Sylva

by Jean Vercors

  No sooner were we alone than Dorothy snapped in a fierce whisper:

  “Do you think you can fool me?”

  I was so staggered by this brusque attack that I remained dumb. I could barely stammer:

  “What do you mean?”

  “That business with poor Jeremy.”

  “Well? What of it?”

  “You don’t care a rap for respectability!”

  “What do you mean, I-”

  “Tell me the truth: are you in love with her?”

  “Now really, Dorothy…”

  “I’m not a prude and if you want to go to bed with her I shan’t kick up a fuss about it. She won’t be your first mistress, as everyone knows. But I beg you not to forget who you are, where you come from. It would be an appalling scandal.”

  “What would? Do you suppose I want to marry her?” I exclaimed.

  “Who knows? I wonder.”

  “I’ve never heard anything so ludicrous. Does one marry a fox? You know perfectly well she is nothing else yet.”

  “Not yet, as you say yourself. But she’ll change. My father is probably quite right.”

  “Well, then it’ll be time to think of it, won’t it?” I said sarcastically, for she had upset me.

  “No, that’s just it. You must think of it now!”

  She said this very insistently, in a tone of alarm, and gripped my hands with an expression of urgency.

  “You are in great danger,” she said. “Remember Pygmalion.”

  “What’s he got to do with it? Sylva isn’t made of marble.”

  “I’m thinking of Shaw’s. What you are going to do goes even beyond Professor Higgins’s exploit. He merely transformed a flower girl into a lady. You’re going to transform a beast into a woman. You’ll love her. You already do.”

  “I? But you’re raving mad! Besides, I’ll have you know that if there’s someone I love-”

  “Shut up!” she shouted.

  I can’t bear to be silenced. And yet I ought to have welcomed her violence. What a moment for making a declaration of love, when I was steeped in the most extreme sentimental confusion! But this “Shut up!” instead of curbing my rashness, made me lose my temper.

  “Why should I shut up? I have kept my mouth shut for ten years! I let you slip once already, I’m not going to start again!”

  I saw her turn pale. She lifted a warning hand to silence me. Her lips quivered but no word came. I seized her hand in both of mine.

  “I am in danger, am I?” I cried. “Well, help me out of it! Provided, that is, that you love me,” I added, lifting her hand to my face.

  But she tore it away and got up. She began to walk up and down, bending and unbending the fingers of her clasped hands.

  “That’s what I should have cried to you ten years ago,” she said tonelessly. She gave a stricken sigh. “I’m too much of a wreck,” she murmured. “I can’t save anybody any more.”

  “Look here, Dorothy…”

  “No!” she cried, then added more softly, musingly: “If I love you? Can I still love? Shall I ever be able to again?” She bent and unbent her fingers. “I thought I loved that man,” she said in a very low, rather husky voice. “I would have given my life for him. In a way I have given it: he horrified me and yet I’d have stood up to the whole earth. His death came as a relief. It also made me desperate, it left me just like one of those jellyfish that one finds motionless on the beach: limp and without feeling. Just anybody can pick up a jellyfish-and for ten years I let myself be picked up by just anybody. I hardly even remember it.”

  My heart had turned to ice while I listened to this sudden confession, but I could think of nothing to say. She looked at me thoughtfully.

  “Whatever happens, whatever you may do, I want you to know that you’ll be forgiven,” she said strangely.

  I got up, walked over to her, grasped her beautiful shoulders and forced her to turn toward me.

  “Dorothy,” I said to her calmly, “suppose Sylva could hear us now, do you think she would understand a single word of what we are saying?”

  Was it the beginning of a smile or only color returning to her cheeks? She repeated like an echo:

  “No, she would not understand a single word.”

  “Can you seriously imagine that I could think of marrying so rudimentary a being, even on some very distant day, when you are about, right here, close to me? Doesn’t it strike you as completely absurd?”

  She shook her head. This time she was really smiling. But joylessly.

  “I’m not a woman one marries, either,” she murmured, and hung her head. “I have nothing to offer. I’m a dried-out crab: a carapace with nothing inside.” She raised her head. “Life doesn’t return to an empty shell. Sylva too is empty-for the time being. But in her something some day may come to life. That’s just what makes me afraid for you.”

  She must have seen from my blank look that I did not understand. She took my hands, removed them from her shoulders.

  “What she’ll have in her brain cells will have been put there by you. What the Pygmalions of this world love is precisely their own likeness. How can they resist it? And on that day there’ll be nothing I can put in the balance. My presence would soon weigh on you like a cumbersome piece of furniture. But if you marry that creature it’ll be the end of you, Albert. I’m not jealous-nor prudish, I repeat. I’ve less right than anyone, alas, to sermonize you! But I’m afraid that once she has a mind, a physical affaire won’t be enough for you.”

  “Well then, marry me,” I said gently.

  But she shook her head obstinately.

  “I’d be your mistress if you like,” she said, very simply. “It would be more honest but I’m afraid that it wouldn’t make any difference when the day comes-it would merely make me a little more miserable.”

  “Let’s try anyhow,” I said just as simply; but I was deeply moved.

  She took my head between her hands and kissed me lightly on the lips.

  “Not now,” she breathed. “When you really want me.”

  Chapter 19

  AFTER Dorothy’s departure, I was back in a state of extreme confusion. Yet I am not a fickle-hearted Latin, a Frenchman for whom every girl he meets is immediately the prettiest one, a Sicilian who swears eternal love to three different women on the same day. I had been quite sincere with Dorothy. But when she was gone and I found myself alone with Sylva again, all I had said seemed to me rash madness. It was not as though my feelings for Sylva were more certain, less ambiguous than before. I had not lied to Dorothy when, some little time ago, I had compared this attachment to hers for her Siamese kitten. But on the other hand hadn’t I, if not confessing it outright, at least stopped denying the strong attraction that Sylva exercised on my senses? Above all, I had concealed even more dangerous thoughts from Dorothy; and though she had divined the gist of them this did not alter the fact that I had hidden them. I had not breathed a word of the exultant joy that had gripped me at the idea that love might change Sylva into a real woman. It was true that I had since told myself, with returning composure, that I was indulging in pipe dreams, that I had turned the order of things upside down and that, in actual fact, it was only provided I could first make a woman of her that Sylva might subsequently be able to feel human love. But that was just it: finding Sylva again as she still was, pretty as a picture but sunk to the very soul in the dark maze of her animal mentality, I could not fool myself. I was quite determined to lift her out of it, to do all that lay in my power to awaken a human intelligence in her. Dorothy had warned me that by doing so I ran the risk of falling in love for good with a woman who, to a considerable extent at least, would be my own creation. But I knew I would do it all the same. And thus, by nevertheless offering my heart to Dorothy, I was becoming perilously guilty toward her.

  At the same time I told myself that I was quite as guilty, for that matter, toward Sylva. If Dorothy had been less shrewd or less honest, what would I have done in the long run? At best, I would
have abandoned Sylva to the care of Mrs. Bumley-but what would have become of her afterward? At worst, I would have followed the Sullivans’ sound advice and entrusted her at once to some institution. That might have meant arresting her development. Well, wouldn’t that be wiser? Wasn’t it better, after all, that she should remain a vixen? Wouldn’t the woman she might become in the best hypothesis still be full of gaps and deficiencies, incapable of adapting herself to our modern world? Wouldn’t I make her unhappy by vowing her to so doubtful a destiny? But a powerful voice within me protested against these pessimistic views, assured me that to abandon her now in her present state might smack of criminal desertion.

  For there were numerous signs which convinced me that the doctor was right, that the time was approaching when “things would begin to happen.” I did not imagine, however, that the time was so close at hand.

  I don’t want to pretend that those precursory signs always struck us clearly, Nanny and me. Many of them escaped us (one cannot always be on the watch); others were fallacious. Like all primates, Sylva was naturally gifted with a great talent for imitation. By regularly repeating our words and acts she eventually linked the acts to the words with apparent logic. But how difficult it was to know when the appearance was deceptive and when it was not! More than once we looked at each other, her governess and I, seized with emotion, in the belief that we had witnessed in our pupil a great step from her condition of an unthinking creature; and then we had to admit that it was only a sham without substance, a mere aping, a parody without reality. Such, it will be remembered, was the episode of the dressing table, of the rose in her hair. But at other times, on the contrary, an act that should have intrigued us, captured our attention, passed us by and we thoughtlessly paid it no heed.

  I remember, for instance, the following little incident. One evening when Fanny had prepared some chocolate ice for us Sylva, after tasting it, began to blow on it in her plate. We laughed about it without realizing at once how much this mistake on her part already represented an association between cause and effect. Only later did we recall it to distinguish a posteriori its faintly precursory indication. It’s so much easier to be wise after the event!

  By and large, Sylva’s very slow and sporadic type of progress, broken by forward leaps and disquieting retrogressions, continued to present far less resemblance to the progress of a backward child than to that of an animal in training, and this bewildered Nanny as much as me. Nothing allowed us to affirm that Sylva’s nature was changing.

  She was just a vixen becoming more and more domesticated, to an exceptional degree no doubt, but to believe anything else for the time being would have been sheer wishful thinking. That is at least what we kept telling ourselves.

  With the result that while I was prepared for fresh progress, even for great changes, while I was even watching out for them with a confused mixture of fear and hope, I did not expect to see them crop up so soon or so suddenly. Perhaps it is a general rule with human beings that they are always caught unawares by events, even those they have watched for most closely.

  I might say in my defense that I had, moreover, some reason to be absent-minded. Dorothy had returned only once, with her father, since the poignant scene in which she had reduced me to silence in order not to hear me. To tell the truth, I had not been able to efface the painful impression left by her exclamation concerning herself: “An empty shell!” She seemed to me to have lost weight and her complexion was dull. She avoided my eyes. It also seemed to me that the doctor was below par. I said to Dorothy, “Come and help me make tea,” hoping thereby to have a chance of talking to her alone. But she eluded the suggestion.

  “I’ll go and make it with Mrs. Bumley,” she said, and we were left standing there, her father and I.

  “I have the impression,” I said to him, “that Dorothy isn’t looking very well. Anything wrong?”

  Upon my word, the old man too was avoiding my eyes!

  “ London has tired her,” he said vaguely. “She must pick up again. That takes time.”

  “Nothing pathological?” I asked, worried.

  “No, no. Just an upset of the neuro-vegetative system. Quiet life and country air will put it right in time. And your little vixen?” he inquired without transition, as if he was in a hurry to change the subject. “Anything new?”

  “Pah!” I said. “Pretty little. She is marking time. Just two or three new words caught here and there. But hardly anything as far as essentials go.”

  “What do you call essentials?”

  “Well, I mean, for instance, that the only way to oblige her to resist her instinctive urges and behave in a bearable manner is still punishment. Nothing else. The fear of being punished stands her in stead of reason or, if you like, of second nature.”

  “Well,” the doctor said, laughing, “isn’t that actually the beginning of ethics?”

  “Yes, the ethics of an animal trainer,” I said ironically. “You see, this tends to confirm in me some age-old certainties. I’ve always thought that prison, capital punishment as a deterrent, are just survivals of the Stone Age; they solve nothing, prevent nothing. There are no fewer thefts or murders in our era than there were at the time of the Visigoths or the Vandals. The human conscience must have sprung from altogether different sources. But which ones? You can’t imagine the number of books poor Nanny has been poring over these last weeks: on primitive psychology, the metaphysics of manners or the immediate data of consciousness… without finding anything remotely applicable to the case of a fox-woman.”

  “The mind of man,” said the doctor, “is born with the individual. That’s the clue to everything. When he discovered that he existed, separately from the rest of things, and from the rest of his pack. Obviously, the pack served him as a mirror for this discovery, but at the same time it retarded it. We are now faced with the same dialectic. Your vixen must learn in the first place that she exists. Nanny and you are helping her and retarding her at the same time. That’s why I thought of those mirrors. Nothing new in that respect?”

  He had not mentioned them for a long time.

  “No. Actually, I’ve even removed the cheval glass from her room and put it up in mine, where it is more useful.”

  “Quite, quite,” he said, suddenly abstracted. “Did it really strike you so much that she wasn’t looking well?”

  It took me quite two seconds to realize that he was talking of Dorothy again.

  “Well, she seems to have lost weight,” I said, “and her complexion isn’t as clear as it was. Are you more worried about her health than you care to admit?”

  “If it only were her health!” he muttered.

  “You’re hiding the truth from me, Doctor… Am I to blame for something?” I asked courageously.

  “You, my poor boy?” he exclaimed, and I never knew whether or not he had been on the verge of telling me more, for Dorothy appeared with a well-laden tray. Nanny had gone to fetch Sylva from her room.

  As usual, Sylva flung herself on me with puppylike manifestations, snapping at my ear, licking the hand with which I was trying to protect myself. Whenever she had been kept locked up by herself for too long she would fall back into these old habits and recover her manners only after the first joy of reunion had been calmed. I pushed her back as best I could, and now it was the doctor’s turn. She had grown accustomed to the black frock coat and for a long time now had been great friends with the old man. Good-naturedly he let himself be kissed and snapped at, then gently pushed her away too.

  “What about me?” asked Dorothy.

  Sylva went up to her, with less enthusiasm but still with some eagerness. As they were about to kiss, Sylva suddenly gave a start, or rather a shudder. She jumped back, slipped out of Dorothy’s already outstretched hands and took shelter behind Mrs. Bumley’s armchair. From there she gazed at the young woman, her cat’s eyes aglow with a watchful attention. Something had alarmed her-but what?

  Dorothy had remained with her hands in mid-air. She s
lowly lowered them under our surprised stare. She herself seemed not so much surprised as the prey of a strange ccmmotion. Her features seemed to decompose. She almost frightened me for a few seconds. And I realized that what had stirred her father when he had talked of her a moment ago was also some sort of fear. “A dead crab”-it was as if someone had just whispered those words into my ear. I perceived that I did not know her, that she was a mystery to me. That, actually, I did not know anything of her life, nor of the reasons for her return.

  All these thoughts occurred to me in less than an instant. The moment after, Dorothy was smiling again, her face had resumed its calm, slightly banal beauty under the coiled plaits of her blond hair. I could believe that it had all been just a dream.

  “Well,” she said quietly, “so you don’t love me any more?”

  And with an amused expression, she held out to Sylva a slice of toast spread with liver paste, for she knew that Sylva still had not the least liking for sweets.

  Sylva took the toast, Nanny poured the tea, and there was no further incident.

  Chapter 20

  IT was toward the middle of the following week, a little before midnight, that the event occurred.

  I cannot recollect the scene without being gripped once again by emotion. Did I realize at the time that it was really my vixen’s first big step in the direction of a human consciousness-the first step out of the dark ramparts in which the animal is imprisoned? Judging by the excitement which overcame me, I think I can claim I did, even though I was not as categorically certain as Doctor Sullivan when I told him about it.

  Yet nothing had happened in the way he had foreseen. He had hoped, it will be remembered, that Sylva might eventually recognize herself in the cheval glass by constantly seeing herself in it but that, after weeks during which her indifference for this object and her inattention bordered on purblindness, I had decided to move the glass into my bedroom. There, at least, somebody wrould be making use of it. Most of all, this permanent failure was getting on my nerves. I did not, therefore, expect any more from this direction. And if the very first stage in the awakening of my vixen must be, as Dr. Sullivan said, the discovery of her own existence, I had given up hope that a looking glass might be instrumental to it.