Читать книгу Five Quarters of the Orange / Пять четвертинок апельсина онлайн

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I had been in Les Laveuses for almost ten years. For the last five I had invited Pistache and her family to stay during the summer holidays. I watched the children grow from curious big-eyed bundles to small brightly colored birds flying over my meadow and through my orchard on invisible wings. I have a good daughter in Pistache. Noisette (my secret favorite) is more like me; sly and rebellious, black eyes like mine and a heart full of wildness and resentment. I could have stopped her leaving-a word, a smile might have done it-but I did not; fearing, perhaps, that she would turn me into my mother. Her letters are flat and dutiful. Her marriage has ended badly. She works as a waitress in an all-night café in Montreal. She refuses my offers of money. Pistache is the woman Reinette might have been, plump and trusting, gentle with her children and fierce in their defense, soft brown hair and eyes as green as the nut from which she takes her name. Through her, through her children I have learned to relive the good parts of my childhood.