Cassis and Reinette stared at him in silence, like children at the zoo watching some dangerous animal. Reinette was scarlet. Leibniz seemed unimpressed by our scrutiny and lit a cigarette, grinning.

“The widow Petit…” he said at last through a mouthful of smoke. “Very good.” He chuckled. “Parachute silk and a thousand other things, she was a real black market free-for-all.” He gave me a wink. “Good work, Backfisch.”

The others looked at me in surprise, but said nothing. I remained silent, torn between pleasure and anxiety at his approving words.

“I’ve had some luck this week,” continued Leibniz in the same tone. “Chewing gum, chocolate and”-he reached into his pocket and brought out a package-“this.”

This turned out to be a handkerchief, lace edged, which he handed to Reinette. My sister blushed scarlet with confusion.

Then he turned to me. “And what about you, Backfisch, what is it you want?” He grinned. “Lipstick? Face cream? Silk stockings? No, that’s more your sister’s line. Doll? Teddy bear?” He was mocking me gently, his eyes bright and filled with silvery reflections.

Now was the time to admit that my mention of Madame Petit had been nothing but a careless slip of the tongue. But Cassis was still looking at me with that expression of astonishment; Leibniz was smiling; and a gleam of an idea had come into my head.

I did not hesitate. “Fishing tackle,” I said at once. “Proper good fishing tackle.” I paused and fixed him with an insolent look, staring him straight in the eyes. “And an orange.”

17.

We met him again, in the same place, a week later. Cassis gave him a rumor about late-night gambling at Le Chat Rouget and a few words he’d overheard from Curé Traquet outside the cemetery about a secret cache of church silver.

But Leibniz seemed preoccupied.

“I had to keep this from the others,” he told me. “They might not have liked me giving it to you.” From under the army jacket lying carelessly on the riverbank he drew out a narrow green-canvas bag about a meter long that made a small rattling sound as he pushed it toward me. “It’s for you,” he said as I hesitated. “Go on.”

In the bag was a fishing rod. Not a new one, but even I could see that it was a fine piece, dark bamboo worn almost black with age and a gleaming metal reel that spun beneath my fingers just as neatly as if it were on ball bearings. I gave a long, slow sigh of amazement.

“Is it…mine?” I asked, not daring quite to believe it.

Leibniz laughed, a bright, uncomplicated sound. “Of course,” he said. “We fishermen have to stick together, don’t we?”

I touched the rod with tentative, eager fingers. The reel felt cool and slightly oily to the touch, as if had been packed in grease.

“But you’ll have to keep it safe, eh, Backfisch?” he told me. “No going telling your parents and friends. You do know how to keep a secret, don’t you?”

I nodded. “Of course.”

He smiled. His eyes were a clear, dark gray. “Get that pike you were telling me about, eh?”

I nodded again, and he laughed. “Believe me, with that rod you could catch a U-Boot.”

I looked at him critically for a moment, just to see how much he was teasing me. Clearly he was amused, but it was a kind mockery, I decided, and he had kept his side of the bargain. Only one thing troubled me.

“Madame Petit…” I began hesitantly. “Nothing very bad will happen to her, will it?”

Leibniz dragged on his cigarette, then flicked the stub into the water.

“I shouldn’t think so,” he said carelessly. “Not if she minds her mouth.” He gave me a sudden sharp look, which included Cassis and Reinette. “And you, all three of you. You keep all this to yourselves, all right?”

We nodded.

“Oh, one more thing for you.” He put his hand into his pocket. “You’ll have to share, I’m afraid. I could only find one.” And he held out an orange.

He was charming, you see. We were all charmed-Cassis less so than Reine and I, perhaps because he was the eldest and understood more about the dangers we were running-Reinette rosy-cheeked and shy and I… Well, perhaps it was I most of all. It began with the fishing rod, but there were a dozen other things, his accent, the lazy ways he had, the careless look of him and his laughter… Oh, he was a real charmer all right, not like Cassis’s son Yannick tried to be, with his brash ways and his weaselly eyes. No, Tomas Leibniz had a natural way with him, even for a lonely child with a headful of nonsense.

It was nothing I could put my finger on. Reine might have said that it was the way he looked at you without saying anything, or the way his eyes changed color-sometimes gray-green, sometimes brown-gray, like the river-or how he walked with his cap tilted back on his head and his hands in his pockets, like a boy playing truant from school… Cassis might have said that it was his reckless quality-the way he could swim the Loire at its widest point or hang upside down from the Lookout Post just as if he were a boy of fourteen, with a boy’s contempt for danger. He knew all about Les Laveuses before he even set foot there; he was a country lad from the Black Forest, and he was full of anecdotes about his family, his sisters, his brother, his plans. He was always making plans. There were days when everything he said seemed to begin with the same words-when I’m rich and the war is over… Oh, there was no end to what he’d do. He was the first adult we had ever met who still thought like a boy, planned like a boy, and maybe in the end that was what attracted us to him. He was one of us, that was all. He played by our rules.

He had killed one Englishman and two Frenchmen so far in the course of the war. He made no secret of it, but the way he told the story you would have sworn he had no choice. It could have been our father, I thought afterward. But even so, I would have forgiven him. I would have forgiven him anything.

Of course, I was guarded at first. We met him three times more, twice alone at the river, once in the cinema with the others, Hauer, Heinemann-squat and red-haired-and slow, fat Schwartz. Twice we sent notes via the boy at the newspaper stand, twice more we received cigarettes, magazines, books, chocolate and a packet of nylon stockings for Reinette. People are less wary of children, as a rule. They guard their tongues less. We gleaned more information that way than you could ever imagine, and we passed it all, on to Hauer, Heinemann, Schwartz and Leibniz. The other soldiers hardly spoke to us. Schwartz, who spoke little French, would sometimes leer at Reinette and whisper at her in guttural, greasy-sounding German. Hauer was stiff and awkward, and Heinemann was full of nervous energy, scratching incessantly at the reddish stubble that seemed an indelible part of his face… The others made me uneasy.

But not Tomas. Tomas was one of us. He was able to reach us in a way no one else did. It was nothing as obvious as our mother’s indifference or the loss of our father, or even the lack of playmates or the privations of war. We were barely aware of those things ourselves, living as we did in our savage little world of the imagination. We were certainly taken by surprise at how desperately we needed Tomas. Not for what he brought us, the chocolate and chewing gum and makeup and magazines. We needed someone to tell about our exploits, someone to impress, a fellow conspirator with the energy of youth and the polish of experience, a teller of finer stories than even Cassis could dream of. It didn’t happen overnight, of course. We were wild animals, just as Mother said, and we took some taming. He must have known that from the start, the clever way he set out to take us one by one, making each feel special… Even now, God help me, I can almost believe it. Even now.