Five Quarters of the Orange (21 page)

Cassis shook his head. “Maybe he’s spotted us,” he said grimly. “Just waiting for one of us to stick our head up—and pow!”

I shrugged again, and carefully looked over the top of the wall. Old Gustave hadn’t passed out, but he was sitting on his stick with his back to us, watching the café. He was quite still.

“Well?” said Cassis as I ducked back behind the wall.

I told him what I had seen.

“What’s he
doing?
” said Cassis, white with frustration.

I shook my head.

“Damn the old idiot! He’ll have us waiting here all night!”

I put my finger to my lips. “Shh. There’s someone coming.”

Old Gustave must have heard them too, for as we ducked farther behind the wall into the blackberry tangles we heard him come over. Not as quietly as we had, and if he’d come over a few meters to the left he would have landed right on top of us. As it was, he fell into a mess of brambles, cursing and flailing with his stick, and we retreated even farther into the thicket. There was a kind of tunnel where we were, made up of rolls of blackberry hedge and goosegrass, and for youngsters of our age and agility it looked as if it might be possible to crawl along underneath until we reached the road. If we could do that, we might be able to avoid climbing back over the wall altogether, thus enabling us to escape unseen into the darkness.

I had almost made my mind up to try this out when I heard the sound of voices from the other side of the wall. One was a woman’s voice. The other spoke German only, and I recognized it as Schwartz.

I could still hear the music playing in the bar, and I guessed that Schwartz and his lady-friend had crept out unremarked. From my vantage point in the blackberry tangle I could see their figures dimly above the wall, and I gestured to Reinette and Cassis to stay where they were. I could see Gustave too, some distance from us and unaware of our presence, huddled against the bricks at his side and watching through one of the cracks in the masonry. I heard the woman’s laughter, high and a little nervous, then Schwartz’s thick voice saying something in German. He was shorter than she was, bullish next to her slim figure, and the way he leaned into her neck seemed oddly carnivorous, as did the sounds he uttered while doing so, slurping, mumbling sounds like a man in a hurry to finish his dinner. As they moved from behind the back porch the moonlight caught them garishly, and I saw Schwartz’s big hands fumbling at the woman’s blouse—
Liebchen, Liebling
—and heard her laughter shriller than ever—
hihihihi!
—as she thrust her breasts into his hands. Then, they were no longer alone. A third figure came from behind the porch, but the German seemed unsurprised by his arrival, because he nodded briefly at the newcomer—though the woman seemed obliv
ious—and turned back to the business in hand while the other man looked on, silent and avid, his eyes gleaming out of the darkness of the porch like an animal’s. It was Jean-Marie Dupré.

It didn’t occur to me then that Tomas might have arranged this meeting. This spectacle in exchange for something else: a favor perhaps, or a tin of black market coffee. I made no connection between the interchange I had witnessed between them in the bar and this—in fact I wasn’t even sure what
this
was, it was so far removed from the little knowledge I had of such things. Cassis would have known, of course, but he was still crouching behind the wall with Reinette. I beckoned to him frantically, thinking that perhaps this was the time—while the three protagonists were still absorbed in themselves—to make good our escape. Nodding, he began to move toward me through the thicket, leaving Reinette in the shadow of the wall, only her white parachute-silk blouse visible from where we waited.

“Damn her. Why doesn’t she follow?” hissed Cassis at last. The German and the town woman had moved closer to the wall so that we could hardly see what was going on. Jean-Marie was close by them—close enough to watch, I thought, feeling suddenly guilty and sick at the same time—and I could hear their breathing, the thick piggy breathing of the German and the harsh excited breathing of the watcher with the high muffled squeal of the woman between them both, and I was suddenly glad I couldn’t see what was happening, glad that I was too young to understand because the act seemed impossibly ugly, impossibly
messy
and yet they were
enjoying
it, eyes rolling in the moonlight and mouths gaping fishily, and now the German was thudding the woman against the wall in short, percussive bursts, and I could hear her head and her backside hitting the bricks and her squealing voice—
ah! ah! ah!
—and his growling—
Liebchen, ja Liebling, ach ja
—and I wanted to stand up and run for it there and then, all my cool falling from me in a great prickly wave of panic.

I was about to follow my instinct—half-standing, turning toward the road, measuring the distance between myself and escape—when abruptly the sounds stopped and Schwartz, very loud in the sudden stillness, snapped,
“Wer ist das?”

It was then that Reinette, who had been moving softly toward us all the time, panicked. Instead of freezing as we had done when Gustave challenged the dark, she must have thought the German had spotted her, because she stood up and began to run, startling with the moonlight on her white silk blouse, and fell into the blackberry bushes with a cry, twisting her ankle to one side and sitting there wailing with her ankle held between her hands and her white face turning helplessly toward us and her mouth moving desperately and without words.

Cassis moved quickly. Swearing beneath his breath he ran through the thicket in the opposite direction, elder branches whipping at his face as he ran and brambles snagging barbs of flesh from his ankles. Without a backward look at either of us, he vaulted the wall on the other side and disappeared onto the road.

“
Verdammt!”
It was Schwartz. I saw his pale moony face over the top of the wall and flattened myself invisibly into the bushes. “
Wer war das?
”

Hauer, who had joined him from the back room, shook his head. “
Weiss’nicht. Etwas über da!
” he pointed. Three faces appeared over the top of the wall. I could only hide my own behind the dark foliage and hope that Reinette would have the sense to make a dash for it as soon as possible. At least I hadn’t run away, I thought contemptuously, like Cassis. Dimly I realized that back in La Rép the music had stopped.

“Wait, there’s someone there still,” said Jean-Marie, peering over the wall. The town woman joined him, her face white as flour in the moonlight. Her mouth looked black and vicious against that unnatural pallor.

“Why, the little trollop!” she said shrilly. “You! Get up this minute! Yes,
you
, hiding behind the wall!
Spying
on us!” The voice was high and indignant, maybe a little guilty. Reine stood up slowly, obediently.
Such a good girl, my sister. Always so quick to respond to the voice of authority. Much good it did her. I could hear her breathing, the quick panicky hiss in her throat as she faced them. Her blouse had pulled out of her skirt as she fell, and her hair had come down and blew about her face.

Hauer said something softly to Schwartz in German. Schwartz reached over the wall to haul Reinette over onto their side.

For a few seconds she allowed herself to be hoisted, unprotesting. She was never the quickest thinker, and of the three of us she was by far the most docile. An order from an adult—her first instinct was to obey without question.

Then she seemed to understand. Perhaps it was Schwartz’s hands on her, or maybe she understood what Hauer had murmured, but she began to struggle. Too late, Hauer was holding her still while Schwartz stripped off her blouse—I saw it go sailing over the wall like a white banner in the moonlight. Then another voice—Heinemann, I think—shouted something in German then my sister was screaming, high, breathless cries—
ah! ah! ah!
—of disgust and terror. For a second I saw her face above the wall, her hair flying out around her, her arms clawing the night, and Schwartz’s beery grinning face turned toward her, then she disappeared, though the sounds continued, the gluttonous sounds of the men and the town woman shrilling in what might have been triumph, “Serve her right, little whore! Serve her right!”

And through it all the laughter, that piggy
heh-heh-heh
that cuts through my dreams even now some nights, that and the saxophone music, so like a human voice, so like his voice….

I hesitated for maybe thirty seconds. No more, though it seemed like more to me as I bit my knuckles to aid concentration and crouched in the undergrowth. Cassis had already escaped. I was only nine—what could I do? I told myself—but even though I only understood very dimly what was going on still I could not leave her. I stood up, opened my mouth to scream—in my mind’s eye Tomas was nearby and would stop the whole thing—except that someone was already
climbing clumsily over the wall, someone with a stick with which he lashed at the onlookers with more rage than efficiency, someone who roared in a furious, cavernous voice, “Filthy
Boches!
Filthy
Boches!
”

It was Gustave Beauchamp.

I ducked back into the undergrowth. I could see very little of what was happening now, but I was aware of Reinette grabbing what was left of her blouse and running whimpering back along the wall to the road. I might have joined her then but for curiosity and the sudden elation that washed over me as I heard the familiar voice calling through the pandemonium,
“It’s all right! It’s all right!”

My heart leaped.

I heard him push his way through the little crowd—others had joined the fight now and I heard the sound of old Gustave’s stick connect twice more with a sound like someone kicking a cabbage. Soothing words—Tomas’s voice—in French and German: “It’s all right now, calm down,
verdammt
, calm it, can’t you, Fränzl, you’ve done enough in one day.” Then Hauer’s angry voice and confused protests from Schwartz.

Hauer, his voice trembling with rage, shouted at Gustave, “That’s twice you’ve tried it with me tonight, you old
Arschloch!”

Tomas shouting something unintelligible, then a great cry from Gustave cut off suddenly by a sound like a sack of flour hitting a stone granary floor, a terrible thwack against the stone, then silence as shocking as an icy shower.

It lasted thirty seconds or more. No one spoke. No one moved.

Then, Tomas’s voice, cheerily casual: “It’s all right. Go back into the bar. Finish your drinks. The wine must finally have got to him.”

There was an uneasy murmur, a whisper, a flutter of protest. A woman’s voice—Colette, I think: “
His eyes
—”

“Just the drink.” Tomas’s voice was brisk and light. “An old man like that. Doesn’t know when to stop.” His laugh was utterly convincing, and yet I knew he was lying. “Fränzl, you stay and help me get him home. Udi, get the others inside.” As soon as the others had
returned to the bar I heard the piano music begin again, a woman’s voice lifting in a nervous warble to the tune of a popular song. Left alone, Tomas and Hauer began to talk in rapid, urgent undertones.

Hauer: “
Leibniz, was muss—”

“Halt’s Maul!
” Tomas broke in sharply. Moving to the place where I guessed the old man’s body had fallen, he knelt down. I heard him move Gustave, then speak to him a couple of times softly, in French.

“Old man. Wake up, old man.”

Hauer said something rapid and angry in German, which I did not catch. Then Tomas spoke, slowly and very clearly, and it was more from the tone of his words than the words themselves that I understood. Slowly, deliberately, the words almost amused in their cool contempt.

“
Sehr gut, Fränzl
,” said Tomas crisply. “
Er ist tot.
”

O
ut of pills
. She must have been desperate. That terrible night, with the scent of oranges all around her and nothing to which she could cling.

I would sell my children for a night’s sleep
.

Then, under a pasted-in recipe clipped from a newspaper, in writing so small my old eyes needed a magnifying glass to make out the words:

Could those pills have been thirty high-dosage morphine tablets? For her silence? Or were the pills something else entirely?

P
aul came back half an hour later. He wore the slightly sheepish expression of a man who expects to be scolded, and he smelled of beer.

“I had to buy a drink,” he said apologetically. “It would have looked odd if I’d just stayed staring at them.”

By then I was half soaked and irritable. “Well?” I demanded. “What’s your big discovery?”

Paul shrugged. “Maybe nothing,” he said reflectively. “I’d rather…ah…wait till I’ve checked a few things before getting your hopes up.”

I looked him in the eye. “Paul Désiré Hourias,” I declared. “I’ve waited for you in the rain for ages. I’ve stood in the stink of this café watching for Dessanges, because you thought we might learn something. I haven’t complained
once
—” He gave me a satirical look at this point, which I ignored. “That makes me practically a
saint
,” I said sternly. “But if you
dare
to try to keep me in the dark—if you so much as
think
about it—”

Paul made a lazy gesture of defeat. “How did you know my middle name was Désiré?” he asked.

“I know everything,” I said, without smiling.

I
don’t know what they did after we ran away. A couple of days later old Gustave’s body was found in the Loire by a fisherman outside Courlé. The fish had been at him already. No one mentioned what had happened at La Mauvaise Réputation, though the Dupré brothers seemed more furtive than ever and an unusual silence hung over the café. Reinette didn’t mention what had happened, and I pretended I’d run off at the same time as Cassis, so she didn’t suspect what I’d seen. But she had changed in some way. She seemed cold, almost aggressive. When she thought I wasn’t looking she would touch her hair and face compulsively, as if checking for something out of place. She avoided school for several days, claiming she had stomach ache.

Surprisingly, Mother indulged her. She sat with her, mixing her hot drinks and talking to her in a low, urgent voice. She moved Reinette’s cot into her own room, something she had never done before for either me or Cassis. Once I saw her give her two tablets, which Reinette took reluctantly, protesting. From my spy place behind the door I caught a snatch of their conversation, in which I thought I caught the word
curse.
Reinette was quite ill for some days after the pills, but recovered soon enough, and no more was said about the incident.

There is little relating to this in the album. On one page my mother writes
R-C fully recovered
under a pressed marigold and a recipe for wormwood tisane. But I’ve always had my suspicions. Could the pills have been some kind of a purgative, in case of an unwanted pregnancy? Could they have been the pills to which Mother refers to in the journal entry? And was T. L. Tomas Leibniz?

I think Cassis might have guessed something, but he was far too
absorbed in his own affairs to take great notice of Reinette. Instead he learned his lessons, read his magazines, played in the woods with Paul and pretended nothing had happened. Perhaps for him, nothing had.

I tried to talk to him about it once.

“Something happened? What do you mean, something happened?” We were sitting at the top of the Lookout Post, eating mustard sandwiches and reading
The Time Machine
. It had been my favorite story all summer, and I never tired of it. Cassis looked at me, his mouth full, his eyes not quite meeting mine.

“I’m not sure.” I was careful what I said, watching his placid face over the hard cover of the book. “I mean, I only stayed a minute longer, but—” Difficult to put it into words. There were no words for that kind of thing in my vocabulary. “They nearly caught Reinette,” I said lamely. “Jean-Marie and the others. They…they pushed her down against the wall. They tore her blouse,” I said.

There was more, if only I could find the words. I tried to recall the feeling of horror, of guilt that had come over me then, the feeling that I was about to witness some ugly, compelling mystery, but somehow everything had become unclear, grainy, like images in a dream.

“Gustave was there,” I continued desperately.

Cassis was getting irritable. “So?” he said in a sharp voice. “So what? He was always there, the old tosspot. So what’s new about that?” And still his eyes refused to meet mine, lingering on the page, skittering to and fro like dead leaves in the wind.

“There was a fight. A kind of fight.” I had to say it. I knew he didn’t want me to, saw his fixed gaze deliberately avoiding me, concentrating on the page, the page, and wishing I’d shut up.

Silence. In silence our wills fought each other, he with his years and his experience, me with the weight of my knowledge.

“Do you think maybe—”

He turned on me then, ferociously, his eyes bright with rage and terror. “Think what, for Christ’s sake? Think
what?”
he spat. “Haven’t
you done enough already, with your
deals
and your plans and your clever
ideas?”
He was panting, his face hectic and very close to mine. “Don’t you think you’ve done enough?”

“I don’t know what…” I was almost in tears.

“Well,
think
, why don’t you?” yelled Cassis. “Let’s say you suspect something, shall we? Let’s say you know why old Gustave died.” He paused to watch my reaction, his voice lowering to a harsh whisper. “Let’s say you suspect someone. Who’re you going to tell? The police? Mother? The fucking Foreign Legion?” I watched him, feeling wretched but not showing it, staring him out in my old insolent way.

“We couldn’t tell anyone,” said Cassis in an altered voice. “Not anyone. They’d want to know how we knew. Who we’d been talking to. And if we said”—his eyes flickered away from mine—“if ever we said
anything—to anyone
—”

He broke off suddenly and turned back to the book. Even his fear had gone, replaced instead by a wary indifference.

“It’s a good thing we’re just kids, isn’t it?” he remarked in a new, flat voice. “Kids are always playing at stuff. Finding things out, detectives, things like that. Everyone knows it isn’t real. Everyone knows we just make it up.”

I stared at him. “But Gustave—” I said.

“Just an old man,” said Cassis, unconsciously echoing Tomas. “Fell in the river, didn’t he, drinking too much wine. Happens all the time.”

I shivered.

“We never saw anything,” said Cassis stolidly. “Not you, not me, not Reinette. Nothing happened. All right?”

I shook my head. “I did see. I did.”

But Cassis would not look at me again, retreating behind the pages of the book, where Morlocks and Eloi warred furiously behind the safe barriers of fiction. And every time I tried to talk to him about it subsequently he pretended not to understand, or to think I was play
ing some kind of make-believe game. In time perhaps he even came to believe it himself.

Days passed. I removed all traces of the orange bag and the orange peel hidden in the anchovy barrel, and I buried them in the garden. I had the feeling that I wouldn’t be using them again.

She writes:

She’s not afraid of anything. I want to warn her that it doesn’t last forever.

She was right about that. It doesn’t. I knew that as soon as Noisette was born—my Noisette, so sly, so hard, so like myself. She has a child now, a child I’ve never seen except in a picture. She calls her Pêche. I often wonder how they manage, alone, so far away from home. Noisette used to look at me like that, with those hard black eyes of hers. Remembering now, I realize she looks more like my mother than me.

Not long after the dance at La Rép, Raphaël came to call. He made some excuse—buying wine or something—but we knew what he really wanted. Cassis never admitted it, of course, but I could see it in Reine’s eyes. He wanted to find out what we knew. I imagine he was worried—more so than the rest because it was his café, after all, and he felt responsible. Maybe he was simply guessing. Maybe someone had talked. In any case he was nervous as a cat when my mother
opened the door, his eyes darting into the house behind her then out again. Since the dance, business at La Mauvaise Réputation had been bad. I’d heard someone at the post office—it might have been Lisbeth Genêt—saying that the place had gone to the dogs, that Germans came there with their whores, that no decent person would be seen there, and though no one had yet made the connection between what happened that night and the death of Gustave Beauchamp, there was no saying when the talk would begin. It was a village, after all, and in a village no one can keep a secret for long.

Well, Mother didn’t give him what you’d call a warm welcome. Maybe she was too conscious of us watching them, too much aware of what he knew about her. Maybe her illness made her sharp, or maybe it was just her naturally surly temperament. She saw him only once more, and two weeks later he was gone and everyone else who had been at La Rép the night of the dance was dead.

Mother makes only one reference to his visit.

No more. Just like that. If it had been another woman I wouldn’t have believed it, but Mirabelle Dartigen was no ordinary woman. No more, she said. And that was her last word. To my knowledge she never took morphine again, though that too might have been because of what happened rather than from sheer force of will. Of course, by then there were to be no more oranges, ever again.

I think even I had lost my taste for them.