Five Quarters of the Orange / Пять четвертинок апельсина

He was nineteen, and scared. He was a machine gunner, and the noise must have sent him a little crazy. He died in a Polish village, right at the beginning of the war. I thought that if he’d been with me I could have helped him, kept him cool somehow, kept him out of trouble. I wasn’t even there.”

Cassis looked at him with hostility.

“So?”

Tomas ignored the question.

“He was my parents’s favorite. It was always Ernst who got to lick the pots when my mother was cooking. Ernst who got the least chores to do.

Cassis was listening now. I could feel the tension between them like something burning.

“When we got the news I was home on leave. A letter came. It was supposed to be a secret, but within half an hour everyone in the village knew the Leibniz boy had deserted. My parents couldn’t understand what was going on. They behaved like people who had been struck by lightning.

I began to crawl closer, using the fallen tree as cover. Tomas went on.

“The funny thing was that I’d always thought I was the coward in the family. I kept my head down. I didn’t take risks. But from then on, to my parents I was a hero. Suddenly I’d taken Ernst’s place. It was as if he’d never existed. I was their only son. I was everything.”

“Wasn’t that… scary?” Cassis’s voice was almost inaudible.

Tomas nodded.

I heard Cassis sigh then, a sound like a heavy door closing.

“He wasn’t supposed to die,” said my brother. I guessed it was Father to whom he referred. Tomas waited patiently, seemingly impassive. “He was always supposed to be so clever. He had everything under control. He wasn’t a coward-”

Cassis broke off and glared at Tomas, as if his silence implied something. His voice and his hands were shaking. Then he began to scream in a high, tortured voice, words I could hardly make out spilling over themselves in furious eagerness to be free.

“He wasn’t supposed to die! He was supposed to sort everything out and make everything better and instead he went and got his stupid self blown up and now it’s me in charge and I… don’t… know… what to do anymore and I’m‘s-s-sc-”

Tomas waited until it was over. It took some time. Then he put out his hand and casually retrieved the gun.

“That’s the trouble with heroes,” he remarked.