Sylva

Then one evening, as I was sitting before the dressing-table in my room, filing my fingernails before going to bed, I saw Sylva come in, probably to kiss me good night after her fashion, as she did every night. I perceived her in the mirror, for my easy chair had its back to the door. Its back was tall and stood between Sylva and me so that she too could see only my reflection in the glass. The result was that she walked toward me, not where I really was, out of her sight, but where she saw me-the cheval glass. Thus she had first to pass close to my chair.

And so, for an instant, she saw us in the mirror, herself and me, side by side.

What did she think as she discovered this feminine shape next to “Bonny”? She stood motionless and began to snarl as she had done when she first saw me with Dorothy. She snarled for some time at her own immobile image next to mine, then she began to move. She walked to the looking glass, and her reflection, moving toward her, growled ever more strongly. And suddenly she pounced on the intruder. The result was a great racket of broken glass and Sylva, flabbergasted, sitting amid the splinters on the ground.

I saw at once that she was not hurt, but also that she was staring at all those pieces with the keenest surprise. She looked at her hand lying on a splinter of glass, withdrew it, put it back, withdrew it again, moving her fingers a little, must have seen her fingers move in the broken shards, rose quickly as if frightened, ran to where she thought she had seen me, stopped dead when she no longer saw me, turned back toward the cheval glass which was now merely an empty frame, gropingly touched (if one can say so) the emptiness inside with her hand, gave a start, ran behind it as if in a panic, suddenly saw me in the frame on the side where she was not expecting me, gave a cry, and fled into her room.

I had watched the whole scene without stirring or speaking, too curious to see what would happen. Nothing more did happen, as a matter of fact. Sylva did not reappear. I picked up the pieces and took them down to the dustbin, mounted the stairs again to go to bed, once more disappointed by this persistent lack of comprehension. I put out the light and tried to sleep.

I could not manage to fall asleep and my idle thoughts soon left my disappointing vixen to return to Dorothy. It was like that almost every night since her last visit. What was the matter with the young woman? What had happened between this last time and the one before? That wan complexion, those tired features. Had these changes something to do with me? But her father’s tone had been so startled and almost sarcastic when he said, “You, my poor boy!” Ought I to be relieved or offended by it? Did I love her or didn’t I? Everybody knows how one’s thoughts turn in circles in one’s half-sleep, and incessantly return to their point of departure. They prevent you from falling asleep but don’t progress an inch. That’s what happened this night too, and I was dozing fitfully.

And then, like a shock, I sensed a presence in the room. I heard nothing. Not a sound. But opening my eyes, I saw a shadow quite close to me, motionless at my bedside. The moon was shining into the room through the slatted shutters, shedding a milky, tiger-striped light, and the silhouette leaned slowly forward amid those bars of moving shadows. I pretended to be asleep but through my eyelashes I could see Sylva’s face approaching mine, and that face-there is no other word for it-was observing, scrutinizing mine. As she had never done before. As if she were trying to discover in it something unknown. With such an unwonted insistence that I hardly dared to breathe while, oddly enough, the doctor’s words came back to me, urging me to think of the invisible work which day after day was accomplished in this blank brain -what junctions, he said, what concatenations of frustrated impressions, forgotten emotions, lost visions, what dim associations, what sudden flashes… And then Sylva left my side, returned to the cheval glass, looked at it, doggedly groped in the empty space.

With a twinge of my heart, I thought I understood what was happening. I arose, took her in my arms. She allowed herself obediently to be led into the bathroom. Before the big wall mirror, I put on the light and for a moment-very brief or very long, I don’t know-she looked at herself at my side. Her eyes slowly widened. Was she going to recognize herself at last? But how could she, since she had never yet seen herself? And indeed, as always, she began to wriggle to escape me. I sought to hold her back, but then, in an upsurge of fear or rage, she bit my hand with a sort of dull bark, short as a cry, and I let her go, annoyed. But… what’s that? What’s she doing? For the first time for many a week, she huddled up between the wall and the little bow-fronted chest of drawers, where she remained trembling as she used to, her dilated eyes clinging to me.