Five Quarters of the Orange / Пять четвертинок апельсина

Satisfied, I went to retrieve my fishing bag from where it lay in the blackberry tangle, happy in the knowledge that I had earned it, after all.

Part Three

The snack-wagon

1

It was maybe five months after Cassis died-four years after the Mamie Framboise business-that Yannick and Laure came back to Les Laveuses. It was summer, and my daughter Pistache was visiting with her two children, Prune and Ricot, and until then it was a happy time. The children were growing so fast and so sweet, just like their mother, Prune chocolate-eyed and curly-haired and Ricot tall and velvet-cheeked, and both of them so full of laughter and mischief that it almost breaks my heart to see them, it takes me back so.

I swear I feel forty years younger every time they come, and that summer I taught them how to fish and bait traps and make caramel macaroons and green-fig jam, and Ricot and I read Robinson Crusoe and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea together, and I told Prune outrageous lies about the fish I’d caught, and we shivered at stories of Old Mother’s terrible gift.

“They used to say that if you caught her and set her free, she’d give you your heart’s desire, but if you saw her-even out of the corner of your eye-and didn’t catch her, something dreadful would happen to you.”

Prune looked at me with wide pansy-colored eyes, one thumb corked comfortingly in her mouth.

“What kind of a dreadful?” she whispered, awed.

I made my voice low and menacing.

“You’d die, sweetheart,” I told her softly.

“Or someone else would. Someone you loved. Or something worse even than that. And in any case, even if you survived, Old Mother’s curse would follow you to the grave.”

Pistache gave me a quelling look.

“Maman, I don’t know why you want to go telling her that kind of thing,” she said reproachfully. “You want her to have nightmares and wet the bed?”

“I don’t wet the bed!” protested Prune. She looked at me expectantly, tugging at my hand. “Mеmеe, did you ever see Old Mother? Did you? Did you?”

Suddenly I felt cold, wishing I had told her another story.

Pistache gave me a sharp look and made as if to lift Prune off my knee.

“Prunette, you just leave Mеmеe, alone now. It’s nearly bedtime, and you haven’t even brushed your teeth or-”

“Please, Mеmеe, did you? Did you see her?”

I hugged my granddaughter, and the coldness receded a little.

“Sweetheart, I fished for her during one entire summer.