Summary
Part 8: 9 August 1944
121: Fort National
On the third afternoon of the siege of Saint-Malo, there is a lull in the shelling. Some horses kick through a garage door and run in the streets. Around 4 pm an American Field howitzer misfires a shell to Fort National where 80 Frenchmen are imprisoned, killing 9 instantly.
122: In the Attic
Marie-Laure isn't sure how much time has passed in the attic, but she is starving. She reasons with the voice of her father in her head: the German has left, and she can open the cans, which will make noise. However, her father’s voice tells her that she didn’t hear the bells go off, and the German would not leave without what he came to get. She hears the German using the toilet downstairs and exclaiming something in German, sounding as if he is in pain. She hears the creaking of her bed, and she wonders if he was sleeping there. She considers biting her arm to drink the liquid there. Finally shells begin to fly, making loud noises. During these noises she gradually opens one can. She peels the lid up and drinks; it is beans, and she eats the whole thing.
123: The Heads
Werner cannot locate any signal, only static on the radio. The battery is almost dead. They also have the extra battery Werner found to power the radio or the field light. They are out of food and water. In the corner of the basement there are white statues of heads that seem to emit a whiteness even in the dark. Werner crawls over to his friend Volkheimer and asks him if he ever heard the stories the boys at Schulpforta told about him. He said yes, and that he didn't like being asked how tall he was all the time. Werner wants to know if the grenades would work to get them out, but Volkheimer says they'd be crushed. There is enough battery to either run the transceiver another day, or to run the light. But they don't need light to use the rifle.
124: Delirium
Von Rumpel is in the bed, soaked in sweat, the taste of blood in his mouth. Ash blows in the window. He wonders if it is dawn. He looks at the model again. He has searched every inch of it, but the only house he needs, the model of rue Vauborel Number 4, is missing. He wonders if the girl took it with her when she left with Claude Levitte. However, he suspects the Sea of Flames is in the house, because the house still stands while others nearby crumble. Also, the old man did not have the stone on him when he was arrested and taken to Fort National—von Rumpel made sure of it. Von Rumpel tells himself he needs to get up again and look, starting in the kitchen.
125: Water
It begins to rain. Marie-Laure thinks this is good because it will put out fires. She hears the German go downstairs and wonders if this is an opportunity to go get water from the buckets she filled and put outside her room. She brings the empty can to fill that too. She waits for her father’s voice to protest, but it does not. She goes to the attic door and listens. She thinks that maybe the German went down noisily but quietly came back up and will shoot her. When she exits the wardrobe, no shots come. In her mind, she summons the childhood image of her grandfather who takes one of her hands, and Etienne takes the other. She imagines what the house must have been like when they were boys. In her room she smells an odor left by the German, a smell of vanilla with something putrid underneath. She goes and finds the bucket, drinks fully from it, and then fills her can. As she turns to go back she hears him downstairs, 3 or 4 floors down, ransacking a room. As she finds the doorway, she finds her braille book on the floor; the German must have thrown it off her bed. She thinks about trying to sneak down to leave, but she does not want to die. She carries the book with her, climbs back inside the wardrobe, and shuts the door.
126: The Beams
In the dark of the cellar, Volkheimer begins to talk of his great grandfather. Volkheimer is standing, crouching under the low ceiling, portrayed like Atlas with the weight of the world on his shoulders. He says his grandfather was a sawyer. Ships back then had sails and needed masts, but there were no trees big enough, so they took them from the forests of Prussia, where Volkheimer grew up. He says his grandfather told him they would put wedges in the trees and sometimes it would take days for them to fall, and Volkheimer would imagine horses pulling the trees across Europe to be given a new life as masts. Werner thinks of the professor who said coal is a tree that is millions of years old, and says that, where he grew up, they dug up old trees. They both say they were desperate to get out. Shells continue to shake the cellar. Werner thinks of Jutta.
127: The Transmitter
Marie-Laure locates the transmitter on the table in the attic. She thinks maybe someone still has a radio—maybe the Americans, or others in the resistance, or even Germans in their hideouts. She raises the antenna; it makes a noise. She waits to see if the noise has alerted the German in her home. She turns on the transmitter and the microphone. She worries the thrum of the transmitter is too loud, but her father’s voice tells her it is like the breeze. Being blind is different than just shutting her eyes. She is in another older world. She hears miles away, families moving in cellars, flies landing on corpses; she feels the land Saint-Malo rests on, hears the bones of a dead whale at the bottom of the sea, its marrow feeding millions of creatures that never see light. She thinks of how she said she would read to Etienne. She opens the book and brings the microphone to her mouth.
128: Voice
Werner hears a girl’s voice speaking crisp French. At first he thinks he is hallucinating, but he wants to hear more. He thinks of himself in his bunk in Children's House, with Jutta trying to wake him out of a dream. The girl continues a narration about being submitted in water and stuck between two large pieces of ice. Suddenly she hisses, "he is here, he is right below me," and then it cuts out. Werner goes over to Volkheimer and tells him, trying to get him up, but he won't move. He tells Werner it's no use. They are both starving and weak. He thinks of the girl; he wants to save her. The chapter ends on a metaphor: god is a white cold eye watching the city being pounded to dust.
Part 9: May 1944
129: Edge of the World
Werner rides in the back of the truck, curled up under a bench. Volkheimer reads him a letter Jutta wrote, telling him that Herr Seidler has heard of his success and sends his congratulations, that Frau Elana's toothache is better, and also that she has started to smoke. Werner sees the dead redheaded girl in the cape floating, following them. Werner thinks of how someone at Schulpforta once told him about a rally for the führer, at which he spoke and there was a feeling of righteousness in the crowd. The only one who doubted that feeling was Jutta. They drive into France and stop and eat. He sees the dead girl's image in the flowers, and then it disappears. They continue driving until they reach Brittany. When they stop Werner gets out and goes to the beach, crossing a bunch of barriers. He sticks his hand in the water and tastes the salt. He hears people yelling, looks up, and sees a bunch of people watching him; he goes back to the town and his companions tell him the beach is full of mines. They go see the Kreiskommandantur, who tells them there is a radio announcement every night with numbers, then birth and death announcements, then music. They don't know what it means.
130: Numbers
Von Rumpel visits a doctor who tells him he only has 3 or 4 months left to live. He has a tumor in his throat and in his small intestines. He then goes to a dinner party where other officers talk of the retreats and the number of their men who have died—10,000. Liver is served, and von Rumpel doesn't eat it. He gets a call from France at the restaurant, from a man named Jean Brignon who has information on Daniel Leblanc, the locksmith from the national museum. Jean Brignon wants von Rumpel to help his cousin in exchange. Von Rumpel does not remember Jean, but he solicits the information nonetheless: the information is that Daniel Leblanc was arrested for conspiracy because they found measurements he made of Saint-Malo. The tip that lead to his arrest was from Claude Levitte. He does not know which camp Leblanc is in. He asks von Rumpel to help his cousin, but von Rumpel hangs up.
131: May
May 1944 feels heavy and humid to Marie-Laure, much like the May of 1940 before she left Paris. Plants are in bloom. Marie-Laure goes to get the bread, and Madame Ruelle reaches across the counter and holds Marie-Laure's face, saying, "you amazing child." She tells Marie-Laure to tell her uncle that the hour has come. The mermaids have bleached hair. They'll be coming within a week. She says it is a wonderful day. She gives Marie-Laure a large loaf of bread and a huge head of cabbage. Marie-Laure knows Etienne has heard on the radio that the British are putting together an armada of boats, including any boat available to join their fleet. After getting the bread, Marie-Laure goes to the grotto; the beach has been blocked off for weeks because of the mines. In the grotto, however, she can still sit with her snails and sea creatures, dream she is in Captain Nemo's submarine, and remember what it was like to be with her father.
132: Hunting (Again)
Werner and the others spend weeks driving around looking for a signal. Werner and Bernd are given a hotel room in the top of an old requisitioned hotel. At night Werner knows the dead girl from Vienna walks the halls, hunting for him. Werner stands in the hexagonal tub in the top floor of the hotel, and above him a 9-foot-long queen bee is on the ceiling.
Werner writes Jutta a letter. He tells her the fever is mostly gone. He describes how he loves the sea, how he sees so many colors in it, and how it seems to contain everything anyone could every feel. He sends his best wishes for Frau Elena and the children.
133: “Clair de Lune”
Werner’s team is working a section of the old city of Saint-Malo tonight. It is raining. He has been listening in on his transceiver; Bernd is on the other one on a parapet under a poncho, but he has not touched his handset in hours, meaning he is sleeping. Suddenly he hears a voice announcing family news, then saying what time the next broadcast is—Thursday at 23:00—followed by music. Werner feels a memory coming at him of the same tenor of voice, the same quality of the transmission of the French Professor to whom he and Jutta used to listen. He feels as if he has been drowning for so long, and someone has suddenly brought him up for air. Werner observes the others: Volkheimer is sleeping on the bench next to him, and the Neumanns are asleep in the front. He waits for Bernd to say he heard something, but he does not say anything. The piano music is familiar; Werner recalls Jutta leaning toward him, Frau Elena in the background kneading bread. No one else heard. Werner thinks of how Frederick told him they didn’t have choices and they don’t own their lives, but in the end it was Frederick who did make a choice: the choice to not dump the water out on the prisoner. It was Werner who did not make choices. Werner goes to leave the van, and Volkheimer asks, “Nichts?” Werner confirms: nothing to report.
134: Antenna
An Austrian Air lieutenant sets up his detachment at the Hotel of Bees, taking apart the 4th floor and installing a cannon on the ramparts. Werner knows he is committing treason by lying and saying he heard nothing, but when he thinks of the piano music, he is filled with happiness. He also thinks of all the men dying in Normandy, and how in Saint-Malo all is still held by the Germans. Phrases the Frenchman used to say would come back to him, such as “ So how, children, does the brain, which lives without a spark of light, build for us a world of light?” Werner knows the antenna must be very high because it used to reach him all the way in Zollverein, and he realizes the man must be using a chimney. Werner is worried that Volkheimer already suspects something is amiss, but he still goes out on foot on Thursday at the time of the broadcast. He walks through the streets and sees the antenna rise from one of the chimneys, on a high house on the edge of the sea, rue Vauborel Number 4. He hears in his head the Frenchman, “Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever.”
135: Big Claude
Von Rumpel goes to visit Big Claude to get information on Daniel LeBlanc and where he lived. To travel to Saint-Malo, von Rumpel has made his way through Breton on false pretenses of finding paintings in old summer homes, sometimes paintings he knows do not exist. Big Claude is not very forthcoming with information, his eyes seeming to say, “Give me.” However, when von Rumpel turns to walk out, Claude reveals where Daniel LeBlanc lived: in Number 4 rue Vauborel.
136: Boulangerie
One day later, Werner is able to go back to the house on a misty morning. He fantasizes that he will ring the bell and be invited in to talk about the broadcasts and about science, but he knows that if he rings the bell the man will think he is being arrested. Werner sees a girl exit the house; she is pretty, with auburn hair and freckles. He worries she saw him staring, until he realizes she is blind. She wears ripped stockings, shoes that are too big, and a stained skirt. He watches her use her cane to find all the storm drains, and he follows her to the boulangerie. Outside the boulangerie Werner observes his surroundings, and sees across from him a sallow and goitrous sergeant major reading a newspaper. Werner wonders why he is shaking. The girl steps out of the boulangerie with her bread, counting under her breath. Werner is riveted, and she walks on into the fog.
137: Grotto
An American plane is shot down and the pilot climbs to shore, only to be taken prisoner. Etienne sees it as a tragedy. Madame Ruelle sees it as exciting, saying he is movie-star handsome. Marie-Laure has continued to read Jules Verne to Etienne; they have begun Volume 2. Today Marie-Laure takes her load and goes down to the grotto, touching the snails and anemones inside. When she comes out, a voice asks her what is inside, and what she has in her bag. The voice is speaking French, but she knows he is German. She says she was collecting snails, but he observes she has none. She worries about the loaf in her bag that probably has a scroll inside. She asks if she can pass, and he asks her if he can ask her about her father. She tries to act as if her father will come, but the man knows her father is in prison. He comes at her and slips; she goes inside the grotto, shuts the door, and locks it. He waits outside. He paces and tells her he has one simple question, after which he will leave. She curls into herself and imagines she is a whelk, impervious.
138: Agoraphobia
Etienne counts the minutes that Marie-Laure has been gone. It usually takes her 21 minutes, one time 23. This time it has been 31. He knows it takes 4 minutes to walk to the bakery and 4 back; he does not know where she goes in between but he suspects it is the sea, because she comes back smelling of sea water. He trusts she keeps herself safe. The last time Etienne went outside was 24 years ago. He thinks of that time, when he tried to act normal but felt his feet pounding and eyes in the cobblestones and corpses in the shadows; afterwards, he came back and crawled into bed. Now he feels a terrible headache coming on. He braces himself, and steps out the door.
139: Nothing
Marie-Laure waits inside the grotto while the German runs his newspaper over the bars. He wants to know what her father was doing here between June and January when he was arrested, and if her father left her anything. Marie-Laure breaks open the bread and eats the paper inside. The snails at her feet rasp away at the floor, with their 80 rows of 30 teeth. The sergeant major shares that he has been sent on pointless tasks, but all he really wants to find is this one thing. He said if she answers him he'll leave and not tell anyone about this place, God's promise. She thinks about what "God's promise" means. Marie-Laure finally answers him, that her father left her nothing: just a broken promise and a dumb model of the city. She is surprised by her anger. The German is quiet, perhaps considering her exasperation. She asks him to keep his promise and leave.
140: Forty Minutes
Etienne feels assaulted by the sun as he makes his way to the bakery. Madame Ruelle is surprised to see him; he tells her that Marie-Laure has not come back and it has been 41 minutes. He struggles with the sunshine. He tells her that sometimes Marie-Laure goes to the sea, and she says that's not possible with the beaches and the ramparts closed. Madame Ruelle is worried they will find the bread. Etienne suddenly remembers the old kennel where he used to play with his brother and Hubert. He and Madame Ruelle run through the streets and arrive there, where they see Marie-Laure crouched with bread broken in her lap. She lets them both in, and is surprised and relieved that they came.
141: The Girl
The blind girl haunts Werner. He thinks of her fearless step. They continue to search for the resistance signals. The blind girl faces down the dead Viennese girl inside him. He wants to know who she is. He is concerned that Volkheimer and the others already suspect that he knows something. He and Jutta used to pray that their whole world would freeze over, that they would wake up and find everything gone. He wishes for that now. In August, Neuman One and Two are taken to the front—all essential men are needed for the defense. Neumann Two leaves looking as though he is in his last hours on earth. Only Volkheimer, Bernd, and Werner remain. That night, Werner decides that at the time of the broadcast he will either turn off the transceiver or cover the meter.
142: Little House
Etienne tells Marie-Laure he will get the bread now, and that he should have been doing it all along; Marie-Laure is relieved. She has nightmares of the German. They do not have much to eat in the house. Marie-Laure thinks of how the policemen 2 years ago asked her if there was anything specific her father mentioned, and how the German wanted to know if her father left anything with her. On the 6th of August, Marie-Laure reads to Etienne from Jules Verne, a passage about how Professor Arronnax wonders if Captain Nemo is carrying out a secret mission unknown to him. Marie-Laure closes the book and tells Etienne she needs to rest. She thinks of the letter she received from her father about looking inside Etienne’s house. She realizes the German is not after the transmitter. She goes to her room and feels the model house of Number 4 rue Vauborel. She presses in a recess at the door and releases it, then shakes it, but hears nothing. Still, she easily solves the puzzle, twisting the chimney, sliding off the roof panels, and turning over the house, which drops a pear-shaped stone into her hand.
143: Numbers
The Americans seem to be winning: Etienne hears that liberation is a matter of days away. At the bakery Madame Ruelle unlocks the door and lets him in, telling him they need the coordinates for flak batteries. He says he will need to take measurements with a compass, but she says it is vital. Also, tomorrow, there is talk that all men ages 18-60 will be imprisoned in case they are part of the resistance. Etienne feels he is being caught in spiderwebs, but he nods and agrees to the plan.
144: Sea of Flames
Marie-Laure picks up the stone repeatedly, and sets it down as if it burns her. She thinks of how Dr. Geffard told her how queens may have worn it. She realizes this stone is what the German wants. She thinks about throwing it in the sea. She realizes it must be real if her father went through so much to conceal it. She considers showing it to her uncle. She thinks of her museum tour and how a boy on it asked, "When was the last time you saw someone throw five Eiffel Towers into the sea?" She tells herself curses are not real, and then she puts the house back in the model.
Early the next morning, Etienne knocks on her door and says he is going out. She asks him where, and he says it is better if she doesn’t know. She asks what will happen when they bomb, and if they will hit houses; he says they won't. He says he’ll be back when she wakes, and then they will finish the book together. She asks Etienne if he is ever sorry she came, and if she seems to be a curse; he says she is the best thing that has ever come into his life.
145: The Arrest of Etienne LeBlanc
Etienne feels good when he leaves the house. He already was able to transmit the location of the cannon beside the Hotel of Bees. He will choose two known points and calculate the 3rd to find the battery. It’s pre-dawn, and no one is up and about in the city. He has the sensation that he is walking down the aisle of a train with all the other passengers sleeping. Then, he turns a corner and a man limps toward him out of the blackness.
146: 7 August 1944
When Marie-Laure awakes, Etienne is not there. She tries not to panic. She eats a piece of bread and fills two buckets of water, as well as the bathtub on the 3rd floor. She opens her book and counts 9 chapters left; she doesn’t want to finish without Etienne. She checks that the little house is still under her pillow. She tries to read a chapter earlier in the novel. In the afternoon she hears the tripwire go off, but it is not Etienne—it is Claude Levitte. She opens the door halfway; he tells her Etienne told him to get her to take her out of the city, because of the evacuation orders. She doesn’t believe that he talked to Etienne; her uncle wouldn’t have asked Claude to escort her to shelter. She insists on staying. She thinks someone put Claude up to this. She closes the door and locks it.
147: Leaflets
In the Hotel of Bees, the Austrians serve pork kidneys on china plates with a silver bee etched in the rim. After dinner, Werner stands in the hexagonal tub on the top floor and looks out the window, observing that the Americans have them pinned against the sea. Orders have been posted by the garrison commander that no one should attempt to leave the city. Right before Werner closes the shutter, a plane flies over and drops leaflets, in French, that say, “Urgent message to inhabitants of this town. Depart immediately to open country.”
Analysis
Trapped in the cellar, Volkheimer stands hunched under the weight of the ruins above him; Werner thinks of him as Atlas in an allusion to Greek mythology. Volkheimer holding the world on his shoulders is a metaphor for the guilt he carries in his actions in the war. Werner sees the heads emitting a white light in the attic, evoking the motif of vision and sight, and the theme of darkness and light. Here Werner is able to see in the dark, meaning perhaps he will also be able to see his own goodness in the darkness. Volkheimer shares a memory of his grandfather with Werner, of how they harvested trees; Werner, in contrast and an inverse parallel, realizes he came from a place that harvested trees that had been dead for millions of years.
Marie-Laure uses her imagination, combined with the strength she draws from family love, to find courage as she has to venture out of the attic in order to drink water. She conjures, in her imagination, the image of her grandfather, and of Etienne, to lead her safely to the buckets of water. Back in the attic, she calls on her father to help her with the radio broadcast, too, and she hears his reasonable voice in her head, telling her what noises are too much and what she can do safely, thus helping her survive unnoticed by von Rumpel downstairs. Unlike the resistance broadcasts, the reason Marie-Laure wants to use the transmitter isn’t related to nationalism; rather, it is related to humanism: she is hoping her voice will reach someone in need of hearing something during this terrible event.
Chapter 121 tells of the accidental shelling of Fort National, where we know Etienne is currently being held—however, we don't know whether he is safe or not. Again, the idea of the curse runs through the narrative. Is the curse causing Marie-Laure’s bad luck: is she unlucky enough to lose Etienne in addition to those she has already lost?
Chapter 127 is exposition of Marie-Laure’s supernatural ability to hear and feel things that are miles away. The supernatural abilities of Marie-Laure are part of the fairy-tale nature of this story: a girl who can see more than anyone but is blind; a stone that can save one person but hurt all they love. Ironically, the supernatural element of the story is a sharp contrast to the humanism theme, because humanism rejects the idea of any supernatural or religious elements controlling human behavior: rather, it is humans who have the choice to do good or bad. This is apparent in the ending of Part 8 in the metaphor, “God is a white cold eye watching the city be pounded to dust.” Thus it is human choice that holds the most power in the novel, despite the fairytale imagery: in things both good and bad, humans are what creates the movement of the novel’s plot.
In Part 9, as the plot builds to the climax, Werner and his unit arrive in Saint-Malo and are told of the broadcast that lists numbers, reports family news, and plays music. The German officials are puzzled by it because they do not understand the music. Ironically, it is the music in the end that saves Etienne and Marie-Laure, because the music is what makes Werner sure he has found the same broadcast he used to listen to as a child. Werner’s discovery of the broadcast is described with two powerful similes. In the first, the voice of Etienne hits him as if it were a six-car train coming out of the darkness at him—the darkness here symbolizing the evilness which has surrounded Werner. The other Werner feels “as if he has been drowning for as long as he can remember and somebody has fetched him up for air” (Ch 133). Breathing again, seeing again, Werner is finally ready to make choices that concord with the kindness inside of him, instead of with the twisted nationalism he has been participating in.
As the date of the bombing approaches, Marie-Laure parallels the heaviness of summer in Saint-Malo in period that lead to the bombing of Paris. Marie-Laure has the ability to see grayness, colors, and the coming of something dark.
As the British near and the geopolitical conflict builds, so does the conflict build for von Rumpel as he comes closer to finding the diamond and pursues Marie-Laure, who locks herself in the kennel. In there, she thinks of herself as a whelk, “impervious”—once again the symbol of the whelk appears as a strong steady creature. This strong, steady creature is up against von Rumpel, who is also known for his patience; Marie-Laure wins this round simply because she is not yet aware that she is the one who holds the Sea of Flames.
Marie-Laure finally discovers the location of the Sea of Flames; ironically, she only discovers it after her encounter with von Rumpel, because of the way he convinced her father left her something. In addition, she makes the discovery after reading a line in the Jules Verne novel about how Captain Nemo seemed to have some secret mission he was on that no one else knew about: suddenly, Marie-Laure thinks of her father, and the words of the letter he wrote; the reader can recall the anxious energy Daniel LeBlanc had when he arrived in Saint-Malo, the way he constructed to model of Saint-Malo as if he were on a deadline. All of it parallels the time when Marie-Laure used to solve puzzles for fun with her father; this time, the puzzle is more complicated and has a more valuable and dangerous reward: the Sea of Flames. At the same time, upon discovering the diamond, Marie-Laure begins to wonder if she has brought a curse on her family and those around her, and asks Etienne about this. However, in Etienne’s eyes, Marie-Laure’s arrival opened his eyes, helping him to live again: her arrival assisted in his survival through familial connection and loyalty, and so he does not see her presence as a curse.
The novel began in medias res, when the leaflets fell from the sky advising the inhabitants of Saint-Malo to leave town. By the end of Part 9 the narrative has finally caught up to the beginning of the novel, as Werner catches and reads the same leaflet that Marie-Laure found in Part 0.
