Five Quarters of the Orange / Пять четвертинок апельсина

We three children had been self-sufficient for so long that it was a blissful, if unspoken relief to have someone in charge again – an adult, someone to keep order.

I remember one day. We were together, the three of us, and Tomas was late. Cassis still called him Leibniz, though Reine and I had long since progressed to first-name terms, and today Cassis was jumpy and sullen, sitting apart from the rest of us on the riverbank, pinging stones into the water. He’d had a shouting match with Mother that morning over some matter of no importance.

If our father was alive you wouldn’t dare talk to me like that!

If your father was alive he’d do as he was told, just as you do!

Beneath the lash of her tongue Cassis fled, as always. He kept Father’s old hunting jacket on a straw mattress in the tree house, and he was wearing it now, hunched in it like an old Indian in a rug. It was always a bad sign when he wore Father’s jacket, and Reine and I left him alone.

He was still sitting there when Tomas came.

Tomas noticed that at once, and sat a little farther down the bank without saying anything.

“I’ve had enough,” said Cassis at last, without looking at Tomas. “Kid’s stuff. I’m fourteen. I’ve had enough of all that.”

Tomas took off his army greatcoat and tossed it aside for Reinette to go through the pockets. I lay on my stomach on the bank and watched.

Cassis spoke up again.

“Comics. Chocolate. It’s all rubbish. That’s not war. It’s nothing.” He stood up, looking agitated. “None of it’s serious.

“Is that what you think?” said Tomas.

“I think you’re a Boche,” spat Cassis.

“Come with me,” said Tomas, standing up. “Girls, you stay here. Okay?”

Reine was happy to do that, to flick through the magazines and treasures in the greatcoat’s many pockets. I left her to it, and slunk after them through the undergrowth, keeping low to the mossy ground. Their voices filtered toward me distantly, like motes from the tree canopy.

“Hold it if you like. Feel how it feels.”

It must have felt very heavy in his hand. Cassis leveled it and looked over the sights at the German. Tomas seemed not to notice.

“My brother was shot as a deserter,” said Tomas. “He’d only just finished his training.