The Stone Boy

by Loubière, Sophie

  It became a habit. Every Sunday and school holiday. As soon as Madame Préau heard the strident shouts of the little boy and his sister’s laugh, wherever she was at that moment, weeding therock garden, picking plums or figs from the branches, making jam with the fruit from the garden, writing a letter to her son, or copying out a whole chapter from the memoir of a sergeant-major who once served under Napoleon, she would go straight back to her lookout post.

  24 July 2009

  Dear Martin,

  You kindly offered to come and help me pick the many plums in the garden before you head off on holiday, but it’s not necessary, as I’m working away at it each morning when it’s cool. And they’ve almost all fallen. The ones still on the branch are rotten. Same with the fig tree. This hasn’t been a good year for fruit. They were in bud too early in the season. They would have suffered from the frost.

  On Sunday on the phone, I thought you seemed worried about me. The fact of being alone has never been a problem, you know. I’ve been living this way for twenty-eight years and it doesn’t bother me at all anymore. I saw Isabelle this morning and gave her two kilos of plums as well as some sheets that I wanted to get rid of. The ones from your rooms. As long as they’re of use for something. She’s leaving for Portugal at the end of July and will be back at the beginning of September. Not worth replacing her. I’ll get along perfectly well without her—the house hardly gets dirty if you don’t leave the windows open during the day (Oh, the dust from that bothersome building site at the top of the road is collecting everywhere thanks to their trucks full of rubble!) and I’m hardly overwhelmed by laundry to wash. Mr. Apeldoorn, the physio, is also on holiday. But Dr. Mamnoue is taking appointments until mid-August.

  I find the neighborhood changed. The people who take the RER train in the morning to go to work park their cars any which way in the street. It’s not unusual for the young ones to gather next to the old wall of the house, smoking and drinking beer. Nothing too bad, but I’d prefer they do it elsewhere all the same. Particularly when they turn up the volume on their radios.

  The heat has been getting to me a bit. These last few days have been particularly hot and I haven’t left the house. The temperature is bearable, as I keep the shutters closed. I’m really going to need something to help me sleep, as I’m sleeping rather badly with the heat. No more than five hours per night. Could you write me up a prescription before you leave for Corsica? Bastien will no doubt enjoy the holidays alone with his daddy. I dream of spending a few days down there. Perhaps it could be done.

  I’d be very happy if my little grandson thought to send me a postcard this year.

  Love and kisses,

  Mum

  13

  Madame Préau enjoyed very good eyesight for her age. Nonetheless, it was difficult for her to see beyond a certain distance, even with her glasses. So, she decided at the beginning of August to get some opera glasses from her optician, Mr. Papy.

  The reason was the little boy under the weeping birch. The lack of contact between him and the rest of the family intrigued her. It no doubt stemmed from a solitary temperament and a tendency to be withdrawn on his part. Yet his unwillingness to speak to the point of submission was unique. He never held a toy in his hands; he was content with twigs and stones. And though Madame Préau did pass the younger brother and sister from time to time on the path as they were coming home from the bakery with their father, one on a bike, the other on a scooter, never had the old woman once seen the little boy behind them. And that was troubling.

  It was a rainy Sunday when Madame Préau first took her opera glasses out of their box. Taking advantage of a break in the weather, the children had come out to play in the garden, avoiding the puddles of water that had formed here and there on the lawn. The glasses allowed her to confirm her suspicions. The magnification showed up plenty of detail. Details had always ruled Madame Préau’s life. That was what made her so formidable when it came to marking schoolbooks.

  As the weeks passed, the old woman noted the behavior and attitudes of the child in a black moleskin notebook. She remarked, for example, that the little boy did not go out in the garden other than on the Lord’s Day, not even during school holidays. The clothes that he wore were dirty, and seemed to be the same: trousers that were too short or shorts, a red sweatshirt or yellow T-shirt, sneakers or flip-flops. His wrists were skinny, his skin grayish, and he often scratched his head. The child probably suffered from vitamin deficiencies. His hygiene was dubious, too, which was not the case for either his sister or his younger brother.

  Madame Préau noted another important detail in her notebook to do with the little boy’s behavior. Once he appeared on the porch at the house, he never joined in to play. He would rub his eyes as if he were dazzled, and then come down the few stairs with unsteady steps.

  But what bothered Madame Préau more than anything was the resemblance to Bastien. The boys weren’t just the same age. Both had pale eyes and curly chestnut hair, thin, short lips, and oval faces.

  From this point on, Madame Préau couldn’t think of her grandson without imagining the “stone boy,” as she called him in her notebook. She liked both boys in their own way.

  14

  Dr. Mamnoue was the first person Madame Préau spoke to about her neighbors. She did so prudently, without revealing too much, with the same care that she took putting on her makeup to go to his office.

  “The child who doesn’t play with the others is bothering you?”

  “I wouldn’t go that far. Let’s say that I’m wondering about him.”

  Madame Préau answered in her soft and somewhat broken voice. Dr. Mamnoue hardly spoke louder than she.

  “He is no doubt looking for some peace and quiet.”

  “Yes, no doubt. But it’s never a good sign, which I say from experience. A child who doesn’t play with others in the playground is a child with problems half the time.”

  Madame Préau often made reference to her experience as a teacher in her discussions with Dr. Mamnoue. They covered fascinating subjects to do with the education and psychology of children. During her working life, Madame Préau had had to come face-to-face with a few cases of maltreatment: there was one little girl, for example, who, after having been no doubt loved and wanted, grew up in an environment that was hugely psychologically violent. Isolated and criticized by her brothers and sisters who refused to play with her, the little girl suffered from bed wetting until she was ten years old. Exhausted, her mother eventually stopped washing the sheets, making do with just drying them on the line. She was hit by her father for her poor marks, even though she was clearly unable to concentrate in class. The child was so afraid of her mother that when Madame Préau called them both into the headmistress’s office, the little girl fainted.

  “So you think that by simply observing a person, you can find out everything about their life?” asked Dr. Mamnoue.

  “No. These are only warning signs. Then you have to confirm them.”

  The man, who was slightly older than his patient, interlaced his fingers across his stomach and tipped his neck back in his leather armchair. A flyaway strand of hair fell coquettishly across the crown of his head.

  “And am I to suppose, dear Elsa, that’s what you intend to do?”

  Madame Préau smiled. She liked it when he called her by her first name, just as she liked that he felt the same way. They had begun this ritual many years ago, well before she treated herself to a relaxing break at Hyères les Palmiers.

  “I have no idea at the moment, Claude. We’ll see. First I have to get rid of all that dust.”

  “Yes, it’s incredible.”

  Dr. Mamnoue picked back up the glass jar filled with ochre dust and gravel. He weighed it in his hand.

  “You wouldn’t think that trucks would leave behind so much dirt.”

  “That is three months’ worth, though it has eased up a bit since the beginning of August. They’re a sight to be seen, driving down the road like madmen. S
ometimes you can hear the gravel bouncing all the way up to the windows. The whole house shakes from it. Worse than the night freight train that passes at two forty-five.”

  “Two forty-five?”

  “Except Sundays and holidays.”

  Madame Préau produced the little moleskin notebook from her handbag to prove her point. She had the look of a schoolgirl who knew her recitation off by heart. Dr. Mamnoue nodded his head, then returned the jar to his desk, making the pebbles tinkle against its surface. The wrinkles across his brow were like furrows waiting for planting.

  “That reminds me of when I was a little boy. I had an incredible collection of stones that I put in a jar just like this. Didn’t you?”

  Madame Préau responded cheekily that the only thing she had collected didn’t fit in a jar.

  “Oh really? So what did you collect?”

  “Poltergeists. Or hairbrushes belonging to my classmates at boarding school. Whichever took my fancy.”

  15 August 2009

  Dear Mr. Mayor,

  Allow me to direct your attention to the troubles that the residents of Rue des Lilas, among whom I number, have been enduring of late. Our road, which is close to the town train station, is not supposed to be used for parking by RER train users. Yet this is now the case, and every two weeks, we are reminded of this fact by a concerto of car horns. As you know, the parking is on one side of the road only, and twice each month, cars must park along the path on the opposite side. As you might imagine, the residents respect this rule, which is not the case for the drivers who park on our street without paying the slightest bit of attention to any of the signs before leaving to take their trains. The result is that they disrupt the traffic very severely, even going so far as to block any cars from passing at all.

  You understand, Mr. Mayor, that this situation is trying for the residents. I know better than to suggest to you that parking on alternate sides of the road on Rue des Lilas be revoked, as it is already challenge enough with the noise pollution and the damage to property walls and the gates to our houses caused by RER train users on Saturday nights and the nights before Bank Holidays. Our mailboxes were “repainted” at the beginning of August, and the path laid with broken glass from beer bottles.

  Personally, I have twice found empty cans and other detritus (an empty cigarette packet, a chocolate bar wrapper) in my garden, which had been thrown over the fence.

  It would be wise to consider increasing surveillance on some of those streets more prone to passing vandalism than others. It would be a shame for our lovely properties—which are the heart and soul of this town—to have to be decked out in barbed wire and watchtowers to guarantee its occupants a bit of peace.

  I am sure that you will handle this matter with the due diligence that it deserves.

  Respectfully yours,

  Madame Elsa Préau

  born, raised, and living locally for more than fifty years

  15

  An apple waited for breakfast time in a ramekin on the little table. With a gilet over her shoulders, Madame Préau was putting drawings from the oldest children in her junior school classes—1975–1981—in alphabetical order. The attic was stuffed with boxes full of the archives from her old school. Madame Préau took great satisfaction in looking back over the drawings in which the parents are often depicted as grotesque, covered in hair, or as matchstick men. The princesses who drew little girls born in the 1960s were adorned with multicolored beads and princess tent dresses with balloon sleeves. As for the knights who appeared under the boys’ paintbrushes, they were bent under the weight of their fabulous swords, fighting at the gates of fortified castles or felling their jagged walls. Poky cars threatened to fall into ravines, and they never forgot the aerial on the roof of the house or the smoke coming out of the chimney. Then the children began drawing satellite dishes on balconies and square fish on plates.

  Madame Préau glanced at the neighbors’ garden, where under a gray sky the little brother and sister were ripping each other to shreds to see who would get the Frisbee. Static as ever, the stone boy remained under the weeping birch, playing by bouncing gravel in his hands. Several times he scratched a scab on his right elbow, and made the wound bleed, before throwing his stones again. Madame Préau abandoned her sorting for a moment to write down in her notebook: Child’s self-destructive behavior. Signs of scarring. Then the phone rang in the living room and she had to leave her lookout post to go down and answer it.

  “Mum, it’s Martin.”

  “Ah. Right. How are you, son? Are your holidays going well? It’s already autumn here.”

  The conversation lasted for twenty minutes: Martin reluctantly explained why his mother would have to make do with monthly dinners with him once he returned from Corsica.

  “You’ve had enough of me then, is that it? You’d rather bed your patients than eat a plate of chips with your mother?”

  “Mum, you’re spiteful. I’m hanging up.”

  “I’m not an idiot, you know.”

  “You don’t know anything. You know nothing about my life, Mum. You never did.”

  “Oh, but I do!”

  Finally, he decided to let the cat out of the bag.

  “I’m back with Audrette. We’ve gotten back together.”

  Madame Préau pulled up a chair to the side table where the phone sat. She was not quite sure she could continue standing. The return of her ex-daughter-in-law to her son’s life was the worst news she could have heard.

  “How long have you been hiding the truth from me?” she said flatly.

  “A year.”

  “And that’s why we can’t have dinner together on Thursdays anymore?”

  “Yes.”

  “She doesn’t want you to see your mother?”

  “Now, that’s not really it. Audrette thinks that—”

  “You do what you like, Martin. It’s all the same to me. As soon as I’ve heard from my grandson… Apropos, how is Bastien? He still hasn’t sent me a postcard.”

  When Madame Préau had finished her conversation and returned to her room, the neighbors’ garden had been emptied of its occupants, which greatly upset her.

  Madame Préau left the bread in the toaster for too long. She dined on onion soup with an aftertaste of sulfur, listening to the newsreader on France 3 summarize the cases of swine flu in France. At nine, a fight broke out among the tomcats in the garden near the shed. Madame Préau had to go out in her slippers and dressing gown to restore order and chase away the one-eyed cat who liked to wreak havoc. Then she closed and bolted the door. She turned off her bedside lamp as usual at half past ten.

  At ten past midnight, Madame Préau switched on the bedside lamp, awoken with a start by a noise coming from inside the house, on the floor below. The sound of metal being struck violently, followed by a muffled cry and an animal’s moan. She listened, motionless under the covers, her heart beating.

  It will not start again. It must not start again.

  Madame Préau thought things through. She had put the heating back on that morning. The woodwork was settling, creaking out its displeasure. The metal shutters were warped, victims of the wintry night. And the cats were tearing strips off of each other in the garden, which was disputed territory. But the most rational explanation did not cure her fear. A moment later, she was walking around the house, hammer in hand, turning on the lights one by one. Going around the house with a tool that belonged to her father, she inspected every room, every nook, looking behind the doors, and then swallowing one of the pills prescribed by her son to clear up any nightmares—ah, that was better.

  At twelve forty-five, the hammer went back into the drawer of the bedside table. Madame Préau noted the time the noise had occurred in her notebook, and then lay down again, leaving the hall light on, like when she was a little girl and her mother came to see her as a surprise.

  16

  The area around the train station was just a vast construction site. The roar of dump trucks spewing t
heir contents of earth and rubble on land sold off by the municipality for the construction of a private residence and a rehabilitation center joined the dogs barking at the noise of the pneumatic drills that hurt their ears.

  Isabelle ran the brush along the kitchen windowsill outside with a sigh. More ochre dust!

  “When will they finish the construction work?”

  A few meters away, Madame Préau was cutting back the plants in the rock garden for the winter, her neck wrapped in the foam brace.