The Stone Boy (10 page)

“We have no choice but to follow procedure. We have to call the parents in with their family record book, and if they don’t respond, that can take more time still.”

The social worker stood up: the interview was over. She accompanied Madame Préau to the lobby and held out a cold hand.

“Well, thank you, Madame Préau, for coming in to flag up this child’s case to us.”

“Could I ring you to find out how things are coming along?” she chanced.

“Of course. But give it a fortnight.”

Madame Préau left the social welfare center with a bad feeling. She decided to walk rather than take the bus. She got home at about four. Rain had started to fall, and the garden released the smell of wet earth. She dropped her key twice before sliding it into the lock. She took off her shoes, put the kettle on for tea, and then thought better of it. Exhausted, she went up to her room and fell asleep in her slippers without having bothered to draw the curtains.

29 September 2009

For the attention of Roselyne Bachelot

Minister of Health and Sports

Minister,

Please allow me to respond to the scandals erupting in the Church today. I am heartbroken three times over. Heartbroken with shame, to think that priests abused children for whom they were responsible, as I myself was responsible, as headmistress of a school, for the outcomes of thousands of students. I am heartbroken with sorrow for the victims whose childhoods were ruined. I am heartbroken as a retired teacher, as to be a teacher is to devote oneself to the education and future of our children.

At some point, the silence becomes unbearable, and people talk. The Church as an institution is confronting it now, but it will not be the only one. I would like to draw your attention, Minister, to the fact that a gym teacher and an Army general were recently arrested. Pedophilia does not only strike the Church and celibate men. It is often a phenomenon within families, a perversion for which there is no cure.

We talk a lot about the celibacy of priests. This celibacy is often experienced as an amputation, not only in terms of sexuality, but also in emotional terms. Just imagine that these men never hold anyone in their arms; they never feel anyone’s arms around them, apart from their immediate family. That is very difficult to live with, believe me. I myself have been divorced since 1975, and, having chosen not to remarry so as to devote myself to my son and my job, I know how it feels. I think of all those men and women who suffer from loneliness and lack affection, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some were to plunge into depression, alcoholism, or perversity. How many priests leave their parishes to “rest” when in reality they are in nursing homes to treat chronic depressive conditions? Listening to unhappiness can drown us in it. Personally, I meditate an hour a day.

It seems to me that recognizing the emotional want suffered by a great majority of the French population is crucial to the future of our society, which tries to medicalize an emotional problem. I think that if we increased the time dedicated to mutual support, solidarity, and exchange of ideas, we could bring about a reduction in the Social Security deficit. This would be just that—true “social security”: reassuring the forgotten, giving them back a place among us, helping them before they are in distress.

I hope you will hear this appeal from a modest retiree who no longer expects much from life other than a bit more time to lend a helping hand to her neighbors.

Respectfully yours,

Elsa Préau

For the next week, the old lady watched in horror as a crane was erected behind the Desmoulins family’s home. With the residence on Rue des Petits Rentiers nearing completion, work was continuing with the construction of a halfway house opposite the train station. There would be no respite for the residents: dump trucks and JCBs smashing apart a little more tarmac each day, hollowing out nest holes in each corner of the Rue des Lilas.

From her room, Madame Préau had a perfect view of the crane operator perched some fifty meters up. It was a shame he didn’t work on Sundays. At that height, the stone boy would have to be in his field of vision. But the presence of this crane would mean that she would have to keep the first- and second-floor shutters closed. Allowing herself to be spied upon so blatantly was out of the question.

And they spoke of practically nothing else at the physio: the construction of the new halfway house. Local residents were concerned about the potentially high-risk population, talking about convicts, former drug addicts, or alcoholics.

“If I were you, I would take on at least two bodyguards,” joked Mr. Apeldoorn.

The physio always had a joke for Madame Préau and worked wonders on her neck. His patient replied that she kept her father’s hammer close at hand in case things got rough, and that had amused Mr. Apeldoorn, the expression “in case things got rough.” In the last few weeks, he had been strutting about the place: his weighing scales had been giving him good news.

“That’s the Sarkozy diet at work! No bread, no pasta or flour. You have to avoid everything that makes crumbs—but you can have strawberry marshmallows and chocolate!”

He also referred to a diet based on lacto-fermentation, which very much interested his patient.

The Wednesday afternoon session with Dr. Mamnoue was devoted to his patient’s telephone. Madame Préau had been receiving strange phone calls since the school year had begun. It rang automatically at nine twenty a.m. and five ten p.m. two to three times a week. She would pick up and then hear the voice of a woman she didn’t know ask her to “Please be patient while I connect you to your correspondent.” Then, without fail, two minutes later, the line would be cut. These calls were bothering Madame Préau: the automatic message delivered gave her no opportunity to intervene, which led to her being frustrated and angry.

“Have you thought about getting onto the do-not-call list?” asked Dr. Mamnoue, examining his sleeves one after another in search of a trace of wear or an ink stain.

“Don’t you think that I’m already on the do-not-call list, Claude?”

“Maybe you recently answered a questionnaire on, I don’t know, an environmental charter in which you were asked if you intended to change your windows to save energy.”

Madame Préau’s eyes widened.

“I received a letter from the electricity company to which I responded, actually. It was about my insulation and installing double-glazing.”

“Ah! They’re very savvy about marketing. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit, dear Elsa; this is certainly one of those semistate partners of the electricity company harassing you with an offer on new windows—a service for which the electricity company gets a small commission, that goes without saying.”

“So it will continue?”

“Without a doubt.”

“I’m going to have to change my number. That’s very annoying.”

Dr. Mamnoue sat back in his chair and moved on to examine his cuff links.

“Give it a little time. The calls will probably dry up, or their automated call system will eventually put you in contact with a salesman before disconnecting. These telemarketing systems are far from fully functional.”

By the end of their conversation, a temporary solution had been found: take the phone off the hook at nine twenty and five ten. Madame Préau paid for the session, during which she had been careful not to mention her visit to Ms. Polin, the social worker.

On Friday, she did not forget to add a packet of caramels to her shopping list. She would need them for an experiment that she had come up with on Thursday when she went to borrow some books from the local library: a brand-new “tactile” book was waiting for little hands to open it and enjoy the story of “Hansel and Gretel.”

When Ms. Briche visited Madame Préau on Saturday morning, she found that her blood pressure was high. She explained to the nurse that she was immersed in a fascinating book by a university professor about rumors and had read well beyond a reasonable hour last night. As a result, she had doubled her dose of morning coffee. Neither woman believed the lie.

Waiting for news from the social worker and looking out for any sign of the child in the garden was putting her nerves on edge.

By contacting social services, she had chosen to give up on her peace of mind.

But whatever the price, Madame Préau was ready to pay it if it could save the child who looked like Bastien.

Each weekday, she had done her utmost to work on her fingering. For almost ten years, Madame Préau had lived surrounded by the elderly and palm trees with only the following activities: walking, reading, and preparing meals—she never ate in the refectory with the other residents. The baby grand piano in the common room of the home allowed her to keep up practicing and avoid lots of chattering sets of dentures. The waiting audience, nestled in velvet club chairs, always hoped that she would play the choruses of songs that would make their hearts leap, hits by Piaf or Yves Montand. To spite her entourage, Madame Préau would only play pieces by Satie. She had his whole repertoire at her fingertips, “Pièces froides,” “Preludes flasques,” “Enfantillages picturesque,” “Rêverie nocturnes,” “Gnossiennes”—such compelling works—and of the six pieces dating from 1906 to 1913, “Effronterie” was her favorite. By contrast, the “Gymnopédies” bored her stiff. Yet that was the only piece appreciated by the other residents. As a one-time boarder at private institutions where they had gone to great pains to make a good Christian out of her, she had retained a sense of sacrifice. So the pianist dished up what her audience wanted, year in, year out, like soup in a flavor that surprises no one anymore.

Earlier, she had gone to play for the stone boy. And for Bastien, it went without saying. The
concertiste
had the three “Peccadilles importunes” from Satie’s works for children. She thought them appropriate to the mood of the garden, a breeding ground of screaming and bickering. She played them in the order set out by the composer: “Being Jealous of His Big-Headed Friend,” then “Eating His Sandwich,” and finally “Taking Advantage of the Corns on His Feet to Steal His Hoop.”

For now, she had to sort out the caramels. Bastien could not pronounce the word “caramel” correctly when he was little: in his mouth, the sweet turned into Carabas, suggesting that the sweets came from the distant kingdom of the Marquis from “Puss in Boots.” Smiling at the memory, Madame Préau put on her coat, tied a pink scarf around her neck, swapped her slippers for a pair of boots, and went out into the street, her pockets full of caramels.

There was no one on the path. Briskly, Madame Préau crossed the street. She leaned against the high concrete wall that shielded the Desmoulins family garden from being overlooked, exactly where, on the other side of the cedar curtain, the little boy would be less than an hour later. The old lady pulled a handkerchief from her pocket. With one hand, she pretended to blow her nose, while she surreptitiously slipped one caramel after another into the lattice of the openwork concrete wall. With their pink and yellow packaging, they would no doubt attract the child’s attention. A dozen fell down on the other side beneath the shrubs. Two caramels remained stuck in the latticework. Madame Préau folded up her handkerchief and returned home.

Later, still decked out in scarf and coat, she would play Satie, as free as a bird with the windows swinging open, until the shouts from the neighboring garden stopped. Then she would climb up to her room and, binoculars in hand, look for traces of sweet wrappers where the child had last been.

She found nothing.

She looked all over the garden with the binoculars, and not a trace of sweet wrappers. Could it be that the child hadn’t found the caramels? Yet the boy had been there, crouching near the cedar; she had seen him, dressed in his too-short anorak and shapeless tracksuit bottoms, his face looking drawn and his skin dull. Unfazed, he lined up twigs and small sticks in front of him. The sticks had been there on the ground, in a mess, a meter from the hedge, spread out in a strange way—almost geometric.

Madame Préau shivered.

Something was drawn on the pale gray gravel with twigs.

Like a giant caramel.

Notes: Sunday 4 October

Difficult to tell whether this drawing on the ground, the bloodstained stones, and the ball filled with soil are signs of an attempt by the child to communicate.

May be simple games or diversions.

Possible, for example, that the stone boy does not have all of his mental faculties, which would explain his submissive attitude, lack of communication with others, and his nonattendance at school.

Along the same lines: it could be that the child, suffering from mental disorders, is taken in by an institution during the week and that his parents bring him back for the weekend. And, as it is not uncommon for this type of mental illness to be associated with behavioral disorders such as anorexia and lead to other deficiencies, the poor overall condition of the stone boy could well be justified.