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eight years old. He stood apart from the other two. He stayed in his corner beneath the weeping birch, calmly collecting stones and pieces of twigs so that he could arrange them on the paving stones in the garden. Invisible from the street, hidden by the cypress trees and the concrete wall, he no doubt thought that he was protected. Other than Madame Préau’s tall fieldstone house, none of the nearby houses were high enough to overlook that part of the garden. Sitting at the little inlaid table that she had placed in a corner of the room, near the window, the old woman would witness the children’s games, nostalgic for the games that she used to oversee at break time when she was still teaching at the Blaise Pascal School. Soothed by the familiar hubbub that reigned in her neighbors’ garden, she would occupy her hands by mending or sorting everything she could in the house: buttons, ribbons, nuts and bolts, pencils, bills, family photographs, letters, postcards, or drawings by former students. Sometimes, when the girl went too far, torturing her little brother for the fun of it, Madame Préau would lean against the lace half curtain. She adjusted her glasses and bit her lip. Certainly it would have been nice to play the role of the schoolmistress again, to open the window and give the little girl a stern warning. Best to not get involved. Madame Préau allowed herself the right to go to speak to the parents only if the little girl crossed a line. As for the child underneath the tree, he was of such exemplary intelligence that he would get curious. One Sunday after the next, he would go through the same motions, constructing totems with bundled twigs and flat stones. He was still, whether crouched or standing, gazing out into the curtain of cedars. No doubt he was looking at insects. And then, sometimes, he would look up suddenly in the direction of Madame Préau’s house. She would pull back, and drop her box of buttons or the pile of photos propped on the writing drawer. With her fringe mussed, she’d pick up the things she had dropped, blushing. Wasn’t it a sin to covet the fruits of your neighbor’s garden?
    It became a habit. Every Sunday and school holiday. As soon as Madame Préau heard the strident shouts of the little boy and his sister’s laugh, wherever she was at that moment, weeding therock garden, picking plums or figs from the branches, making jam with the fruit from the garden, writing a letter to her son, or copying out a whole chapter from the memoir of a sergeant-major who once served under Napoleon, she would go straight back to her lookout post.

    24 July 2009
Dear Martin,
     
You kindly offered to come and help me pick the many plums in the garden before you head off on holiday, but it’s not necessary, as I’m working away at it each morning when it’s cool. And they’ve almost all fallen. The ones still on the branch are rotten. Same with the fig tree. This hasn’t been a good year for fruit. They were in bud too early in the season. They would have suffered from the frost.
     
On Sunday on the phone, I thought you seemed worried about me. The fact of being alone has never been a problem, you know. I’ve been living this way for twenty-eight years and it doesn’t bother me at all anymore. I saw Isabelle this morning and gave her two kilos of plums as well as some sheets that I wanted to get rid of. The ones from your rooms. As long as they’re of use for something. She’s leaving for Portugal at the end of July and will be back at the beginning of September. Not worth replacing her. I’ll get along perfectly well without her—the house hardly gets dirty if you don’t leave the windows open during the day (Oh, the dust from that bothersome building site at the top of the road is collecting everywhere thanks to their trucks full of rubble!) and I’m hardly overwhelmed by laundry to wash. Mr. Apeldoorn, the physio, is also on holiday. But Dr. Mamnoue is taking appointments until