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.