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 penguinrandomhouse.com Copyright © 2021 by Brian Hall Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader. 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 pid_prh_5.7.0_c0_r0 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
