“What’s going to happen now,” I asked, “according to you? What’ll be the next stage?”
He raised his long arms as if taking heaven for witness.
“Can’t say, old man, I’m not a diviner! On the contrary, I’m waiting to learn from her how things happened in the dim brains of the first men.”
“Unfortunately, those things took a few thousand years to happen… If we have to wait all that long…”
“Naturally, nothing proves that Sylva will pass the various stages at breakneck speed and nonstop. Still, she’s just done it, and what with her environment and the aid you give her, we may hope that she’ll continue.”
“Yes, but how can we be of assistance if we don’t know a word of the syllabus?”
“Oh,” said the doctor, “you’ll see all right how things will shape. I suppose that now that she has discovered herself she’ll start putting questions. You’ve got your work cut out.”
“Dorothy isn’t in?” I blurted out, for her continued absence was beginning to surprise me.
The doctor’s face literally changed, as if this sudden question had taken him by surprise. His cheeks had turned crimson on either side of the big, fat nose which, having blushed more faintly, bore an irresistible resemblance to the beak of a frightened toucan.
“I believe she’s got a headache,” he said.
I didn’t believe a word of it.
“May I at least say hello to her?”
“Do excuse her,” he said quickly. “I think she’s gone to lie down.”
“Doctor,” I said reproachfully, “you aren’t forthright with me. Have I made a faux pas somewhere? Why does Dorothy refuse to see me? It seemed to me a few days ago…”
He interrupted me in a most comical way: by blowing his nose. He shook his curly wreath of foam while producing from his nose a thunderous snort.
“No, no,” he answered into his handkerchief. “She doesn’t refuse. It has nothing to do with you, I assure you. Don’t question me,” he went on, folding the handkerchief. “We’re going through a trying time. It’s a consequence of her life in London… She’ll talk to you about it herself later. Later,” he repeated, holding out the palms of his hands as if begging for alms. “Right?” he said insistently with an engaging and rather pathetic smile, so that there was nothing to do but smile back and put my palms into his.
“You know my friendship for you. I don’t need to tell you…”
“I know, I know I can count on you. Just now you could be of no help. Oh!” he corrected himself precipitately. “Don’t make me say more than I’ve said! It’s nothing serious. It’ll pass. It’s a trying time. Everything will be all right later on.”
I was not, however, more than half reassured when I left him. What had he meant by twice repeating “a trying time”? I was not at all certain that Dorothy’s attitude had really nothing to do with me.
During the following days I dared not be too insistent in getting Sylva in front of a looking glass again. I had immediately replaced all the mirrors, including the cheval glass, but Sylva at first pretended not even to notice their presence—though she could not prevent herself, when passing through the gallery where two tall pier glasses faced each other, from quickening her pace and even running.
Nevertheless, we saw her gradually losing her fear. She could no longer avoid seeing her face from time to time in a windowpane, reflected in a glass case or the high polish of a piece of furniture. There came a day when, instead of running away or pretending not to have seen it, she looked at it and stopped. Thereafter she would approach her reflection. Timidly at first, then with curiosity, then with absorbed attention. The cheval glass became a center of interest for her, one of which she did not seem to tire. She would now look at herself at all hours of the day. But not as a woman does, admiringly or disconsolately, nor even simply to study herself. Rather as a sort of constant checkup, as if she were never sure of finding opposite her, returning stare for stare, this creature whose reality seemed to plunge her into endless perplexity.
She would leave the mirror and curl up at the foot of the bed, her face in her cupped hands, her eye’s staring straight ahead without seeing anything, never batting an eyelid, like a motionless cat. At those moments, I would have gladly given months of my life to be able to penetrate that little brain and witness what was going on in it. Perhaps nothing much was, at least after the fashion that our too highly developed brains are able to imagine.
When at last she emerged from this unseeing contemplation she would huddle up even more tightly and go to sleep, or else skip around and start to play as she used to. I have told how she enjoyed pouncing on objects, on all sorts of “quarry,” showing a marked preference for those that could be knocked over or sent rolling: a stool, a chair, Nanny’s needlework basket (when the contents scattered all over the place, she would take refuge in a corner and wait for the nurse’s outburst with a half-roguish, half-rueful expression), or else a pitcher, a box. But now she would suddenly stop playing, grasp the object between her hands, inspect its every side. Sometimes she would carry it in front of the mirror and gaze at herself with it, a strained look in her fixed eyes. It was hard to say whether they expressed anguish, absent-mindedness or deep thought. As a rule, after such a scrutiny she would drop the object, go and curl up on her bed again, her chin in her hands, with staring, vacant eyes. She almost always fell asleep in the end.
One day, in the course of playing she flung herself on a small basket filled with apples which Nanny had gone to fetch from the loft. The apples naturally rolled in all directions. Sylva chased them with the bounding grace of a young gazelle at large. At last she picked one up and began to munch it. Suddenly, as if prompted by a brain wave, she jumped to her feet, left the room, ran downstairs. Nanny and I followed her, much intrigued. We found her in the dining room gazing at the large still life copied after the Master of Munich above the sideboard. She turned toward us and said, “Apples.”
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—”