The Stone Boy

by Loubière, Sophie

  By Friday morning, Martin’s resolve was wavering. The fever wasn’t going down, and Madame Préau looked smaller under the burning sheets. If in a few hours the patient’s condition hadn’t improved, they would be forced to go to the hospital. The housekeeper relieved Dr. Préau from nine to noon, and then it was the turn of the nurse, Ms. Briche, to stay at the sick woman’s bedside for another four hours. She kept the fever under control and checked her pulse while doing her crossword magazine, all without forgetting to keep the old lady hydrated.

  At almost seven o’clock, Martin found his mother sitting up in her bed, her shawl over her shoulders and a book by Virginia Woolf on her knees. She smiled at him. “You ate?” Martin gawped, discovering on the nightstand the remains of a snack of crackers, cheese, and apple.

  “I was hungry, yes. So, did you hear them?”

  Martin sat on the bed next to his mother.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Well, the mice. You’ve been sleeping in the armchair here for three days, haven’t you? You must have heard them.”

  The doctor pulled out the stethoscope.

  “I don’t know; I didn’t pay attention. The fever has subsided, it seems…”

  Martin withdrew his hand from his mother’s forehead.

  “Who made you something to eat?”

  “I did, why?”

  “You got up?”

  “Yes. You said it yourself, the fever subsided.”

  Martin sighed. “Mum, you are still very weak. This morning I was this close to taking you to the hospital. You mustn’t get up if there’s someone right here to help you. Could you turn toward the window? I’d like to listen to your lungs.”

  The old woman obeyed, bending her back.

  “But I’m doing very well, son. I wouldn’t run a marathon or climb a ladder to prune the plum trees. But going to the toilet or down the stairs to the kitchen is well within my capabilities. So you’re saying that the mice have kept quiet since Wednesday?”

  “Mum, can we talk seriously? You are very sick. Even if you feel like you’re getting better…”

  “I am better.”

  Martin moved the chest piece of the stethoscope to various points on the patient’s back, listening to the sound of her breath.

  “It’s possible that you have contracted a mild form of the flu. But a relapse is likely. Whatever it is, you’re contagious, so you’ll be consigned to the house.”

  “But my shopping, who’s going to do that? And I have to take my books back to the library!”

  “You can make a shopping list for Isabelle.”

  “You know that Isabelle can only read Portuguese.”

  “Fine. Then I’ll do your shopping.”

  “That’s nice of you, Martin, but nobody can do my shopping but me. I only buy certain products, particularly organic ones.”

  “You’ll make me a list.”

  “Look, I think I have enough supplies to last a few days.”

  “Breathe deeply, please.”

  Madame Préau complied. She had difficulty breathing, which led to a little cough. Her son sighed again.

  “Mum, I want you to limit how much you move about in the house when you’re alone. I’ll ask Isabelle to come and prepare your meals for a few days. By the way, I reconnected your phone.”

  “Don’t you think you’re making too much of this?”

  Martin raised his hand for silence. He listened to Madame Préau’s heartbeat. Then he crossed his arms, and his shoulders slumped.

  “This morning, I hospitalized a little girl who was on the verge of exhaustion. She was choking because of an excess of fluid. Her lungs are severely infected, and she’s suffering a great deal. The girl is being treated. I think that she’ll get through it, but there will be lasting effects on her respiratory system.”

  Unable to find a comeback, Madame Préau slipped her book under her pillow and straightened her shawl, leaving Martin to take her blood pressure.

  “Have you noticed the strange smell in your house?”

  “A smell?”

  “Yes, it smells like sewage… Have you been treating the septic tank with bags of Eparcyl? Isabelle told me that you keep the shutters closed on the first and second floors all the time. We have to let the sun and air into your house, Mum—otherwise you’ll get sick again.”

  While he inflated the cuff around her skinny arm, Madame Préau prayed that the stone boy didn’t have swine flu, and that if he did, he might end up in the hospital if his illness got worse. She wondered if the Desmoulins parents did go to the social welfare centre last Tuesday, and then, without warning, she coughed so hard she gave herself a headache.

  Notes: Saturday 17 October

  Do they beat him? Is it only the father? Is the mother pretending she doesn’t know? How can parents inflict such torture on such a young human being, their own flesh and blood? How can you live with this going on next to you? What crime has he committed?

  The cough isn’t going away.

  I don’t know how long I’ll be in quarantine.

  Martin was right about a relapse.

  And about the smell.

  My house smells bad.

  Despite the septic tank treatment.

  Find a solution that doesn’t require me to open the windows during the day.

  Notes: Sunday 18 October

  The stone boy appeared in the garden later than usual. His health isn’t improving. He’s having trouble walking.

  Martin is angry at me. I was playing the piano with the windows open when he arrived. Asked me if I wanted to die. I told him that I was playing the piano for Bastien and that he would hear it better if I opened the windows. My answer had an effect: he relented immediately and spoke to me tenderly.

  Martin thinks I’m losing my grip.

  He asked me if I was keeping up with my therapy.

  He’d be better off being wary of Audrette.

  I am a miserable woman in a world of misery, but I’m not crazy.

  Attempted to contact Ms. Polin several times to no avail. This waiting is unbearable. I’m obsessed with the stone boy. At night, I hear him breathing behind the curtains, his moans reach me from the stairwell, and sometimes in the kitchen, I find Bastien with his little baker’s apron, cheeks and hands covered with flour. He whispers to me: “Play for me, Granny Elsa, play for me.”

  Drink herbal teas recommended by Dr. Mamnoue and continue Stilnox.

  Positive point: smell problem resolved with simple stoppers reinforced with pieces of old bath towels.

  37

  From Sunday night to Monday morning, Madame Préau didn’t say a word. The sleeping tablet she had taken with a glass of green apple liqueur in the evening triggered a breakdown. She meticulously noted the worrying noises in the house—crackling, whispers, and other hissing sounds—broke the lead in her pencil three times, and twice went to drink milk in the kitchen where Bastien was waiting for her, silently, sitting on a stool. She collapsed on her bed at five a.m., exhausted from coughing. At eight thirty, the jangling of pneumatic drills resumed on the building site. Madame Préau went downstairs to heat up a cup of coffee. Bastien was not in the kitchen anymore. The phone rang at nine.

  “Ms. Polin here. Could you come in to see me this morning? What I want to talk to you about cannot be said over the telephone.”

  The urgency of the meeting and Ms. Polin’s nervousness were worrying. What had she discovered? An hour later, the old lady was in the social worker’s office, her heart thumping.

  Madame Préau had skipped her morning wash, hastily pulling on a long skirt and turtleneck. With her feet toasty in her lined boots, and a purple wool-knit beret covering her gray hair, she took the bus despite Martin’s warnings. The fate of the stone boy was worth a citywide flu epidemic.

  Ms. Polin was not alone in her office with the cheery posters. A permed colleague stood beside her, her arms folded across a sage-green suit.

  “Ms. Plaisance, a psychologist here
at the social welfare center, and I wanted to inform you as agreed on the results of the meeting with the Desmoulins family…”

  The parents had indeed appeared at the social welfare center on the allocated day, equipped with their family record book.

  “The problem is that they do not have a third child.”

  The record book proved it. The news hit like a flan hitting a tile floor. Madame Préau blinked. A computer hard drive under the desk buzzed, making the ground vibrate.

  “Surely there must be some mistake. Perhaps it’s a question of a child from a previous marriage? In that case, it makes sense that it doesn’t appear in the record book.”

  “I made inquiries to that effect, which is why I did not respond to your calls right away. But neither spouse is divorced. Neither the father nor the mother has another child.”

  Madame Préau shrank into her seat, the victim of a coughing fit. She pulled out a handkerchief from her purse, apologizing. The social worker crossed her fingers over the file in front of her.

  “What we want to understand, Ms. Plaisance and myself, is your reason for contacting us.”

  Madame Préau straightened. She understood immediately where the social worker was going.

  “We do not fully understand why you took this approach.”

  “I simply came to report a case of abuse. What is the problem?”

  “But, Madame Préau, how can a child be abused who does not legally exist?”

  “But he exists, I assure you! I saw him just like I’m seeing you now—it was only last Sunday! And I can assure you that his health has deteriorated significantly in a few weeks.”

  The two women exchanged glances. The psychologist put her hands on either side of the desk and leaned forward with a cold smile. The old lady was on her guard.

  “Madame Préau, I understand that you live alone.”

  “Yes, that’s correct.”

  “Forgive me for asking you this question, but do you struggle with loneliness?”

  “I’m used to it. It’s not a problem for me.”

  “But to not have a family, children, or grandchildren to hug and to play in your garden, it must make you sad, no?”

  “I see exactly what you’re insinuating. And the answer is no.”

  The social worker took over: “This kind of step is not a small matter, Madame Préau. By filing a report about this family, you have interfered with the private life of Mr. and Madame Desmoulins, which could cause them problems.”

  “Do you have any reason to be annoyed with your neighbors?” added the psychologist.

  “Not at all. I don’t even know these people!”

  “Really? Because they have told us that you were going to give piano lessons to their daughter.”

  So there it was.

  They were closing in on her.

  “How do you know that? Did you speak to them about me?”

  “Of course not. We only asked them about their interactions with the neighbors.”

  Madame Préau didn’t believe a word of it.

  They were in cahoots with Desmoulins!

  The rumble of the computer became more threatening.

  What had she expected? Social welfare was part of the County Council. All this was only the next logical step.

  Madame Préau felt herself pale. She was suffocating in this room; it was too dark, too full of aggressive and violent images for her to face these two harpies. The psychologist’s steel-blue eyes reminded her of a teacher at the boarding school where her father had sent her against her will. She had a face like tanned leather, with a velvety voice and matchstick legs.

  “Listen, I stand by what I said to you. There is a child in a very bad way in my neighbors’ garden. If you don’t believe me, well, fine. I’ll go to the police to file a complaint.”

  “We want to believe you, Madame Préau,” replied the curly-haired psychologist, “but without proof, it is very difficult. It would have to be proven that the child really does exist.”

  Madame Préau stood and nervously buttoned up her coat. She couldn’t wait to leave.

  “You only have to come to my house next Sunday, ladies. I’ll make you a nice cup of tea and lend you my binoculars. It’s crazy how many little details you can see with those binoculars. You can see much further than a family book, and well beyond the end of your own nose,” she added before leaving the room without closing the door.

  As before, Madame Préau preferred to walk rather than take the bus. Her hands were trembling. She took Rue Parmentier with the notion to stop at the police station but changed her mind. The old lady had a migraine setting in. Better to regain her strength before entering the lion’s den. This battle would be a tricky business—given Madame Préau’s history.

  38

  Martin received a call from his mother late in the morning. She asked him if there weren’t a more effective cough syrup than Helicidine, and if he could get her a camera that was easy to use. Martin questioned her about what had prompted her to start taking photographs at more than seventy years of age. She said that she wanted to photograph the present to keep track of the truth, rather than live in the past, which Martin took as a tremendously positive impulse and a step on the road to recovery.

  “Well, you know, something that’s easy to handle, but that can take sharp pictures up to thirty meters.”

  Martin promised to take care of it this week. He added: “Take care of yourself, and most importantly, no more open-air piano performances. If the fever doesn’t return, you can go out on Friday to do your shopping.”

  Madame Préau hung up with a sigh. She had an adorable son. Too bad he shared his life with a demon.

  After having checked all the windows and doors of the house next door through the shutters of her bedroom window, the old lady spent the afternoon on the lookout for the slightest movement in her neighbors’ garden.

  Madame Desmoulins went out twice. Wearing a blue fleece and white jeans, she had a mobile phone stuck to her right ear and was pacing the terrace. She left the house at four twenty p.m. Twenty minutes later, Madame Desmoulins was back with Laurie and Kévin. All three of them went straight into to the house. The shutters on the four windows were closed at six thirty, plunging the house into darkness. However, thanks to the glass bricks arranged above the French doors of what must have been the living or dining room, Madame Préau could tell whether the light was on or off inside. At about seven o’clock, Mr. Desmoulins drove his metallic red Kangoo into the garage. The old lady took the opportunity to take a break from her stakeout. She warmed up a Tetra Pak of organic leek and potato soup, ate two slices of bread she thawed under the grill along with a piece of Comté, and finished off her meal with some Muscat grapes and the France 3 evening news. An item on computer viruses and more specifically the microchips implanted in dogs and cats caught her attention. She promised herself to look up a book in the library that specialized in this area when she was feeling better. If a cat’s microchip could “crack” a computer code simply by the animal being present in the room, millions of people could have been under surveillance without their knowledge and had their privacy violated continuously. At least dogs are forbidden in nuclear power plants. Regardless, from now on, she’d be more wary of stray cats in the garden.

  At nine thirty, she had a wash. Then she put on her nightgown, buttoned her woolen coat over it, put on her beret, and went to her room, plunged into darkness. She grabbed the binoculars and resumed her post at the window, hidden behind the shutters. Mr. Desmoulins came out a quarter of an hour later to smoke. As usual, he had his mobile phone in his hand and seemed very absorbed in it. He was probably playing one of those card games that Martin had shown her in his office; Madame Préau’s son sometimes enjoyed a game of backgammon on his Nokia. But there was no way of knowing for sure. Maybe it was one of those new monitoring tools that allow you to see and hear at a distance. Could Mr. Desmoulins be quietly scanning Madame Préau’s house?

  The door opened, and
Madame Desmoulins appeared wearing her white trousers. She went over to her husband and they exchanged a few words. From where she was with the window open, in the still of the night, Madame Préau could only hear a faint murmuring carried on the breeze. The father and mother seemed like conspirators, whispering to each other. Mr. Desmoulins even slipped a hand under his wife’s sweater. She heard them giggling. Madame Préau imagined that she was the butt of their jokes. The Desmoulins must have been happy with the trick that they had pulled with the help of the two bitches at the social welfare center. Soon, a small child’s cry rang out from the house. The mother immediately broke away from her husband, looking distinctly displeased, and went back inside, closing the door on the echo of a new cry.

  Madame Préau took a deep breath and rested the binoculars on the side table.

  It could well be Kévin.

  Or Laurie.

  The two bitches at the social welfare center had been right. Other than the little girl’s drawing and the stone boy’s appearance on Sundays, to which she was the only witness, nothing could suggest that anything was amiss in this family.

  The light was still shining from the neighbors’ after midnight. Madame Préau did not wait for them to turn it off before going to bed. As she still wasn’t asleep by the time the freight train passed, disturbed by her cough, she took a glass of green apple liqueur, a big spoonful of cough syrup, and a Stilnox, and closed her eyes.

  She spent the night paralyzed under the bedclothes, coughing, thirsty, sweaty, convinced that Mr. Desmoulins was scaling the wall of her house and was trying to open the metal shutters on her window, making horrible grinding noises.