Sylva

by Jean Vercors

  To get rid of this unbearable odor I would have to throw the room open to wholesome drafts, spread the rugs and blankets out in the garden. But how could I, all by myself, leave a window open without running the risk that Sylva would jump out? A six- or eight-foot leap would not scare her, I thought, and nothing allowed me to suppose that she had lost her desire to run away, to return to the alluring forest. I would therefore have to tie her up. But that was easier said than done. To put a buckle on one of my belts, a chain to the buckle, and fix the chain to the bedpost presented no problem; but there remained the problem of finding a means of slipping the belt onto Sylva. It was rather like putting a pinch of salt on a bird’s tail.

  Take advantage of her sleep? Her slumber was too light and tense, too wary to ensure success. She still slept like a fox; anything would wake her. I eventually decided that I had only one chance to succeed: during our games. For Sylva loved to play with Nanny or me whenever we were willing.

  And we found we had to be willing, if only to keep her awake. For whenever we did not busy ourselves with her, the time that was not occupied by eating or trying to get out of the room-trotting, sniffing, whining, despite our efforts to make her drop this habit-was spent by her almost entirely in sleeping. The most painful ordeal that besets an animal in idleness is boredom. As if, as soon as it is unoccupied, the living being becomes aware of its condition as an inexplicable, unexplained creature whose existence seems void of all usefulness as well as of any reasonable motive. The animal’s boredom, even more than ours, takes on a meaning of utter futility, and against so vast a tedium the animal has but one remedy: sleep.

  Twenty times a day Sylva would yawn her head off, like a dog who has been shut up, and with the same long, plaintive whine. Like a dog, she would curl up and fall asleep for ten minutes, a quarter of an hour. No sooner did she wake than she would start to prowl about, seeking to play. If Nanny and I were engaged elsewhere, she would hunt: her favorite plaything was an upholstered stool. Small and round, it rolled between her hands like a ball of wool worried by a cat. She would amuse herself chasing it, then tire of it, have a go at a chair for a change, and had thus broken two or three. I marveled that she never hurt herself in the course of these games, however much she fell with her prey. She would break the chair but never incur so much as a bruise herself.

  When I was about and in a mood to join in, she preferred to play with me. I was more amusing than a chair although the game did not vary: a sham fight. I was much stronger than she, but she was much nimbler, and it was not always deliberately that I let her get the better of me. She would then playfully snap at my ear, my throat. I could not let the game go on for too long: to grapple with a pretty girl in light attire is not the best way to keep one’s self-control, even if one knows she is only a fox. I would push her back a little roughly; she did not take it amiss but simply remained motionless, gazing at me out of her cold and fixed onyx eyes, then she would yawn, whine, and go to sleep.

  It was during one of those sessions that I grasped the opportunity to slip my belt around her waist. It is not easy to close a buckle singlehanded, but I was just about to manage it all the same when she realized what was happening. She tried to escape but the buckle held fast. I thought she would kill herself, so much did she struggle, but the chain was solid, the bed heavy and, though at the end of this hurricane, frantic capers, somersaults and jerks fit to strangle her waist, the bed had landed all askew at the other end of the room, Sylva, for her part, found herself lying on the ground, exhausted and breathless as on the day of the hunt after the hounds had pursued her.

  I turned this momentary calm to account by opening wide the door and windows, carrying the mattress and bedding out into the sunshine, spreading the carpet and counterpane on the lawn. Several times during this house-cleaning, Sylva renewed her struggle, but in vain. To undo the buckle was too difficult for her. When the odor was dispelled I closed the door and windows and released her: that is, I unbuckled the chain but left her with the belt, well aware that I would never be able to slip it on her a second time. Whereas to snap the hook on the buckle would only require speed and stealth.

  Meanwhile, I had quite a fight merely to unfasten the chain, for she was still mad with fright and fury and completely beside herself. I was fiercely bitten. When at last I had managed it, she jerked away to escape and huddled in her favorite corner, as in the early days, between the wall and the small bow-fronted chest, where she stayed on the alert, watching me with the tense expression she used to have. I locked the chain away in a drawer, pulled the bed back into place, put everything in order and left the room to give my vixen time to calm down.

  During the rest of the day she refused all nourishment. The next day she accepted it, but from afar, and went off to eat it under the bed. She seemed to have lost the few words she knew, and they came back to her only very slowly with her returning calm.

  But though she was appeased, the presence of the belt continued to worry her. She constantly tugged at it, fiddled with the buckle-but always in vain-until finally she seemed to get used to it. However, the room once more began to smell like a menagerie, and when on the following Friday I found my gentle Sylva tamed at last, it was time to start all over again. I took advantage of a moment when she was busy sucking clean the carcass of a chicken, with her back turned to me, and quickly hooked the chain onto the belt without her even noticing it at first. But when she saw me open door and window, she jumped to her feet and, feeling herself held back, began to struggle as before, albeit a trifle less frantically and never ceasing to watch my every move. So much so that hearing me say soothingly over and over again, “Come now… come… keep still… you know I’ll unfasten you presently…” she eventually did keep quiet, just pulling obstinately at her belt with both hands. I aired the bedding and dragged the carpets outside. I was about to spread them out on the grass when I heard the thud of a soft fall behind me. And turning around, I saw Sylva, still on all fours, straightening up in the polyanthus bed at the foot of the house. She was no sooner on her feet than she reached the hedgerow in three bounds. I was paralyzed with surprise. She was wearing her woolen chemise, but the belt had gone: had she, by dint of fiddling with it and with the aid of chance, succeeded in undoing the buckle? It was a bit late in the day to worry about that. Before I had recovered my wits, she had jumped over the fence and was streaking toward the woods with the swiftness of a doe. I rushed after her, shouting her name, but I did not run half as fast as she. Like a wisp of smoke she had vanished in the forest before I was halfway across the field.

  For a long time I called her name among the trees with a kind of despair, for I knew only too well that she would not answer and that trying to find her again in the undergrowth was a hopeless endeavor. Nevertheless I returned to the farm, saddled a horse, and set out on a one-man hunt through the woods, furiously keeping on till nightfall. I flushed a number of animals and among them a fox, but a bigger and older one than Sylva had been before her transformation; it was grayer, too, and I did not pursue it. However, the fact that the idea had occurred to me even for a moment showed that a miracle in reverse would not actually have surprised me, that I even expected perhaps to discover her in this guise. Simultaneously, I had to confess that my attachment for her was no less ambiguous than herself. In whatever shape I would have found her again-animal or human-I was prepared to give thanks to heaven with the same grateful heart.

  I rode home only when the moon rose, deeply disheartened and deeply troubled, too. The room seemed lugubrious to me-cold and deserted. If I don’t find her again, I told myself, I’ll take a wife. I have forgotten how to live all alone. I’ll marry Dorothy. But now the idea of letting any creature other than my vixen into this room filled me with a sort of revolt and with the feeling, both strange and unbearable, of an impossible breach of faith. Like a widower who, with his wife hardly cold in her grave, was already toying with the unseemly idea of marrying again. And all this for a vixen! The thought left me
aghast and distressed. The truth was, if at that moment I had been obliged to choose between marrying the most beautiful girl in Britain or finding my vixen again even in her original form, I believe I would not have wavered for an instant… One can gather from this the degree my obsession had reached at the end of an exhausting chase.

  Chapter 10

  THE next day was a Saturday, and there was a meet scheduled. I saddled my horse again and scoured the woods all day, trembling whenever I heard the distant clamor of hounds and horn. Toward evening I went all the way up to the inn to have a beer at the public bar where I hoped to gather news, yet dreaded to hear it. How could I have dared mention Sylva’s escape and my fear that she might have changed back into an animal of the chase? Fortunately they had been after a stag and left the foxes alone. Nor did anyone talk of a mysterious girl, whom I would have had some trouble to claim without first mentioning her escape… If I found her again, I vowed to myself I would introduce her to all my friends in the village, so as to prevent my getting caught another time in such an absurd predicament.

  I returned to the manor with a somewhat easier heart. But I was thinking: This is only a momentary respite; if I cannot lay my hands on Sylva soon, the outcome is bound to be dramatic, whether she is run to earth in one shape or the other. I thought of asking to join in the fox hunt, despite my convictions about the sport.

  At any rate, the next meet was not due until the following Saturday. What was I to do till then? On Sunday I rode through the woods again, for a long time and without result, before knocking at the Sullivans’ door as I had promised.

  The door was opened by Dorothy. I must have looked rather wild with my clothes torn and my hair sticky with perspiration, for she exclaimed, “Good Lord! What’s the matter?” She called her father and showed me into the drawing room. While she was pouring me a glass of whisky and the old doctor, sitting opposite me, was silently gazing down at me from above his black frock coat, I recovered some of my self-control. I even managed to laugh like someone poking fun at himself.

  “Don’t take any notice. I’ve been riding cross-country all day and I’m fagged out. An idiotic story.”

  I turned to the young woman.

  “Your father was splendid the other day, but I’m not cherishing any illusions. My story did not convince him. I suppose he told you?”

  She acknowledged it, but was obviously on her guard.

  “What did you think of it?” I asked bravely.

  She shrugged her shoulders.

  “Told like that to someone who hasn’t seen anything, it really sounds past belief,” she admitted. “Will you show me that… the creature?”

  “Too late,” I said. “She’s escaped.”

  “How’s that?” cried the doctor.

  “Through the window. She’s run off into the woods.”

  I must have looked distraught. There was a pause and the old man said:

  “Come now, isn’t that the best joke she could play on you? You’re well rid of her now.”

  “Yes,” I agreed sourly, “that’s no doubt what I ought to be thinking, if I were sensible. Unfortunately I’m thinking the very opposite. I am reproaching myself most bitterly.”

  I told them of all I feared: the hunters, perhaps the lunatic asylum.

  Dorothy remarked, a little edgily, “But if she’s only a vixen, what do you care? You aren’t responsible for her any more!”

  I said that, on the contrary, I felt deeply responsible. That I didn’t know why exactly, but if she met with an accident I would find it hard to forgive myself. And moreover, in the village, she was now considered my niece. I could no longer let her disappear just like that.

  After a moment Dorothy asked, “But how do you yourself consider her? Still as a vixen or already as a girl?”

  The question delighted me. For the putting of it meant that Dorothy must have begun to accept things as they were. But it also embarrassed me.

  “That’s just it, I don’t know.” I sighed. “She has a woman’s form but the mind of a fox. Is anatomy enough?”

  “If she behaves in all respects like a fox…” Dorothy started but broke off and blushed slightly.

  I finished the thought for her:

  “You’d leave her in the forest, if you were I?”

  She probably didn’t dare answer “yes” and slowly rubbed the side of her nose. I turned toward her father. “What do you think, Doctor?”

  “Supposing she’s a real vixen?” he asked cautiously.

  “Yes, supposing she is. What would you answer if you were sent for to treat her? Would you say, ‘This is a vet’s business?’ ”

  “Of course not, but that, as you said yourself, is just a question of anatomy. I’d attend her, even if she were a vixen. But afterward I’d recommend that she be put away. It’s the only solution, believe me,” he added, looking hard into my eyes.

  Was he beginning to believe in the miracle, too? Or was it only a piece of… not quite disinterested advice? I looked away and said:

  “No, really, that’s impossible! She’d die in a mental home. Just as she’ll die in the forest if she persists in staying there. She has need of me.”

  “And you of her, perhaps?” said Dorothy in a tone that seemed to me a little acid.

  “Perhaps I do,” I agreed very quietly, “I’ve grown used to her presence.”

  Tibbles, the Siamese kitten, was fondly rubbing himself against one of my legs. I fondled him with one hand while smiling at his mistress.

  “And if Tibbles disappeared, wouldn’t you miss him?”

  “That’s true,” said Dorothy. And as if this remark, by defining the nature of my feelings, had cheered her up, she returned my smile with friendliness. She added, however, “But that’s not quite the same thing, is it?”

  My smile broadened. “No, not quite…” Tibbles jumped onto my knee and purred under my stroking. Dorothy and I were now looking at each other with a kind of complicity.

  “I’d like to see her,” she said, “when she’s back at the manor.”

  “Do you think she’ll come back?” I cried.

  “Tibbles often runs away but he always comes back.”

  “Sylva isn’t a cat, she’s a fox,” I said in a worried tone.

  Dorothy put a sympathetic hand on mine.

  “Would it help you to be patient if I came and kept you company for a few days?”

  “Who would look after your father in the meantime?”

  “We’re having the Dean in to lunch on Tuesday,” the doctor reminded her.

  “I’ll be along on Wednesday,” Dorothy decided.

  This visit calmed me a little. I slept fairly well. On Monday the various jobs on the farm occupied my actions and thoughts all day. I reached home tired, but it was a welcome fatigue. After dinner I settled down by the fire and tried to read. It was an uneasy attempt, preoccupied as I was. Nevertheless I was just beginning to succeed when a soft scratching on the door made me raise my head. The scratching was repeated several times. I went to open the door with a throbbing heart. It was Sylva.

  She slipped inside like a shadow and sank down beside the fireplace. She was panting a little, though almost quietly. But her appearance wrung my heart: her poor chemise hung in pitiful rags, and her body underneath was clawed, bleeding, prickling with thorns. She had slumped down on her side, in the gently relaxed, weary attitude of a greyhound after a race, her head thrown back a little, her hair spread out. She closed her eyes and breathed less noisily.

  I knelt down beside her and started to pull away her rags which in places were stuck with clotted blood and sweat. She let me do it, only quivering a little when I had to pull at the cloth to make it come away. I went to fetch a basin of water and began to sponge her gently, extracting a thorn, a bur here and there. She did not object, just moaned a little, but without resistance. I also discovered tooth marks: she must have tried to return to her burrow, to her fox and fox cubs. But she was a woman; how could they have recognized her? They
had defended themselves against her as against an intruder, an enemy.

  For how long after that had she gone on roaming, too tall and clumsy and hurt by every thorn, before she had decided to come back? Perhaps she had also fled from the fox hunt.

  When I had cleansed her thoroughly, I applied a healing balm to her scratches and sprayed talcum powder all over her body. We were near the fire; it was warm; she nestled close to me and began to murmur gently with sleepiness and well-being. I wrapped my arms around her and rocked her softly like a child. It was the first time I had dared to take her close to me, naked and abandoned. I am a self-respecting man but a prudent one, too, and I have always considered that the surest way of resisting temptation is to avoid it. But on that evening Sylva’s return-when I had already almost despaired of it-the intense relief at seeing my fears dispelled, my slightly overwrought joy at her sweet fidelity, all overwhelmed my watchfulness. I felt lighthearted, gay, carefree with a dash of boldness in which there soon mingled a new tenderness that was freer, more unrestrained, soon even more audacious and almost reckless, and gradually tending to libertinism… After all, I told myself with a sort of delightful dizziness, she’s a woman, isn’t she? What harm would there be? And if she’s a fox, she probably hasn’t even a soul, so what sin would there be in it? She was purring under the caresses with which I was soothing her to sleep, very chaste caresses but which I now found hard to control, for they were wandering a little over her arched hips, her breasts. My fingers were trembling.

  The purring stopped, or rather it changed into the tender mewing of a cat. The body quivered and rippled. My nerves were taut, and when she jerked round to flatten herself against me, I only just managed not to lose my head completely. But now the mewing, which had been meek and peaceful, became more violent and at last so totally feline, so totally beastlike, that it shocked me through and through. I let the bewitching body slide to the carpet and walked away, quivering with a kind of dizziness, a horror, an anguish, perhaps even with terror and a piercing interrogation, merciless as the stab of a stiletto between the ribs.