Sylva

by Jean Bruller

  Should I take Sylva into the heart of this seething life of which, so recently, she had still formed an intimate part, like a fish in water, flesh of its flesh? I did not make up my mind to it without some fear. But I now had too much affection for her, unselfish affection; yes, I loved her too much for what she was—a vixen—to want to deprive her of the forest and the ecstasy of spring which I myself felt so strongly. What risk was I running, after all? If her homeland reclaimed her and if she escaped, what else could she do but return to me, as she had done the first time? And even if she did not, I could nowadays call out the whole village to be my beaters, since she passed for my niece, a “backward” child. And if, assuming the worst, one did not find her again, it meant that she had resumed her pristine shape—so much the better for her—and I should be free for Dorothy… Come on, I thought, be a little bold, be generous…

  Six days a week Nanny would take her for a walk. On Sundays it was my turn, unless some unforeseen problem kept me at the farm. The wild joy Sylva displayed every morning when setting out was even more rapturous when she saw me put on my boots, coat and hat. While I was going through the garden, she would gambol all around me, skipping and shouting: “Bonny walk! Bonny walk!” Then she would streak through the gate before me, along the path through the fields which she took with Nanny every day.

  This time I called out to her: “Sylva!” She stopped still, turned around, the pointed little face gazing at me with a questioning look. I thought I even saw her ears prick up.

  I motioned to her and turned toward the path leading to the forest. With a bird’s cry she came scampering back, overtook me and ran on for some twenty yards, still uttering those larklike cries. Then she fell silent, hesitated as if to listen, set off again. Was she running less quickly? It seemed to me that something was restraining her. She stopped again and then, as if regretfully, turned around and came back toward me with uncertain steps. She seemed constrained, intimidated. When she was level with me, she came close a little gauchely and clung to my side to keep in step with me, silently and with lowered head. It seemed to me that she was trembling a little.

  I could well understand that the forest, if not exactly frightening her, had at least assumed for my vixen since her last flight an unfriendly, hostile, perhaps even a cruel, face. So that, to check it, I turned around and walked toward the house. But when I looked back Sylva was gazing at me fixedly, with that particular look in her eyes that dogs have when they are on a track and see their master does not follow them. I naturally gave in to this mute appeal and we set out again toward the woods. Sylva was calming herself, anyway, and by the time we had reached the edge of the wood she was no longer trembling.

  The path narrowed amidst the fern and trees. We could not walk abreast. Sylva left my side, slipped in front to walk ahead. I noticed, to my great confusion, that it was my heart now that beat with emotion. What was I expecting, then? I do not know. Perhaps to see her turn into a fox again, before my eyes? I caught myself, if not precisely wishing it, at least contemplating the possibility with a sort of secret longing which left me half amazed, half troubled. Did I not love her any more? Did I (for Dorothy’s sake perhaps) want to lose her? At this thought my heart beat more violently and dictated to me a very different fantasy which filled my chest with the fragrance of the woods: the fantasy that we should both meet again as foxes.

  Which of us has not wished some time to be a gazelle, a dolphin, a swallow? In other words, to regain Eden—innocence, joy and freedom—to cast off the burden of the human estate, the strictness of the state of a Christian, the glum duties of the condition of a British subject… Oh, to be able to gallop along the tracks with my vixen, leap over the ferns, pursue a hare, a stoat… These kinds of wish-dreams are never very serious, and this one hardly any more so, but if I did not really wish to become a fox, could I still long, then, for her to become one without me? Besides, wasn’t she a fox anyhow, despite her appearance?

  I gradually realized that what I regretted was that she was in fact neither woman nor fox. Seeing her in this human shape so brutally “detached” from her natural setting, as a scissor cut is “detached,” a silhouette cut out amidst this vast organic element which we passed through but with which we could not merge, I realized intensely the extent to which her little soul must unconsciously feel wrenched and lonely. Before, she had breathed with the forest’s breath, mingling with it fiber by fiber; now she too could only watch it like a spectacle, enjoy it from outside like myself, however much we were inside it. What had been a communion of each moment, each look, each movement, was now no more than a foreign scrutiny, a face-reading, however fascinating it still might be. And seeing her move her head this way and that with the quickness of a squirrel; raise it to follow the flight of a wood pigeon, a linnet; leave the path with a doe’s leap to inspect an anthill; scratch in passing as if with claws the trunk of a dead tree to try and discover in it a little honey of wild bees; start up at the cracking of a bough, stop dead at the stifled complaint of a stone marten—seeing her thus repeat her foxy movements though they could no longer be those of a wild beast but only a vain imitation, a make-believe, my heart contracted with pity and tenderness.

  And yet what a lovely sight she was in the forest, my Sylva! Her hair had the flamboyant hue of larches in autumn; her neck rose proud and straight, supple and nervous and strong like a horse’s leg; her slender back, molded in a sweater that was the color of autumn leaves too, rippled and quivered at the slightest noise, the softest breath; as for her legs, they were so noble and beautiful that one could have loved them for their own sake, a supple pair of salmon swimming a continuous minuet in the subaqueous light of the undergrowth…

  Thus we strolled, she in front and perpetually in a buoyant rhythm halfway between walking and running, all her pores—or so it seemed—open to the thousand murmurs, the thousand scents, the thousand tremors of the springtime awakening; and I walking behind, forgotten, I told myself, so completely forgotten…

  But though I may have thought it with a little melancholy, it did not really pain me; on the contrary, I was hoping, hoping with all my heart and all my strength at that moment, that she might recapture however little of that—but what can one call it? pulsation? rapture?—ah! a little of the bubbling delight that was hers before the transformation, a little of the ineffable fullness of her life as a fox subjected only to its nature—to Nature.

  Three hours thus passed like a minute. Only when I noticed that I was dragging my legs did my sudden fatigue make me abruptly aware of the lapse of time. I looked at my wrist watch: half past twelve! I was not even very sure where we were, since Sylva had been pulling me along in all sorts of directions, on the spur of her impulses. But I figured that Richwick Manor must be quite a mile away. What would Nanny say! The Sunday dinner would be burned. Sylva continued to gambol with the same winged ease, impervious to tiredness. I called her.

  I thought at first that she had not heard me—or did not wrant to hear. I called more loudly and she turned around, gave me a faithful doggy look with a facial twitch that could have been a smile had she known how to smile. But she set off again at a run. This time I shouted her name peremptorily, with a hint of anger in my voice. She began to trot in a circle, almost turning around herself, but still trotting until she was face to face with me. She waited. I said, “It’s very late, we must go home.”

  She remained silent, gazing at me with an attentive, distant look in her eyes.

  “And I don’t even know where we are! Can you guide us?”

  As if in answer, she passed in front and streaked off like an arrow. “Not so fast!” I cried, laughing.

  She probably did not understand and went on. I had to make an effort to catch up with her, grab her skirt, pull her back.

  “Not so fast,” I repeated, and she slowed down her pace. We walked like that for a good quarter of an hour. I was not in the least worried about the way we were going: I was sure that she still had that innate sense of di
rection which civilized man has lost with his wildness. And indeed we soon found ourselves at the edge of the wood—-much closer, happily, than I had feared.

  Sylva had stopped on the verge of the forest, she let me pass, as if courteously stepping aside in a doorway. I took a few steps forward, in the direction of the house where I could see Nanny anxiously waiting for us on the threshold. She motioned to me wildly. I was gaily waving back when, I don’t know why, I had the feeling that Sylva was not following me. I just caught a fleeting glimpse of both Nanny’s arms flung up in despair before I turned around.

  Sylva was no longer there.

  Chapter 14

  I RUSHED into the forest in an immediate reflex, calling her as on the day of her first flight. But once I found myself among the trees and bushes, amid all this forest murmur deeper than silence, I did not take long to recover my wits and recognize wisely—with consternation—that it would be a waste of time to search for her. Sylva had vanished in the forest like a lizard in long grass; it was quite vain to pursue her.

  Thus, what I so much feared on setting out had completely slipped my mind on the way back, had taken me completely unawares. I was furious and vexed, though more the latter, for once again, beneath my anger against myself, I found the subtle feeling of serenity, if not of elation, that I had felt a little earlier at the thought that she might resume her original shape. The pleasure of knowing Sylva free in her former kingdom weighed in my heart against the displeasure of seeing her disappear. I could measure in these contradictory emotions the strength of my affection for her.

  In any case, this loss no longer racked me to excess. As I have said, I had envisaged this accident and even foreseen what might follow: probably a spontaneous return when Sylva had roamed to her heart’s content; if not, a combined search that could not reasonably be expected to meet with failure.

  I walked back to the house. On the edge of the wood I almost knocked down a panic-stricken Nanny, breathless from running on her short legs. I soothed her as best I could, but she gave me a thorough dressing down. When she saw us walk toward the forest, she could have sworn this would happen! she cried. What stupid imprudence, what reckless foolishness! A man of my age! And what would happen to her now, poor mite?

  “What do you think can happen to her?” I said with the greatest calm (fortified by my earlier experience).

  “How can I tell?” she wailed. “Anything can happen!”

  “Such as?” I inquired with a hint of irony.

  We were striding back toward the house. She stopped and glowered at me. When Nanny was in a temper, she looked even more like a bulldog. Between her flabby cheeks which shook with anger, under the truffle of a nose with flaring, quivering nostrils, her lips bared ferocious fangs. In this state she would have scared a tiger. Not being a tiger I smiled, and this smile brought her rage to a climax.

  “What about the wood choppers?” she spluttered into my face. “The poachers? Tramps, hooligans, the woods are full of satyrs on Sundays! Don’t you know that?”

  My smile faded. She was exaggerating, but good Lord, she was right! By thinking of the young creature as a fox all the time, I had totally forgotten that for a resolute fellow on the lookout for adventure she would be just a pretty wench like any other—prettier than any other. She would run away, I told myself to set my mind at rest. But was I so sure she would? And I recalled a scene which had occurred that very morning.

  Nanny had accustomed her, when waking up, to go and “kiss Bonny good morning” at an hour when I was still in bed. She had been doing so for a long time now, of her own accord and very willingly. On this morning, after kissing me (always moistening my cheek, my nose a little), she had suddenly slipped between the sheets and rubbed herself against me with such ardor that I understood, amused and embarrassed, what was the matter: the awakening of spring, by Jove!… Her wild little animal nature remained subservient to the seasons.

  I had repulsed her by getting out of bed at once and, promptly distracted according to the normal habit of her little feather brain, she had forgotten me and set to play with one of her objects.

  I had hastened to forget this bout of discomfiting heat but now, at the thoughts suggested by Nanny, I felt gripped by fever. In an instant, icy perspiration broke out all over me. And why only one? Why not two, or ten? How many foxes, it suddenly flashed through my mind with a sharp and sudden pain, had already previously imposed their male ardor on her?

  I retained just enough self-control to be stupefied and appalled at having this thought: what was coming over me? Jealous of the past loves of a fox bitch? It was too funny for words! And I tried to laugh about it. Alas, there was no room for doubt: I was not laughing, I was in agony. I had abruptly left Nanny and was stalking fast toward the house while she was calling after me: “Sir! Sir!” in a worried, rueful voice, not quite knowing, I suppose, what could have offended me in her words but guessing that she had somehow hurt me. I rushed up the stairs, locked myself in my room, and paced from one wall to the other, groaning and clenching my fists, while a voice inside me spoke up in revolt: Steady now! Steady! Have you gone mad?

  However, as I honestly questioned my heart I could no longer hide from myself that I was madly jealous. Jealousy in all its forms has always struck me as a most improper feeling. The French hold it up to ridicule and make fun of it in their theatre. (But as they make even more fun of deceived and complacent husbands, they contradict themselves in this respect as they do in all others.) As for me, I don’t think that jealousy is so much a laughing matter as a repulsive one. This is partly why for so many years I have hesitated to get married: against jealousy there is nothing more effective than celibacy… And here I was, racked by pain and hatred at the idea of rutting foxes around a vixen, and the favors she had granted them! Was I, then, forced to admit to myself that I could possibly be in love with her—and in the throes of the most common, vulgar sort of love at that?

  I called to my rescue the memory of Dorothy, but this only exacerbated the confusion of my thoughts. To be sure, I had once been in love with Dorothy; perhaps I had never stopped completely; but never had I, in her respect, been stirred by thoughts like this. Not even at the time of her awful marriage—no, never had I sunk, even to mortify myself, to imagining her in the arms of her abominable husband. Such images would have disgusted me with myself for conjuring them up. And now they were submerging me, because they no longer applied lo a young lady of good family but to a female fox! I tried to persuade myself that these feelings could be better explained if they were not those of a lover, but a father. And for almost an hour I even managed to convince myself of it: yes, I felt for Sylva an anxious, authoritarian affection,

  I was pained by her lapses from virtue, I worried about her future, I loathed her seducers. Nothing that was not very high-minded in all this. Unfortunately, this fiction could not be maintained for long, and the pain that griped my stomach at any too imaginative evocation was void of paternal feeling. So much so that after torturing myself in this way, I fell to wondering whether, for the sake of my moral health and self-respect, it would not be best never to see her again, to abandon her to her destiny in the forest. And to marry Dorothy as soon as possible.

  But even supposing that I would have found sufficient strength in this wise resolution to put it into effect, was it still practicable? Could I openly abandon my “niece”—since I thought I had been so clever in passing her off as such? No, I told myself, it is too late for that. In the eyes of all, such an abandonment would be incomprehensible and criminal. Willy-nilly, I had to find Sylva again. And I realized without surprise that this necessity filled me at once with apprehension and a somber glee.

  I had flung myself on the bed; these contradictory emotions had shaken me violently, and I eventually fell asleep. I woke up toward evening in a state of mind which seemed to me extremely lucid: A storm in a teacup, all this, old chap! Sylva is not a vixen any more, her past love affairs are like those of a Hindu princess before he
r metempsychosis, when she was still a sow: dissolved in Nirvana. She is not a woman either, and if you once, in a fleeting moment, felt for her an impious lust, you never allowed it to show more than the tip of its nose. Your dignity is unimpaired. You are jealous, are you? So what, if you surmount your jealousy? Come on, since you are fond of her, whether as a lover or a father, let her be happy according to her nature and not according to yours—by gratifying her instincts, by unconsciously carrying out the orders they subject her to.

  I got up. I had completely recovered my composure, or so I thought. The nobility of those feelings, the high-mindedness of this self-denial, gave me an encouraging opinion of myself. I regained my strength and calm, and when I found poor Mrs. Bumley waiting for me at the dinner table, looking so stricken that it made me smile, I said: “Come on, Nanny, this isn’t a tragedy! Just look at me; I slept soundly—she tired me out with that three hours’ sprint through the woods! Come on, come on, she’ll soon come back, and if she doesn’t we won’t have much trouble finding her.”

  She gazed at me wordlessly for a moment with her big kind, sorrowful eyes. She shook her head.

  “She won’t come back at all,” she said.

  Chapter 15

  I ATTACHED little importance to this pessimistic forecast. Mothers and nannies always take the blackest view of the least little upset: a touch of cold will turn to pneumonia, a child that is late has been run over. For three days we awaited the return of the runaway, with a certain calm as far as I was concerned, with a plaintive agitation on Nanny’s part.

  Sylva did not come back.

  I jolly well had to make up my mind. Early one morning I went to the village to pay a visit to my friend John Filbert Walburton, who had been Mayor for the past ten years. As the owner of a stud farm famous all over Somerset (two or three of the top winners of these last years were bred in his stables) he was also the Master of the local Fox Hounds. He was a sort of giant, with a ruddy face and a thick fair mustache that drooped into his mouth. When he saw me come in he cried: “I was just going to look you up!”