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Chapter no 42 – Occuper

All the Light We Cannot See

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.

โ€œHello?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, fourthโ€”how tall is this house?โ€”now Madame’s voice is calling, โ€œMademoiselle,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. โ€œDo 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.

โ€œDoes this whole house belong to my great-uncle Etienne?โ€ โ€œEvery room.โ€

โ€œHow does he pay for it?โ€

Madame Manec laughs. โ€œYou 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€ โ€œYou knew him?โ€

โ€œI have worked here since Master Etienne was a little boy.โ€ โ€œMy grandfather too? You knew him?โ€

โ€œI did.โ€

โ€œWill I meet Uncle Etienne now?โ€ Madame Manec hesitates. โ€œProbably not.โ€ โ€œBut he is here?โ€

โ€œYes, child. He is always here.โ€ โ€œAlways?โ€

Madame Manec’s big, thick hands enfold hers. โ€œLet’s see about the bath. Your father will explain when he returns.โ€

โ€œBut Papa doesn’t explain anything. He says only that Uncle was in the war with my grandfather.โ€

โ€œThat’s right. But your great-uncle, when he came homeโ€โ€”Madame hunts for the proper phrasingโ€”โ€œhe was not the same as when he left.โ€

โ€œYou mean he was more scared of things?โ€

โ€œI 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€

โ€œNot ever?โ€

โ€œNot 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. โ€œAre we high in the air, Madame?โ€

โ€œWe 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€

โ€œDoes the window open?โ€

โ€œIt does, dear. But it is probably best to leave it shuttered whileโ€”โ€

Marie-Laure is already standing atop the bed, running her palms along the wall. โ€œCan one see the sea from it?โ€

โ€œWe’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.

โ€œAre there snails out there, Madame?โ€

โ€œSnails? In the ocean?โ€ Again that laugh. โ€œAs many as raindrops.

You’re interested in snails?โ€

โ€œYes yes yes. I have found tree snails and garden snails. But I have never found marine snails.โ€

โ€œWell,โ€ says Madame Manec. โ€œYou’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 voiceโ€”de 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 dโ€™Orsay.

A. Cotteret wants his mother to know he is safe in Laval.

Madame Meyzieu seeks whereabouts of six daughters, sent by train to Redon.

โ€œEverybody 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.

โ€œCan we visit the ocean tomorrow, Papa?โ€ โ€œProbably not tomorrow.โ€

โ€œWhere is Uncle Etienne?โ€

โ€œI expect he’s in his room on the fifth floor.โ€ โ€œSeeing things that are not there?โ€

โ€œWe are lucky to have him, Marie.โ€

โ€œLucky 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€

โ€œJust 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. โ€œWhat does it mean, Papa, they’llย occupyย us?โ€

โ€œIt means they’ll park their trucks in the squares.โ€ โ€œWill they make us speak their language?โ€

โ€œThey might make us advance our clocks by one hour.โ€ The house creaks. Gulls cry. He lights another cigarette.

โ€œIs it likeย occupation,ย Papa? Like the sort of job a person does?โ€ โ€œIt’s like military control, Marie. That’s enough questions for now.โ€ Quiet. Twenty heartbeats. Thirty.

โ€œHow can one country make another change its clocks? What if everybody refuses?โ€

โ€œThen a lot of people will be early. Or late.โ€

โ€œRemember our apartment, Papa? With my books and our model and all those pinecones on the windowsill?โ€

โ€œOf course.โ€

โ€œI lined up the pinecones largest to smallest.โ€ โ€œThey’re still there.โ€

โ€œDo you think so?โ€ โ€œI know so.โ€

โ€œYou do not know so.โ€

โ€œI do not know so. I believe so.โ€

โ€œAre German soldiers climbing into our beds right now, Papa?โ€

โ€œNo.โ€

Marie-Laure tries to lie very still. She can almost hear the machinery of her father’s mind churning inside his skull. โ€œIt will be okay,โ€ she whispers. Her hand finds his forearm. โ€œWe 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.

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