Five Quarters of the Orange

by Joanne Harris

  “No, it’s mine,” I said. “Let me.”

  I was thinking rapidly. Of course I might be able to retrieve some of the orange peel, but I didn’t want Cassis to suspect.

  I turned my back on them to divide the orange, slicing carefully to avoid cutting my hand. Cutting quarters would have been easy, slice down the middle, then slice again, but this time I needed to cut an extra piece, large enough for my purpose but too small to be immediately noticeable as missing from the rest, a piece I could slip into my pocket for later… As I sliced it I saw that Tomas’s gift was a Seville blood orange, a sanguine, and for an instant I was transfixed at the red juice dripping from my fingers.

  “Hurry up, clumsy,” said Cassis impatiently. “How long does it take to cut an orange into quarters?”

  “I’m trying,” I snapped. “The skin’s so tough.”

  “L-let m-m-m-” Paul made a move toward me and for a second I was sure he’d seen it, the fifth piece, no more than a sliver really, before I slid it into my sleeve and out of sight.

  “It’s all right,” I said. “I’ve done it now.”

  The pieces were uneven. I had done the best I could, but still there was one quarter that was noticeably bigger than the rest, and another that was very small. I took the small piece. I noticed Paul gave the large one to Reine.

  Cassis watched in disgust. “I told you you should have let me do it,” he said. “Mine isn’t a proper quarter. You’re so clumsy, Boise.”

  I sucked my piece of orange in silence. After a while Cassis stopped grumbling and ate his. I saw Paul watching me with an odd expression, but he didn’t say anything.

  We threw our pieces of peel into the river. I did manage to save one piece of mine in my mouth, but I threw in the rest, uneasily aware of Cassis’s eyes on me, and was relieved to see him relax a little. I wondered what he might have suspected. I transferred the bitten-off piece of peel into my pocket with the illicit fifth quarter, feeling pleased.

  I just hoped it would be enough.

  I showed the others how to clean their hands and mouths with mint and fennel and to rub under their fingernails with mud to hide the orange-peel stain, then we went home through the fields to where Mother, singing tonelessly to herself in the kitchen, was preparing dinner.

  “Sweat the onion and shallots in olive oil with some fresh rosemary, mushrooms and a small leek. Add a handful of dried tomatoes, basil and thyme. Cut four anchovies lengthways and place in the pan. Leave for five minutes.

  “Boise, some anchovies from the barrel. Four big ones.”

  I went down to the cellar with a dish and the wooden tongs so that the salt would not crack open the skin of my palms. I took out the fish, then the orange bag in its protective jar. I added the new piece of orange, squeezing the oil and juice onto the old peel to revive it, then chopped what was left with my pocketknife and tied it into the bag. The scent was immediate and pungent. I sealed the bag back into the jar, rubbed the glass clean of salt and placed it in my apron pocket so that no more of the precious scent could escape. I touched my palms briefly against the salted fish so that Mother would be deceived.

  “Add a cupful of white wine and the parboiled, floury potatoes. Add cooking scraps-bacon rind, leftover meat or fish-and a tablespoon of oil. Cook on a very low heat for ten minutes without stirring or lifting the lid.”

  I could hear her singing to herself in the kitchen. She had a monotonous, rather grating voice, which rose and fell at intervals.

  “Add the raw unsoaked millet-hnn hnnn-and turn off the heat. Leave covered for-hnnn hnnn-ten minutes without stirring or-hnnnn-until the juices have been absorbed. Press into a shallow dish-hnn hnn hnnn-brush with oil and bake until crisp.”

  With a keen eye to what was happening in the kitchen, I put the orange bag under the heating pipes for the last time.

  I waited.

  For a time I was sure it wasn’t going to work. Mother stayed in the kitchen, humming to herself in that tuneless dogged way. As well as the pavé there was also a cake black with berries and bowls of green salad and tomatoes. Almost a celebration dinner, though what we had to celebrate I couldn’t guess. Mother was like that sometimes; on good days there would be a feast, and on bad we would make do with cold pancakes and a smear of rillettes. Today she seemed almost fey, hair falling from its usually severe scraped-back style into casual tendrils, face moist and pink with the heat of the fire. There was a feverish quality about her, in the way she spoke to us, the quick breathless hug she gave Reine as she came in-a rarity almost as unusual as her brief episodes of violence-the tone in her voice, the way her hands moved in the basin, on the chopping board, with quick nervous flutterings of the fingers.

  Out of pills.

  A crease between her eyes, creases around her mouth, her strained, effortful smile. She looked at me as I handed her the anchovies and gave a smile of peculiar sweetness, a smile that a month ago, a day ago, might almost have softened my heart.

  “Boise.”

  I thought of Tomas sitting by the riverbank. I thought of the thing that I had seen, the oil-slick, monstrous beauty of its flank against the water. I wish. I wish. He’d be there tonight, I told myself, at La Mauvaise Réputation. Jacket slung casually across a chair back. I imagined myself, grown suddenly movie-star beautiful and refined, silk dress billowing out behind me, everyone staring. I wish. I wish. If I’d only had my rod…

  My mother was staring at me with that expression of strange, almost embarrassing vulnerability.

  “Boise?” she repeated. “Are you all right? Do you feel ill?”

  I shook my head in silence. The wave of self-hatred that struck me was whiplash quick, a revelation. I wish…I wish…I made my face sullen. Tomas. Only you. Forever.

  “I’ve got to check my traps,” I told her in my dead voice. “I won’t be long.”

  “Boise!” I heard her call after me, but I ignored her. I ran to the river, checked each trap twice, certain that this time, this time, when I needed that wish…

  All empty. I threw the small fry-bleaks, gudgeons, flat small-snouted eels-back into the river in sudden, searing rage.

  “Where are you?” I screeched across the silent water. “Where are you, you sly old bitch?”

  Below my feet the dim Loire flowed unmoved, brown and mocking. I wish. I wish. I picked up a stone from the bank and threw it as far as I could, wrenching my shoulder painfully.

  “Where are you? Where are you hiding?” My voice sounded hoarse and shrill, like my mother’s. The air sizzled with my fury. “Come out and show yourself! Dare you! DARE YOU!”

  Nothing. Nothing but the brown snaky river and the sandbanks lying half drowned in the failing light. My throat felt raw and scraped. Tears stung the corners of my eyes like wasps.

  “I know you can hear me,” I said in a low voice. “I know you’re there.”

  The river seemed to agree with me. I could hear the silky sounds of the water against the bank at my feet.

  “I know you’re there,” I said again, almost caressingly. Everything seemed to be listening to me now, the trees with their turning leaves, the water, the burnt autumn grass.

  “You know what I want, don’t you?” Again that voice, which sounded like someone else’s, that adult, seductive voice. “You know.”

  I thought of Jeannette Gaudin then and the water snake, of the long brown bodies hanging up against the Standing Stones and the feeling I had had, earlier that summer a million years ago, the conviction.…It was an abomination. A monster. No one could make a pact with a monster.

  I wish. I wish.

  I wondered whether Jeannette had stood where I was now, barefoot and looking over the water. What did she wish for? A new dress? A doll to play with? Something else?

  White cross. Beloved Daughter. Suddenly it didn’t seem such a terrible thing to be dead and beloved, a plaster angel at your head and silence…

  I wish. I wish.

  “I’d throw you back,” I whispered slyly. “You know
I would.”

  For a second I thought I saw something. Bristle black in the water, a shining silent something like a mine, all teeth and metal. But it was just my imagination.

  “I would,” I repeated softly. “I’d throw you back.”

  But if it had been there at all, it wasn’t now. Beside me a frog belched suddenly, absurdly. It was getting cold. I turned and went back across the fields the way I came, picking a few ears of corn to excuse my late arrival.

  After a while I began to smell the pavé cooking, and I quickened my step.

  3.

  I‘ve lost her. I’m losing them all.

  It’s there in my mother’s album opposite a recipe for blackberry cake, tiny migraine-letters in black ink, the lines crossed and recrossed as if even the code in which she writes is not enough to hide the fear she hides from us and from herself.

  She looked at me today as if I wasn’t there. Wanted so hard to take her in my arms but she’s grown so much and I’m afraid of her eyes. Only R-C keeps a little softness but Fra doesn’t feel like my child any more. My mistake was thinking children were like trees. Prune them back and they’ll grow sweeter. Not true. Not true. When Y. died I made them grow up too fast. Didn’t want them to be children. Now they’re harder than me. Like animals. My fault. I made them that way. Oranges in the house again tonight, but no one smells them but me. My head aches. If only she could put her hand on my forehead. No more pills. The German says he can get some more, but he doesn’t come. Boise. Late home tonight. Like me, divided.

  It sounds like gibberish, but her voice in my mind is suddenly very clear. It is sharp and plaintive, the voice of a woman hanging on to her sanity with every bit of her strength.

  The German says he can get some more, but he doesn’t come.

  Oh, Mother. If only I’d known.

  4.

  Paul and I read through the album little by little during those lengthening nights. I deciphered the code while he wrote down and cross-referenced everything by means of small cards in order to try to put events in sequence. He never commented, not even when I passed over certain sections without telling him why. We averaged two or three pages a night, not a great deal, but by October we had covered almost half the album. For some reason it seemed a less arduous task than when I’d tried it alone, and we would often sit late into the night remembering the old days of the Lookout Post and the rituals at the Standing Stones, the good days before Tomas. Once or twice I even came close to telling him the truth, but I always stopped just in time.

  No. Paul mustn’t know.

  My mother’s album was only one story; one with which he was already partly familiar. But the story behind the album…I looked at him as we sat together, the bottle of Cointreau between us and the copper pot of coffee simmering on the stove behind. Red light from the fire lit his face and outlined his old yellow mustache in flame. He caught me looking at him-seems he does that more and more often nowadays-and smiled.

  And it wasn’t so much the smile as something behind the smile-a look, a kind of searching, wry look-that made my heart beat faster and my face flush with something more than the heat of the fire. If I told him, I thought suddenly, that look would go from his face. I couldn’t tell him. Not ever.

  5.

  When I came in the others were already at table. Mother greeted me with her strange, forced cheeriness but I could tell that she was at the end of her tolerance. The smell of orange stung my sensitized nostrils. I watched her intently.

  We ate in silence.

  The celebration dinner was heavy, like eating clay, and my stomach rebelled against it. I pushed food about on my plate until I was sure she was looking elsewhere, then transferred it into my apron pocket for later disposal. I need not have worried. In the state she was in, I don’t think she would have noticed if I’d thrown it against the wall.

  “I smell oranges.” Her voice was brittle with desperation. “Has any of you brought oranges into the house?”

  Silence. We looked at her blankly, expectant.

  “Well? Have you? Brought oranges?” Voice rising now, a plea, an accusation.

  Reine looked at me suddenly, guilty.

  “Of course not.” I made my voice flat and sullen. “Where would we get oranges?”

  “I don’t know.” Her eyes were narrow with suspicion. “The Germans, perhaps. How should I know what you do all day?”

  This was so close to the truth that for a moment I was startled, but I didn’t let it show. I gave a shrug, very conscious of Reinette watching me. I shot her a warning look.

  Give the game away, would you?

  Reinette turned back to her cake. I kept on watching my mother. Staring her out. She was better at it than Cassis, her eyes expressionless as sloes. Then she stood up abruptly, almost knocking over her plate and half-dragging the tablecloth with her.

  “What are you staring at now?” she cried at me, stabbing at the air with her hands. “What are you staring at, damn you? What is there to see?”

  I gave another shrug. “Nothing.”

  “That isn’t true.” Voice like a bird’s, sharp and precise as a woodpecker’s beak. “You’re always staring at me. Staring. What at? Thinking what, you little bitch?”

  I could smell her distress and fear, and my heart swelled with victory. Her eyes dropped from mine. I did it, I thought. I did it. I won.

  She knew it too. She looked at me for another few seconds, but the battle was lost. I gave a tiny smile, which only she could see. Her hand crept to her temple in the old gesture of helplessness.

  “I have a headache,” she said with difficulty. “I’m going to lie down.”

  “Good idea,” I said tonelessly.

  “Don’t forget to wash the plates,” she said, but it was only noise. She knew she’d lost. “No putting them away still wet. No leaving-” Then she broke off, silent, staring into space for half a minute. A statue frozen midmovement, mouth half open. The rest of the sentence hung between us for an uneasy half-minute.

  “Plates on the draining board all night,” she finished at last, and stumbled off down the passageway, pausing once to check the bathroom, where there were no more pills.

  We-Cassis, Reinette and I-looked at one another.

  “Tomas said to meet him at La Mauvaise Réputation tonight,” I told the others. “He said there might be some fun.”

  Cassis looked at me. “How did you do that?” he said.

  “Do what?” I echoed.

  “You know.” His voice was low and urgent, almost fearful. In that moment he seemed to have lost all authority over us. I was the leader now, the one to whom the rest would look for guidance. The strange thing was that though I realized this at once, I felt scarcely any satisfaction. There were other things on my mind.

  I ignored his question. “We’ll wait until she’s asleep,” I decided. “An hour, maybe two at most. Then we’ll make our way across the fields. No one will see us. We can hide out in the alley and watch out for him.”

  Reinette’s eyes lit up, but Cassis looked skeptical. “What for?” he asked at last. “What are we going to do when we get there? We’ve got nothing to tell him, and he already left the film magazines-”

  I glared at him. “Magazines,” I snapped. “Is that all you ever think about?”

  Cassis looked sullen. “He said something interesting might happen,” I said. “Aren’t you curious?”

  “Not really. It mightn’t be safe. You know what Mother-”

  “You’re just chicken,” I said fiercely.

  “I’m not!” He was, though. I could see it in his eyes.

  “Chicken.”

  “I just don’t see the point in-”

  “Dare you,” I said.

  Silence. Cassis gave a sudden pleading look at Reine. I began to stare him out. He held my gaze for a second or two, then turned away.

  “Baby stuff,” he said with mock indifference.

  “Double dare you.”

  Cassis made a furious ge
sture of helplessness and defeat. “Oh, all right, but I tell you, it’s going to be a pointless waste of time-”

  I laughed in triumph.

  6.

  The Café de la Mauvaise Réputation, “ La Rép ” to its regulars-wooden floor, polished bar with an old piano standing beside it (of course, nowadays half the keys are missing and there’s a planter of geraniums where the works used to be), a row of bottles (no optics in those days) and glasses hanging on hooks under the bar and around. The sign has been replaced by a blue neon thing and there are machines and a jukebox, but in those days there was nothing but the piano and a few tables that you could move against the walls if anyone happened to want to dance.

  Raphaël could play when he wanted to, and sometimes someone-one of the women, Colette Gaudin or Agnès Petit-might sing. No one had a record player in those days, and the radio was forbidden, but the café was said to be a lively place in the evenings, and we sometimes heard music from there even across the fields if the wind was blowing in the right direction. That was where Julien Lecoz lost his south pasture at cards-rumor had it he’d betted his wife as well, but no one would take him up on the offer-and it was the second home of the local drunks who would sit at the terrasse smoking or playing pétanque by the steps. Paul’s father was there often, much to our mother’s disapproval, and though I never saw him drunk he never seemed to be quite sober either, smiling vaguely at passersby and showing his big square yellow dentures. It was a place where we never went. We were territorial creatures and regarded certain places as peculiarly our own, though others belonged to the village, the adults, places of mystery or indifference, the church, the post office where Michelle Hourias sorted the mail and gossiped over the counter, the little school where we had spent our earliest years, but which now stayed boarded up.

  La Mauvaise Réputation.

  We stayed away partly because our mother told us. She had a peculiar hatred of drunkenness, of dirt, of loose living, and the place epitomized all of these to her. Though she was not a churchgoer she retained an almost puritanical view of life, believing in hard work, a clean house, polite, well-mannered children. When she had to walk past the place she would do so with her head lowered protectively, a scarf crossed at her thin chest, mouth pursed against the sounds of music and laughter from within. Strange that such a woman-such a self-controlled, order-loving woman-should have fallen victim to drug addiction.