Sylva

by Jean Vercors

  He raised a weary hand, and his mouth twitched sideways in a grimace that might possibly be construed as a smile. “Quite so, quite so,” he said, just as he would have said to a child apologizing for being stumped by a difficult passage in Lucretius: Don’t get flustered, take your time, it’ll come.

  I stammered something like “How could I have guessed…” or “It’s unimaginable…” to which he replied with rejoinders of the same type, such as “Naturally” or “I quite understand.” I too was slumped deep in my armchair, and the two of us must have looked very much like a pair of discarded marionettes after a show. The first clear thought I was eventually able to express was:

  “When exactly did the last relapse occur?”

  And as I uttered it I became clearly aware of the anxiety that had stealthily been gnawing at me: wasn’t it my doing, after all?

  He said, “Let me see, let me see…” but could not manage to remember. However, by dint of checking his reminiscences, it appeared that the date was definitely prior to her last visit but one when Dorothy and I had had that curious conversation which had been first violent, then pathetic. And that very violence, and equally the pathos, were not at all normal for a woman who was so reserved as a rule, sometimes even to the point of being enigmatic. However, I still could not convince myself that I was quite free from blame.

  “Deal as you wish with me,” I said. “I’ll do anything you like. I have a deep affection for Dorothy. If you think that marriage…”

  At the same time I was thinking: Ah, never mind Sylva! She is nothing yet. The worst that can happen to her is not to become anything. Whereas Dorothy is a human being to be saved, a woman about to destroy herself, partly through your fault perhaps, because you don’t love her enough. Your duty is to love her: it’s probably the only way of rescuing her.

  “Six weeks ago I’d have answered yes,” Dr. Sullivan was saying. “Now I’m wondering; and besides, it’s too late, it would be unreasonable to sacrifice the best years of your young life. I did not dare talk to you about it when maybe there was still time. I’m the only one that’s to blame,” he added, as if he had guessed my thoughts.

  He had to start twice to heave himself out of his armchair.

  “Shall I come with you?” I quickly suggested.

  “What an idea, at this time of night! I won’t be home before one in the morning. I’ve only come to tell you honestly how things stand. Come whenever you can. Perhaps if she sees you, if she consents to see you… oh, I don’t know, I don’t know anything any more. But we must try. Yes, don’t delay too long, after all.”

  “I’ll be over tomorrow, if I can. But tell me,” I added, “you don’t seem to have a third cure in mind. Why?” The thought had only just struck me.

  He uttered a deep sigh and raised his long, lean arms.

  “Who knows if it can still do any good?” he muttered. “The trouble with these cures is that they progressively lose their efficacy. Besides, Dorothy would first have to agree, to consent to undergo it. This doesn’t seem to be the case any more. You can’t imagine the state she’s in. It’s a complete collapse. Come and see for yourself. Thank you. I’ll be expecting you.”

  Chapter 23

  I AM not quite sure that what prevented me from going to Dunstan’s the very next day, as I had almost promised, was really work on the farm. It is a fact that I had some troubles: a sick cow, the beginnings of a fire in a barn right in the fields. But I could not conceal from myself that those successive delays, those successive excuses, brought me a cowardly relief. I was really frightened at the idea of finding Dorothy in the state which her father had left me imagining.

  I was consequently at once surprised and reassured, as well as almost disappointed in a way, by the spectacle that awaited me when at last I showed up at the Sullivans’, on the third day. Dorothy was reading quietly, near her father, by the window. She gave me the same welcome to which I had become accustomed-the calm and mysterious smile. She even impressed me as looking better than the last time. But behind her I saw Dr. Sullivan sadly shake his head, as if to warn me: “Don’t you believe it.”

  Dorothy asked me for news of my vixen; she knew about the enormous step forward which Sylva had made and seemed quite engrossed by the story of the apples she had recognized in the still life. Then she said, “I’ll go and make some tea.”

  No sooner was she out of the room than I exclaimed cheerfully, “Why, she seems to me-”

  “Tut, tut,” the doctor interrupted me. His face expressed the same anxious wistfulness it had shown a moment before. “Don’t trust appearances,” he went on. “Just wait an hour or so, till the effect of the drug begins to wear off.”

  I gave a start. “Do you mean that at this moment…?”

  He nodded silently, and continued in the same melancholy tone. “I am powerless to prevent her. I can’t go and search her room.”

  “But she seems perfectly normal. Are you sure that…?”

  I could never manage to finish my questions, so much did a sort of instinctive reticence make me bite back words that seemed to me unutterable in front of a father- though he uttered them himself without false shame.

  “The drug produces strange effects,” he said, “and they vary with the day, the hour, like everything that attacks the psyche. During the war I used to know a colonel in the Indian Army who would get drunk to keep going during his bouts of malaria. He never walked so straight as when he was tight. And he would produce metaphysical theories of which he couldn’t have grasped a word in his normal state. At other times, however, after just a few whiskies, he would leave the room tottering and collapse on his bed where he’d sleep like a log for three hours. Dorothy will sometimes pass two days in a semi-coma, and the next day she holds forth as if she were lecturing at the Royal Society. It’s unpredictable. Or else she talks and walks straight like the colonel, as she does today. But that is not a lasting state; in an hour’s time, she’ll either be prostrate or pour forth incredible rubbish for hours on end.”

  “Have you reason to believe that she… every day, I mean really every day… that… she is never sober?”

  “I can’t watch over her every minute of the day, but I know unfortunately that she’s got to the stage where she’d be even worse if she went without the stuff. It’s a vicious circle. And it can only get worse.”

  “What do you want me to do?” I asked. “Tell me, and I’ll do it. Can an emotional shock still produce a beneficial effect? I’ll marry her tomorrow if she consents.”

  “I am quite aware that you have already proposed to her; she was deeply moved by it, but still honest enough to refuse. I don’t know what to say. You see before you an old man, a poor old doctor completely outstripped by events. Perhaps I’m counting on your youth, yours and hers, for a miracle to happen.” He gave a poor little smile. “You’ve performed one already, why not a second?”

  “Unfortunately, it was quite beyond me to perform it. It happened all by itself. Do give me your advice, though. Should I show initiative? Be bold and pressing? Or do you think, on the contrary, that a slow, tactful, tenacious persuasiveness-‘’

  But I was not given time to finish, even less to obtain a reply. We heard Dorothy’s footsteps approaching as she came bringing in the tea.

  The doctor had left us alone, on the pretext of a patient’s visit. He had scarcely gone when Dorothy forestalled me before I had time to open my mouth.

  “I know my father has told you everything. But I don’t know whether, as a result, I feel more humiliated before you or more relieved. Now you know the lot. I warned you, and I don’t have to use any more arguments to make you see that I am not the sort of woman one marries. No!” she cried, for I was about to interrupt her. “Spare me your solicitude. I’ve not yet fallen so low that it would not wound me without doing me the least good. We don’t love each other. What sort of life do you think we would lead together?”

  “And you,” I retorted, “spare me your subterfuges! We don’t l
ove each other, you say? Allow me to consider that I know my own feelings at least a little better than you!”

  She shook her head.

  “The one you love isn’t me any more. And you’re right!” she said more loudly as I was about to protest. “Yes, a thousand times right! Forget what I once held against your vixen. I’ve thought a great deal about it since. Every woman is Galatea or she is nothing; every man is Pygmalion. Man loves his own creature in woman, a creature he has taken centuries to sculpt. Now that she is alive, he is hoist with his own petard, and so is she. But you’ll have pulled her from the clay with your own hands! She’ll become a woman, she’ll become a human being, whereas I… I, on the contrary…”

  She broke off, as if she had tripped up. She had gone pale. I rose, threw myself at her knees, tried to take her in my arms, saying:

  “I won’t let you… I’ll get you out of it… I’ll die if I don’t!”

  But she dodged me with a sideways movement of her body, slipped out of the armchair and went to lean against the mantelpiece. I was left kneeling like a fool, while she gazed at me without irony, without severity either, but with a sort of loftiness that seemed to me a little wild-eyed.

  “And how do you know I want to get out of it? What do you know of anything? Poor child. You know nothing at all. Nor does anybody. Who listens to us, anyway? Oh, you foolish Pygmalions!” she cried and threw out her arm straight before her so that she suddenly resembled her father in his preacher’s mood. She must have seen my surprise, my alarm. She motioned with her hand. “Don’t take any notice. You ought to go…” She was stammering. “If you… if you don’t go… you’ll… you’ll be sorry. Don’t listen,” she begged. “Please, I’m asking you,” and I saw that her body was quivering like that of a restive horse held reined in at the starting line. “I’ll talk an awful lot of drivel. Don’t wait, go! Are you deaf or what?”

  But I was so fascinated that I could neither speak nor budge. Her voice became jerky, convulsive.

  “Oh! I don’t care a damn, after all! Listen if you like! What does it matter? I’m not asking your opinion. Who ever asked for ours? You stupid sorcerers’ apprentices! Did we ask for anything? We were happy as females. What business had we with brains? The mind is a nuisance. It only spoils one’s pleasure and makes pain unbearable. What did we need? To be kept safe and warm, to enjoy our pleasures and to procreate. But no! That wasn’t enough. We had to start thinking, too. A fat lot further that got us! When the heart has a mind, it has to labor, suffer, defend itself. Against whom? The mind. And here I’m getting away from it, and you say you won’t let me!

  “Well, I’m damned if I’ll let you prevent me! Go away. I stay where I am. I won’t be caught again. I won’t let anyone force me to my knees and make me knock my head against the cold stone of the world’s absurdity. That’s your lookout, your skull is thicker, sounder-and you were determined to rebel. But what about us, with our poor thin skulls? Bumps, that’s all. And they hurt. A great success! Oh, I too thought for a long time that the mind was superior to all. But what good has it done me? What good has all I’ve ever learned done me? No good at all, or as good as none. As soon as a thing was really important, phut! There was nobody, no thought, no nothing. Actually that’s the very sign, isn’t it, by which we recognize that a thing is important! Dare you say it isn’t?

  “And what am I to do with a mind that fades out whenever I’m pressed to act? With a mill that turns around and around in a vacuum? That grinds nothing but crazy desires and useless remorse? Absurd difficulties. Imaginary fears. And what else could it grind, what other flour? Well, I’m no longer hungry. I’ve had my fill. I want to be left alone to sleep. I’ve found my home, my dump, my barrel. Don’t try to drive me out of it. Or would you rather have me pray myself silly in the gloom of churches, like so many scared old hens? If I have to choose a Nirvana… I understand you: love! Yes. That is a refuge too. To belong to a man entirely, and no more thinking! No more terror before the silence of the stars. No wonder they all rush into it! But at the bottom of love there is still something: suffering. And consequently a mind. And therefore muddle. A rotten remedy! I’ll have no more of it. I want oblivion, that’s all. Oblivion! Oblivion!” she cried crescendo.

  She had reeled off this nonsense at such speed that I had not been able to get a word in edgeways. As she caught her breath, I tried to dam this flood with a fierce “Listen to me!” as one hurls a stick between the legs of a bolting horse. But she shouted an even louder “Shut up!” which silenced me once more. And suddenly I was a little horrified to notice a dribble of foaming saliva at the corner of her mouth.

  “I’m talking like a madwoman, aren’t I?” she rapped out, as if she had read my thoughts. “And why do you think that princesses drink till they roll under the table when they’re all alone at the end of the day? Do you want to see other women as crazy as me? I’ll show you thousands of them, tens of thousands, all over England, if you like! Yes, I know, I know, I’m a bit different, I go one better, I’m destroying myself, but what if that suits me? Who is to stop me, and by what right? Shut up!” she rapped, and then abruptly: “I’m talking, talking, of course I’m talking too much.

  “Don’t pay any attention,” she repeated in a suddenly cracked voice, as if she had broken it with too much shouting or as if there had suddenly dropped on her an insuperable fatigue. “All right, I know I may be saying a lot of rubbish along with the rest, it’s on account of the stuff, it’s always like that toward the end before it wears off. Don’t worry, I have to talk, I can’t stop myself talking, a sort of verbal fever,” she murmured. “Oh, I’m out of breath, I can’t go on any more. Be a pet, open the drawer over there, no, in the small table, behind the screen. Yes. There’s a snuffbox in it. Of old china. That’s it. Give it to me. Hurry up. What?”

  I had said nothing, but I had opened the snuffbox and was staring at the white powder with disgust, with positive execration. I went over to the window and opened it.

  “What are you doing?” she screamed, and hurled herself upon me.

  But I had already tossed the snuffbox out into the garden, and all that remained of the powder was a cloud of dust carried away by the wind.

  It was such a brutal attack that I fell against a stool, stumbled, sprawled headlong under a storm of shouts. I was struck, trampled, a heel dug into my cheek. I tried to get up, shielding my face behind my crooked arms, and received such a violent blow in the chest that I lost my balance again, caught myself up at the armrest of a settee, at last managed to get to my feet and fled under an avalanche of all kinds of objects and foul abuse. I no longer know how I got to my carriage. I was running away, not from cowardice, but from a kind of unsurmountable horror, a sacred revolt. On the road, I was still shaking in every limb as I staunched the blood on my wounded face.

  Chapter 24

  BY the time I got home I was somewhat calmer, and also a little ashamed of my panic-stricken flight. So that was all I had been able to accomplish. That was the sum total of all my boastful promises to Dr. Sullivan. I locked myself in my study in order to think without being disturbed, to try to see things straight.

  I did succeed, in a way, but there was scant comfort in my conclusion. For I saw myself at last as I was: spread-eagled and torn between Sylva and Dorothy, between an animal whom I wanted to change into a woman and a woman who wanted to change back into a beast. You’ve run away like a coward, I told myself. Tomorrow you’ll go back. You won’t give up under any pretext. You’ll fight as long as necessary, until you’ve saved her from herself. Perhaps you’ve seen the worst, and in any event you know now what to expect. A modicum of courage should be enough to help you overcome your revulsion. I avoided saying: a modicum of love.

  Those were fine resolutions. Perhaps I would have kept them, too. But the next day a short and distressed note from Dr. Sullivan informed me that Dorothy had returned to London.

  I reproached myself bitterly. Wasn’t I to blame once again for this departure? W
hat an idiot I had been to throw all her supplies of the drug out of the window. A handsome, gallant, virtuous and romantic gesture! As if the only possible result wasn’t to oblige Dorothy to procure more at all cost, without delay… Perhaps she had also run away from the awful self-portrait she had shown me.

  For the time being there was no question of my going after her to London. Summer was approaching, although somewhat timidly as yet, haymaking was already in full swing, wheat and barley would soon require my full time, the harvester had to be overhauled, arrangements made with the neighbors for the threshing machine, not to mention the normal day-to-day problems.

  To be frank, this flight also brought me a grim deliverance. I was prevented, at least for the one season, from having to fulfill a painful, heavy duty. What better excuse than one’s helplessness? And by the same stroke I could devote myself once more to my little vixen, without feeling guilty, without accusing myself of neglect or ulterior motives…

  Actually, I had not for a single day dropped my concern for her. We hoped, Nanny and I, that we were well rid of the gorilla. I had ordered the farmer to loose the dogs as soon as he showed up. They were not vicious but their physiognomy inspired respect. Jeremy Hull was seen prowling about two or three times more, but each time he must have fled instantly.

  During those few weeks I had kept Sylva, I must confess, more or less locked up in the house. The forest stroll had turned out too badly to encourage me to try new experiments. Moreover, Sylva at home no longer showed the animal boredom that had once made her yawn to distraction. Her games were more varied. The objects no longer represented mere quarry, Sylva began to have some intelligent relationships with them. It amused her less to scatter the contents of the needlework box; instead she tried to add to it things that did not belong there-my tooth paste or my cigars, for instance-which incidentally did not improve Nanny’s mood. Sylva also began to rummage in the cupboards or the sideboard, not without causing many a catastrophe. Occasionally some utensil would intrigue her for a long while and she would seek to use it for all sorts of purposes. Nevertheless, we did not restrain her, for this increase in her curiosity for “things” which her mind was obviously beginning to grasp as “objects” (and such a sudden and swift increase, at that) seemed to us extremely promising.