The Cobble
21 June 2010
In the old district of Brussels, not far from the Grande Plac e, in one of those alleys where nowadays the chairs of restaurants and displays of bread squeeze tourists into thin grey funnels, and above which hang awnings and flowers and signs for beer, there was laid a street of cobbles. The gentlemen who set the cobbles did so professionally and precisely. Working back and forth across the street, when they reached one end they would start anew back across, laying a square, end cobblestone into the soft sand and sticky mortar, weaving a tapestry up the incline where the alley narrowed into the distance. At the same time another set of gentlemen, in an exercise intended to save time, worked from the top end of the street down so that the two groups could meet in the middle.
For days they worked. At lunch they would walk the short distance to the Grande Place where they would sit in the shadow of the Maison du Roi, eating their bread and cheese in steadfast silence. At the end of each day they would decamp to the nearby tavern and talk about pressing matters, the most frequent of which was a complaint against their disastrous marriages.
When the day came and the two sets of workers finally met they realised they had made a miscalculation.
One row of cobbles, therefore, was laid with a crudely hewn stone blob, ill-fitting amongst the rest. Small and ugly and not like all the other cobbles, the workers hoped that nobody would notice it. They packed up their tools, examined their handiwork, and left an hour early that day. The sun set and black clouds grew across the stars, a curtain closing, and it rained.
The next morning the inhabitants of Brussels were all there to christen the new cobbles. They walked along them and exclaimed the craftsmanship of their symmetry. The occasional remark was made of the out-of-place cobble, but nobody paid it more than a passing glance, even if that glance was edged with distaste.
The fact remained though that this cobble existed, and was different from the rest. In the uniformity of the street it was the odd one out, marooned as it was in its wide moat of hardened mortar. It was not neatly set, the gap around it was barer and deeper than the gaps between the other cobbles, and it was ever so slightly raised, like the top of a tall soldier’s helmet above a parapet.
Being different is an affliction of attrition, and when different the gap back to normality only gets wider. The pedestrians would scuff their shoes and chip away scallops of the little cobble. The rain would come and the rivulets would all lead to the basin in which the cobble lived, where the water would squall and bubble and erode its base. Undermined, it fell to an angle and the shark fin protuberance was worn away by wind and dust and even more shoes. Children would pounce on the difference and gather around the cobble and kick it. Some would take sharp pieces of glass and scratch at it. At night, the cracks in the cobble would fill with water and the water would freeze and expand and in this way the cobble’s heart started to split.
The cobble was made from the same stone as all the others and yet its difference accelerated its atrophy. Like a rotten tooth in a mouth of healthy ones it corroded at its base and centre, and the tiny fault lines made by years of exposure all conspired to bring about a premature end to its tenure on the street until, at last, it was finally kicked loose of the mortar and became nothing more than a useless, decaying rock.
As it was kicked loose it just so happened that a city street cleaner was passing by. He picked up the cobble and brought it towards his cart. The restaurateur watched this from the upstairs window of his building and ran down to the alley.
‘Monsieur, monsieur,’ he called.
The street cleaner turned and the restaurateur caressed the small pebble from his grip. ‘Would it trouble you if I were to take this cobble for myself?’ he said.
‘That piece of rubbish? Why?’
‘Because it is different.’
The street cleaner shrugged and acceded to the restaurateur’s request. The restaurateur stroked the rock, its jagged edges, its pitted surface, its craggy base. He had watched the cobble for many years, watched how it had tripped so many passers by, how people had become angered by its deficiency of flatness, how just a small difference had caused such outrage. He took the cobble into his restaurant and set it lovingly on his windowsill between two candles, where it could forever watch the place of its strange and funny life, and where the wind and the rain and the kicks no longer came.
Have your say