The Stone Boy (5 page)

At seven, the same time that she had her dinner, Madame Préau would prepare a tin bowl of food for the neighborhood stray cats, which she would leave near the shed at the end of the garden. The shutters were closed at seven thirty. Madame Préau had a light dinner in the dining room while watching the news on France 3, and then did some more reading before getting ready for bed. The bedside lamp was turned off at ten thirty. If she couldn’t sleep, she’d count high-speed trains. The echo of their infernal race would reach her with reassuring regularity from the railway platform a hundred meters away.

On Saturdays between nine and noon, a nurse, Ms. Briche, would visit to check her blood pressure. If she picked up on the slightest agitation or sign of an anxiety attack in her patient, she informed Dr. Martin Préau—which she had never had to do until now.

Sunday was the hardest day. On Sundays, Madame Préau would fast, drinking vegetable soup and organic herbal teas concocted by Madame Budin, the chemist. No one ever came to Madame Préau on Sunday, and Madame Préau had no one to visit. She didn’t keep up any particular acquaintances among the neighbors, who kept to themselves. They were content to say hello as they passed each other on the footpath every other day when the bins went out. Only one of her former students, who lived in number four, sometimes stopped to smile or exchange pleasantries in front of Madame Préau’s house. Though she was in her fifties, Ms. Blanche seemed twenty years older. The poor woman had lost her mind years ago. She filled her days by hoarding anything recyclable in her house, in her garden, and even in the trunk of her car. Cardboard boxes, bottles, corks, plastic wrappers, newspapers—fragile structures heaped like peaks of whipped cream were visible behind the outer fence where a tangle of shrubs clung, forming random snares. Having scaled the front wall, a clematis had meandered inside the house via the first-floor window that Ms. Blanche left open throughout the year, and through which other piles of reusable materials were visible. The mind of the young woman who had once studied the piano at Madame Préau’s house had clearly meandered, too, and her clothes were impregnated by the smell of mold.

Sunday was a terrible day. The children weren’t coming back from school, singing along the path; the postman wasn’t doing his rounds, dinging his bicycle bell; the ballet of dumper trucks and JCBs working on nearby building sites was brutally called to a halt; the windows of Madame Préau’s house weren’t vibrating each time they passed; the street was deserted, the neighborhood had been siphoned of all its commotion; not even a one-eyed tomcat snuck across the dew-covered garden.

So Madame Préau would watch the neighbors.

High-pitched screams and the squeak of a swing forced Madame Préau out of her Sunday nap at about three o’clock. She got up, opened the double curtains, and discovered the children playing in the garden. A little girl and two boys. The smaller of the two boys was barely more than three and was sniveling a lot, the victim of his sister’s taunts. Aged five or six perhaps, she was deliberately making him fall out of the swing, grabbing the ball from his hands, or pushing him off a little truck so that she could take his place. She was using her physical superiority with some skill, taking advantage of the lack of supervision by either her mother or her father. For their part, they were happy enough to glance over at their children when they got too rowdy. Occasionally, the father came out to smoke a cigarette and drink a coffee or a beer. He would sit on a plastic garden chair and would pay the most attention to his mobile phone. The mother rarely appeared outside the house; she would charge across the garden, but only to take down the laundry that was hanging in front of the wall of the garage. Both were blond of a rather Nordic sort, like the little boy and his sister.

The other boy, the bigger one, had dark, chestnut-brown hair. He must have been Bastien’s age, seven or perhaps eight years old. He stood apart from the other two. He stayed in his corner beneath the weeping birch, calmly collecting stones and pieces of twigs so that he could arrange them on the paving stones in the garden. Invisible from the street, hidden by the cypress trees and the concrete wall, he no doubt thought that he was protected. Other than Madame Préau’s tall fieldstone house, none of the nearby houses were high enough to overlook that part of the garden. Sitting at the little inlaid table that she had placed in a corner of the room, near the window, the old woman would witness the children’s games, nostalgic for the games that she used to oversee at break time when she was still teaching at the Blaise Pascal School. Soothed by the familiar hubbub that reigned in her neighbors’ garden, she would occupy her hands by mending or sorting everything she could in the house: buttons, ribbons, nuts and bolts, pencils, bills, family photographs, letters, postcards, or drawings by former students. Sometimes, when the girl went too far, torturing her little brother for the fun of it, Madame Préau would lean against the lace half curtain. She adjusted her glasses and bit her lip. Certainly it would have been nice to play the role of the schoolmistress again, to open the window and give the little girl a stern warning. Best to not get involved. Madame Préau allowed herself the right to go to speak to the parents only if the little girl crossed a line. As for the child underneath the tree, he was of such exemplary intelligence that he would get curious. One Sunday after the next, he would go through the same motions, constructing totems with bundled twigs and flat stones. He was still, whether crouched or standing, gazing out into the curtain of cedars. No doubt he was looking at insects. And then, sometimes, he would look up suddenly in the direction of Madame Préau’s house. She would pull back, and drop her box of buttons or the pile of photos propped on the writing drawer. With her fringe mussed, she’d pick up the things she had dropped, blushing. Wasn’t it a sin to covet the fruits of your neighbor’s garden?

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

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.

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?”