The Stone Boy Read Online Free PDF

with a pull-out writing desk. It was similar to the one that Madame Préau had got from her great-grandmother, which had been stolen in the course of the famous burglary. It was an expensive present for Madame Préau, who had refrained from sending anything to her son for his birthday for these last eight years, convinced that the package would be stolen by a postal worker before reaching its destination.
    “Do you know that they don’t need to open letters any more to read them? They use scanners; it’s more practical. That’s progress for you.”
    Martin drove his mother back home without venturing a word. He was hiding something from her, something that he was ashamed of or that embarrassed him greatly. Something that probably had something to do with the fact that his mobile hadn’t stopped vibrating in his inside jacket pocket throughout the meal.
    He’d have to bring it up sooner or later.
    It saddened Madame Préau that her son could keep such secrets.
    A close-knit family is built on honesty, not unspoken troubles.

11
     
    The alarm clock rang at six forty-five. At seven thirty, Madame Préau opened the shutters in her bedroom. Next, twenty minutes of morning gymnastics. Isabelle, the housekeeper, who lived around the corner, rang the doorbell at nine o’clock on the dot. She took off her shoes, stepped into her slippers, tied an apron around her hips, and consistently refused the coffee offered to her by Madame Préau. For an hour, Isabelle would dust or run the vacuum cleaner, make the bed or take care of the laundry while the old woman would read in the living room, drinking a Nescafé. She belonged to the library and would take out two or three books per week. She took notes on each work, notes that she transcribed in large notebooks, to do with errors of style, implausibility, or philosophical and historical details of interest to her, in addition to all biblical references. At eleven o’clock on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Madame Préau had an appointment in the city center with a physiotherapist, Mr. Apeldoorn, to treat arthritis in her neck. Sessions in traction or with electrostimulation meant that she could go without the foam brace that she was obliged to wrap around her neck while she gardened. On Wednesdays, after her nap, Madame Préau would walk to Dr. Mamnoue, in Raincy. On the way back, she would stop in the new square along the railway line and look for Bastien’s face among the children. There, if time permitted, she would unwrap her snack (homemade biscuits or even an overly sweet pastry from Didier’s in the Place du Général de Gaulle, accompanied by a flask of fruit juice), which she would eat on the bench, offering any crumbs from her little meal to the cheeky sparrows. On Fridays, Madame Préau would devote the morning to writing a few letters, and the afternoon would be dedicated to shopping. She would do her shopping at the supermarket, pulling her wheeled caddy behind her, buying nothing without having first consulted the ingredients of each product. Colorings, preservatives, thickening agents, sweeteners—she banished any product that could potentially cause cancer or cardiovascular disease from her diet. She selected her meat, fish, fruit, and vegetables at the Saturday morning market, finding out about their country of origin, and always refusing tomatoes, oranges, and strawberries from Spain. Once a month, she would stock up at the health food shop on Avenue Jean Jaurès, where she would get herself some Indian soap nuts, margarine, dried fruit, and evening primrose oil capsules. She only ate bread from the boulangerie-pâtisserie at Gagny station, where she had taken to going again. She inevitably chose a type of baguette called a
festive
, with a very well-baked, crunchy crust that was like biting into a firecracker on Bastille Day.
    At seven, the same time that she had her dinner, Madame Préau would prepare a tin bowl of food for the neighborhood stray cats, which she would