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

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Once they had come to requisition a violin from Denis Gaudin, Jeannette’s grandfather. Jeannette told me about it just a week before she died. It was getting dark and the blackout shutters were already in place, when she heard a knocking at the door. She opened it and saw a German officer. In polite though laborious French he addressed her grandfather.

“Monsieur, I… understand… you have… a violin. I… need it.”

A few of the officers, it seemed, had decided to form a military band. I suppose even Germans needed some way of passing the time.

Old Denis Gaudin looked at him.

“A violin, mein Herr, is like a woman,” he replied pleasantly. “Not to be lent out.”

And very gently he closed the door. There was a silence as the officer digested this. Jeannette looked up at her grandfather with wide eyes. Then, outside, the sound of the German officer laughing and repeating:

“Wie eine Frau! Wie eine Frau!”

The German officer never came back, and Denis kept his violin until much later, almost until the end of the war.