The Stone Boy (2 page)

I miss you, and the house, too. Here, I often go for walks. The forests are magnificent and I breathe in pure air that smells of ferns. Mommy would find the region too cool, though.

I have a comfortable little apartment just above the school that comes with the job, but I am fairly isolated and far from the town. Gérard doesn’t visit me unless he gets leave, which is rare. In Algeria he is mainly treating civilians, and tells me he is performing amputations on children. I think that Algerians aren’t just fighting for their independence; they’re starting a real revolution. It’s all anyone talks about around here. Sons, husbands—many of the men have left, and those who come back are demoralized or violent. They’ve all become hardened, and they put on an arrogant machismo. They have to learn to respect their wives and children again. Some have come back so burdened that they are physically hunched over, their shirtsleeves stick out from under their jackets, as if they were carrying stones in their hands.

Forgive me for writing about sad things again, but I have no one to tell other than a stray dog who pisses against my door. I chase him out of the playground regularly, as I don’t want him to give the children rabies. I hope that you’re well and that you don’t miss me too much.

With love and kisses,

Elsa

She was standing up in her room a meter away from her bed, staring at the ceiling. There was an odd noise, like a marble rolling along the floorboards. The noise stopped, and started again, this time like the shoes of a dancer called to the attic for a macabre ballet. The woman stood in the middle of the room, dressed in a nightgown, one hand running over her round belly.

Leave me alone. Leave me alone, please.

She had got up to drink a glass of water to improve her circulation. Then, when she was back in her room, she had opened the curtains, worried. With her face tilted toward the frost-covered glass, she looked out beyond the chestnut tree, looking around for someone, a shadow crossing the snowy garden, the memory of a floral dress disappearing around the corner of the street one spring day during the war. Then the noise happened again. A marble across the floor. Sashaying footsteps.

No. I’m begging you. Go away!

Elsa was standing still by the window, her skin taking on a bluish cast from the streetlamp. Her knees weakened and buckled, and she writhed in pain. Overhead, the noises started again, louder, in the rhythm of her contractions with each pitch and roll of her insides. She didn’t groan, didn’t scream, didn’t wake her husband.

Leave me alone! I don’t want to come with you! Not now!

It was two hours since the sun had withdrawn from her frozen feet. The noise of her fall had woken Gérard. His young wife was sitting in a puddle of blood. Elsa was giving birth.

22 August 1974

Gérard,

I can’t go on with your way of life anymore. Your absences are longer than ever. Seeing you come back late, neglecting your son and your wife, all so that you can take care of people other than us—people who aren’t suffering like I am—is not acceptable. To endure the weariness of a doctor who has reached his limit, to be subjected to your mood swings and your listlessness, is too much for me. I already know the scene; there’s no need to play it out further. Your plan to leave for Canada to take up your studies again and to specialize is a shining example of your egotism. How can you intend to dedicate your life to diseases of the heart when you show so little regard for my heart and that of your son? Did you even think of us, of what I would be obliged to sacrifice in order to follow you—my position as headmistress, for example?

I would prefer that you not return home again and that, in time, you rent a studio so that you can take stock.

This changes nothing about my feelings for you. I love you; you are the only man in my life and my son’s father.

I will explain the situation to Martin.

Elsa

Kneeling in front of the low table in the living room, the child unwrapped his present with the enthusiasm of a man condemned to death. The size of the item covered in forest-green paper was far too modest to correspond to Martin’s hopes. He had asked for a giant Meccano set and a chemistry kit for his birthday. The child held up the package: too heavy for a board game or a giant puzzle.

“Go ahead, Martin, open your present.”

His mother forced a smile through too much makeup. Her lipstick was like a dark purple rail track through the snow. The cider was too sharp and the chocolate cake needed more butter. Also wanting were Martin’s classmates: the little party couldn’t be held until the second Wednesday in January. There was no upside to being born between Christmas and New Year at all. It was usually impossible to get all of your friends together, the luckier of whom had gone skiing, and there was the disappointment of Christmas gifts being put aside for your birthday “unless your parents thought ahead,” which was never the case with Martin’s parents. So, the gifts that he received were rarely as impressive as those opened by his friends twice each year. Regardless, Martin’s mother had always held on to the idea that they should “mark the occasion.”

“A little party, just us. What do you say?”

Sitting on the big armchair in the living room, her knees together below her lilac wool dress, she looked like she was praying, her elbows bent, watching Martin’s fingers tear open the wrapping paper on his first gift. When he saw the encyclopedia, the child turned pale.

“Do you like it?”

“It’s not what I wanted.”

“It’s a useful gift. You’ll need it for your studies.”

“Yes, but it’s not what I wanted.”

“We don’t always get what we want in life, Martin. Open your other gift.”

“If it’s like the first one, I don’t want it.”

“Stop that. Go on, open it. It came from Galeries Lafayette in Paris.”

Martin pulled off the paper more quickly this time: maybe it was one of those wonderful toys he’d seen last week in the window of the big Parisian shop. Inside a gray cardboard box lined in cellophane, the little boy found a pair of mittens and a matching hat.

“It’s pure wool. You won’t be numb with the cold going to school in the morning with them.”

The hat was rust-colored with brown snowflakes embroidered on it. It was a ridiculous thing to put on in the playground. Martin looked at his mother, incredulous.

“Why did you buy me that?”

She leaned down to her son and caressed his face.

“Listen, Martin, times are hard, as well you know. Your father has abandoned us and I have to get by on just my own salary, so—”

“That’s not true! You’re talking rubbish!”

On the verge of tears, Martin threw the box and its contents on the ground, then ran out and shut himself in his room. His mother’s voice echoed up the stairs: “Come now, try to be reasonable, Martin! You need a hat much more than a Meccano set!”

2 April 1979

For the attention of the Director of the County Council of Seine-Saint-Denis

Sir,

Allow me to bring your attention to a sect that appears to be operating currently in Seine-Saint-Denis and with which I have unfortunately been in contact several times following a family tragedy.

This organization pretends to heal psychological damage and serious illness through nutrition and extreme fasting. Without a doubt, it involves cultlike behavior.

I had the opportunity to test several of their methods, including instincto-therapy, and I can report that the kind of practices suggested reduce the patient to an extremely fragile mental state. They allow the patient to become enthralled by what they are devoting themselves to, sometimes causing social and family breakdown in cases where these were not the original causes of the patient’s isolation.

Certain individuals call themselves shamans, but they are nothing but frauds. That is the case for the person whose name and address is attached herewith. He is currently offering wildly expensive weekends at his farm in Neufmoutiers-en-Brie, where they are holding seminars on Peru on the pretext of helping his followers to reach, and I quote, “a quest for a saving self truth.” I think that this person is a crook. Personally, I have given him a great deal of money, thinking that he would help my father to overcome his cancer. Result: my father had a brutal relapse due to a massive vitamin B deficiency. I have already filed a report with social services and at the police station in my town, but the man is well established here and gains new followers daily in market squares across the region—that’s where he’s based, behind the counter at his supposedly organic fruit and vegetable stall.

Dreadful charlatans are hiding behind this façade of getting back to nature and alternative psychology. We cannot allow not only a great many adults, but their children, too, to be subjected to such danger. As the headmistress of a school, I know certain parents who are in thrall to this gentleman, and who swear by him and him alone to heal their relatives. I could not let such instances with medical and social implications go unreported.

I am depending upon your swift intervention in this matter.

Yours faithfully, with respect,

Madame Elsa Préau

Headmistress of Blaise Pascal School

PS—I have CCed this letter to the Minister of Health and the Police Commissioner.

On the third floor of the hospital complex in Seine-Saint-Denis, an overweight female doctor was sitting in a narrow room behind a desk groaning with files. She was speaking to Madame Préau, and Madame Préau was listening to her as closely as she could, her hands folded and her legs crossed. She had the distinct feeling that other people were standing around her—medical personnel, nurses, orderlies with mocking expressions. The woman in the white blouse was explaining something very important. It was precisely for this reason that there were so many people in this room staring at her.

“The battle is over, Madame Préau. What you have done for your father all these years is outstanding. You have managed to keep him in the best possible physical condition, well beyond the prognosis that we gave him after his remission.”

What was worrying Madame Préau was her ability to take in what this pink-cheeked woman was going to tell her. These past years had been difficult, and her nerves were frayed. Martin’s departure for Canada hadn’t helped things. But she understood that her son’s studies took precedence over his mother and that he needed to be closer to his father.

“I understand that it is difficult to hear this, but I know that you can take it. If we look at the MRI…”

Madame Préau turned toward the window and concentrated on the view of the park. Poplars quivered in the rays of the setting sun. It would be so lovely to walk along there just now, and leave behind this sentencing.

“Overall, his health has deteriorated. We will give him the best possible care, but you should know that he will continue to suffer.”

Her mother would have so loved those pathways of white flowers, the foliage turning inky in the shadow of the beech trees. Madame Préau would take her father there twice a week, pushing the wheelchair to a bench where, in the shade of a honeysuckle, she would sit, the invalid by her side. She would read the paper to her father, commenting passionately about the first measures put in place by the new government—measures that would give the French people a more optimistic perspective about their future.

“If he were to fall victim to respiratory failure, we need your authorization—do you understand?”

The new government didn’t waste any time: raising the minimum wage, increasing the minimum rate for the old age pension and child benefits, temporarily suspending the deportation of foreigners… And then there was that astonishing festival dreamed up by the Ministry for Culture, a national day dedicated to music! Madame Préau asked suddenly:

“What is the date today?”

“The twenty-first of June.”

“Yes, of course. Where is my head—”

“Madame Préau, do you give us your consent so that we could let him
go
?”

At the school today, they were celebrating the first day of summer in the playground. Madame Préau had arranged for break time to be livened up for the children with songs and dancing. A tiring day. They hadn’t heard shouts of joy like that since the last school fête. The headmistress’s heart was still swelling with happiness.