, messieurs.

07  I am not an animal.

08  I am not here to raze your collections.

09  They belong to all of Europe, to all of humanity, do they not?

10  I am here only for something small.

11  Something smaller than the bone of your kneecaps.”

12  He looks at the mineralogist as he says it.

13  Who looks away, crimson.

 

01  The assistant director says, “This is absurd, Sergeant Major.”

 

264

01  Von Rumpel folds his napkin and places it back in the basket and sets the basket on the ground.

02  He licks the tips of his finger and picks the crumbs off his tunic one by one. 

03  Then he looks directly at the assistant director.

04  “The Lycee Charlemagne, is that right?

05  On the rue Charlemagne?”

 

01  The skin around the assistant director’s eyes stretches.

 

01  “Where your daughter goes to school?”

02  Von Rumpel turns in his chair.

03  “And the College Stanislas, isn’t it, Dr. Hublin?

04  Where your twin sons attend.

05  On the rue Notre-Dame des Champs?

06  Wouldn’t those handsome boys be preparing to walk home right now?

 

01  Hublin sets his hands on the back of the empty chair beside him, and his knuckles become very white.

 

01  “One with a violin, the other a viola, am I correct?

02  Crossing all those busy streets.

03  That is a long walk for ten-year-old boys.”

 

01  The assistant director is sitting very upright.

02  Von Rumpel says, “I know it is not here, messieurs.

03  Not even the lowest janitor would be so stupid as to leave the diamond here.

04  But I would like to see where you have kept it.

05  I would like to know what sort of place you believe is safe enough.”

 

01  Neither of the French men says anything.

02  The assistant director resumes looking at his manuscript, thought it is clear to von Rumpel that he is no longer reading.

 

264

01  At four o’clock the secretary raps on the door and again von Rumpel sends her away.

02  He practices concentrating only on blinking.

03  Pulse in his neck.

04  Tock tock tock tock.

05  Others, he thinks, would do this with less finesse.

06  Others would use scanners, explosives, pistol barrels, muscle.

07  Von Rumpel uses the cheapest of materials, only minutes, only hours.

 

01  Five bells.

02  The light leaches out of the gardens.

 

01  “Sergeant Major, please,” says the assistant director.

02  His hands flat on his desk.

03  Looking up now.

04  “It is very late.

05  I  must relieve myself.”

 

01  “Feel free.”

02  Von Rumpel gestures with one hand at a metal trash can behind the desk.

 

01  The mineralogist wrinkles his face.

02  Again the phone rings.

03  Hublin chews his cuticles.

04  Pain shows in the assistant director’s face.

05  The fan whirs.

06  Out in the gardens, the daylight unwinds from the trees and still von Rumpel waits. 

 

01  “Your colleague,” he says to the mineralogist, “he’s a logical man, isn’t he? 

02  He doubts the legends.

03  But you, you seem more fiery.

04  You don’t want to believe, you tell yourself not to believe.

05  But you do believe.”

06  He shakes his head.

07  “You’ve held the diamond.

08  You’ve felt its power.”

 

01  “This is ridiculous,” says Hublin.

02  His eyes roll like a frightened colt’s.

03  “This is not civilized behavior.

04  Are our children safe, Sergeant Major?

 

266

01  I demand that you let us determine if our children are safe.”

 

01  “A man of science, and yet you believe the myths.

02  You believe in the might of reason, but you also believe in fairy tales.

03  Goddesses and curses.”

 

01  The assistant director inhales sharply.

02  “Enough,” he says.

03  “Enough.”

 

01  Von Rumpel’s pulse soars: has it already happened?

02  So easily?

03  He could wait two more days, three, while ranks of men broke against him like waves.

 

01  “Are our children safe, Sergeant Major?”

 

01  “If you wish them to be.”

 

01  “May I use the telephone?”

 

01  Von Rumpel nods.

02  The assistant director reaches for the handset, says ”Sylvie” into it, listens awhile, then sets it down.

03  The woman enters with a ring of keys.

04  From a drawer inside the assistant director’s desk, she produces another key on the chain.

05  Simple, elegant, long-shafted.

 

01  A small locked door at the back of the main-floor gallery.

02  It takes two keys to open it, and the assistant director seems inexperienced with the lock.

03  They lead von Rumpel down a corkscrewing stone staircase; at the bottom, the assistant director unlocks a second gate.

04  They wind through warrens of hallways, past a warder who drops his newspaper and sits ramrod straight as they pass.

 

267

00  In an unassuming storeroom filled with dropcloths and pallets and crates, behind a sheet of plywood, the mineralogist reveals a simple combination safe that the assistant director opens rather easily.

 

01  No alarms.

02  Only the one guard.

 

01  Inside the safe is a second, far more interesting box.

02  It is heavy enough that it requires both the assistant director and the mineralogist to lift it out.

 

01  Elegant, its joinery invisible.

02  No brand name, no combination dial.

03  It is presumably hollow but with no discernible hinges, no nails, no attachment points; it looks like a solid block of highly polished wood.

04  Custom work.

 

01  The mineralogist fits a key into a tiny, almost invisible hole on the bottom; when it turns, two more tiny keyholes open on the opposite side.

02  The assistant director inserts matching keys into those holes; they unlock what looks like five different shafts.

 

01  Three overlapping cylinder locks, each dependent on the next.

 

01  “Ingenious,” whispers von Rumpel.

 

01  The entire box falls gently open.

 

01  Inside sits a small felt bag.

 

01  He says, “Open it.”

 

01  The mineralogist looks at the assistant director.

02  The assistant director picks up the bag and unties its throat and upends a wrapped bundle into his palm.

 

268

00  With a single finger, he nudges apart the folds.

01  Inside lies a blue stone as big as a pigeon’s egg.

 

 

 

THE WARDROBE

 

269

01  Townspeople who violate blackout are fined or rounded up for questioning, though Madame Manec reports that at the Hotel-Dieu, lamps burn all night long, and German officers go stumbling in and out at every hour, tucking in shirts and adjusting trousers.

02  Marie-Laure keeps herself awake, waiting to hear her uncle stir.

03  Finally she hears the door across the hall tick open and feet brush the boards.

04  She imagines a storybook mouse creeping out from its hole.

 

01  She climbs out of bed, trying not to wake her father, and crosses into the hall.

02  “Uncle,” she whispers.

03  “Don’t be afraid.”

 

01  “Marie-Laure?”

02  His very smell like that of coming winter, a tomb, the heavy inertia of time.

 

01  “Are you well?”

 

01  “Better.”

 

01  They stand on the landing.

02  “There was a notice,” says Marie-Laure.

03  “Madame has left it on your desk.”

 

270

01  “A notice?”

02  “Your radios.”

03  He descends to the fifth floor.

04  She can hear him sputtering.

05  Fingers traveling across his newly empty shelves.

06  Old friends gone.

07  She prepares for shouts of anger but catches half-hyperventilated nursery rhymes instead: . . .

08  a la salade je suis malade au celeli je suis guéri . . .

 

01  She takes his elbow, helps him to the davenport.

02  He is still murmuring, trying to talk himself off some innermost ledge, and she can feel fear pumping off him, virulent, toxic: it reminds her of fumes billowing off the vats of formalin in the Department of Zoology.

 

01  Rain taps at the windowpanes.

02  Etienne’s voice comes from a long way off.

03  “All of them?”

04  “Not the radio in the attic.

05  I did not mention it.

06  Does Madame Manec know about it?”

 

01  “We have never spoken of it.”

02  “Is it hidden, Uncle?

03  Could someone see it if the house were searched? ” 

04  “Who would search the house?” 

 

01  A silence follows.

 

01  He says, “We could still turn it in.

02  Say we overlooked it?”

 

01  “The deadline was yesterday at noon.”

 

01  “They might understand.”

 

01  “Uncle, do you really believe they will understand you have overlooked a transmitter that can reach England?”

 

271

01  More agitated breaths.

02  The wheeling of the night on its silent trunnions.

03  “Help me,” he says.

04  He finds an automobiles jack in a third-floor room, and together they go up to the sixth floor and shut the door of her grandfather’s room and kneel beside the massive wardrobe without risking the light of a single candle.

05  He slides the jack under the wardrobe and clanks up the left side.

06  Under its feet he slips folded rags; then he jacks up the other side and does the same.

07  “Now, Marie-Laure, put your hands here.

08  And push.”

09  With a thrill, she understands: they are going to park the wardrobe in front of the little door leading to the attic.

 

01  “All your might, ready?

02  One two three.” 

 

01  The huge wardrobe slides an inch.

02  The heavy mirrored doors knock lightly as it glides.

03  She feels as if they are pushing a house across ice.

 

01  “My father,” says Etienne, panting, “used to say Christ Himself could not have carried this wardrobe up here.

02  That they must have built the house around it.

03  Another now, ready?”

 

01  They push, rest, push, rest.

02  Eventually the wardrobe settles in front of the little door, and the entrance to the attic is walled off.

03  Etienne jacks up each foot again, pulls out the rags, and sinks to the floor, breading hard, and Marie-Laure sits beside him.

 

272

01  Before dawn rolls across the city, they are asleep. 

 

 

 

 

BLACKBIRDS

 

273

01  Roll call.

02  Breakfast.

03  Phrenology, rifle training, drills.

04  Black-haired Ernst leaves the school five days after he is chosen as the weakest in Bastian’s exercise.

05  Two others leave the following week.

06  Sixty becomes fifty-seven.

07  Every evening Werner works in Dr. Hauptmann’s lab, alternately plugging numbers into triangulation formulas or engineering: 

08  Hauptmann wants him to improve the efficiency and power of a directional radio transceiver he is designing.

09  It needs to be quickly returned to transmit on multiple frequencies, the little doctor says, and it needs to be able to measure the angle of the transmissions it receives.

10  Can Werner manage this?

 

01  He reconfigures nearly everything in the design.

02  Some nights Hauptmann grows talkative, explaining the role of a solenoid or resister in great detail, even classifying a spider hanging from a rafter, or enthusing about gatherings of scientists in Berlin, where practically every conversation, he says, seems to unveil some new possibility.

 

274

01  Relativity, quantum mechanics ― on such nights he seems happy enough to talking about whatever Werner asks.

 

01  Yet the very next night, Hauptmann’s manner will be frighteningly closed; he invites no questions and supervises Werner’s work in silence.

02  That Dr. Hauptmann might have ties so far up ― that the telephone on his desk connects him with men a hundred miles away who could probably wag a finger and send a dozen Messerschmitts streaming up from an airfield to strafe some city ― intoxicates Werner.

 

01  We live in exceptional times.

 

01  He wonders if Jutta has forgiven him.

02  Her letters consist mostly of banalities ― we are busy; Frau Elena says hello ― or else arrive in his  bunkroom so full of censor marks that their meaning has disintegrated.

03  Does she grieve over his absence? 

04  Or has she calcified her feelings, protected herself, as he is learning to do?

 

01  Volkheimer, like Hauptmann, seems full of contradictions.

02  To the other boys, the Giant is a brute, an instrument of pure strength, and yet sometimes, when Hauptmann is away in Berlin, Volkheimer will disappear into the doctor’s office and return with a Grundig tube radio, and hook up the shortwave antenna, and fill the lab with classical music. 

 

275

01 Mozart, Bach, even the Italian Vivaldi.

02  The more sentimental, the better.

03  The huge boy will lean back in a chair, so that it makes squeaking protestations beneath his bulk, and let his eyelids slip to half-mast.

 

01  Why always triangles?

02  What is the purpose of the transceiver they are building?

03  What two points does Hauptmann know, and why does he need to know the third?

 

01  “It’s only numbers, cadet,” Hauptmann says, a favorite maxim.

02  “Pure math.

03  You have to accustom yourself to thinking that way.”

 

01  Werner tries out various theories on Frederick, but Frederick, he’s learning, moves about as if in the grip of a dream, his trousers too big around the waist, the hems already falling out.

02  His eyes are both intense and vague; he hardly seems to realize when he misses targets in marksmanship.

03  Most nights Frederick murmurs to himself before falling asleep: bits of poems, the habits of geese, bats he’s heard swooping past the windows.

 

01  Birds, always birds.

 

01  “. . . now, arctic terns, Werner, they fly from the south pole to the north pole, true navigators of the  globe, probably the most migratory creatures ever to live, seventy thousand kilometers a year. . .”

 

01  A metallic wintery light settles over the stables and vineyard and rifle range, and songbirds streak over the hills, great scattershot nets of passerines on their way south, a migratory throughway running right over the spires of the school.

 

276

01  Once in a while a flock descends into one of the huge lindens on the grounds and seethes beneath its leaves.

 

01  Some of the senior boys, sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds, cadets who are allowed freer access to ammunition, develop a fondness for firing volleys into the trees to see how many birds they can hit.

02  The tree looks uninhabited and calm; then someone fires, and its crown shatters in all directions, a hundred birds exploding into flight in a half second, shrieking as the whole trees flown apart.

 

01  In the dormitory window one night, Frederick rests his forehead against the glass.

02  “I hate them.

03  I hate them for that.”

 

01  The dinner bell rings, and everyone trots off, Frederick coming in last with his taffy-colored hair and wounded eyes, bootlaces trailing. 

02  Werner washes Frederick’s mess tin for him; he shares homework answers, shoe polish, sweets from Dr.Hauptmann; they run next to each other during field exercises.

03  A brass pin weighs lightly on each of their lapels; one hundred and fourteen hobnailed boots spark against pebbles on the trail.

04  The castle with its towers and battlements looms below them like some misty vision of foregone glory.

05  Werner’s blood gallops through his ventricles, his thoughts on Dr. Hauptmann’s transceiver, on solder, fuses, batteries, antennas; his boot and Frederick’s touch the ground at the exact same moment.

 

 

 

278

01  SSG 35 A NA513 NL WUX

02  DUPLICATE OF TELEPHONED TELEGRAM

 

01  10 DECEMBER 1940

 

01  M. DANIEL LEBLANC

02  SAINT-MALO FRANCE 

 

01  = RETURN TO PARIS END OF MONTH = TRAVEL SECURELY = 

 

 

 

 

BATH

 

279

01  One final burst of frenetic gluing and sanding, and Marie-Laure’s father has completed the model of Saint-Maro.

02  It is unpainted, imperfect, striped with a half-dozen different types of wood, and missing details.

03  But it’s complete enough for his daughter to use if she must: the irregular polygon of the island framed by ramparts, each of its eight hundred and sixty-five buildings in place.

 

01  He feels ragged.

02  For weeks logic has been failing him.

03  The stone the museum has asked him to protect is not real.

04  If it were, the museum would have sent men already to collect it.

05  Why then, when he puts a magnifying glass to it, do its depths reveal tiny daggers of flames?

06  Why does he hear footfalls behind him when there are none?

07  And why does he find himself entertaining the brainless notion that the stone he carries in the linen sachet in his pocket has brought him misfortune, has put Marie-Laure in danger, may indeed have precipitated the whole invasion of France?

 

280

01  Idiotic.

02  Ludicrous.

 

01  He has tried every test he can think of without involving another soul.

 

01  Tried folding it between pieces of felt and striking it with a hammer ― it did not shatter.

 

01  Tried scratching it with a halved pebble of quartz ― it did not scratch.

 

01  Tried holding it to candle flame, drowning it, boiling it.

02  He has hidden the jewel under the mattress, in his tool case, in his shoe.

03  For several hours one night, he tucked it into Madame Manec’s geraniums in a window flower box, then convinced himself the geraniums were wilting and dug the stone out.

 

01  This afternoon a familiar face looms in the train station, maybe four or five back in the queue.

02  He has seen this man before, pudgy, sweating, multi-chinned.

03  They lock eyes; the man’s gaze slides away.

 

01  Etienne’s neighbor.

02  The perfumer.

 

01  Weeks ago, while taking measurements for the model, the locksmith saw this same man atop the ramparts pointing a camera out to sea.

02  Not a man to trust, Madame Manec said.

03  But he is just a man waiting in line to buy a ticket.

 

01  Logic.

02  The principles of validity.

03  Every lock has its key.

 

01  For more than two weeks, the director’s telegram has echoed in his head.

 

281

00  Such a maddeningly ambiguous choice for that final directive ―  Travel securely.

01  Does it mean to bring the stone or leave it behind?

02  Bring Marie-Laure or leave her behind?

03  Travel by train?

04  Or by some other, theoretically more secure means?

 

01  And what if, the locksmith considers, the telegram was not sent from the director at all?

02  Round and round the questions run.

03  When it is his turn at the window, he buys a ticket for a single passenger on the morning train to Rennes and then on to Paris and walks the narrow, sunless streets back to rue Vauborel.

04  He will go do this and then it will be over.

05  Back to work, staff the key pound, lock things away.

06  In a week, he will ride unburdened back to Brittany and collect Marie-Laure.

 

01  For supper Madame Manec serves stew and baguettes.

02  Afterward he leads Marie-Laure up the rickety flights of stairs to the third-floor bath.

03  He fills the big iron tub and turns his back as she undresses.

04  “Use as much soap as you’d like,” he says.

05  “I bought extra.”

06  The train ticket remains folded in his pocket like a betrayal.

 

01  She lets him wash her hair.

02  Over and over Marie-Laure trawls her fingers through the suds, as though trying to gauge their weight.

03  There has always been a sliver of panic in him, deeply buried, when it comes to his daughter: 

 

282

01  a fear that he is no good as a father, that he is doing everything wrong.

02  That he never quite understood the rules. 

03  All those Parisian mothers pushing buggies through the Jardin des Plantes or holding up cardigans in department stores ―

04  it seemed to him that those women nodded to each other as they passed, as though each possessed some secret knowledge that he did not.

05  How do you ever know for certain that you are doing the right thing?

 

01  There is pride, too, though ― pride that he has done it alone.

02  That his daughter is so curious, so resilient.

03  There is the humility of being a father to someone so powerful, as if he were only a narrow conduit for another, greater thing.

04  That’s how he feels right now, he thinks, kneeling beside her, rinsing her hair: as though his love for his daughter will outstrip the limits of his body.

05  The walls could fall away, even the whole city, and the brightness of that feeling would not wane.

 

01  The drain moans; the cluttered house crowds in close.

02  Marie turns up her wet face.

03  “You are leaving.

04  Aren’t you?”

 

01  He is glad, just now, that she cannot see him.

 

01  “Madame told me about the telegram.”

 

01  “I won’t be long, Marie.

02  A week.

03  Ten days at most.”

 

01  “When?”

 

01  “Tomorrow.

02  Before you wake.”

 

283

01  She leans over her knees.

02  Her back is long and white and split by the knobs of her vertebrae.

03  She used to fall asleep folding his index finger in her fist.

04  She used to sprawl with her books beneath the key pound bench and move her hands like spiders across the pages.

 

01  “Am I to stay here?”

 

01  “With Madame.

02  And Etienne.”

 

01  He hands her a towel and helps her climb onto the tile and waits outside while she puts on her nightgown.

02  Then he walks her up to the sixth floor and into their little room, though he knows she does not need to be guided, and he sits on the edge of the bed and she kneels beside the model and sets three fingers on the steeple of the cathedral.

 

01  He finds the hairbrush, does not bother turning on the lamp.

 

01  “Ten days, Papa?”

 

01  “At most.”

02  The walls creak; the window between the curtains is black; the town prepares to sleep.

03  Somewhere out there, German U-boats glide above underwater canyons, and thirty-foot squid ferry their huge eyes through the cold dark.

 

01  “Have we ever spent a night apart?” 

 

01  “No.” 

02  His gaze flits through the unlit room.

03  The stone in his pocket seems almost to pulse.

04  If he manages to sleep tonight, what will he dream?

05  “Can I  go out while you are gone, Papa?”

 

284

01  “Once I get back.

02  I promise.”

 

01  As tenderly as he can, he draws the brush through the damp strands of his daughter’s hair.

02  Between strokes, they can hear the sea wind rattle the window.

 

01  Marie-Laure’s hands whisper across the houses as she recites the names of the streets.

02  “Rue des Cordiers, rue Jacques Cartier, rue Vauborel.”

 

01  He says, “You’ll know them all in a week.”

02  Marie-Laure ’s fingers rove to the outer ramparts.

03  The sea beyond.

04  “Ten days,” she says.

05  “At most.”

 

 

 

WEAKEST (#2)

 

285

01  December sucks the light from the castle.

02  The sun hardly clears the horizon before sinking away.

03  Snow falls once, twice, then stays locked over the lawns.

04  Has Werner ever seen snow this white, snow that was not fouled immediately with ash and coal dust?

05  The only emissaries from the outside world are the occasional songbird who lands in the lindens beyond the quadrangle, blown astray by distance storm or battle or both, and two callow-faced corporals who come into the refectory every weak or so ― always after the prayer, always just as the boys have placed the first morsel of dinner in their mouths ― to pass beneath the blazonry and stop behind a cadet and whisper in his ear that his father has been killed in action.

 

01  Other nights a prefect yells Achtung! and the boys stand at their benches and Bastian the commandant waddles in.

02  The boys look down at their food in silence while Bastian walks the rows, trailing a single index finger across their backs.

 

286

01  ”Homesick?

02  We mustn’t trouble ourselves over our homes.

03  In the end we all come home to the führer.

04  What other home matters?

 

01  “No other!” shout the boys.

 

01  Every afternoon, no matter the weather, the commandant blows his whistle and the fourteen-year-olds trot outside and he looms over them with his coat stretched across his belly and his medals chiming and the rubber hose twirling.

02  “There are two kinds of death,” he says, the clouds of his breath plunging out into the cold.

03  “You can fight like a lion.

04  Or you can go as easy as lifting a hair from a cup of milk.

05  The nothings, the nobodies ― they die easy.”

06  He sweeps his eyes along the ranks and swings his hose and widens his eyes dramatically.

07  “How will you boys die?”

 

01  One windy afternoon he pulls Helmut Rodel out of line.

02  Helmut is a small, unpromising child from the south who keeps his hands balled in fists nearly all his waking hours.

 

01  “And who is it, Rodel?

02  In.

03  Your.

04  Opinion.

05  “Who is the weakest member of the corps?

06  The commandant twirls the hose.

07  Helmut Rodel takes no time.

08  “Him, sir.”

 

01  Werner feels something heavy fall through him.

02  Rodel is pointing directly at Frederick.

 

01  Bastian calls Frederick forward.

02  If fear darkens his friend’s face, Werner cannot see it.

03  Frederick looks distrusted.

04  Almost philosophical.

 

287

01  Bastian drapes his hose around his neck and trudges across the field, snow to his shins, taking his time, until he is little more than a dark lump at the far edge.

02  Werner tries to make eye contact with Frederick, but his eyes are a mile away.

 

01  The commandant raises his right arm and yells, “Ten!” and the wind frays the word across the long expanse.

02  Frederick blinks several times, as he often does when addressed in class, waiting for his internal life to catch up with his external one.

 

01  “Nine!”

 

01  “Run!” hisses Werner.

 

01  Frederick is a decent runner, faster than Werner, but the commandant seems to count quickly this afternoon, and Frederick’s head start has been abbreviated, and the snow hampers him, and he 

cannot be over twenty yards away when Bastian raises his left arm.

 

01  The boys explode into movement.

02  Werner runs with the others, trying to stay in the back of the pack, their rifles beating in syncopation against their backs.

03  Already the fastest of the boys seem to be running faster than usual, as though tired of being outrun.

 

01  Frederick runs hard.

02  But the fastest boys are greyhounds, harvested from all over the nation for their speed and eagerness to obey, and they seem to Werner to be running more fervently, more conclusively, than they have before. 

03  They are impatient to find out what will happen if someone is caught.

 

288

01  Frederick is fifteen strides from Bastian when they haul him down.

 

01  The group coalesces around the front-runners as Frederick and his pursuers get to their feet, all of them pasted with snow.

02  Bastian strides up.

03  The cadets encircle their instructor, chests heaving, many with their hands on their knees.

04  The breath of the boys pulses out before them in a collective fleeting cloud that is stripped away quickly by the wind.

05  Frederick stands in the middle, panting and blinking his long eyelashes.

 

01  “It usually does not take so long,” says Bastian mildly, almost as if to himself.

02  “For the first to be caught.”

 

01  Frederick squints at the sky.

 

01  Bastian says, “Cadet, are you the weakest?”

 

01  “I don’t know, sir.”

 

01  “You don’t know?”

02  A pause.

03  Into the Bastian’s face flows an undercurrent of antagonism.

 

01  “Look at me when you speak.”

 

01  “Some people are weak in some ways, sir.

02  Others in other ways.”

 

03  The commandant’s lips thin and his eyes narrow and an expression of slow and intense malice rises in his face.

04  As though a cloud has drifted away and for a moment Bastian’s true, deformed character has come glaring through.

05  He pulls the hose from around his neck and hands it to Rodel.

 

01  Rodel blinks up at his bulk.

02  “Go on, then,” prods Bastian.

 

 

289

01  In some other context, he might be encouraging a reluctant boy to step into cold water.

02  “Do him some good.”

 

01  Rodel looks down at the hose: black, three feet long, stiff in the cold.

02  What might be several seconds pass, though they feel to Werner like hours, and the wind tears through the frosted glass, sending zephyrs and wisps of snow sirening off across the white, and a sudden nostalgia for Zollverein rolls through him in a wave: boyhood afternoons wandering the soot-stained warrens, towing his little sister in the wagon.

03  Muck in the alleys, the hoarse shouts of work crews, the boys in their dormitory sleeping head to toe while their coats and trousers hang from hooks along the walls.

04  Frau Elena’s midnight passage among the beds like an angel, murmuring, 

05  I know it’s cold.

06  But I’m right beside you, see?

 

01  Jutta, close your eyes.

 

01  Rodel steps forward and swings the hose and smacks Frederick with it across the shoulder.

02  Frederick takes a step backward.

03  The wind slashes across the field.

04  Bastian says, “Again.”

 

01  Everything becomes soaked in a hideous and wondrous slowness. 

02  Rodel rears back and strikes.

03  This time he catches Frederick on the jaw.

04  Werner forces his mind to keep sending up images of home: the laundry; Frau Elena’s overworked pink fingers; dogs in the arrays; steam blowing from stacks ― every part of him wants to scream: is this not wrong?

 

290

01  But here it is right.

 

01  It takes such a long time.

02  Frederick withstands a third blow.

03  “Again,” commands Bastian.

04  On the fourth, Frederick throws up his arms and the hose smacks against his forearms and he stumbles.

05  Rodel swings again, and Bastian says, “In your shining example, Christ, lead the way, ever and always,” and the whole afternoon turns sideways, torn open; Werner watches the scene recede as though observing it from the far end of a tunnel: a small white field, a group of boys, bare trees,  

a toy castle, none of it any more real than Frau Elena’s stories about her Alsatian childhood or Jutta’s drawings of Paris.

06  Six more times he hears Rodel swing and the hose whistle and the strangely dead smack of the rubber striking Frederick’s hands, shoulders, and face.

 

01  Frederick can walk for hours in the woods, can identify warblers fifty yards away simply by hearing their song.

02  Frederick hardly ever thinks of himself.

03  Frederick is stronger than he is in every imaginable way.

04  Werner opens his mouth but closes it again; he drowns, he shuts his eyes, his mind.

 

01  At some point the beating stops.

02  Frederick is facedown in the snow.

 

01  “Sir?” says Rodel, panting.

02  Bastian takes back the length of hose from Rodel and drapes it around his neck and reaches underneath his belly to hitch up his belt.

 

291

01  Werner kneels beside Frederick and turns him onto his side.

02  Blood is running from his nose or eye or ear, maybe all three.

03  One of his eyes is already swollen shut; the other reminds open.

04  His attention, Werner realizes, is on the sky.

05  Tracing something up there.

 

01  Werner risks a glance upward: a single hawk, riding the wind.

 

01  Bastian says, “Up.”

 

01  Werner stands.

02  Frederick does not move.

 

01  Bastian says, “Up,” more quietly this time, and Frederick gets to a knee.

02  He stands, wobbling.

03  His cheek is gashed and leaks tendrils of blood.

04  Splotches of moisture show on his back from where the snow has melted, into his shirt.

05  Werner gives Frederick his arm.

 

01  “Cadet, are you the weakest?”

02  Frederick does not look at the commandant.

03  “No, sir.”

 

01  Hawk still gyring up there.

02  The portly commandant chews on a thought for a moment.

03  Then his clear voice rings out, flying above the company, urging them into a run.

04  Fifty-seven cadets cross the grounds and jog up the snowy path into the forest.

05  Frederick runs in his place beside Werner, his left eye swelling, twin networks of blood peeling back across the cheeks, his collar wet and brown.

 

01  The branches seethe and clatter.

02  All fifty-seven boys sing in unison.

 

 

292

01  We shall march onwards.

02  Even if everything crashes down in pieces;

03  For today the nation hears us,

04  And tomorrow the whole world!

 

01  Winter in the forests of old Saxony.

02  Werner does not risk another glance toward his friend.

03  He quick-steps through the cold, an unloaded five-round rifle over his shoulder.

04  He is almost fifteen years old.

 

 

 

 

 

THE ARREST OF THE LOCKSMITH

 

293

01  They seize him outside of Vitre, hours from Paris.

02  Two policemen in plain cloths bundle him off a train while a dozen passengers stare.

03  He is questioned in a van and again in an ice-cold mezzanine office decorated with poorly executed watercolors of oceangoing steamers.

04  The first interrogators are French; an hour later they become German.

05  They brandish his notebook and tool case.

06  They hold up his key ring and count seven different skeleton keys.

07  What do these unlock, they want to know, and how do you employ these tiny files and saws?

08  What about this notebook full of architectural measurements?

 

01  A model for my daughter.

 

01  Keys for the museum where I work.

 

01  Please.

 

01  They frog-march him to a cell.

02  The door’s lock and hinges are so big and antiquarian, they must be Louis XIV.

03   Maybe Napoleon.

04  Any hour now the director or his people will show up and explain everything.

05  Certainly this will happen.

 

294

01  In the morning the Germans run him through a second, more laconic spell of questioning while a typist clatters away in the corner.

02  They seem to be accusing him of plotting to destroy the Château de Saint-Malo, though why they might believe this is not clear.

03  Their French is barely adequate and they seem more interested in their questions than his answers.

04  They deny access to papers, to linens, to a telephone.

05  They have photographs of him.

 

01  He yearns for cigarettes.

02  He lies faceup on the floor and imagines himself kissing Marie-Laure once on each eye while she sleeps.

03  Two days after his arrest, he is driven to a holding pen a few miles outside Strasbourg.

04  Through fence slats, he watches a column of uniformed schoolgirls walk double-file in the winter sunshine.

 

01  Guards bring prepackaged sandwiches, hard cheese, sufficient water.

02  In the pen, maybe thirty others sleep on straw laid atop frozen mud.

03  Mostly French but some Belgians, four Flemings, two Walloons.

04  All have been accused of crimes they speak of only with reticence, anxious about what traps might lurk within any question he puts to them.

05  At night they trade rumors in whispers.

06  “We will only be in Germany for a few months,” someone says, and the word goes twisting down the line.

 

295

01  “Merely to help with spring planting while their men are at war.”

 

01  “Then they’ll send us home.”

 

01  Each man thinks this is impossible and then:

02  It might be true.

03  Just a few months.

04  Then home.

 

01  No officially appointed lawyer.

02  No military tribunal.

03  Marie-Laure’s father spends three days shivering in the holding pen.

04  No rescue arrives from the museum, no limousine from the director grinds up the lane.

05  They will not let him write letters.

06  When he demands to use a telephone, the guards don’t bother to laugh.

07  “Do you know the last time we used a telephone?”

08  Every hour is a prayer for Marie-Laure.

09  Every breath.

 

01  On the fourth day, all the prisoners are piled onto a cattle truck and driven east.

02  “We are close to Germany,” the men whisper.

03  They can glimpse it on the far side of the river.

04  Low clumps of naked trees bracketed by snow-dusted fields.

05  Black rows of vineyards.

06  Four disconnected strands of gray smoke melt into a white sky.

 

01  The locksmith squints.

02  Germany?

03  It looks no different from this side of the river.

04  It may as well be the edge of a cliff.