The Stone Boy (7 page)

She went to her room to find a pair of binoculars to take a look in the neighbors’ garden. It was empty. There didn’t seem to be any movement in the house. Only the barking of dogs in the street repeated like an echo distorted by the wind. Madame Préau sat on her bed. It was a Monday. It was almost noon. She would have to wait until Sunday to see the child behind the concrete wall. She had a week to think about what to believe.

It rained for six days. Madame Préau only went out to go to medical appointments, neglecting her shopping and the return of her books to the library. She made do with meals based on canned food accompanied by thawed frozen bread. Wednesday’s session with Dr. Mamnoue was devoted to the reappearance of her ex-daughter-in-law in Martin’s life. She associated unpleasant memories with Audrette and was relieved to
offload
the more cumbersome ones. On Thursday, Martin had to cancel their dinner; in the four days since he returned from Corsica, the waiting room at his office hadn’t emptied before half past eight. He was skipping meals, abusing vitamin bars and caffeinated fizzy drinks. A real Samaritan. He was working his way to a lovely ulcer. Just like his father used to do. Foolish.

On Sunday, no one appeared in the neighbors’ soggy garden. The shutters remained closed throughout the day. Madame Préau didn’t see the car come out of the garage. Perhaps the family had gone away? When Madame Préau telephoned her son at the end of the day, he refused to put Bastien on the line. At half past seven, she ate a vegetable soup in front of the France 3 national news. The news was pathetic: the threat of a flu epidemic was growing, the release of a video of Brice Hortefeux’s polemical comments was raising an outcry on the left, a collection of school supplies was now being organized for the poorest families, a report showed the dilapidated and insalubrious state of university dormitories, a British artist had found nothing better to do than to put a mold of his head covered with his own blood on show in London. But the regressive aspect of society today designed to shun the values of the Republic was not the source of Madame Préau’s annoyance. She knew that mankind was condemned to die of cancer, poisoned by antibiotics, volatile chemical compounds in paints, preservatives, and parabens in cosmetics, its belly full of its own waste plastic, like an albatross at Midway Atoll in the North Pacific, and she did not care.

No, what was worrying her was the big, one-eyed tomcat.

Madame Préau’s garden was a haven for stray animals. No conflict was tolerated. The one-eyed cat had made up his mind to prevent his fellow strays access to the food dishes left near the garden shed. He didn’t care about getting scraped and collecting scars, flaunting them with all the childish arrogance of a dominant male. Recently, an abscess on his left front leg had burst. Blood and pus was seeping from it, dirtying the food dishes. Madame Préau could not approach him to take care of it—he was a really aggressive cat, and the wound only made him worse. So she chased him away when she saw him jump over the garden wall, knowing that at night, when she wasn’t there, he would return to do his worst and win back any territory he decided belonged to him.

Madame Préau had always taken care of the animals around her. Once an active member of and volunteer for the SPA, she had gone so far as to collect a goat with two broken legs found at a motorway rest stop on the way to Provins and a young baboon rescued from a cosmetics laboratory that had been paying a whopping amount of business tax to the Champagne-Ardenne regional government. But if a despot terrorized and deprived others of their food, even if he was one-eyed and mangy, that was too much to bear.

She had to do something.

At eight o’clock, Madame Préau was ready. Positioned in the shed on a stool, hidden under a plastic tarp, she waited until the cat showed the tip of his nose at the jam-packed bowls, shaking a box of cat food to attract him.

“Come on, come here, you.”

It took a good quarter of an hour before the lame cat dared to enter the dark shack, inhaling the cat food piece by piece that trailed to the stool where his benefactor stood.

“Come on, my fat tomcat, come here.”

Madame Préau’s voice was soft and quavering. He was so close to her that she could feel him purring.

“I think it’s about time the feast came to an end, young man.”

The shock of the hammer against the cat’s skull cut the soft purring short.

15 September 2009

Ms. Blanche,

There is currently a rumor in the neighborhood that you engage in strange practices in your ramshackle house. From my bedroom window, I saw you last night, by the light of a pink moon, rocking a cradle in which, according to local residents (so says the butcher), is the body of a dead dog.

I should tell you that I am not one of those people who point the finger at others as in times gone by. I do not believe in the modern-day witches the tabloids buy into. I think that if you didn’t forget to wash, and if you cleared out a bit of your clutter, they wouldn’t talk so much rubbish about you. In the eyes of our neighbors, you would simply be a poor woman who cannot bring herself to bury her pet, powerless to tame the melancholy of her heart.

If I can help in any way, please let me know; I just buried a cat in my garden, and I’m only a few shovelfuls of earth away.

With fond memories of the music lessons that I gave you, Delphine, a happy time in a past life.

In solidarity,

Elsa Préau

Dr. Mamnoue was quite fond of the dreams of his oldest patient. She had a talent as a storyteller that gave credibility and gravitas to her tales. The previous night, a nightmare had woken her well before dawn. She immediately noted its contents in her notebook, and it was now open on her lap.

“It was nighttime. There was someone in the house. A presence more disturbing than hostile. And that someone was playing the piano downstairs in the living room. The melody wasn’t anything familiar, and I didn’t know if the tune was happy or sad. I was terrified to leave my bed, and my bedside lamp refused to turn on. Then I got up to turn on the overhead light, but the switch wasn’t working, either. The electricity had been cut off in the house.”

“Were you afraid?”

“I knew I had no choice but to go down to the cellar to flip the circuit breaker, and yes, I was very afraid to confront the person playing the piano. But I needed to know who was hiding in there. So I decided to feel my way down the stairs. When I reached the room, I saw the window that looks out onto the street fighting the wind and the curtains shaking as if they were angry.”

“The window was
fighting
, and the curtains were
angry
?” queried Dr. Mamnoue.

Madame Préau sighed, annoyed.

“Not exactly. Let’s say they danced. They moved erratically, fitfully. You see?”

“Continue, Elsa.”

“At the end of the room, sitting at the piano, was a young boy. I went to him to ask him what he was doing sitting in the dark. Then he turned to me. His face was covered with dirt. He said: ‘Play for me, Granny Elsa.’ Dirt also came out of his mouth. It was scary.”

Madame Préau was quiet. She closed the notebook and crossed her hands over her knees. The old man cleared his throat.

“The child, was he Bastien?”

“It was… yes. Yes, it was definitely Bastien.”

“And that was all?”

“That was all.”

“So…”

“So… what?”

“I suppose that you’ve analyzed your dream.”

Madame Préau nodded. Her mouth was dry. She took the empty glass in front of her on the desk.

“I’d like a bit more water, please, Claude,” she said in a hoarse voice.

The doctor took the carafe behind him on a sideboard and filled his patient’s glass.

“Well, what is your interpretation?”

The old woman drank the glass down in large gulps. Then she put it back on the desk with another sigh.

“I’m worried about the little boy who lives across the street.”

Then she added, almost ashamed: “And I think I very much want to get back to the piano.”

The doctor tutted.

“Do you dream of Bastien often?”

“Almost never.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“In fact, since I’ve started taking the pills Martin prescribed for me, I don’t have dreams anymore.”

“And you miss Bastien.”

“Yes.”

Dr. Mamnoue shook his head.

“You find that hard to accept.”

“Accept what? That I miss Bastien?”

He tugged lightly on the collar of the shirt sticking out from under his green cardigan and changed the subject.

“Do you feel at ease in your home?”

“It’s my childhood home.”

“It’s full of memories. Perhaps too many, right?”

Madame Préau shrugged. With her long skirt and purple turtleneck, she looked like a Little Sister of the Poor.

“Memories are part of life. I don’t see how that can be disturbing.”

Dr. Mamnoue joined his fingers together under his chin and put his elbows on his desk.

“And the earth in Bastien’s mouth? How do you interpret that?”

A fire engine went down the road. Madame Préau started when she heard the siren.

“Oh! Yes. Where is my head? That’s just it! I forgot to tell you about it.”

“What?”

“I’ve had trouble with the cats.”

“Cats?”

“The neighborhood stray cats. I feed them from time to time. One of them—he’s very aggressive—attacks the others, but that’s all over now.”

“What happened?”

Madame Préau whispered maliciously.

“He’s eating dirt.”

There was no more mention of Madame Préau’s dream for the rest of the session. Dr. Mamnoue took the fee for the session, shook his patient’s hand, and accompanied her to the landing outside.

“And don’t forget, at night before you go to sleep: camomile tea with honey, and you’ll sleep better.”

“If Martin could hear you, he’d laugh out loud. Natural medicines aren’t his cup of tea.”

“I have nothing against chemicals, but let’s try not to abuse them too much for the moment. I’d prefer that we see each other twice per week than give you sleeping tablets.”

“Two times per week? I didn’t think you were so extravagant, Claude.”

The old man gave a faint smile.

“Right. We’ll talk about it again next Wednesday. Good-bye, Elsa.”

Once outside, Madame Préau hurried to the window of the patisserie on Place du Raincy. She didn’t go in to buy cake, eager to escape her slip of the tongue, her only lie: it wasn’t Bastien’s face that she had seen in her dream, it was the stone boy’s.

Play for me, Granny Elsa.

She couldn’t wait for Sunday.

There was plenty to do between now and then.

The bell rang briefly. A moment later, students burst out of the school like bees from a hive, eager to get rid of their schoolbags. At the gate, some parents caught their offspring midflight with warm kisses. Among them, Madame Préau’s neighbor scanned the crowd for her children. A few meters behind on the opposite pavement, the former headmistress of the school observed the half-past-four pickup time, hands in the pockets of her plum wool coat. The sky was blue, the air chilly, and most of the children wore scarves. It was one of the first days of autumn that heralded the winter, bright and proud.

It didn’t take long for Madame Préau to see the little boy, trailing his scarf on the ground, and then his sister, walking briskly toward their mother. She took her children by the hand and headed back toward their home without dawdling. She didn’t speak to any other mums, and did not stop at the junior school, the main building of which backed onto the infant school, to wait for her eldest son. Madame Préau was only partially surprised. It seemed logical. In cases of abuse, the child doesn’t receive the same treatment as his brothers and sisters. The little boy no doubt went home alone. After all, at seven, you’re a big boy, right? Madame Préau remained skeptical: she had never seen the stone boy walking down the street. And there was only one entrance to his house, the gate facing her home. Unless the father went to fetch his son in the car after supervised study? Possibly. The old woman shook her head and returned to her place at the school gates, unable to resist the pleasure of watching school pickup time.

All students in the school who weren’t staying on for after-school activities streamed past, bringing back memories. Madame Préau thought she saw Bastien at the age of three, on his first day of school, passing by wearing new brown calfskin lace-ups. A little one with his arm in a sling reminded her of Bastien at age five, when he hurt himself falling off his bike. In the midst of all the happy meetings, a little girl was screaming for no reason, and was firmly carried off by her fairly ashamed father. The parents didn’t linger as long as when she still ran the place: they were in a hurry to get back, and wrapped up short conversations, heading straight to the Monoprix store with the buggy. Modern family living favored isolation and withdrawal. The lack of communication between individuals insured the State against any mobilization and eradicated any breeding grounds for social activism. Society was working steadily toward mental manipulation and marginalization.