All the Light We Cannot See - Anthony Doerr Page 0,39
only partway before striking the bed.
The weather in this place: you can feel it between your fingers.
She gropes through a doorway into what? A hall? Out here the roar is fainter, barely a murmur.
“Hello?”
Quiet. Then a bustling far below, the heavy shoes of Madame Manec climbing flights of narrow, curving steps, her smoker’s lungs coming closer, third floor, fourth—how tall is this house?—now Madame’s voice is calling, “Mademoiselle,” and she is taken by the hand, led back into the room in which she woke, and seated on the edge of the bed. “Do you need to use the toilet? You must, then a bath, you had an excellent sleep, your father is in town trying the telegraph office, though I assured him that’ll be about as profitable as trying to pick feathers out of molasses. Are you hungry?”
Madame Manec plumps pillows, flaps the quilt. Marie-Laure tries to concentrate on something small, something concrete. The model back in Paris. A single seashell in Dr. Geffard’s laboratory.
“Does this whole house belong to my great-uncle Etienne?”
“Every room.”
“How does he pay for it?”
Madame Manec laughs. “You get right to it, don’t you? Your great-uncle inherited the house from his father, who was your great-grandfather. He was a very successful man with plenty of money.”
“You knew him?”
“I have worked here since Master Etienne was a little boy.”
“My grandfather too? You knew him?”
“I did.”
“Will I meet Uncle Etienne now?”
Madame Manec hesitates. “Probably not.”
“But he is here?”
“Yes, child. He is always here.”
“Always?”
Madame Manec’s big, thick hands enfold hers. “Let’s see about the bath. Your father will explain when he returns.”
“But Papa doesn’t explain anything. He says only that Uncle was in the war with my grandfather.”
“That’s right. But your great-uncle, when he came home”—Madame hunts for the proper phrasing—“he was not the same as when he left.”
“You mean he was more scared of things?”
“I mean lost. A mouse in a trap. He saw dead people passing through the walls. Terrible things in the corners of the streets. Now your great-uncle does not go outdoors.”
“Not ever?”
“Not for years. But Etienne is a wonder, you’ll see. He knows everything.”
Marie-Laure listens to the house timbers creak and the gulls cry and the gentle roar breaking against the window. “Are we high in the air, Madame?”
“We are on the sixth floor. It’s a good bed, isn’t it? I thought you and your papa would be able to rest well here.”
“Does the window open?”
“It does, dear. But it is probably best to leave it shuttered while—”
Marie-Laure is already standing atop the bed, running her palms along the wall. “Can one see the sea from it?”
“We’re supposed to keep shutters and windows closed. But maybe just for a minute.” Madame Manec turns a handle, pulls in the two hinged panes of the window, and nudges open the shutter. Wind: immediate, bright, sweet, briny, luminous. The roar rises and falls.
“Are there snails out there, Madame?”
“Snails? In the ocean?” Again that laugh. “As many as raindrops. You’re interested in snails?”
“Yes yes yes. I have found tree snails and garden snails. But I have never found marine snails.”
“Well,” says Madame Manec. “You’ve turned up in the right place.”
Madame draws a warm bath in a third-floor tub. From the tub, Marie-Laure listens to her shut the door, and the cramped bathroom groan beneath the weight of the water, and the walls creak, as if she were in a cabin inside Captain Nemo’s Nautilus. The pain in her heels fades. She lowers her head below the level of the water. To never go outdoors! To hide for decades inside this strange, narrow house!
For dinner she is buttoned into a starchy dress from some bygone decade. They sit at the square kitchen table, her father and Madame Manec at opposite sides, knees pressed to knees, windows jammed shut, shutters drawn. A wireless set mumbles the names of ministers in a harried, staccato voice—de Gaulle in London, Pétain replacing Reynaud. They eat fish stewed with green tomatoes. Her father reports that no letters have been delivered or collected in three days. Telegraph lines are not functioning. The newest newspaper is six days old. On the radio, the announcer reads public service classifieds.
Monsieur Cheminoux refugeed in Orange seeks his three children, left with luggage at Ivry-sur-Seine.
Francis in Genève seeks any information about Marie-Jeanne, last seen at Gentilly.
Mother sends prayers to Luc and Albert, wherever they are.
L. Rabier seeks news of his wife, last seen at Gare d’Orsay.
A. Cotteret wants his mother to know he is safe in Laval.