The Stone Boy (6 page)

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. Sometimes 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

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.

The area around the train station was just a vast construction site. The roar of dump trucks spewing their 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.

“We’re lucky, Isabelle. Imagine the hell that the people on Rue des Petits Rentiers are living, with that huge crane overhead and a cement mixer that lets its motor run all day. That smell of diesel is horrific.”

The housekeeper nodded with a sad smile, holding her dustpan across her body.

“Will I put all this in the jar as usual?”

“Do, Isabelle. Do.”

She returned to the kitchen, saying to Madame Préau that they were almost out of floor cleaner and Ajax for the windows, but that there was no hurry. The housekeeper felt the ground vibrate under her slippers. A truck was going down the road, giving the barking dogs a second wind. Madame Préau also felt the vibration but paid no attention, too busy using the handle of the shears to crush a family of spiders nestled in the rock garden.

“Madame Elsa?”

The housekeeper stuck her head out the living room window. She sounded concerned, like she was doubting herself.

“Yes, Isabelle?”

“Could you come and look, please?”

Madame Préau straightened up, attached the shears to the belt of her overalls, and went back to the steps. She tapped the heels of her rubber boots against the scraper fixed to the wall, and as nothing was stuck to the soles, she went inside. Isabelle was still leaning out of the living room window, staring at the stone windowsill.

“What did you find?”

“The stones. It’s strange.”

Isabelle rolled the gravel a few centimeters with her brush. A stain appeared on a stone. Madame Préau raised her eyebrows.

“Looks like dried blood.”

The gravel was also covered in the same red color. Isabelle shook her head, muttering.

“That’s all we need!”

Taken aback, Madame Préau stood still for a moment.

“What should I do, Madame Elsa? Should I put them in the jar, too?”

Madame Préau took off her neck brace with an irritated gesture.

“Leave it. I’ll take care of it.”

She waited until the housekeeper had gone home before she spread the small stones across the kitchen table and looked at them under the magnifying glass, turning them over carefully in her hands. It was not a trick. They were stained with dried blood. How had these stones landed on the living room windowsill? Where could the blood possibly have come from? The stones slid into a jam jar. Madame Préau screwed the lid on tightly, and then looked for a place to store the jar. She decided that the best hiding place was the crisper drawer of the refrigerator. Back in the living room, Madame Préau stood in front of the window: the neighbors’ weeping birch was ten meters across the street, the exact location where the child usually stood. Madame Préau put a hand over her mouth, thinking. Was it possible that the child had thrown the stones? That the blood had come from the cut on his elbow? Up until now she had attributed the presence of small stones and gravel on the windowsills to passing trucks. Could there be another explanation? Had the boy already thrown stones into her garden? By not aiming too high, somehow, you could reach the living room window without the chestnut leaves getting in the way.

The tree’s mottled foliage trembled in the breeze. A strand of gray hair tickled Madame Préau’s nose. She brushed it away, pulling the little black notebook out of the pocket of her overalls and jotting down the date and time at which the stones had been discovered. She also wrote two questions:

Why would the child have thrown the blood-covered stones against my window?

Is there a connection to the noise heard in the middle of the night last night?