The Stone Boy (3 page)

“Madame Préau, please, we need your consent.”

The ill man’s daughter turned to face the doctor and noticed her hostile expression. Pink and white scrubs moved back and forth behind her restlessly, sharpening their syringes.

“Tell me, Doctor,” whispered Madame Préau, “this evening, for the music festival, couldn’t you just see your devoted orderlies singing the latest hits to the patients just before they gave them the lethal injection?”

13 March 1997

Audrette,

I am sorry to have to write you this letter, but you have given me no choice.

You cannot get away with it just because you’re my daughter-in-law. Refusing to let me see my grandson is enormously cruel. I do not see how his spending Wednesday afternoons with his granny poses such a problem for you. Bastien is a charming child, he’s very intelligent, and he’s my only grandchild. I’m also very concerned about his health; Bastien has lots of bruises. Does he have trouble with his balance? Does he fall often? If not, do you see any reason for his contusions?

I think that you are being subjected to a bad influence at the moment, one that is altering your perception of things. I have another hypothesis about your situation, but I would rather discuss it face-to-face. And I don’t see how keeping a goat and a baboon in my garden could possibly be harmful to my grandson. To the contrary; it has been proven that contact with animals is particularly beneficial to children. Besides, Bamboo never gets out of his cage.

I should warn you, however, that if you prevent me from seeing Bastien, I will be obliged to contact the judge at family court. I intend to exercise my visitation rights just like any other grandmother.

Kiss Bastien and Martin for me.

Elsa Préau

The scrawny daisies had been pulled up by the root. The dandelions, too. Parched by the heat, the earth crumbled between your fingers.

“Are they for me, Bastien?” asked Madame Préau.

“No, they’re for Mommy.”

The little boy held the makeshift bouquet tightly in his left hand. He walked with his head bobbing, one palm against his granny’s, which was damp with sweat. There wasn’t a breath of wind to chase the dog days of summer away.

“I really like Captain Cousteau.”

“Me too, Bastien.”

“Why did he die?”

“Because the Good Lord needed him.”

“It’s not fair. Who’s going to take care of the whales now?”

“You, when you’re older.”

“Granny Elsa?”

“Yes, Bastien?”

“Why did you come to school to pick me up and not Mommy?”

“Because she had to work. She’ll come later.”

On the path, between two verges of yellow grass that had grown up beneath the tarmac, a colony of fireflies had caught the child’s eye. He stopped for a moment to watch the insects mating happily.

“What kind of insects are these, Granny Elsa?”

Madame Préau raised an eyebrow.

“Not God’s creatures, certainly.”

“Oh?”

“Come on, Bastien, let’s cross.”

“But that’s not the way home.”

“We’re not going home. We’re going to have a picnic in Courbet Park with our after-school snack.”

“Great!”

“I made chocolate cake.”

The little boy’s face lit up. He readjusted one of the straps of his schoolbag and pulled at the elastic of his shorts before stepping out onto the zebra crossing.

Twenty minutes later, Madame Préau and her grandson were picnicking on the grass in the shade of the big chestnut trees. Bastien made a face. He put what was left of his cake down on a paper napkin.

“I don’t feel good, Granny.”

He ran his hand through his hair.

“Did you eat too quickly?”

“No, I’m dizzy.”

She put a hand to his burning forehead.

“I told you not to stay on the swing for too long in the sun. Have some juice.”

Bastien drank straight from the plastic bottle. Soon he was sleeping, his cheek pressed against his granny’s skirt, listening to a story about goblins.

“… they wore hats as tall as they were wide and big belts made of wolf skin across their black woollen coats. Everyone in the village was afraid of their nasty tricks. They were the ones who would drop things in the middle of the night, or crack the floorboards in people’s houses. They could open any door. No lock could keep them out. They were so ugly that when women saw them, they would faint from fright. Even the strongest men and the bravest children would take to their heels when they crossed paths with a goblin.”

Bastien’s grandmother brought the last piece of cake to her lips. Her arm was shaking gently, trailing crumbs across her blouse.

“They were very nasty goblins sent by the County Council. The same ones who spoke to your lovely mommy in her sleep, all the better to manipulate her, and to make her do very nasty things to her family, and most of all to you, my little Bastien.”

Nodding off, the grandmother closed her eyes, too.

“But you, my dear, they’ll never have you. Your granny won’t let her grandson be part of anything wicked. No one will lay a finger on any blood of mine. Sleep, my Bastien, sleep tight. Granny Elsa is watching over you…”

Submerged in water in a cup propped up against his schoolbag, the flowers that the little boy had picked were sinking like a forgotten promise. Rocked by the children’s shouts echoing across the park, stretched out against each other, Bastien and his grandmother looked like they were sleeping.

Tiny stars.

Thousands of yellow stars.

I want to die.

Cousin, crush me in your arms

Make me die again.

The bed banged silently against the wall and the nightstand. The cushions that Martin had put behind the head of the metal bedframe were doing an admirable job. Only the woman persisted in making noise, alternating between plaintive groans and panting. To stifle her cries, Martin clamped a hand over her mouth, which only heightened their excitement. She bit him until he drew blood; he grew even more vigorous. Two glasses and a half-full whisky bottle clinked together on the nightstand as if toasting them, threatening to fall onto the rug. The woman’s naked body disappeared under her massive, hairy partner. Lost within the crumpled sheets, an ankle slipped out, rubbing against the fabric to the rhythm of the battering. After a while, the man straightened up, lifting up his partner’s legs and hooking them around his hips. He then penetrated her in a position that put the muscles in his arms and legs to the test. The woman had to find something other than his fist to bite.

When they’d caught their breath, uncovered to the waist and legs spread-eagled across the bed, a mobile rang. Martin had just fallen back to sleep. He barely opened his eyes and answered the call.

“Right, Martin. I can’t stay here, really, knowing you’re there all the time, even if you’re doing it for my own good, that’s it, it’s just beyond me. Dr. Mamnoue told me yesterday about an establishment in Hyères that would be very good for me. I’d be put up in an apartment with a balcony, a kitchenette for cooking, and even a guest bed; I could have Bastien to stay over. It seems perfect to me. Did you come back late last night? I didn’t hear you come in.”

“Good morning, Mum.”

“Yes, good morning, son. It’s half past eight, you know. Aren’t you going to the surgery this morning?”

“Yes, yes, I’m going.”

The man sat on the edge of the bed and lit a cigarette.

“I thought that what you wanted most in life was getting back to your house and your garden,” he said, clearing his throat.

“You know full well that it isn’t my house anymore, that it belongs to my son, and three years on, you’ve turned it into a slum.”

“Mum—”

“I can’t stand being here any longer. I have to leave. Now that Bamboo and the cherry tree are dead, I couldn’t care less about the garden. And you keep the furniture. I don’t want to take anything with me. Why did you destroy the cage? You could have used it as a rabbit hutch—”

“Can we talk about this later?” Martin cut across her.

She began again, more sweetly: “Ah. You’re not alone, is that it? Who is it? Is it Audrette? Will I make you some coffee?”

Martin looked at the woman sprawled across his bed, who asked for a cigarette, two fingers to her parted lips. Her makeup had run, accentuating the wrinkles under her eyes. Her small breasts, rosy from lovemaking, gave her a youthful air, and the scar above her pubis told some of her story.

“Mum, I can’t talk to you now. I’m going to hang up.”

“Dr. Mamnoue said that the sun would do me a world of good, you know.”

“Yes, yes, he’s right. We’ll talk about it on my lunch break, okay?”

After throwing the phone in the middle of the sheets, Martin idly caressed his partner’s chest.

“Who was that?” she asked.

“The landlady.”

“Pardon?”

“My mother. She thinks I’m with my ex-wife.”

The floorboards creaked. The woman stood and looked for her underwear in the jumble of laundry strewn about the floor and across the messy room. She was wearing the same sad expression that Martin had noticed the first time she had walked through the door of his surgery. He sat on the edge of the bed for a moment, studying his toes, scratching his cheeks through his beard. His neck was sore.

“Can I use your bathroom?”

The man grasped the bottle of whisky and poured himself a glass to swallow two tablets he had fished out of the nightstand.

“By all means, Valérie… There are clean towels underneath the sink.”

Martin would see her again later for an appointment, like the others. And she wouldn’t insist on their sleeping together again. Women don’t like men who slip through life without looking for so much as a foothold.

Two floors down, a suitcase, flung against the stairs in the entryway, was still waiting to be unpacked. An old radio set was playing in the living room. Journalists were commenting on the news of the day: Vladimir Putin had officially taken up office as President of the Russian Federation, a contentious penalty shoot-out between Nantes and Calais’s amateur team in the finals of the Coupe de France, and the depraved behavior of one Dr. Martin Préau—a complete humiliation to his mother. Standing at the window, Madame Préau drank her second cup of coffee, listening closely to water gurgling in the pipes. Someone was having a shower in her bathroom. Soap residue and the woman’s hair were undoubtedly running through the plumbing in the house. Madame Préau winced in disgust and spat her coffee into the sink.

The car’s back wheel hit a pothole in the road. The bouquet of flowers bounced off the passenger’s knees. Madame Préau was shunted along the backseat closer to her son, wrapping an arm over his right shoulder.

The taxi driver was driving like a madman.

Both were agreed on this point.

The trip from the Gare de Lyon to Bagnolet seemed long. With the rain beating down, the car was now approaching a town in the eastern suburbs, marked out by shops with garish signs: takeaways, car accessory shops, estate agents, tool-hire places; Madame Préau could barely recognize the city center. After a dozen intersections, the taxi turned left into a driveway hedged with crape myrtle in full bloom. They passed a private secondary school with students in hoodies and young women in skinny jeans pouring out for break time. Madame Préau leaned her head against the glass, curious about this style—so unflattering for the heavyset girls. The passenger finally recognized the railway bridge and the red bricks over which the car passed. Where a pretty forest of beech and chestnut had lined the road nine years earlier, a paltry square and two medical facilities (one retirement home and an assisted-living facility for the handicapped) had sprung up brazenly, along with a supermarket, topped off with a car park and surrounded by advertising hoardings. Directly opposite, a group of semidetached houses was under construction. On the corner, an area of fifty square meters of grass clashed with a landscape dotted with bungalows; no doubt the planning handiwork of the town council, kept aside for the highest bidder.

“It’s become so ugly,” exclaimed Madame Préau.

A hand held on to her shoulder. Her son was trying to comfort her.

“We’re almost there, Mum.”