They go into every room. Third floor fourth fifth. On the sixth, they stand in her grandfather’s old bedroom and open the huge wardrobe with its heavy doors and cross the hall and stand over the model of Saint-Malo in Marie-Laure’s room and whisper to each other and then tromp back downstairs.
They ask a total of one question: about three Free French flags rolled up in a second-floor closet. Why does Etienne have them?
“You put yourself in jeopardy keeping those,” says the second policeman.
“You would not want the authorities to think you are terrorists,” says the first. “People have been arrested for less.” Whether this is offered as favor or threat remains unclear. Marie-Laure thinks: Do they mean Papa?
The policemen finish their search and say good night with perfect politeness and leave.
Madame Manec lights a cigarette.
Marie-Laure’s stew is cold.
Etienne fumbles with the fireplace grate. He shoves the flags one after another into the fire. “No more. No more.” He says the second louder than the first. “Not here.”
Madame Manec’s voice: “They found nothing. There is nothing to find.”
The acrid smell of burning cotton fills the kitchen. Her great-uncle says, “You do what you like with your life, Madame. You have always been there for me, and I will try to be there for you. But you may no longer do these things in this house. And you may not do them with my great-niece.”
To My Dear Sister Jutta—
It is very difficult now. Even paper is hard to XXXXCENSOR MARKS HEREXXXX We had XXXXCENSOR MARKS HEREXXXX no heat in the XXXXCENSOR MARKS HEREXXXX. Frederick used to say there is no such thing as free will and that every person’s path is predetermined for him just like XXXXCENSOR MARKS HEREXXXX and that my mistake was that I XXXXCENSOR MARKS HEREXXXX XXXXCENSOR MARKS HEREXXXX XXXXCENSOR MARKS HEREXXXX XXXXCENSOR MARKS HEREXXXX XXXXCENSOR MARKS HEREXXXX XXXXCENSOR MARKS HEREXXXX XXXXCENSOR MARKS HEREXXXX XXXXCENSOR MARKS HEREXXXX XXXXCENSOR MARKS HEREXXXX XXXXCENSOR MARKS HEREXXXX XXXXCENSOR MARKS HEREXXXX XXXXCENSOR MARKS HEREXXXX. I hope someday you can understand. Love to you and Frau Elena too. Sieg heil.
The Frog Cooks
In the weeks to come, Madame Manec is perfectly cordial; she walks with Marie-Laure to the beach most mornings, takes her to the market. But she seems absent, asking how Marie-Laure and Etienne are doing with perfect courtesy, saying good morning as if they are strangers. Often she disappears for half a day.
Marie-Laure’s afternoons become longer, lonelier. One evening she sits at the kitchen table while her great-uncle reads aloud.
The vitality which the snail’s eggs possess surpasses belief. We have seen certain species frozen in solid blocks of ice, and yet regain their activity when subjected to the influences of warmth.
Etienne pauses. “We should make supper. It doesn’t appear that Madame will be back tonight.” Neither of them moves. He reads another page. They have been kept for years in pill boxes, and yet on subjecting them to moisture, have crawled about appearing as well as ever . . . The shell may be broken, and even portions of it removed, and yet after a certain lapse of time the injured parts will be repaired by a deposition of shelly matter at the fractured parts.
“There’s hope for me yet!” says Etienne, and laughs, and Marie-Laure is reminded that her great-uncle was not always so fearful, that he had a life before this war and before the last one too; that he was once a young man who dwelled in the world and loved it as she does.
Eventually Madame Manec comes through the kitchen door and locks it behind her and Etienne says good evening rather coldly and after a moment Madame Manec says it back. Somewhere in the city, Germans are loading weapons or drinking brandy and history has become some nightmare from which Marie-Laure desperately wishes she could wake.
Madame Manec takes a pot from the hanging rack and fills it with water. Her knife falls through what sounds like potatoes, the blade striking the wooden cutting board beneath.
“Please, Madame,” says Etienne. “Allow me. You are exhausted.”
But he does not get up, and Madame Manec keeps chopping potatoes, and when she is done, Marie-Laure hears her push a load of them into the water with the back of her knife. The tension in the room makes Marie-Laure feel dizzy, as if she can sense the planet rotating.
“Sink any U-boats today?” murmurs Etienne. “Blow up any German tanks?”
Madame Manec snaps open the door of the icebox. Marie-Laure can hear her rummage through a drawer. A match flares; a cigarette lights. Soon enough a bowl of undercooked potatoes appears before Marie-Laure. She feels around the tabletop for a fork but finds none.