Five Quarters of the Orange / Пять четвертинок апельсина - Харрис Джоанн

I did not reply. I wasn’t going to promise anything.

Cassis slid into the aisle next to the soldier called Hauer. Looking around curiously I could see that no one was paying us the slightest attention except the German standing behind us, a slight, sharp-faced young man with his uniform cap tilted back at a rakish angle and a cigarette in one hand. Beside me I heard Cassis whispering urgently to Hauer, then the crackle of papers. The sharp-faced German grinned at me and gestured with the cigarette.

Suddenly, with a jolt, I recognized him. It was the soldier from the market, the one who had seen me take the orange. For a minute I could do nothing but stare at him, transfixed.

The German gestured again. The glow from the cinema screen lit his face, throwing dramatic shadows from his eyes and cheekbones.

I cast a nervous glance at Cassis, but my brother was too deep in conversation with Hauer to notice me. The German was still watching expectantly, a little smile on his lips, standing some distance away from where the others were seated. He held his cigarette with the tip cupped into his palm, and I could see the dark smudge of his bones beneath the glowing flesh. He was in uniform, but his jacket was undone and his head was bare. For some obscure reason, that reassured me.

“Come here,” said the German softly.

I could not speak. My mouth felt as if it were full of straw. I would have run, but was not sure my legs would carry me. Instead, I put up my chin and moved toward him.

The German grinned and dragged another breath from his cigarette.

“You’re the little orange girl, aren’t you?” he said as I came closer.

I did not reply.

The German seemed unconcerned by my silence.

“You’re quick. As quick as I was when I was a boy.” He reached into his pocket and brought out something wrapped in silver paper. “Here. You’ll like it. It’s chocolate.”

I eyed him with suspicion.

“I don’t want it,” I said.

The German grinned again.

“You like oranges better, do you?” he asked.

I said nothing.

“I remember an orchard by a river,” the German said softly. “Near the village where I grew up. It had the biggest, blackest plums you ever saw. High wall all around. Farm dogs prowling. All through summer, I tried to get at those plums! I tried everything. I could hardly think of anything else.”

His voice was pleasant and lightly accented, his eyes bright behind a scrawl of cigarette smoke. I observed him warily, not daring to move, unsure whether or not he was making fun of me.

“Besides, what’s stolen tastes so much better than what you get for free, don’t you think?”

Now I was sure he was mocking me, and my eyes widened indignantly.

The German seemed to see my expression, and laughed, still holding out the chocolate.

“Go on, Backfisch, take it. Imagine you’re stealing it from the Boches.”

The square was half melted, and I ate it straightaway. It was real chocolate too – not the whitish, gritty stuff we occasionally bought in Angers. The German watched me eat, amused, as I eyed him with undiminished suspicion, but with growing curiosity.

“Did you get them in the end?” I asked at last, in a voice thick with chocolate. “The plums, I mean?”

The German nodded.

“I did, Backfisch. I still remember the taste.”

“And you weren’t caught?”

“That too.” The grin became rueful. “I ate so many that I made myself sick, and so I was found out. I got such a hiding! But I got what I wanted in the end. That’s what matters, isn’t it?”

“That’s good,” I agreed. “I like to win.” I paused. “Is that why you didn’t tell anyone about the orange?”

The German shrugged.

“Why should I tell anyone? It was none of my business. Besides, the grocer had plenty more. He could spare one.”

I nodded. “He’s got a van,” I said, licking the square of silver paper so that none of the chocolate would be lost. The German seemed to agree.

“Some people want to keep everything they’ve got to themselves,” he said. “That isn’t fair, is it?”

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I shook my head. “Like Madame Petit at the sewing shop,” I said. “Charges the earth for a bit of parachute silk she got for free.”

“Precisely.”

It struck me then that perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned Madame Petit, and I shot him a quick glance, but the German seemed hardly to be listening. Instead he was looking at Cassis, still whispering to Hauer at the end of the row of seats. I felt a stab of annoyance that Cassis should interest him more than I did.

“That’s my brother,” I said.

“Is it?” The German looked back at me again, smiling. “You’re quite a family. Are there any more of you, I wonder?”

I shook my head.

“I’m the youngest. Framboise.”

“I’m very pleased to meet you, Françoise.”

I grinned.

“Framboise,” I corrected.

“Leibniz. Tomas.”

He held out his hand. After a moment’s hesitation, I shook it.

14

So that was how I met Tomas Leibniz. For some reason Reinette was furious with me for talking to him, and sulked all the way through the rest of the film. Hauer had slipped Cassis a packet of Gauloises, and we both crept back to our seats, Cassis smoking one of his cigarettes and myself lost in speculation. Only when the film was finished was I ready to ask questions.

“Those cigarettes,” I said. “Is that what you meant when you said you could get things?”

“Of course.”

Cassis was looking pleased with himself, but I still sensed anxiety beneath the surface. He held his cigarette in the palm of his hand, as if in imitation of the Germans, but on him the gesture looked awkward and self-conscious.

“Do you tell them things? Do you?”

“We sometimes… tell them things,” admitted Cassis, smirking.

“What kind of things?”

Cassis shrugged.

“It started with that old idiot and his radio,” he said in a low voice. “That was only fair. He shouldn’t have had it anyway, and he shouldn’t have pretended to be so shocked when all we were doing was watching the Germans. Sometimes we leave notes with a delivery man, or at the café. Sometimes the newspaper man gives us stuff they’ve left. Sometimes they bring it.” He tried for nonchalance but I could sense that he was anxious, edgy. “It’s nothing important,” he continued. “Most of the Boches use the black market themselves anyway, and send stuff home to Germany. You know, stuff they’ve requisitioned. So it doesn’t really matter.”

I considered this.

“But the Gestapo-”

“Oh, grow up, Boise!” Suddenly he was angry, as he always was when I put him under pressure. “What do you know about the Gestapo?” He looked around nervously, then lowered his voice again. “Of course we don’t deal with them. This is different. I told you, it’s just business. And anyway, it’s nothing to do with you.”

I faced him, feeling resentful.

“Why not? I know things too.”

I wished now that I had made more of Madame Petit with the German, that I had told him she was a Jew.

Cassis shook his head scornfully.

“You wouldn’t understand.”

We rode home in slightly apprehensive silence, perhaps expecting Mother to have guessed about our unsanctioned trip, but when we got home we found her in unusual spirits. She did not mention the smell of oranges, her sleepless night or the changes I had made in her room, and the meal she prepared was almost a celebration dinner, with carrot and chicory soup, boudin noir with apple and potatoes, black buckwheat pancakes and clafoutis for dessert, heavy and moist with last year’s apples and crusted with brown sugar and cinnamon. We ate in silence as always, but Mother seemed abstracted, quite forgetting to tell me to take my elbows off the table and failing to see my tangled hair and smudged face.

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Perhaps the orange had tamed her, I thought.

She made up for it the next day, however, reverting to her usual self again with a vengeance. We avoided her as best we could, doing our chores in haste then retreating to the Lookout Post and the river, where we played halfheartedly. During these summer days at the river Paul came with us, but he sensed that he was no longer a part of us, that he was excluded from the circle we made. I felt sorry for him, even a little guilty, knowing what it was like to be excluded, but could do nothing to prevent it. Paul would have to fight his own battles, as I had fought mine.