Sylva

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-”

But Nanny wasn’t listening. I saw her open her mouth a little, as if to interrupt me. But this was immediately wiped away by an expression of such startled surprise that I spun round full-circle.

The French window was open. And Sylva, darting with a swallow’s speed, was running toward a distant figure, short and squat, which loomed in the twilight like a ghost of the Stone Age.

For the first time in my life I was sorry I wasn’t a marksman. That I could not dash to my gunrack, grab a weapon from the hook, fire into the air and oblige that cursed gorilla to flee for his life.

For lack of a gun I grabbed from behind the chest one of the ivory-knobbed sticks that had belonged to my father and rushed out, yelling curses; I had gripped the stick by the ferrule end and was whirling it around furiously.

I am of respectable size and as I came rushing up, yelling and flaying the air, I must have looked fairly horrifying. The result was that my pithecanthrope turned on his heels and decamped without asking for more. Sylva, seeing him run away, stopped in her course. She watched him disappear, with a look more curious than grieved on her face. I felt a distinct urge to break my stick on her back, but I flatter myself on keeping some self-control in all circumstances-or nearly all. I stopped, and let the stick glide along my hand until I could make use of it in the ordinary way: I leaned on it. Sylva had turned round and was eying me. I called her in a commanding voice.