Five Quarters of the Orange Read online

  First I listened at the door of my mother’s room. Silence. I knew she had taken her pills, and the chance was that she would be sleeping heavily, but I could not run the risk of being caught. Very gently I turned the doorknob. A board beneath my bare foot popped with a sound like a firecracker. I stopped mid-gesture, listening for her breathing, for any change in its rhythms. There were none. I pushed the door. One shutter had been left slightly open, and the room was light. My mother was lying across the bed. She had kicked off the covers during the night, and one pillow had fallen to the floor. The other was half covered by her outflung arm, and her head was hanging uncomfortably at an angle, her hair brushing the floorboards. I noticed with no surprise that the pillow in which I had concealed the muslin bag was the one upon which she was resting. I knelt beside her. Her breathing was thick and slow. Beneath her bruise-colored eyelids the pupils moved erratically. Slowly I worked my fingers into the pillowcase beneath her.

  It was easy. My fingers worked at the knot in the center of the pillow, coaxing it back toward the slit in the lining. I touched the bag, drew it closer with my fingernails, finally pulling it from its hiding place and safe into the palm of my hand. My mother never stirred. Only her eyes ticked and skittered under the darkened flesh, as if constantly following something bright and elusive. Her mouth was half open, and a thread of drool had crawled down her cheek to the mattress. On an impulse I put the sachet beneath her nostrils, crushing it to release the scent, and she whimpered in her sleep, turning her head away from the scent and frowning. I put the orange sachet into my pocket again.

  Then I began in earnest. A final glance behind me at my mother, as if she might be a dangerous animal feigning sleep. Then I moved to the mantelpiece. There was a clock there, a heavy piece with a round dial under a gilt and glass dome. It looked strange above the bare little black grate, too ornate for my mother’s room, but she had inherited it from her mother, and it was one of her most prized possessions. I lifted the glass dome and carefully turned the clock’s hands back. Five hours. Six. I replaced the dome.

  Then I rearranged the ornaments on the mantelpiece-a framed photograph of my father, another of a woman I knew to be my grandmother, a pottery vase of dried flowers, a dish containing three hairpins and a single sugared almond from Cassis’s christening. I turned the photographs against the wall. I placed the vase on the floor. I took the hairpins from the dish and put them in the pocket of my mother’s discarded apron. Then I picked up her clothes and draped them artistically around the room. One clog balancing on the lamp shade. The other on the window ledge. Her dress hanging neatly on a hanger behind the door, but her apron spread out on the boards like a picnic tablecloth. Finally I opened her wardrobe and positioned the door so that the mirror inside it would reflect the bed from where she was lying. The first thing she would see as she awoke was herself.

  I did none of this from any real sense of mischief. My intention was not to hurt but to disorient, to fool her into thinking that her imagined attack had been real and that she herself had, unknowingly, moved the objects, arranged the clothes, changed the clock. I knew from my father that she sometimes did things and lost track of doing them, that in the extremity of her pain and confusion her vision was troubled, her thoughts more so. The clock on the kitchen wall might suddenly appear bisected, one half clearly visible and the other suddenly not there, nothing but the bare wall behind it, or a wineglass might seem to change place on its own, to shift slyly from one side of the plate to the other. Or a face, a human face-mine, my father’s, Raphaël’s at the café-half the features would be suddenly sheared away as if by some terrible surgery, or half of the page of a cookbook removed even as she read, the remaining letters dancing incomprehensibly before her.

  Of course I didn’t know all that then. I learned most of this from the album, from her scribbled notes, some frantic, almost despairing-at three in the morning, anything seems possible-others almost clinical in their detachment, noting symptoms with cool scientific curiosity.

  Like the clock, I am divided.

  11.

  Reine and Cassis were still asleep when I left, and I guessed I had about half an hour to take care of my business before they awoke. I checked the sky, which was clear and greenish, with a faint yellow stripe on the horizon. Dawn was maybe ten minutes away. I would have to hurry.

  I took a bucket from the kitchen, pulled on my clogs, which were waiting on the doormat, and ran as fast as I could toward the river. I took the shortcut through Hourias’s back field, where summer sunflowers raised hairy, still-green heads at the pale sky. I kept low, invisible beneath the spread of leaves, my bucket clanging against my leg at every step. It took me less than five minutes to arrive at the Standing Stones.

  At five in the morning the Loire is still and sumptuous with mist. The water is beautiful at that time of the day, cool and magically pale, the sandbanks rising like lost continents. The water smells of night, and here and there a spray of new sunlight makes mica shadows on the surface. I took off my shoes and my clothes and surveyed the water critically. It looked deceptively still.

  The Treasure Stone was maybe thirty feet from the bank, and the water at its base looked oddly silky at the surface, a sign that a strong current was at work. I could drown here, I told myself, and no one would even know where to look for me.

  But I had no choice. Cassis had issued a challenge. I had to pay my own way. How could I do that, with no pocket money of my own, without using the purse hidden in the treasure chest? Of course, there was a chance he might have removed it. If he had, I would risk stealing from my mother’s purse. But that I was reluctant to do. Not because stealing was especially wrong, but because of my mother’s unusual memory for figures. She knew what she had to the last centime. She would know at once what I had done.

  No. It had to be the treasure chest.

  Since Cassis and Reinette had finished school there had been few expeditions to the river. They had treasure of their own-adult treasure-to gloat over. The few coins in the purse amounted to a couple of francs, no more. I was counting on Cassis’s laziness, his conviction that no one but he would be able to reach the box tied to the pillar. I was sure the money was still there.

  Carefully I scrambled down the banking and into the water. It was cold, river mud oozing between my toes. I waded out until the water was waist deep. I could feel the current now like an impatient dog at the leash. God, it was already so strong! I put out a hand against the first pillar, pushing away from it into the current, and took another step. I knew that there was a drop just ahead, a point at which the still-shallow verge of the Loire sheared away into nothingness. Cassis, when he was making the trip, always pretended to drown at this point, turning belly up into the opaque water, struggling, screaming with a mouthful of brown Loire spurting from between his lips. He always fooled Reine, however many times he did this, making her squeal in horror as he sank beneath the surface.

  I had no time for such an exhibition. I felt for the drop with my toes. There. Pushing against the riverbed I propelled myself as far as I could with my first kick, keeping the Standing Stones downriver to my right. The water was warmer on the surface, and the drag of current not as strong. I swam steadily, in a smooth arc, from the first Standing Stone to the second. The Stones are maybe four meters apart at their widest stretch, spread unevenly from the bank. I could make two meters with a good strong kick against each pillar, aiming slightly upstream so that the current would bring me back to the next pillar in time to begin again. Like a small boat tacking against a strong wind, I limped toward the Treasure Stone in this way, feeling the current grow stronger each time. I was gasping with cold. Then I was at the fourth pillar, making my final lunge toward my goal. As the current dragged me toward the Treasure Stone I overshot the pillar and there was a moment of sudden, sparkling terror as I began to move downstream into the main drag of the river, my arms and legs pinwheeling against the water. Panting, almost crying with panic, I managed to kick mys
elf in range of the Stone and grabbed the rope that secured the treasure chest to the pillar. It felt weedy and unpleasant in my hand, slimed with the brown ooze of the river, but I used it to maneuver myself around the pillar.

  I clung there for a moment, letting my pounding heart quiet. Then, with my back wedged safely against the pillar, I hauled the treasure chest up and out of its muddy cradle. It was a difficult job. The box itself was not especially heavy, but weighted with chain and tarpaulin as it was, it seemed a dead weight. Trembling with cold now, my teeth chattering, I struggled with the chain and finally felt something give. Kicking my legs frantically to keep my position against the pillar, I hauled at the box. I knew another moment of near panic as the mud-slimed tarpaulin caught at my feet, then my fingers were working at the rope that held the box. For an instant I was sure that my numbed fingers would not be able to open the tin, then the catch gave way and water rushed into the treasure chest. I swore. Still, there was the purse, an old brown leather thing Mother had discarded because of a faulty catch. I grabbed it and jammed it between my teeth for safety, then with a final effort, slammed the box closed and let it sink, weighted by its chain, to the bottom again. The tarpaulin was lost, of course, the remaining treasure waterlogged, but that couldn’t be helped. Cassis would have to find somewhere drier to hide his cigarettes.

  I had the money, and that was all that mattered.

  I swam back to the bank, missing the last two pillars and drifting two hundred meters down toward the Angers road before I managed to steer myself out of the current-more like a dog than ever, a mad brown dog with its leash twined crazily around my frozen legs. The whole episode, I guessed, had taken maybe ten minutes.

  I forced myself to rest awhile, feeling the slight warmth of the sun’s first rays on my face, drying the mud of the Loire against my skin. I was trembling with cold and exhilaration. I counted the money in the purse-there was certainly enough for a cinema ticket and a glass of juice. Good. Then I walked upstream to where I had left my clothes. I dressed-an old skirt and a red sleeveless man’s shirt cut down to make a smock. My clogs. I did a perfunctory check on my fishing traps, tipping out the small fry or leaving it in place as bait. In a cray pot by the Lookout Post there was the unexpected bonus of a small pike-not Old Mother, of course-and this I slid out into the bucket I had brought from the house. Other catches: a mess of eels from the muddy flats beside the big sandbank, a sizable bleak from one of my catch-all nets. I piled them all into the bucket. They would be my alibi if Cassis and Reine were already awake. Then I made my way home through the fields as unobtrusively as I had come.

  I did well to bring the fish. Cassis was washing under the pump when I got back, though Reinette had warmed a basin of water and was dabbling delicately at her face with a soapy washrag. They looked at me curiously for a moment, then Cassis’s face relaxed into an expression of cheery contempt.

  “You never give up, do you?” he said, jerking his dripping head at the fish bucket. “What you got in there, anyway?”

  I shrugged. “Couple of things,” I said carelessly. The purse was in the pocket of my smock, and I smiled inwardly at its comforting weight. “Pike. Just a small one,” I said.

  Cassis laughed. “You might catch the small ones, but you’ll never catch Old Mother,” he said. “Even if you did, what’d you do with it? A pike that old wouldn’t be any good to eat. Bitter as wormwood and full of bones.”

  “I’ll catch her,” I said stubbornly.

  “Oh?” His tone was careless, disbelieving. “And what then? You’ll make a wish, will you? Wish for a million francs and an apartment on the Left Bank?”

  I shook my head mutely.

  “I’d wish to be a movie star,” said Reine, toweling her face. “To see Hollywood, and the lights, and Sunset Boulevard, and to drive in a limousine and to have dozens and dozens of dresses…”

  Cassis gave her a brief look of scorn, which cheered me immensely. Then he turned to me. “Well, what about it, Boise?” His grin was brash and irresistible. What’s it going to be? Furs? Cars? A villa in Juan-les-Pins?“

  I shook my head again. “I’ll know when I’ve caught it,” I said flatly. “And I’ll get it too. See if I don’t.”

  Cassis studied me for a moment, the grin sliding from his face. Then he made a little noise of disgust and turned back to his ablutions.

  “You’re something, Boise,” he said. “Really something, you know?”

  Then we raced off to finish the day’s chores before Mother woke up.

  12.

  There is always plenty to do on a farm. Water to bring in from the pump, leaving it in metal buckets on the cellar tiles so that the sun doesn’t warm it, goats to milk, the pail to be covered with a muslin cloth and left in the dairy, the goats then taken to the pasture so that they don’t eat all the vegetables in the garden, hens and ducks to feed, the day’s crop of ripe strawberries to pick, the baking oven to stoke even though I doubted Mother would be doing much baking today. The horse, Bécassine, to be let out into the pasture and fresh water brought to the troughs. Working at maximum speed it took us the best part of two hours to finish, and by the time we did the sun’s heat was gaining, the night damp already steaming off the baked-earth paths and the dew drying on the grass. It was time to go.

  Neither Reinette nor Cassis had mentioned the money question. There was no need. I paid my way, Cassis had told me, assuming that this would be impossible. Reine looked at me oddly as we picked the last of the strawberries, wondering perhaps at my self-assurance, and when she caught Cassis’s eye she giggled. I noticed that she had dressed with especial care this morning-her pleated school skirt, ankle socks and shoes with a red short-sleeved sweater-and her hair was rolled into a fat sausage at the back of her head, secured with hairpins. She smelt unfamiliar too, a kind of sweetish powdery smell like marshmallow and violets, and she was wearing the red lipstick. I wondered if she was meeting someone. A boy, perhaps. Someone she knew from school. She certainly seemed more nervous than usual, picking the fruit with the delicate haste of a rabbit feeding among weasels. As I moved between the rows of strawberry plants I heard her whisper something to Cassis, then I heard her high, nervous giggle.

  I shrugged inwardly. I supposed they were planning to go off somewhere without me. I had persuaded Reine to take me, and they would not go back on that promise. But as far as they knew, I had no money. That meant they could go to the pictures without me, perhaps leaving me by the fountain in the market square to wait for them, or sending me on an imaginary errand while they went to meet their friends… Sourly I bit down on the thought. That was supposed to be how it went. So sure of themselves that they had overlooked the one obvious solution to my problem. Reine would never have swum the Loire to the Treasure Stone. Cassis still saw me as the little sister, too much in awe of the adored older brother to hazard the slightest thing without his permission. Occasionally he looked at me and grinned his satisfaction, his eyes gleaming with mockery.

  We left for Angers at eight o’clock, I riding on the back wheel of Cassis’s huge ungainly bike with my feet wedged perilously beneath the handlebars. Reine’s bicycle was smaller and more elegant, with high handlebars and a leather saddle. There was a bicycle basket across the handlebars in which she carried a flask of chicory coffee, and three identical packets of sandwiches. Reine had tied a white scarf around her head to protect her coiffure, and the tails whipped at her nape as she rode. We stopped three or four times on our way-to drink from the flask in Reine’s bicycle basket, to check a soft tire, to eat a piece of bread and cheese in lieu of breakfast. At last we came to the suburbs of Angers, passing the collège-closed now for the holidays and guarded by a pair of German soldiers at the gate-and down streets of stucco houses toward the town center.

  The cinema, the Palais-Doré, was in the main square, close to where the market was held. Several rows of small shops lined the square, most of which were opening for the morning, and a man was washing down the pavement with a bu
cket of water and a broom. We pushed the bikes then, steering them into an alley between a barber’s and shuttered butcher’s shop. The alley was barely wide enough to walk through, and the ground was piled with rubble and debris; it seemed safe to assume that our bikes would be left alone. A woman at the terrasse of a café smiled at us and called a greeting; a few Sunday customers were already there, drinking bowls of chicory and eating croissants or hard-boiled eggs. A delivery boy went by on a bicycle, ringing his bell importantly; by the church a newspaper stand sold single-sheet bulletins. Cassis looked round, then made his way to the newsstand. I saw him hand something to the newspaper man, then the man handed Cassis a bundle, which quickly vanished into Cassis’s trouser waistband.

  “What was that?” I asked.

  Cassis shrugged. I could see that he was pleased with himself, too pleased to withhold the information just to annoy me. He lowered his voice conspiratorially and allowed me a glimpse of rolled-up papers, which he immediately covered up again.

  “Comic books. Serial story.” He winked at Reine self-importantly. “American film magazine.”

  Reine uttered a squeak of excitement and made as if to grab his arm. “Let me, let me see!”

  Cassis shook his head irritably. “Shh! For God’s sake, Reine!” He lowered his tone again. “He owed me a favor. Black market,” he mouthed. “Kept them for me under the counter.”

  Reinette looked at him in awe. I was less impressed. Perhaps because I was less aware of the scarcity of such items; perhaps because the seeds of rebellion already growing in me pushed me to scorn anything of which my brother seemed overly proud. I gave a shrug to show my indifference. Still, I wondered what kind of “favor” the newspaper man might have owed Cassis, and finally concluded that he must have been bragging. I said as much.