Five Quarters of the Orange / Пять четвертинок апельсина - Харрис Джоанн - Страница 19

The cinema, the Palais-Doré, was in the main square, close to where the market was held. Several rows of small shops lined the square, most of which were opening for the morning, and a man was washing down the pavement with a bucket of water and a broom. We pushed the bikes then, steering them into an alley between a barber’s and shuttered butcher’s shop. The alley was barely wide enough to walk through, and the ground was piled with rubble and debris; it seemed safe to assume that our bikes would be left alone. A woman at the terrasse of a café smiled at us and called a greeting; a few Sunday customers were already there, drinking bowls of chicory and eating croissants or hard-boiled eggs. A delivery boy went by on a bicycle, ringing his bell importantly; by the church a newspaper stand sold single-sheet bulletins. Cassis looked round, then made his way to the newsstand. I saw him hand something to the newspaper man, then the man handed Cassis a bundle, which quickly vanished into Cassis’s trouser waistband.

“What was that?” I asked.

Cassis shrugged. I could see that he was pleased with himself, too pleased to withhold the information just to annoy me. He lowered his voice conspiratorially and allowed me a glimpse of rolled-up papers, which he immediately covered up again.

“Comic books. Serial story.” He winked at Reine self-importantly. “American film magazine.”

Reine uttered a squeak of excitement and made as if to grab his arm.

“Let me, let me see!”

Cassis shook his head irritably.

“Shh! For God’s sake, Reine!” He lowered his tone again. “He owed me a favor. Black market,” he mouthed. “Kept them for me under the counter.”

Reinette looked at him in awe. I was less impressed. Perhaps because I was less aware of the scarcity of such items; perhaps because the seeds of rebellion already growing in me pushed me to scorn anything of which my brother seemed overly proud. I gave a shrug to show my indifference. Still, I wondered what kind of “favor” the newspaper man might have owed Cassis, and finally concluded that he must have been bragging. I said as much.

“If I had contacts with the black market,” I said with a passable show of skepticism, “I’d make sure I got better stuff than a few old papers.”

Cassis looked stung.

“I can get anything I want,” he said quickly. “Comics, smokes, books, real coffee… chocolate-” He broke off with a scornful laugh. “You can’t even get the money for a rotten cinema ticket!” he said.

“No?”

Smiling, I took the purse from out of my apron pocket. I jingled it a little, so that he could hear the coins inside. His eyes widened as he recognized the purse.

“You little thief!” he breathed at last. “You rotten, bitching little thief!”

I looked at him, but said nothing.

“How did you get that?”

“Swum out and got it,” I answered defiantly. “Anyway, it wasn’t stealing. The treasure belonged to all of us.”

But Cassis was hardly listening.

“You bitching, thieving…” he said again.

Clearly he was disturbed that anyone other than he should obtain anything by guile.

“I don’t see that it’s any different from you and your black market,” I said calmly. “It’s all the same game, isn’t it?” I let this sink in before I continued. “And you’re just upset because I’m better at it than you.”

Cassis glared at me.

“It isn’t anything like the same thing,” he said at last.

I kept my expression disbelieving. It was always so easy to make Cassis give himself away. Just like his son, all those years later. Neither of them ever understood anything about guile.

Cassis was red-faced, almost shouting now, his conspiratorial tone forgotten.

“I could get you anything you liked. Proper fishing tackle for your stupid pike,” he hissed savagely. “Chewing gum, shoes, silk stockings, silk underwear if you wanted-”

I laughed aloud at that. Brought up as we had been, the idea of silk underwear was ludicrous. Enraged, Cassis grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me.

“You stop that!” His voice cracked with fury. “I got friends! I know people! I could get-you-anything-you-wanted!”

You see how easy it was to take him off balance. Cassis was spoiled in his way, too used to being the great older brother, the man of the house, the first to go to school, the tallest, the strongest, the wisest. His occasional bouts of wildness – his escapades into the woods, his daredevilry on the Loire, his small thefts from market stalls and shops in Angers – were uncontrolled, almost hysterical. He took no enjoyment from them. It was as if he needed to prove something to both of us, or to himself.

I could tell I perplexed him. His thumbs were digging so deeply into my arms that they would make great ripe blackberry marks on my skin the next day, but I did not show any sign of it. Instead I just looked at him steadily and tried to stare him out.

“We’ve got friends, Reine and me,” he said in a lower voice, almost reasonable now, his thumbs still gouging into my arms. “Powerful friends. Where do you think she got that stupid lipstick? Or the perfume? Or that stuff she puts on her face at night? Where d’you think we got all that from? And how d’you think we earned it?”

He let go of my arms then with an expression of mingled pride and consternation, and I realized that he was slick with fear.

I don’t remember very much about the film. Circonstances Atténuantes, with Arletty and Michel Simon, an old film that Cassis and Reine had already seen. Reine at least was untroubled by the fact; she stared at the screen the whole time, rapt. I found the story unlikely, too removed from my realities. Besides, my mind was on other things. Twice the film in the projector broke; the second time the houselights went on and the audience roared disapproval. A harassed-looking man in a dinner jacket shouted for silence. A group of Germans in a corner, feet resting on the seats in front of them, began slow-clapping. Suddenly Reine, who had come out of her trance to complain irritably about the interruption, gave a squeak of excitement.

“Cassis!” She leaned over me and I could smell a sweetish chemical scent in her hair. “Cassis, he’s here!”

“Shh!” hissed Cassis furiously. “Don’t look back!”

Reine and Cassis sat facing the front of the auditorium for a moment, expressionless as dummies. Then he spoke, from the corner of his mouth, like someone whispering in church.

“Who?”

Reinette flicked a glance at the Germans from the corner of her eye.

“Back there,” she replied in the same fashion. “Some others I don’t know.”

Around us the crowd stamped and yelled. Cassis ventured a quick look.

“I’ll wait till the lights go down,” he said.

Ten minutes later the lights dimmed and the film continued. Cassis wriggled from his seat toward the back of the auditorium. I followed him. On the screen Arletty pranced and eye-fluttered in a tight low-cut dress. The mercury reflection lit our low-bent, running figures, making Cassis’s face a livid mask.

“Go back, you little idiot,” he hissed at me. “I don’t want you with me, getting in the way!”

I shook my head.

“I won’t get in the way,” I told him. “Not unless you try to stop me coming with you.”

Cassis made an impatient gesture. He knew I meant what I said. In the dark I could feel him trembling, with excitement or nerves.

“Keep down,” he told me at last. “And let me do the talking.”

We finally squatted down at the back of the auditorium, close to where the group of German soldiers made an island among the regular crowd. Several of the men were smoking; we could see dimps of red fire on their flickering faces.

“See him there, at the end?” whispered Cassis. “That’s Hauer. I want to talk to him. You just stay with me and don’t say a word, all right?”