Joanne Harris - Five Quarters of the Orange

“Wait, there’s someone there still,” said Jean-Marie, peering over the wall. The town woman joined him, her face white as flour in the moonlight. Her mouth looked black and vicious against that unnatural pallor.

“Why, the little trollop!” she said shrilly. “You! Get up this minute! Yes, you , hiding behind the wall! Spying on us!” The voice was high and indignant, maybe a little guilty. Reine stood up slowly, obediently. Such a good girl, my sister. Always so quick to respond to the voice of authority. Much good it did her. I could hear her breathing, the quick panicky hiss in her throat as she faced them. Her blouse had pulled out of her skirt as she fell, and her hair had come down and blew about her face.

Hauer said something softly to Schwartz in German. Schwartz reached over the wall to haul Reinette over onto their side.

For a few seconds she allowed herself to be hoisted, unprotesting. She was never the quickest thinker, and of the three of us she was by far the most docile. An order from an adult-her first instinct was to obey without question.

Then she seemed to understand. Perhaps it was Schwartz’s hands on her, or maybe she understood what Hauer had murmured, but she began to struggle. Too late, Hauer was holding her still while Schwartz stripped off her blouse-I saw it go sailing over the wall like a white banner in the moonlight. Then another voice-Heinemann, I think-shouted something in German then my sister was screaming, high, breathless cries- ah! ah! ah! -of disgust and terror. For a second I saw her face above the wall, her hair flying out around her, her arms clawing the night, and Schwartz’s beery grinning face turned toward her, then she disappeared, though the sounds continued, the gluttonous sounds of the men and the town woman shrilling in what might have been triumph, “Serve her right, little whore! Serve her right!”

And through it all the laughter, that piggy heh-heh-heh that cuts through my dreams even now some nights, that and the saxophone music, so like a human voice, so like his voice…

I hesitated for maybe thirty seconds. No more, though it seemed like more to me as I bit my knuckles to aid concentration and crouched in the undergrowth. Cassis had already escaped. I was only nine-what could I do? I told myself-but even though I only understood very dimly what was going on still I could not leave her. I stood up, opened my mouth to scream-in my mind’s eye Tomas was nearby and would stop the whole thing-except that someone was already climbing clumsily over the wall, someone with a stick with which he lashed at the onlookers with more rage than efficiency, someone who roared in a furious, cavernous voice, “Filthy Boches! Filthy Boches! ”

It was Gustave Beauchamp.

I ducked back into the undergrowth. I could see very little of what was happening now, but I was aware of Reinette grabbing what was left of her blouse and running whimpering back along the wall to the road. I might have joined her then but for curiosity and the sudden elation that washed over me as I heard the familiar voice calling through the pandemonium, “It’s all right! It’s all right!”

My heart leaped.

I heard him push his way through the little crowd-others had joined the fight now and I heard the sound of old Gustave’s stick connect twice more with a sound like someone kicking a cabbage. Soothing words-Tomas’s voice-in French and German: “It’s all right now, calm down, verdammt , calm it, can’t you, Fränzl, you’ve done enough in one day.” Then Hauer’s angry voice and confused protests from Schwartz.

Hauer, his voice trembling with rage, shouted at Gustave, “That’s twice you’ve tried it with me tonight, you old Arschloch!”

Tomas shouting something unintelligible, then a great cry from Gustave cut off suddenly by a sound like a sack of flour hitting a stone granary floor, a terrible thwack against the stone, then silence as shocking as an icy shower.

It lasted thirty seconds or more. No one spoke. No one moved.

Then, Tomas’s voice, cheerily casual: “It’s all right. Go back into the bar. Finish your drinks. The wine must finally have got to him.”

There was an uneasy murmur, a whisper, a flutter of protest. A woman’s voice-Colette, I think: “ His eyes -”

“Just the drink.” Tomas’s voice was brisk and light. “An old man like that. Doesn’t know when to stop.” His laugh was utterly convincing, and yet I knew he was lying. “Fränzl, you stay and help me get him home. Udi, get the others inside.” As soon as the others had returned to the bar I heard the piano music begin again, a woman’s voice lifting in a nervous warble to the tune of a popular song. Left alone, Tomas and Hauer began to talk in rapid, urgent undertones.

Hauer: “ Leibniz, was muss-”

“Halt’s Maul! ” Tomas broke in sharply. Moving to the place where I guessed the old man’s body had fallen, he knelt down. I heard him move Gustave, then speak to him a couple of times softly, in French.

“Old man. Wake up, old man.”

Hauer said something rapid and angry in German, which I did not catch. Then Tomas spoke, slowly and very clearly, and it was more from the tone of his words than the words themselves that I understood. Slowly, deliberately, the words almost amused in their cool contempt.

“ Sehr gut, Fränzl ,” said Tomas crisply. “ Er ist tot. ”

O ut of pills . She must have been desperate. That terrible night, with the scent of oranges all around her and nothing to which she could cling.

I would sell my children for a night’s sleep .

Then, under a pasted-in recipe clipped from a newspaper, in writing so small my old eyes needed a magnifying glass to make out the words:

T. L. came again. Said there had been a problem at La Rép. Some soldiers got out of hand. Said R-C might have seen something. Brought pills.

Could those pills have been thirty high-dosage morphine tablets? For her silence? Or were the pills something else entirely?

Paul came back half an hour later. He wore the slightly sheepish expression of a man who expects to be scolded, and he smelled of beer.

“I had to buy a drink,” he said apologetically. “It would have looked odd if I’d just stayed staring at them.”

By then I was half soaked and irritable. “Well?” I demanded. “What’s your big discovery?”

Paul shrugged. “Maybe nothing,” he said reflectively. “I’d rather…ah…wait till I’ve checked a few things before getting your hopes up.”

I looked him in the eye. “Paul Désiré Hourias,” I declared. “I’ve waited for you in the rain for ages. I’ve stood in the stink of this café watching for Dessanges, because you thought we might learn something. I haven’t complained once -” He gave me a satirical look at this point, which I ignored. “That makes me practically a saint ,” I said sternly. “But if you dare to try to keep me in the dark-if you so much as think about it-”

Paul made a lazy gesture of defeat. “How did you know my middle name was Désiré?” he asked.

“I know everything,” I said, without smiling.

Idon’t know what they did after we ran away. A couple of days later old Gustave’s body was found in the Loire by a fisherman outside Courlé. The fish had been at him already. No one mentioned what had happened at La Mauvaise Réputation, though the Dupré brothers seemed more furtive than ever and an unusual silence hung over the café. Reinette didn’t mention what had happened, and I pretended I’d run off at the same time as Cassis, so she didn’t suspect what I’d seen. But she had changed in some way. She seemed cold, almost aggressive. When she thought I wasn’t looking she would touch her hair and face compulsively, as if checking for something out of place. She avoided school for several days, claiming she had stomach ache.