Sylva

by Jean Vercors

  Amazed and quite upset by these surprising thoughts, I carefully closed the doors and windows and went downstairs to cook my dinner. While I was stewing some mushrooms, I tried to look at the situation in a sensible way. I was about to keep imprisoned a woman of whom nobody knew or could know anything. She was naked, I had not even a rag with which to clothe her and how could I ask the farmer’s wife for a dress or a shift without attracting undue attention? And how long could I keep this compromising presence secret? I received few visitors, but all the same, in the long run… And the day when, by chance-and the chance was bound to come-she was discovered locked away here, I would most certainly risk being prosecuted. Furthermore, as I would be unable to say anything about her or where she came from, there would be an additional charge of contempt of court-goodness knows what else. Madness. Sheer madness. Come now, go upstairs, wake her up and open the doors for her, you idiot!

  But I went on stirring the sauce and knew that I would do nothing of the sort. What I need, I told myself, is someone to whom I can tell the whole story, a friendly soul to share my secret. All right, but who? Rack my brain as I might, I could not think of a confidant. Everyone would think I was crazy-just as they had thought of David Garnett’s poor hero.

  Meanwhile my dinner was ready. I swallowed it absent-mindedly, hastily and without pleasure (yet I adore mushrooms). Then it entered my mind that she might be hungry. I found a young capon in the larder and took it upstairs with me. When I opened the door she jumped out of bed and dashed in a panic all around the room, trying to climb up the walls, the curtains. I sat down in an armchair and kept perfectly still, to let her terror abate. She had huddled in a corner of the room, between the wall and the small bow-fronted chest of drawers. She watched me with her bright eyes, not missing my smallest movement. Thus I in turn could examine her at leisure. Did she look like a fox? Yes, if one knew it. The finely chiseled nose, the very high Mongoloid cheekbones, the triangular cheeks and the pointed chin-all subtly recalled her origin. Her hair too, a beautiful red with a hint of tawny here and there. It wasn’t very long, just covering her shoulders. She had an adorable figure, but though her shapely curves revealed that she was a woman, she was so very dainty and frail that one would otherwise have taken her for a very young girl. Her small feet, so long and slender, were positively touching: the ankles were so delicate that one feared they might break like glass. The hands, even slimmer and longer than the feet, never stopped fidgeting, moving this way and that with a perpetual quivering of the fingers.

  When I thought the moment had come, I tossed the chicken on the floor in such a way as to make it roll toward her. She immediately started up, her fingers clutching the wall, ready to flee, and remained for a few seconds in this catlike attitude, her eyes turned now on me, now on the bird. Then she relaxed again. The fowl was a step away. She stared at it for a long time, motionless as a stone, with an almost drowsy expression. At last, with a single pounce, she snatched it and carried it off under the bed.

  For almost half an hour I heard the crunch of bones. Then, silence. I could not see her, but I guessed that her sharp, slit eyes were watching my feet, observing their movements. I arose, removed my dressing gown and went to bed. I left the light on for a long while, waiting, hoping perhaps, for something to happen. But nothing did: not a move, not a breath. I might just as well have been all alone in my room. At last sleep overcame me and I switched off the lamp.

  Chapter 3

  WHAT wakened me the next morning was not the noise, but the smell. The reader will have to excuse these disagreeable details. They will help him to understand what difficulties, what unpleasantness I had to cope with at first. What I had interned under my bed was, after all, just a fox, whose human form merely made matters more difficult. I had not foreseen this sort of inconvenience (and would it have made any difference if I had?) and when the odor apprised me of it, I leaped out of bed. At one bound, too, the creature emerged on the opposite side, jumped on a chair, from there onto the chest of drawers, then to the top of a cupboard whence she watched me with her catlike stare. I moved the bed to lift the carpet which I proceeded to shake out of the window, before fetching a basin to give it a thorough wash. As I was doing this, I was stirred by curious feelings. Naturally, as I stood there mopping the rug, I felt a certain disgust. But I was rather touched, too, somehow. I would have to educate her as one trains a puppy, a kitten-as one teaches a baby to be “clean.” With the added complication, however, that she was an adult and that I would first have to gain her confidence. And the prospect of this future confidence melted my heart.

  Now I am not sure mine was a very noble emotion. Mothers know well the kind of exaltation one derives from having a human being all to oneself, from keeping it for one’s pleasure, like an object, like a thing. But they feel this for a baby, I was feeling it for a grown woman.

  Still, I had to win her confidence, but first I had to think up ways of doing so. Would patience be enough? Anyway, I realized, I was holding a trump card of first magnitude: food. She would receive it from me, and me alone, day after day. No animal can resist it. Why should she prove more intractable?

  I prepared some eggs and bacon for myself, and for her a kipper and some hard-boiled eggs. When I went upstairs to take them to her, I found her nestling in the warmth of the bed, but she immediately climbed onto the cupboard again. I deposited the fish and eggs on the chest of drawers on a sheet of tissue paper, settled down in front of a small table at the far end of the room and, my back turned, began to eat my breakfast. After some little time I heard her stir and the wood creak. At last there was the noise of rustling paper, broken shells.

  The next problem was my departure. I wanted to appear at the farm at the same time as usual. To lock the creature in my bedroom meant running the risk of finding goodness knows what carnage on my return. It did cross my mind to stow her in the bathroom, but how was I to get her there? To chase her all over the room was out of the question, for she was much nimbler than I; I would simply waste my time and cause useless damage. Never mind, I would leave her where she was and hope for the best.

  When I arrived home at noon, bringing a small duckling for her, I felt a pang of anguish: there was nobody in the room. I ran to the window, but I had fastened it well. It was only as I approached the bed that a slight bulge in the coverlet revealed her hidden presence to me. She must be asleep under it, snug and warm, tightly curled up. I placed the duckling on the pillow and sat down in an armchair to read the Morning Post, keeping one eye on the counterpane. After a while I saw it stir with intestinal undulations; a pink nose tip finally emerged and began to sniff the fowl. The whole head followed, examined the surroundings and noticed me. It shrank back, like that of a tortoise. Then it reappeared, cautiously. A hand in its turn emerged, seized the duck, then all of them-nose, hand and bird-disappeared under the coverlet. Damn! I would have to change the sheets, but it was too late to think of that now. I listened with a smile to the cracking of the duck’s bones under the brocade.

  I shall spare the reader the boredom of repetitions. Day after day, during that early period, events did indeed repeat themselves more or less in the same way. Under the bed I had placed a rubber mat, more easily washed. Fairly soon she stopped climbing to the top of the cupboard on awakening, but she kept her distance, in the true sense of the word. She often shivered with cold, but all my attempts to slip a dressing gown or wrapper over her by stealth were foiled by her speed in taking flight, her startling agility. It was just as well that natural decency prevented me from harboring any improper designs on her graceful nudity, for she was incredibly lithe. Anyway, despite her attractiveness, I was still at the stage where I saw in her just a vixen.

  I do not know what she did with her days, if she slept, snooped around or lounged, since I was out in the fields or at the farm; but every evening, at nightfall, I witnessed the same performance. She would go to the door with an anxious, nervous air and press her muzzle against the keyhole or move it
along the cracks, sniffing here and there with short, ceaseless, spasmodic snuffles. She would scratch at the wood. Then she would trot along the walls and start the same business all over again at the window. Then trot again, back to the door. She would scratch obstinately, moaning noiselessly and sniffing. This would last till night had fallen completely. When at last the room was entirely dark (I purposely did not put on the light) she would stop the performance, as if regretfully, and return to snuggle under the counterpane. I let her sleep there and went downstairs to dine. I would spend the evening, as was my habit, reading in the study. Toward eleven I would go upstairs to bed. However fast asleep she was, she would never be caught unawares. I would slip between the sheets but already she was gone: a lizard could not have slid away more rapidly. She would settle down under the bed where she found the thick woolen blanket I had left there permanently and snuggle into it-and so we would spend the night, one above the other, as though in a sleeping car.

  Just as I had hoped, however, she gradually grew used to my presence, as it proved harmless and moreover was accompanied three times a day by food. She no longer hid when I came in, no longer took to flight; on the contrary the slim, tapering face would shoot out from under the bedcovers and watch me, no longer with fear but with the fixed stare of expectancy and greed. She soon came to recognize my step on the stairs, in the passage, and I would find her behind the door, wriggling her little backside with joy. She took the cutlet or the roasted fowl from my hands, and though she would still go and devour it out of my sight-under the bed or in the bathroom-this was just one last atavistic precaution, and eventually it too disappeared.

  I had told myself from the very first that she would have to be given a name. I called her Sylva, of course; I owed this approximation to David Garnett. To accustom her to it, I would stand for a moment behind the door, softly calling her by her name; she would scratch the wood, I would hear her whine with impatience. Within a short time her little brain established a link between this name and food; when she heard it she would come running up to me and I would give her an extra titbit. Later she obeyed even without this bait, and when I ordered: “Sylva, come here!” she would stop still and come back to devour her meal at my feet. But it was a very long time before she accepted my first caress. A motion of the fingers when my hand was empty would cause her to bolt.

  At long last, however, she consented to let me scratch the scruff of her neck, the top of her forehead, while she ate, squatting. Gradually she even came to like it. She would gently rub her nape against my bent finger, and when the nail reached the first vertebra, her whole back quivered and hunched around her shoulder blades. Rigidly and as if in a trance, she would close her eyes, her head thrown back. Often now, at the end of a meal, she would slip her little skull under my hand of her own accord, for the pleasure of it, and the day came when she turned up her face under my fingers and, with a flick of her tongue, thanked the open palm that was fondling her. This touched me more than was reasonable, I am afraid, but the affection of a small wild animal is always a heart-stirring victory.

  It had taken us all of a fortnight to reach that stage. In the meantime, the major complication was Fanny, the farmer’s daughter, whom I employed to attend to the household chores. I ordered her to confine her cleaning, polishing and sweeping to the ground floor because, I told her, I had started to repaint the second-floor rooms (which I proceeded to do for credibility). Yet I trembled. A noise, a cry, anything, might betray a presence; and although poor Fanny was too stupid to be really inquisitive, she was after all a woman and I had no doubt that the least carelessness on my part would prompt her to investigate. The next day the whole village would have known that the squire was hiding a stark-naked girl in his bedroom.

  The first thing to do, at all costs, was to clothe her. Ever since she had let herself be approached, I had repeatedly tried to make her accept a dressing gown. To no avail, and worse: she grew frightened and it took me two or three days to regain the lost ground in her confidence. Moreover, if Fanny were to discover Sylva in one of my dressing gowns, it would hardly be better than finding her in the nude. I decided to go into town to buy her some clothes. But going into town meant being away for a whole day, and I could not overcome my apprehension of what might happen.

  I was all the less tempted to overcome this apprehension since her nakedness, to tell the truth, no longer bothered me personally. Apart from the fact that it is a charming sight, nakedness, by becoming habitual, ceases to draw the eye, loses its excitement, and even inspires satiety. One need only think of the beach at Brighton to understand how my propinquity with Sylva, constantly in Eve’s dress, left my heart and senses generally untroubled. And if only my feelings had been involved, I would gladly have let her stay in this attire as long as she felt like it. Her wounds had healed; her skin had the bloom and softness of satin; her muscles, slender and long, rippled gently under the skin. Why conceal those appealing charms with a barbarous fabric, a badly cut frock? I had no illusions about my talents in this field, and knew beforehand what a poor dress buyer I would make.

  But downstairs, through the floor, I could hear Fanny whistling and humming appallingly out of tune as she dusted the furniture, polished the brass, shook out the rugs. It was really too risky. I definitely could not delay any longer. Wednesday being market day at Wardley, I mixed into Sylva’s breakfast a good dose of sleeping powder, had the gig harnessed, locked the whole house with the greatest care, and bade the farmer’s son drive me into town.

  Chapter 4

  I SENT the boy to the seed merchant and told him to meet me at Wardley Station, where I said I wanted to pick up a trunk I had left in the cloakroom on my last trip. I actually bought a large carryall, crammed it at Marks amp; Spencer’s with underwear and feminine attire of roughly the right size, and took a cab to the station where the gig, as arranged, picked me up twenty minutes later. We reached Richwick Manor just before nightfall.

  I found the house in order-that is to say, safely locked just as I had left it. But upstairs in the bedroom there was an indescribable havoc. I was a little surprised that Sylva had waked up, though less surprised that she had flown into a rage. Waking to find herself all alone and locked in, she must have passed through successive fits of fear and anger. She had probably searched for me too: my wardrobe had been gutted as if by a hurricane and my clothes flung all about, sprawling one on top of the other like the dismembered victims of a massacre. She had treated the sheets and blankets in the same fashion. A pillow lay ripped open, the down scattered everywhere. And there, upright above the wreckage, stood Sylva looking at me.

  I remained rooted to the threshold, in the grip not so much of anger or even amusement as, strangely enough, fascination-I would even say, if I dared to face the ridicule, of ecstasy. Caught like this, rising perfectly straight from amid the white, motionless froth of down and linen, naked like an aphrodite anadyomene, my Sylva, it is true, was beautiful; but what overwhelmed me was the shock of an illumination infinitely more breath-taking than her mere beauty. There was all that inanimate paraphernalia, with this admirable body rising above it, a living body and nothing more since it was still unlit by the least human spark, yet one whose palpitation, whose self-affirmation, whose innate will toward a lofty harmony triumphantly opposed the chaos. Never, perhaps, so strongly as in that minute have I realized, with spontaneous, sensuous evidence, the truth that is apparently beginning to impress itself on physicists: that inanimate matter is disorder and that the only order is life.

  Towering above the inert rubbish that littered the floor, Sylva presented such a pure, proud figure, an outline of such grace, that if one could venture to apply to the sense of sight the term voluptuousness, I would like to say that what I experienced was a visual thrill so intense that it became voluptuous, an exalting feeling that life, just life, was the only miracle. What I mean to say is that at that minute Sylva was no longer a woman or a vixen in my eyes, that the miracle of her metamorphosis seemed to m
e paltry and insignificant, that the real, the sole miracle was this vital harmony, it was-in the midst of anarchy, of the slow universal disintegration-the noble, organized, living body and this beauty of a human form, all the more overpowering in its miraculous grace for being as yet uninhabited by a mind. So much so that I caught myself wishing that I might henceforth live always in chaos if only this grace would crown it forever.

  And to think I was trailing those idiotic garments about in my suitcase! If I bundled up this living purity in their lifeless folds, would I not be pushing it back into incoherence? I felt strongly inclined to throw the whole lot out of the window. That divine body should stay radiant as it stood before me at that moment, naked and resplendent and victoriously imposing on disorder the order of its own beauty. Yes, it should stay like that, come what may!

  Having attained these crystalline heights my thoughts, alas, began to waver. I felt, apart from some dim protests voiced by my common sense, that my exaltation was sprouting disturbing ramifications within me, was straying from the solemn gaze to less noble regions. A certain trembling of my hands signified the first alarm. The nature of my enthusiasm changed, while Sylva’s nature too seemed to evolve: I suddenly found her beauty, less pure, more desirable. I became aware that our attitudes, hers and mine, had altered ever so little. My knees were bent, my hands stretched out, but it was the sight of her knees, flexing as if on the verge of flight, that made me notice my own posture. It was a posture from which not only all dignity of bearing but even simple decency had so utterly disappeared that I was mortified to the bottom of my heart, to the very core of my self-respect. Besides, this evident intrusion of brutish lust had abruptly spoiled everything: within a moment my superb aphrodite had returned to the state of a frightened female, her grace had contracted into strained tension, and all I had before me now was a fox bitch on the alert, a beast that had sunk back into the disorder of things, the same disorder of which I myself felt shamefully captive.