Five Quarters of the Orange / Пять четвертинок апельсина

They’ll want you to do it of your own accord.”

“So?” I could feel my anger reaching toward him now. “How long does that leave me? A month? Two? What can I do with two months? I could rack my brains for a year and it still wouldn’t do any-”

“That’s not true.” He spoke flatly, without resentment, pulling a single crumpled Gauloise from his top pocket and popping a match against his thumb to light it. “Do anything you’ve a mind to do. Always could.” He looked at me then over the red eye of the cigarette and gave his small, sad smile.

I shook my head. “That isn’t the same thing,” I told him.

“It is, though, just about,” replied Paul, dragging acrid smoke. “You must know that. You can learn a lot about life from fishing.”

I looked at him, puzzled. He went on:

“Take Old Mother, now. How d’you catch her, when all those others didn’t?”

I considered that for a moment, thinking back to my nine-year-old self.

“I studied the river,” I said at last.

“Hm.” The cigarette flared again, and he breathed smoke through his nostrils. “And if this Dessanges was a fish. What then?” He grinned suddenly. “Find where he feeds. Find the right bait, and he’s yours. Isn’t that right?”

I looked at him.

“Isn’t that right?”

Maybe. Hope scratched a thin silver trail across my heart. Maybe.

“I’m too old to fight them,” I said.

Paul put his rough brown hand over mine and smiled.

“Not to me,” he said.

9

He’s right, of course. You can learn a lot about life from fishing. Tomas had taught me that, among other things. We’d talked a lot, the year we were friends. Sometimes Cassis and Reine were there and we’d talk and exchange news for small items of contraband: a stick of chewing gum or a bar of chocolate or a jar of face cream for Reine or an orange… Tomas seemed to have an unlimited supply of these items, which he distributed with casual indifference.

Since my conversation with Cassis in the tree house I felt that things were settled between us, Tomas and me. We followed the rules; not the mad rules of our mother’s devising but simple rules that even a child of nine could understand: Keep your eyes open. Look after number one. Share and share alike.