I cast a triumphant glance at Nanny, who grew pale, then blushed and lifted her hand to her bodice with emotion. She took Sylva by the fingers.
“And this?” she asked.
“Grapes.”
“And this?”
She was pointing at a corner of the painting, to a small silver statue representing a standing, young Bacchus, with his face raised and a bunch of grapes held against his lips. But Sylva did not say anything. She looked at it for a long time but did not speak. Nanny said, “That’s a gentleman.” But Sylva looked without saying a word. Then her eyes slipped away, she withdrew her fingers, with one leap she was on a chair, which fell over, and she resumed her game without paying attention to us.
“That was too difficult,” I told Nanny. “The painting of a sculpture, and a silver one at that! That is quite meaningless for her. Too far removed from reality.”
But Nanny vehemently shook her kind, doggy face, which made her heavy jowls ripple like washing being laundered in the river.
“The grapes and apples aren’t much like real fruit, either. It’s fantastic that she recognized them. I have read that certain savages in Indonesia are still quite incapable of it. Quite fantastic that she has grasped that apples are something that can be portrayed.”
“Has she really understood it? That’s not so sure,” I said prudently. (It was my turn to show circumspection.) “I’ve been observing her ever since that mirror business. What seems to me beyond doubt is that she has begun to be able to ‘separate’ objects from one another, just as she has done for herself. To isolate each object. And once they are isolated, she can recognize them even when portrayed. Which doesn’t mean that she is already able to—”
But Nanny wasn’t listening. I saw her open her mouth a little, as if to interrupt me. But this was immediately wiped away by an expression of such startled surprise that I spun round full-circle.
The French window was open. And Sylva, darting with a swallow’s speed, was running toward a distant figure, short and squat, which loomed in the twilight like a ghost of the Stone Age.
For the first time in my life I was sorry I wasn’t a marksman. That I could not dash to my gunrack, grab a weapon from the hook, fire into the air and oblige that cursed gorilla to flee for his life.
For lack of a gun I grabbed from behind the chest one of the ivory-knobbed sticks that had belonged to my father and rushed out, yelling curses; I had gripped the stick by the ferrule end and was whirling it around furiously.
I am of respectable size and as I came rushing up, yelling and flaying the air, I must have looked fairly horrifying. The result was that my pithecanthrope turned on his heels and decamped without asking for more. Sylva, seeing him run away, stopped in her course. She watched him disappear, with a look more curious than grieved on her face. I felt a distinct urge to break my stick on her back, but I flatter myself on keeping some self-control in all circumstances—or nearly all. I stopped, and let the stick glide along my hand until I could make use of it in the ordinary way: I leaned on it. Sylva had turned round and was eying me. I called her in a commanding voice.
I cannot describe her movement better than by saying that she came crawling. She was walking upright, but sideways like a crab, and her whole body was so full of reticence, so visibly drawn against her will, against her obvious desire to flee, that all my anger dissolved, gave way to amusement and tenderness. She was coming toward me to receive a prospective thrashing, without quite knowing the reason why, like a good little dog who only knows from his master’s voice that there are strokes in the offing.
When she was quite close, I let go of the stick, which dropped to the ground; Sylva gave a hedge sparrow’s chirp, picked it up, carried it away to the house frisking and gamboling, laughing with joy, put it back in its place behind the chest and, running back to meet me, flung herself at me just as I was passing the door with such strength that I stumbled and fell with her onto the carpet, where she hugged and licked me and nibbled my ear. Her body on top of mine was beginning to sway so gently and suggestively that I had to throw her aside so as not to lose, before the uproariously laughing Nanny, all decency together with her respect and my dignity.
And I was wondering, with growing perplexity, by what means it would ever be possible to teach my innocent little vixen, if not a sense of sin, at least a semblance of modesty.
This latter characteristic was indispensable if I hoped to be able some day to invite friends to the house or take Sylva visiting. I imagined with scowling embarrassment one of those overaffectionate displays that Sylva might indulge in, without any warning, amidst a circle of friends. If I were its object, I might put a stop to it quickly enough, but if it was some visitor she took a sudden fancy to?
I confided my apprehensions to Nanny, and we pondered them at length. I don’t know what people will be thinking about Freud in the 1960’s. As for me, I had only just discovered psychoanalysis, as had the rest of the civilized world. The aim of this method is not, of course, to implant complexes in people who don’t suffer from them, but rather to uproot them where they are burgeoning.
Still, we told ourselves that if in Sylva’s case it were possible to provoke the growth of some reasonable inhibitions it would make our life in the future a good deal easier. It was patently obvious that Sylva was absolutely devoid of those dark nooks and crannies in which the human being hides away his impure or odious impulses. If we wanted to turn Sylva quite simply into someone respectable (we were not presumptuous enough to hope we could make a lady of her), we would first of all have to build up against her appetites some of those foolproof impediments which at times no doubt are conducive to neuroses, but without which she would go on behaving with the innocent, savage shamelessness that foiled all efforts to civilize her.
So we both reread the major works of the inspired Viennese. Since they laid down suitable methods for unearthing sexual inhibitions, we were able to hope we might inversely discover some means of injecting them. But to our great regret it appeared that there was only one means to that end: to grow up in society from earliest infancy. Nothing proved applicable to a fox changed into a woman long after puberty. We also read the works of Jung, who ascribes our subconscious life to the existence of ancestral archetypes in our atavistic selves. Unfortunately, as far as Sylva was concerned, there were no ancestors other than foxes. Finally we were forced to conclude that all these explanations of the origin of our inhibitions merely shoved the mystery further away in order to side-step it more effectively.
We, however, were confronted with a human creature in a state as pure as that prevailing on the day after the first mutations, without ancestors and without a social environment, descended among us, as the doctor said, brand-new from its animality.
Chapter 22
I HAD not dared bother Dr. Sullivan again, either by driving over to him or asking him to come and see me. After what he had told me on my last visit, I could only wait for him to give me the first sign.
But he gave none. I was growing vexed with impatience, more and more convinced that I bore some blame. It was all because of my living with Sylva the way I did, I said to myself. Nanny had understood the need for it and did not blame me any more; Dorothy too had pretended to concur, but perhaps it had only been a face-saving device to make her appear broad-minded and hide her jealousy? Sylva’s and my equivocal propinquity had probably pained her after all, wounded her pride. And—perhaps—her unavowed love?