Marie-Laure wakes to church bells: two three four five. Faint smell of mildew. Ancient down pillows with all the loft worn out. Silk wallpaper behind the lumpy bed where she sits. When she stretches out both arms, she can almost touch walls on either side.
The reverberations of the bells cease. She has slept most of the day.
What is the muffled roar she hears? Crowds? Or is it still the sea?
She sets her feet on the floor. The wounds on the backs of her heels pulse. Where is her cane? She shuffles so she does not bash her shins on something. Behind curtains, a window rises out of her reach. Opposite the window, she finds a dresser whose drawers open 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.
โHello?โ
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, fourthโhow tall is this house?โnow Madame’s voice is calling, โMademoiselle,โ and she is taken by the hand, led back into the room in which she woke, and seated on the edge of the bed. โDo 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?โ
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.
โDoes this whole house belong to my great-uncle Etienne?โ โEvery room.โ
โHow does he pay for it?โ
Madame Manec laughs. โYou 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.โ โYou knew him?โ
โI have worked here since Master Etienne was a little boy.โ โMy grandfather too? You knew him?โ
โI did.โ
โWill I meet Uncle Etienne now?โ Madame Manec hesitates. โProbably not.โ โBut he is here?โ
โYes, child. He is always here.โ โAlways?โ
Madame Manec’s big, thick hands enfold hers. โLet’s see about the bath. Your father will explain when he returns.โ
โBut Papa doesn’t explain anything. He says only that Uncle was in the war with my grandfather.โ
โThat’s right. But your great-uncle, when he came homeโโMadame hunts for the proper phrasingโโhe was not the same as when he left.โ
โYou mean he was more scared of things?โ
โI 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.โ
โNot ever?โ
โNot for years. But Etienne is a wonder, you’ll see. He knows everything.โ
Marie-Laure listens to the house timbers creak and the gulls cry and the gentle roar breaking against the window. โAre we high in the air, Madame?โ
โWe 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.โ
โDoes the window open?โ
โIt does, dear. But it is probably best to leave it shuttered whileโโ
Marie-Laure is already standing atop the bed, running her palms along the wall. โCan one see the sea from it?โ
โWe’re supposed to keep shutters and windows closed. But maybe just for a minute.โ 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.
โAre there snails out there, Madame?โ
โSnails? In the ocean?โ Again that laugh. โAs many as raindrops.
You’re interested in snails?โ
โYes yes yes. I have found tree snails and garden snails. But I have never found marine snails.โ
โWell,โ says Madame Manec. โYou’ve turned up in the right place.โ 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’sย 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 voiceโde Gaulle in London, Pรฉtain 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 Genรจve 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 dโOrsay.
A. Cotteret wants his mother to know he is safe in Laval.
Madame Meyzieu seeks whereabouts of six daughters, sent by train to Redon.
โEverybody has misplaced someone,โ murmurs Madame Manec, and Marie-Laure’s father switches off the wireless, and the tubes click as they cool. Upstairs, faintly, the same voice keeps reading names. Or is it her imagination? She hears Madame Manec stand and collect the bowls and her father exhale cigarette smoke as though it is very heavy in his lungs and he is glad to be rid of it.
That night she and her father wind up the twisting staircase and go to bed side by side on the same lumpy bed in the same sixth-floor bedroom with the fraying silk wallpaper. Her father fusses with his rucksack, with
the door latch, with his matches. Soon enough there is the familiar smell of his cigarettes: Gauloisesย bleues. She hears wood pop and groan as the two halves of the window pull open. The welcome hiss of wind washes in, or maybe it’s the sea and the wind, her ears unable to unbraid the two. With it come the scents of salt and hay and fish markets and distant marshes and absolutely nothing that smells to her of war.
โCan we visit the ocean tomorrow, Papa?โ โProbably not tomorrow.โ
โWhere is Uncle Etienne?โ
โI expect he’s in his room on the fifth floor.โ โSeeing things that are not there?โ
โWe are lucky to have him, Marie.โ
โLucky to have Madame Manec too. She’s a genius with food, isn’t she, Papa? She is maybe just a little bit better at cooking than you are?โ
โJust a very little bit better.โ
Marie-Laure is glad to hear a smile enter his voice. But beneath it she can sense his thoughts fluttering like trapped birds. โWhat does it mean, Papa, they’llย occupyย us?โ
โIt means they’ll park their trucks in the squares.โ โWill they make us speak their language?โ
โThey might make us advance our clocks by one hour.โ The house creaks. Gulls cry. He lights another cigarette.
โIs it likeย occupation,ย Papa? Like the sort of job a person does?โ โIt’s like military control, Marie. That’s enough questions for now.โ Quiet. Twenty heartbeats. Thirty.
โHow can one country make another change its clocks? What if everybody refuses?โ
โThen a lot of people will be early. Or late.โ
โRemember our apartment, Papa? With my books and our model and all those pinecones on the windowsill?โ
โOf course.โ
โI lined up the pinecones largest to smallest.โ โThey’re still there.โ
โDo you think so?โ โI know so.โ
โYou do not know so.โ
โI do not know so. I believe so.โ
โAre German soldiers climbing into our beds right now, Papa?โ
โNo.โ
Marie-Laure tries to lie very still. She can almost hear the machinery of her father’s mind churning inside his skull. โIt will be okay,โ she whispers. Her hand finds his forearm. โWe will stay here awhile and then we will go back to our apartment and the pinecones will be right where we left them andย Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seaย will be on the floor of the key pound where we left it and no one will be in our beds.โ
The distant anthem of the sea. The clopping of someone’s boot heels on cobbles far below. She wants very badly for her father to say, Yes, that’s it absolutely,ย ma chรฉrie,ย but he says nothing.