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

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Her smile was stretched and mirthless. Impossible to imagine her ever being young. I stabbed at my paupiette in its congealing sauce.

“I always wanted to fight everybody too,” said my mother. “I would have sacrificed everything, hurt anyone to prove myself right. To win.” She looked at me intently, curiously, her black eyes like pinpricks in tar. “Contrary, that’s what you are. I knew from the moment you were born that’s what you were going to be. You started it all again, worse than ever. The way you screamed in the night and wouldn’t feed-and me lying awake with the doors closed and my head pounding.”

I did not answer. After a moment my mother laughed rather jeeringly and began to clear the dishes. It was the last time she spoke of the war between us, though that war was far from over.

The Lookout Post was a large elm on the near bank of the Loire. Half overhanging the water, a clutch of thick roots hanging down deep from the dry soil of the bank, it was easy to climb even for me, and from the higher branches I could see all of Les Laveuses. Cassis and Paul had built a primitive tree house there – a platform and some branches bent over to make a roof – but I was the one who spent the most time in the completed shelter. Reinette was reluctant to climb to the top, though the way had been made easier by means of a knotted rope, and Cassis rarely went there any more, so I often had the place to myself. I went there to think and to watch the road, where sometimes I could see the Germans in their jeeps-or more often, motorcycles-passing by.