Summary
Part 6: 8 August 1944
96: Someone in the House
Marie-Laure reasons that someone is in the house because she first heard the gate shut and then the door. She hears her father’s voice in her head giving her bits of reasons: for example, the person is not Etienne because he would have called out to her. She feels distress and imagines herself a shell coiling into a shell. She imagines jumping out the window. Her father’s voice tells her a rescuer would be calling out. She knows she has to hide. She has her cane, the cans, the knife, the brick, and the house with the stone in it. She recognizes the man’s footsteps, an out-of-rhythm stride, a German sergeant major with a dead voice. Moving quietly, grateful she doesn’t have her shoes, she goes into her grandfather’s room and opens the wardrobe, where behind the doors Etienne has installed a false door. She goes inside, shuts the wardrobe doors, and then inches the false door shut. She asks the stone to protect her now, if that’s what it does.
97: The Death of Walter Bernd
Bernd murmurs gibberish for an hour, then asks for light. Volkheimer feeds him the last of a canteen of water. Bernd tells the story of how he visited his father last year, who was very old. When he went to visit him his father told him he didn’t have to stay, that he could go off with friends. Bernd left, even though he had come far to visit his father, and had no friends left to visit there. Not long after he tells this story, he dies. Werner works on making the radio work—perhaps not for Jutta, but rather so he doesn’t have to think of Volkheimer burying Bernd in the rubble. Werner finds materials and a battery that they can use to keep the field light lit. He places the crushed transceiver on the table. He looks at the task as a problem to solve.
98: Sixth-floor Bedroom
Von Rumpel limps through the house, in and out of each room. He does not see any dollhouses. He worries he got everything wrong. On the 6th floor he sees Henri’s neat room, then the small bathroom, and then Marie-Laure’s room, full of seashells; there, he sees the model of the city, which is what he has been searching for. He thinks of how his daughters would love to see something like that. He has the sensation he has been here before, that he once had a room like this, as if the room had been waiting for his return. He believes the Sea of Flames will be inside the model.
99: Making the Radio
Werner wraps a wire around a pipe, and has connected the parts needed—ground, antenna, and battery. He raises an earphone to his ear, but the radio does not work. The hotel above them groans, then a shell explodes somewhere and dust falls on them. Werner envisions the distribution of the current; he rechecks all the parts, then tries again and finds the radio working. He remembers Jutta, and also thinks of Herr Seidler. He scans the channels and finds only static.
100: In the Attic
Marie-Laure hears the German shut the wardrobe doors, and she waits. She grows sleepy. She decides to climb up into the garret, where it is hot, the air trapped. She knows that the floors there are noisy, so she moves carefully. She wonders what she will do if the German comes in—hit him with the umbrella rack up there? She wants to open a can but knows she can’t do it quietly. Outside she hears a shell flying. She is terrified. She wonders if he is gone but knows he is not, because she knows why he came here.
Part 7: August 1942
101: Prisoners
Werner meets an underweight corporal known as Neumann Two, who comes to greet him by foot. Neumann One is the driver, and there are an engineer and a sergeant as well. Neumann Two examines the uniforms that Werner brought, and is disappointed they are not in his size. They walk to the village, where Neumann Two orders calf livers at a delicatessen and eats them. He takes 3 pills for his back, and then asks for 12 hardboiled eggs to go, 4 of which he gives to Werner. They board a train in Schulpforta and ride until Lodz, where they get out on a platform full of sleeping soldiers, as if they were all enchanted, breathing in synchrony. They sit and wait, and after dark a train begins to pass: a locomotive, a few cars, a machine gun in a blister, and all the cars following are flatcars loaded with people, standing and kneeling. Neumann Two says they are prisoners. Each car seems to have sacks in a wall at the front to block the wind. Werner tries to see the individuals in the cars, and then suddenly realizes that the "sacks" are actually dead bodies, hundreds or thousands of men. Werner asks, “They were sitting on their dead?” Neumann Two responds by miming as if he were raising a rifle towards the train, and says, “bang.”
102: The Wardrobe
Etienne does not come out of his study for days after Madame Manec dies. Madame Manec’s friends bring food for Etienne and Marie-Laure, and take her to the memorial. After 4 days Etienne comes out of his room, comes to the kitchen, and asks the women to leave. Then he locks the doors, goes to the basement, and takes out an electric saw. They go to the 6th floor and saw a hole in the back of the wardrobe, then in the attic door. Etienne arranges the things in the attic. Marie-Laure falls asleep on her grandfather’s bed. She wakes to music, Clair de Lune, and the recording of her grandfather. Etienne comes down stairs, and she knows what he will say. Etienne wants to participate in what Madame Manec is doing; he says that it is not a game, and he needs to know the routine. Marie-Laure says she will go to the bakery, and describes the way there. She will ask for bread, and Madame Ruelle will ask after Etienne, so as to be assured that Etienne is willing to participate. She will pay with a ration ticket. Then she will get the bread and come back. He tells her to go do it.
103: East
Werner and Neumann Two ride East, sleeping in the cars, watching thin pale soldiers get on and off. Occasionally they see an overturned, burnt train car. They arrive in Russia. They get off the train and walk through a charred village. Werner is brought to a captain eating a boiled round piece of gray meat. He asks Werner to look at the equipment. Neumann Two brings a lantern and shows Werner the back of a truck (an Opel Blitz), where the transceivers are, and leaves him there. Werner wonders whether this is Dr. Hauptmann’s idea of punishment or reward. He thinks of Frau Elena and his sister, warm in front of the fire at Children’s House. Werner feels soothed by the site of the transceivers, all the way out here like old friends. He opens the back and sees the damage. He remembers fixing Herr Seidler’s Philco. As he opens the second transceiver case, Volkheimer appears.
104: One Ordinary Loaf
Etienne tears open the bread to find the paper string of numbers. He says they will wait until dark to read them. Etienne rigs the house with wires so they can tell if someone has entered the gate and front door: when this happens, bells go off on the third floor and in the attic. Marie-Laure tests the bells. Then Etienne builds a sliding false back on the wardrobe that can be opened from both sides. He puts the telescoping antenna in the chimney. He turns on the transmitter and reads the string of numbers on three frequencies, then turns it off. Marie-Laure asks what the numbers mean; he does not know. He asks Marie-Laure if she remembers what Madame Manec said about the boiling frog, and wonders if the frog was supposed to be her or the Germans.
105: Volkheimer
Werner meets the other people he is working with, and they tell him their captain believes that attacks of partisans hitting the trains are being organized by radio, Volkheimer assures them that Werner is better than their last technician. They take the Opel down the roads and stop every few miles to set up the transceivers. They leave Bernd and Neumann Two behind with a rifle and headphones, then drive further. Werner switches on the primary receiver, listening for unsanctioned sounds. At night they eat sardines, and Werner has nightmares of Frederick, and of Jutta staring at him accusingly. Volkheimer keeps checking to see if Werner has heard anything. In their tests, Werner always knew Volkheimer was out there transmitting, but now he is chasing ghosts. At night there is frost, and Werner wakes with his breath showing, wondering how deep will the snow be.
106: Fall
From the 5th floor of the house, Etienne watches German soldiers gathering for a photo shoot at the Bastion de Hollande, laughing in the wind. He sees three women leaving Big Claude’s house, the only house on the block with electricity. He lights a candle and goes to the sixth floor. He has given up trying to crack the code of the paper. He has felt better since he has begun to read the paper on the radio daily: he hasn’t struggled with his vision, nor with nausea. They have been reading the slips of paper for months, and now Etienne has also begun to play music. He imagines the people receiving the numbers do not expect the music. Tonight he plays Vivaldi. Marie-Laure comes to the attic, and they dance. He lets the music play too long, he thinks. He sees the glow on Marie-Laure’s face, reminding him of dusks in places he used to go with his brother. The transmitter remains on after the song ends. After Marie-Laure goes to bed, Etienne sit by his own bed. He imagines the bony figure of Death riding the streets below, looking at the houses; he says to it, "Pass us by."
107: Sunflowers
Werner and his unit drive the Opel listening for the signals of foreigners. They are in a field of sunflowers, one transceiver in the truck; Bernd takes the other transceiver into the stalks to set up. Neumann One and Two talk about sex. Suddenly Werner hears Russian coming through the radio. He gives the coordinates to Bernd and they calculate the distance: 1.5 kilometers away. The truck takes off into the sunflowers, the stalks and heads hitting against the truck. Volkheimer distributes weapons; they see a cottage. They shut off the truck and Volkheimer, Neumann Two, and Bernd go on foot with their weapons. Werner listens to the radio, where a man continues to talk. He hears the shots first in the air and then on the radio. Volkheimer comes back with what seems like ink splashed on his face—then Werner realizes it is not ink. He tells Neuman One to burn the place, and Werner to salvage the equipment. Outside there is a dog that seems to be sleeping; inside are two dead men, and Werner notes they are not wearing uniforms. In the kitchen there are unlabeled potions in the cupboard, and one that says 'belladonna'. Werner takes their transmitter, a low-quality machine. Neumann One uses diesel to burn the place. Werner thinks of Dr. Hauptmann saying that a scientist is determined by his interests and his time; Werner thinks of all the events in his life that have lead him here, and watches the fire as they drive away.
108: Stones
Von Rumpel goes to a warehouse in Lodz, his first time traveling since he finished his treatment in Stuttgart. There, he is dressed in a jumpsuit and a Gefreiter (the officer in charge) explains the protocol: two other men, also in jumpsuits, will take the stones out of their settings, another man will clean them, and then von Rumpel will examine them and call out their level of clarity—included, slightly included, or almost loupe-clean. They will work in 12-hour shifts. They dump out a bag of jewels. Von Rumpel starts to ask where they came from, but then realizes he already knows.
109: Grotto
Marie-Laure still expects Madame Manec to come up the stairs in the mornings. When Marie-Laure wakes she always goes to the bakery via the same route, counting the storm drains. There she asks for an ordinary loaf, which sometimes contains a scroll and other times does not. Sometimes Madame Ruelle also gives her groceries. After she gets the bread she goes to the grotto, unlocks the door, and wades into the chilly water calf-deep. She observes all of the sea life there: a barnacle living inside a mussel shell; a hermit crab. That winter the electricity is off more than it is on, so they burn furniture and other things to stay warm. She takes the rug from Madame Manec’s room to throw on top of her bed. She wonders if she should go stand in the front door while Etienne broadcasts, but stays in bed. She thinks of her father, dreams herself in the museum, and hears him say he'll never leave her in a million years.
110: Hunting
Werner continues to work on finding people transmitting from unpermitted transmitters. They find various locations and stop them. He feels successful. The captain promises them holiday leave and other treats. They drive through places that he and Jutta once recorded on their maps— places like Minsk and Prague. Sometimes when they are driving they pass prisoners in trucks and Volkheimer asks Neumann One to slow down. He looks for prisoners that are his size, of large stature, and when he sees one he gets out the the truck and orders the man to give him his clothes and his boots. The men comply but are always reluctant to give up their boots, knowing that without them they will die. Germans drive all over Russia; the roads are compacted ice and blood. In spring it begins to melt, but ice still remains.
One night Werner is in a restaurant a few tables away from a soldier who is reading with a surprised expression. Neumann One tells him that the reason the boy looks that way is because he lost his eyelids to frostbite. They are not able to receive mail, and Werner has not written to Jutta in months.
111: The Messages
Occupation authorities require that a list of the inhabitants of a house are posted on the door. In summer 1943 Madame Ruelle hands Marie-Laure another note in addition to the bread, a note that she wants Etienne to read. The note says that a monsieur wants his daughter to know he is alive and well. Marie-Laure and Etienne discuss what it means; Marie-Laure thinks it means exactly what it says. They continue to receive and read more messages like it—announcements, for example, of deaths and births. Etienne feels good knowing that ordinary people are listening to his broadcasts. He always reads the number, the messages, and plays a song, all on a few different frequencies. This is too long, Etienne thinks, but no Germans come for him. Each night Marie-Laure asks Etienne to read her the letters from her father. She asks him what he thinks her father meant when he said twice in his letter, “inside Etienne's house,” but they've discussed it many times to no avail. Etienne thinks of the summer that he and his brother Henri tried to catch fireflies. After Marie-Laure falls asleep, Etienne hears a noise outside. He looks in the street and sees Madame Manec's ghost, collecting sparrows and putting them inside her coat.
112: Loudenvielle
Von Rumpel is in the Pyrenees. He waits to see the contents of a bag of gems taken from a man who was arrested. The man is affiliated with the National Museum. Von Rumpel still feels weak and queasy from his treatments. He sees a car pull up; a thin man with a black eye is taken out of the back, and a handbag is removed from the trunk. The captain and von Rumpel examine the contents: there are six felt pouches with gems, one of them a pear-shaped diamond. After examining it he knows it is a fake, but feels successful having found 2 fakes so far. He celebrates by eating a meal of wild boar and Bordeaux wine, a luxury.
113: Gray
December 1943 is very cold, and there is hardly any wood left to burn. Marie-Laure continues to deliver messages for Etienne to read. She can hear airplanes passing low overhead and fears some will crash into them, but none does, and nothing changes. The only thing that Marie-Laure notes has changed is that she has grown and cannot fit the clothes her father brought for her, nor her shoes: she wears Etienne’s shoeswith three pairs of socks. There are rumors that all residents of Saint-Malo will be forced to leave except for essential personnel and people with medical reasons. Etienne says they will not leave. Marie-Laure spends parts of her days lost in memories of times when she could see the colors of the streets of Paris. Now her entire world seems gray, except in the moments when Etienne is broadcasting on the radio and playing the music—then she sees magenta, aquamarine, and gold for those five minutes.
114: Fever
Werner gets a fever with diarrhea, and all he can do is lie down in the back of the truck. His companions try to help; Neumann Two offers the pills he takes (which now Werner knows are not for backaches). It becomes 1944; he hasn’t written to Jutta in a year. He continues to find illegal transmissions, and realizes that everyone really is a partisan: all non-Germans want the Germans out. The Russian partisans operate in an unsophisticated and disorganized manner, even though the resistance is said to be an organized, dangerous group. He thinks of Dr. Hauptmann’s talk of entropy—that if it decreases in one system, it increases in another. To Werner, it appears they are all Hades. In February they are in the mountains, driving down switchbacks; Werner shivers in the back, Volkheimer covers him with a blanket. Out the window Werner sees, for a moment, Jutta in a cabin sitting at a table with Frau Elena and other children; next to the stove is a bin of dead infants.
115: The Third Stone
At a chateau in Amiens, outside of Paris, von Rumpel goes to check the contents of a safe. The home belongs to a retired paleontologist, and the chief of security took refuge there in the days after Paris was bombed. Inside the safe is a pear-shaped diamond. Von Rumpel hopes it is real, especially because his cancer has come back. He also knows that soon he will be sent into the war: all of the people out examining objects of value are soon going to be sent to fight. He wonders who the third courier of the Sea of Flames would be.
116: The Bridge
In a French village to the south of Saint-Malo, a German truck is blown up while crossing a bridge. Madame Ruelle whispers to Marie-Laure that there are rumors a resistance radio network helped facilitate this. The authorizes have blocked access to the rampart walkways and are in the process of blocking off the beach. Yet there is still a number inside the loaf. Etienne says he thought they would take a break. That night, part way into the song, Etienne abruptly stops the broadcast. He comes downstairs and tells Marie-Laure how many people died in the Great War. He says that what they are doing isn't just reading numbers. Marie-Laure responds by saying that they are the good guys—aren't they?
117: Rue des Patriarches
Von Rumpel goes to the building where Marie-Laure and her father used to live in Paris. He questions the landlady on the first floor, who is surrounded by cats. She says she receives a check mailed to her every month. Von Rumpel goes to the apartment and enters. Inside it's clear the occupants left in haste. He sees the string tied between two places, and the grip strips on the floor; then he finds a book in Braille and understands that the locksmith has a blind daughter, that he is a loyal employee of the museum, and thus he is the perfect candidate to carry the jewel. Von Rumpel sees the model of the neighborhood, the Latin quarter, and notices one house is more worn than the rest: the building he is in. He remembers the style of the safe that held the diamond at the museum, and notices some of the same details on the miniature house. Hoping there is something inside, he crushes it with his foot.
118: White City
Werner and the others arrive in Vienna. The town seems all white and empty. They drive around for a while; Werner can feel the fever still inside him. He wonders at the purpose of opera houses and other art when people are killing each other and the future seems so bleak. They stop in one place and Newman One gives them all haircuts. The narrator tells the reader that Newman One would have been a barber if he hasn't been scheduled to be killed in Normandy in 10 weeks. While they have their hair cut, they listen to waltz on the radio. Werner observes Volkheimer’s softer side as he listens to the music, and contrasts that with the fact that he knows Volkheimer has killed over a hundred men. Werner observes a child in a maroon cape playing while her mother watches, and remembers the joy of playing on a spring day. He worries Neumann Two or Bernd will come and say something crass, but they don't, and Werner feels a little more hopeful. Later, he finds an forbidden broadcast on the radio; he traces it to a big apartment block where he sees an antenna outside. Volkheimer and Newman Two go up but don't find anything. Werner goes up 5 minutes later to check it out. He sees that what he thought was an antenna was a rod meant to be attach to a clothesline. He sits down on the unmade bed, observing smells and objects belonging to a woman. He looks at the wallpaper and his brain feels jumbled; the wallpaper seems to move. Then he observes the maroon, hooded cape hung on the doorknob; at the same time he hears a gargled scream from Newman Two, a shot, a woman's scream, and then another shot. He goes into the bedroom and sees the woman lying on the floor, and the little girl he saw earlier in the closet, with a surprised look on her face and a hole in her forehead. In his mind, he tries to will her to blink. He feels nauseous. They go back to the truck, and Werner is sick between his shoes.
119: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
On Marie's sixteenth birthday, Etienne gives her the two-volume set of Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea in braille. It has been over 3 years since her father left, and 4 years since she read braille, but it comes back to her right away. She thanks Etienne and can't understand how he got it; he mentions the bookseller Monsieur Hébrard, and tells her she has made a lot of friends. She begins to read it aloud to Etienne, the story coming back to her: the question of whether the creature seen is a reef or a sea monster; Professor Aronnax going to check it out, and then finding himself on Captain Nemo's submarine, the Nautilus.
120: Telegram
A new garrison commander arrives on the emerald coast. Even though he is of shorter stature and is prematurely gray, he gives off the impression that he is tall and powerful. He came with a French secretary. He is based in Saint-Malo, where he sends off telegrams nightly. In April 1944 he sends off a telegram that alerts Europe that there is a terrorist radio transmission coming from the area in or near Saint-Malo.
Analysis
In Part 6, Marie-Laure calls on her father, in her imagination and her memory of him, to help her survive being in the house with von Rumpel. Werner begins to put together the radio, thinking of it as a problem to solve. His survival up until this point has depended exactly on his skill of fixing radios.
In Part 7, both Werner and Marie-Laure are getting to work in their respective situations of participating in nationalism for their own country. Werner joins the Wehrmacht, where for the first time he is exposed to the atrocities the Germans are committing against others. Yet, there with his new unit, amongst the radio, he feels comforted and thinks of family—of Jutta and Frau Elena. He has a contrast of the truth of the atrocities the Germans are committing, and his own survival in what he has made important to him: working with radios, and using his skills in science and technology. Werner feels successful in that he is able to accomplish the task that is assigned to him—finding the partisan broadcasts—but the success is a lot bloodier than he imagined. He has nightmares where he sees Frederick and Jutta: both of them have made ethical decisions to respect human life, and they stand accusing Werner. He is also somewhat disturbed by how the Partisan broadcasters are not very threatening: they are poor and don’t have good equipment. One of the most powerful images is when they are driving through the sunflowers and come upon a pretty cottage; this pleasant country imagery is juxtaposed with the violent act that they are committing. Werner complies with all the actions required of him, but his doubts are still in his mind. As Werner spends more time with his unit completing his tasks, he gets more and more isolated from Jutta—not writing with her, and thus straying farther away from the humanism she encompasses. Werner also becomes physically sick, a physical reflection of the spiritual and emotional hardships he faces while carrying out his gruesome tasks.
Meanwhile, Marie-Laure and Etienne are invigorated by their participation in the French Resistance. Marie-Laure spends more time amongst the snails and other creatures in the grotto, which is Marie-Laure’s symbolic shell. In Chapter 111 the theme of memory appears as the viewpoint changes for a chapter to Etienne. The imagery of Etienne’s mind is revealed to the reader in this part, as we see the hallucinations he has—of death walking the streets, and of Madame Manec’s ghost on the street. Etienne’s memories of his brother and himself as a child also come to him, strengthening him for the task of participating in the resistance. Etienne and Marie-Laure are even more surprised that there are others out there who want to share family news via the radio—births and deaths—also highlighting the theme that family love is what helps the characters to survive.
In one of the only moments of doubt for Etienne since he agreed to join the resistance, he expresses concerns that his broadcasts are leading to deaths, a concern that he relates back to the horrors he saw in the Great War. His words echo Dr. Hauptmann’s words to Werner in Chapter 58: he said “it’s only numbers” to reassure Werner that he was completing his job as necessary, and that he should not worry about the consequences. However, Etienne’s perspective is the humanist one, as shown when he says, “These numbers, they’re more than numbers.” Etienne believes in the goodness of humans, that they have a choice not to harm each other; thus he questions if what he is doing is right.
In Part 7, as von Rumpel’s cancer worsens, he begins to believe in the power of the stone, and wants to find it more for that reason than any other. In addition, he knows he will be sent to war soon, building on the growing evidence of the Germans losing the war. This mood is portrayed through the imagery from the German side of the war, showing their disorganization and lack of resources. When seen from Werner’s point of view, the narrative takes on a bleak tone: Volkheimer stealing clothes off prisoners the same size as him; the Neumann’s stealing weapons and clothes off dead partisans; the ice and blood paving the roads. Also, there is an allusion to Greek literature in “the White City” of Vienna, where Werner thinks of Hades: he feels the places he visited are like the Greek conception of Hell and the Underworld. He thinks of the theory of entropy discussed by Hauptmann but is not convinced any longer of its truth: it does not seem to be true for Germany and the Third Reich, because everything he sees is in disorder.
Chapter 118 is one of the most jarring and emotionally intense chapters of the book, in which Werner and his unit murder a mother and her young daughter accidentally. The chapter is rich with imagery and themes. It starts with the unit pulling into the seemingly empty city of Vienna, and stopping to get haircuts from Neumann One. In a paragraph of exposition, the author ironically describes what Neuman’s life would be like as a barber, if he were not set to die in 10 weeks. Werner chooses music to play on the radio that Volkheimer would like, to please and support him in a time when the rest of the mood is bleak. At the same time, Werner is also reflecting on Volkheimer’s actions as part of this unit, how he has been killing many people, and contrasts that with his soft side; the humanist in Werner still sees the good in Volkheimer, the Volkheimer who likes classical music. Werner is uplifted when he watches the little girl in the hooded cape play; ironically, this girl is the same one senselessly murdered by Neumann Two when Werner miscalculates the location of an illegal radio.
Part 7 ends with a telegram from the Germans alerting the surrounding areas of the resistance broadcast; thus, Etienne and Marie-Laure are endangered, and once again the momentum of the time switching in the novel is maintained.
