Joanne Harris - Five Quarters of the Orange

“Who’s there?” His voice was querulous. “Is there anybody there?” We kept quiet behind the wall, stifling giggles.

“ Anybody? ” repeated old Gustave, then, apparently satisfied, muttered something barely audible to himself and began to move again. He came as far as the wall, knocked out his pipe against the stones. A spark shower floated down onto our side, and I clapped my hand onto Reinette’s mouth to stop her from screaming. Then, silence for a moment. We waited, barely daring to breathe. Then we heard the sound of him pissing luxuriantly, endlessly against the wall, giving out a little old-man’s grunt of satisfaction as he did so. I grinned in the dark. No wonder he’d been so eager to know if anyone was there. Cassis nudged me furiously, one hand over his mouth. Reine made a disgusted face. Then we heard the sounds of him fastening his belt buckle again, and a few shuffling steps toward the café. Then nothing.

We waited for a few minutes.

“Where is he?” whispered Cassis at last. “He hasn’t gone. We’d have heard him.”

I shrugged. In a sliver of moonlight I could see Cassis’s face shining with sweat and anxiety. I gestured toward the wall. “Look and see,” I mouthed. “Maybe he’s passed out, or something.”

Cassis shook his head. “Maybe he’s spotted us,” he said grimly. “Just waiting for one of us to stick our head up-and pow!”

I shrugged again, and carefully looked over the top of the wall. Old Gustave hadn’t passed out, but he was sitting on his stick with his back to us, watching the café. He was quite still.

“Well?” said Cassis as I ducked back behind the wall.

I told him what I had seen.

“What’s he doing? ” said Cassis, white with frustration.

I shook my head.

“Damn the old idiot! He’ll have us waiting here all night!”

I put my finger to my lips. “Shh. There’s someone coming.”

Old Gustave must have heard them too, for as we ducked farther behind the wall into the blackberry tangles we heard him come over. Not as quietly as we had, and if he’d come over a few meters to the left he would have landed right on top of us. As it was, he fell into a mess of brambles, cursing and flailing with his stick, and we retreated even farther into the thicket. There was a kind of tunnel where we were, made up of rolls of blackberry hedge and goosegrass, and for youngsters of our age and agility it looked as if it might be possible to crawl along underneath until we reached the road. If we could do that, we might be able to avoid climbing back over the wall altogether, thus enabling us to escape unseen into the darkness.

I had almost made my mind up to try this out when I heard the sound of voices from the other side of the wall. One was a woman’s voice. The other spoke German only, and I recognized it as Schwartz.

I could still hear the music playing in the bar, and I guessed that Schwartz and his lady-friend had crept out unremarked. From my vantage point in the blackberry tangle I could see their figures dimly above the wall, and I gestured to Reinette and Cassis to stay where they were. I could see Gustave too, some distance from us and unaware of our presence, huddled against the bricks at his side and watching through one of the cracks in the masonry. I heard the woman’s laughter, high and a little nervous, then Schwartz’s thick voice saying something in German. He was shorter than she was, bullish next to her slim figure, and the way he leaned into her neck seemed oddly carnivorous, as did the sounds he uttered while doing so, slurping, mumbling sounds like a man in a hurry to finish his dinner. As they moved from behind the back porch the moonlight caught them garishly, and I saw Schwartz’s big hands fumbling at the woman’s blouse- Liebchen, Liebling -and heard her laughter shriller than ever- hihihihi! -as she thrust her breasts into his hands. Then, they were no longer alone. A third figure came from behind the porch, but the German seemed unsurprised by his arrival, because he nodded briefly at the newcomer-though the woman seemed oblivious-and turned back to the business in hand while the other man looked on, silent and avid, his eyes gleaming out of the darkness of the porch like an animal’s. It was Jean-Marie Dupré.

It didn’t occur to me then that Tomas might have arranged this meeting. This spectacle in exchange for something else: a favor perhaps, or a tin of black market coffee. I made no connection between the interchange I had witnessed between them in the bar and this-in fact I wasn’t even sure what this was, it was so far removed from the little knowledge I had of such things. Cassis would have known, of course, but he was still crouching behind the wall with Reinette. I beckoned to him frantically, thinking that perhaps this was the time-while the three protagonists were still absorbed in themselves-to make good our escape. Nodding, he began to move toward me through the thicket, leaving Reinette in the shadow of the wall, only her white parachute-silk blouse visible from where we waited.

“Damn her. Why doesn’t she follow?” hissed Cassis at last. The German and the town woman had moved closer to the wall so that we could hardly see what was going on. Jean-Marie was close by them-close enough to watch, I thought, feeling suddenly guilty and sick at the same time-and I could hear their breathing, the thick piggy breathing of the German and the harsh excited breathing of the watcher with the high muffled squeal of the woman between them both, and I was suddenly glad I couldn’t see what was happening, glad that I was too young to understand because the act seemed impossibly ugly, impossibly messy and yet they were enjoying it, eyes rolling in the moonlight and mouths gaping fishily, and now the German was thudding the woman against the wall in short, percussive bursts, and I could hear her head and her backside hitting the bricks and her squealing voice- ah! ah! ah! -and his growling- Liebchen, ja Liebling, ach ja -and I wanted to stand up and run for it there and then, all my cool falling from me in a great prickly wave of panic.

I was about to follow my instinct-half-standing, turning toward the road, measuring the distance between myself and escape-when abruptly the sounds stopped and Schwartz, very loud in the sudden stillness, snapped, “Wer ist das?”

It was then that Reinette, who had been moving softly toward us all the time, panicked. Instead of freezing as we had done when Gustave challenged the dark, she must have thought the German had spotted her, because she stood up and began to run, startling with the moonlight on her white silk blouse, and fell into the blackberry bushes with a cry, twisting her ankle to one side and sitting there wailing with her ankle held between her hands and her white face turning helplessly toward us and her mouth moving desperately and without words.

Cassis moved quickly. Swearing beneath his breath he ran through the thicket in the opposite direction, elder branches whipping at his face as he ran and brambles snagging barbs of flesh from his ankles. Without a backward look at either of us, he vaulted the wall on the other side and disappeared onto the road.

“ Verdammt!” It was Schwartz. I saw his pale moony face over the top of the wall and flattened myself invisibly into the bushes. “ Wer war das? ”

Hauer, who had joined him from the back room, shook his head. “ Weiss’nicht. Etwas über da! ” he pointed. Three faces appeared over the top of the wall. I could only hide my own behind the dark foliage and hope that Reinette would have the sense to make a dash for it as soon as possible. At least I hadn’t run away, I thought contemptuously, like Cassis. Dimly I realized that back in La Rép the music had stopped.