Five Quarters of the Orange / Пять четвертинок апельсина

It was just like Reinette to get so excited about nothing at all.

“We told them-well, we just mentioned to one of them-about Toupet and his radio,” she said. For some reason she was flushed, her cheeks bright as peonies. “He gave us the lipstick, and some cigarettes for Cassis, and… well, all kinds of things.” She was speaking rapidly now, unstoppably, her eyes bright. “And later Yvonne Cressonnet said that she saw them come to old Toupet’s room, and they took the radio away, and he went with them, and now instead of Latin we have an extra geography lesson with Madame Lambert, and no one knows what’s happened to him!”

She leveled her gaze at me.

I remember her eyes were almost gold, the color of boiling sugar syrup as it begins to turn.

I shrugged. “I don’t suppose anything happened,” I said reasonably. “I mean, they wouldn’t send an old man like that to the front just for having a radio.”

“No. Course they wouldn’t.” Her reply was too hasty. “Besides, he shouldn’t have had it in the first place, should he?”

I agreed he shouldn’t.

It was against the rules. A teacher should have known that. Reine looked at the lipstick, turning it gently, lovingly in her hand.

“You won’t tell, then?” She stroked my arm gently. “You won’t, will you, Boise?”

I pulled away, rubbing my arm automatically where she had touched me. I never did like being petted.

“Do you and Cassis see these Germans often?” I questioned.

She shrugged. “Sometimes.”

“D’you tell them anything else?”

“No.

” She spoke too quickly. “We just talk. Look, Boise, you won’t tell anyone, will you?”

I smiled. “Well, I might not. Not if you do something for me.”

She looked at me narrowly.

“What do you mean?”

“I’d like to go into Angers sometimes, with you and Cassis,” I said slyly. “To the pictures, and the cafе, and stuff…”

I paused for effect and she glared at me from eyes as bright and narrow as knives.

“Or,” I continued in a falsely holy tone, “I might tell Mother that you’ve been talking to the people who killed our father.

Talking to them and spying for them. Enemies of France. See what she says to that.”

Reinette looked agitated.

“Boise, you promised!”

I shook my head solemnly.

“That doesn’t count. It’s my patriotic duty.”

I must have sounded convincing. Reinette turned pale. And yet the words themselves meant nothing to me. I felt no real hostility to the Germans.