Read Online Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris - Free Book Online Page B

Latin teacher there, Monsieur Toubon. Cassis calls him Monsieur Toupet because he looks as if he wears a wig. He was always getting at us. He was the one who made the whole class stay in that time. Everybody hated him.”
    “A teacher gave it to you?” I was incredulous.
    “No, stupid. Listen. You know the Boches requisitioned the lower and middle corridors and the rooms around the courtyard. You know, for their quarters. And their drilling.”
    I’d heard this before. The old school, with its location near the center of Angers, its large classrooms and enclosed playgrounds, was ideal for their purposes. Cassis had told us about the Germans on maneuvers with their gray cow’s-head masks, how no one was allowed to watch and the shutters had to be closed around the courtyard at those times.
    “Some of us used to creep in and watch them through a slit under one of the shutters,” said Reinette. “It was boring, really. Just a lot of marching up and down and shouting in German. Can’t see why it all has to be so secret .” Her mouth drooped in a moue of dissatisfaction.
    “Anyway, old Toupet caught us at it one day,” she continued. “Gave us all a big lecture, Cassis and me and…oh, people you wouldn’t know. Made us miss our free Thursday afternoon. Gave us a whole lot of extra Latin to do.” Her mouth twisted viciously. “I don’t know what makes him so holy anyhow. He was only coming to watch the Boches himself.” Reinette shrugged. “ Anyway ”—she continued in a lighter voice—“we managed to get him back eventually. Old Toupetlives in the collège —he has rooms next to the boys’ dorm—and Cassis looked in one day when Toupet was out, and what do you think?”
    I shrugged.
    “He had a big radio in there, pushed under his bed. One of those long-wave contraptions.” Reinette paused, looking suddenly uneasy.
    “So?” I looked at the little gold stick between her fingers, trying to see the connection.
    She smiled, an unpleasantly adult smile. “I know we’re not supposed to have anything to do with the Boches . But you can’t avoid people all the time,” she said in a superior tone. “I mean, you see them at the gate, or going into Angers to the pictures….” This was aprivilege I greatly envied Reine-Claude and Cassis—that on Thursdays they were allowed to cycle into the town center to the cinema or the café—and I pulled a face.
    “Get on with it,” I said.
    “I am ,” complained Reinette. “God, Boise, you’re so impatient ….” She touched her hair. “As I was saying, you’re bound to see Germans some of the time. And they’re not all bad.” That smile again. “Some of them can be quite nice. Nicer than old Toupet, anyway.”
    I shrugged indifferently. “So one of them gave you the lipstick,” I said with scorn. Such a fuss over so little, I thought to myself. It was just like Reinette to get so excited about nothing at all.
    “We told them—well, we just mentioned to one of them—about Toupet and his radio,” she said. For some reason she was flushed, her cheeks bright as peonies. “He gave us the lipstick, and some cigarettes for Cassis, and…well, all kinds of things.” She was speaking rapidly now, unstoppably, her eyes bright.
    “And later Yvonne Cressonnet said that she saw them come to old Toupet’s room, and they took the radio away, and he went with them, and now instead of Latin we have an extra geography lesson with Madame Lambert, and no one knows what’s happened to him! ”
    She leveled her gaze at me. I remember her eyes were almost gold, the color of boiling sugar syrup as it begins to turn.
    I shrugged. “I don’t suppose anything happened,” I said reasonably. “I mean, they wouldn’t send an old man like that to the front just for having a radio.”
    “No. Course they wouldn’t.” Her reply was too hasty. “Besides, he shouldn’t have had it in the first place, should he?”
    I agreed he shouldn’t. It was against the rules. A