ALSO BY BRIAN HALL
FICTION
The Saskiad
The Dreamers
I Should Be Extremely Happy in Your Company
Fall of Frost
NONFICTION
Stealing from a Deep Place: Travels in Southeastern Europe
The Impossible Country: A Journey Through the Last Days of Yugoslavia
Madeleine’s World: A Biography of a Three-Year-Old
VIKING
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
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Copyright © 2021 by Brian Hall
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hall, Brian, 1959– author.
Title: The stone loves the world / a novel by Brian Hall.
Description: New York: Viking, [2021]
Identifiers: LCCN 2020046556 (print) | LCCN 2020046557 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593297223 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593297230 (ebook)
Classification: LCC PS3558.A363 S76 2021 (print) | LCC PS3558.A363 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020046556
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020046557
Designed by Meighan Cavanaugh, adapted for ebook by Cora Wigen
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover design: Colin Webber
Cover art: (top) Max Play, (center and bottom) Gala from Shutterstock; (background) Marcus Davies / Millennium Images
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For Elizabeth, who grew up two miles from the Holmdel Horn Antenna
운명이 아닐까 싶어
사랑해
Contents
Cover
Also by Brian Hall
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Part One
Tuesday, February 16, 2016
1965–1976
Tuesday, February 16, 2016
Sunday, February 14, 2016
Wednesday, February 17, 2016
Tuesday, February 16, 2016
Wednesday, February 17, 2016
1993–1994
2006
2006
2006
Wednesday, February 17, 2016
Wednesday, February 17, 2016
1993–1994
Thursday, February 18, 2016
Thursday, February 18, 2016
Part Two
1935–1951
1926–1996
1953
1957
1996
2006
Part Three
Friday, February 19, 2016
1984–2002
2011
1994
2013
Friday, February 19, 2016
Sunday, February 21, 2016
Sunday, February 21, 2016
Sunday, February 21, 2016
July 4, 2016
August 21, 2017
Acknowledgments
About the Author
The thrushes sing as the sun is going,
And the finches whistle in ones and pairs,
And as it gets dark loud nightingales
In bushes
Pipe, as they can when April wears,
As if all Time were theirs.
These are brand new birds of twelve-months’ growing,
Which a year ago, or less than twain,
No finches were, nor nightingales,
Nor thrushes,
But only particles of grain,
And earth, and air, and rain.
—Thomas Hardy
PART ONE
Tuesday, February 16, 2016
Feeling like a freak, she almost ran out of the office, rode the B62 home to pack her bare minimum shit, hopped the G and the E, and here she is under the sign of the dog.
“Where to?”
The lean animal devours miles on the wall behind the bored woman’s head. Ten customer service windows, two open. Possible combinations of two from a set of ten is forty-five, four times five is twenty, largest prime number less than twenty is nineteen, nineteenth letter is S.
“Seattle.”
“Seattle, Washington?”
“Is there another one?”
“I meant, that’s a long trip.”
Woman is smiling. Probably pointless friendliness.
“Depends what you’re comparing it to. Can I get a ticket to Saturn?”
Now a puzzled look.
“Never mind.”
The woman, like a Skee-Ball machine, produces a chain of tickets, z-folds and hands them over. Liquid scarlet inch-long artificial nails, gold ring on fourth finger with bulky ruby or rhodolite garnet or chromium paste. The gleam of it is terribly distracting.
She takes the ticket, finds the gate. There’s no such thing as luck, but the next departure is only seventy minutes away. First stop, Baltimore. The narrow sprung device bolted to the wall is deliberately designed to be uncomfortable (this fucking world), so she unrolls her pad and settles on the floor. The tiled wall is white, with a black border cutting in at the corners to isolate white squares, very common, there must be a name for it. She googles, finds nothing.
She would take out her Newman, but can’t concentrate. Well she certainly fucked up everything, didn’t she? Instead of escaping on the bus, she could escape under it. They’re everywhere in the city, just wait at a corner and launch yourself so that the two vectors of motion intersect. She envisions the shining wall of white steel and glass humping up and over, then gulping as the driver hits the brakes too late. Windshield wipers like praying hands. Brainless bystanders screaming, fainting. Most people call this ideation. Mathematicians call it “doing a Ramanujan.”
So why doesn’t she? Cowardice?
A man waiting in line at the next gate keeps looking at her. Twenties, scruffy beard, skinny jeans, dun winter jacket. She wants to inform him, the reason you have skin is so that you will always know where you end and the rest of the world begins. Nature provides this service free of charge. He should read Wishner (everyone should read Wishner): “From the Eastern chipmunk we have learned the lesson of how an animal survives and prospers by minding its own business.”
Ambling to the corner, minding her own business. The city where no one notices you. The bus approaching, forearm across her eyes, goodbye, cruel world! Maybe it’s not cowardice that’s stopping her, but a modicum of dignity. Too dramatic, too public. Calling attention to herself, the way her mother likes to do. She has never needed anyone, witnesses included. A concealing cornfield and a combine harvester. A long-abandoned vat of acid in a crumbling factory in the Rust Belt. A turnout in the Cascades with a spectacular view.
What she needs is a little time to think.
1965–1976
When Mark was five years old, his parents took him and his older sister to the New York World’s Fair. They stayed in a dark house that belonged to some lady his mother knew. The front yard sloped down to a busy street. During the boring evenings when they talked, his parents seemed to think he would play in this yard. But he could see: the smallest stumble
