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

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“What’ll you wish for when you catch her?”

By now he believed implicitly that I would catch the old pike, and he spoke with a kind of reluctant awe.

I considered.

“Dunno.” I took a bite of bread and rillettes. “There’s no point making plans till I’ve caught it. That might take time.”

It was time I was willing to take. Three weeks into June and my enthusiasm had not faltered. Quite the opposite. Even the indifference of Cassis and Reine-Claude only served to increase my stubbornness. Old Mother was a talisman in my mind, a slinking black talisman that, if I could only reach it, might put right everything which was skewed.

I’d show them. The day I caught Old Mother they’d all look at me in amazement. Cassis, Reine-and to see that look in my mother’s face, to make her see me, perhaps to clench her fists in rage… Or to smile with peculiar sweetness and open her arms…

But here my fantasy stopped; I dared not imagine further.

“‘Sides,” I said with studied languor. “I don’t believe in wishes. I told you that already.”