Sylva

I cannot describe her movement better than by saying that she came crawling. She was walking upright, but sideways like a crab, and her whole body was so full of reticence, so visibly drawn against her will, against her obvious desire to flee, that all my anger dissolved, gave way to amusement and tenderness. She was coming toward me to receive a prospective thrashing, without quite knowing the reason why, like a good little dog who only knows from his master’s voice that there are strokes in the offing.

When she was quite close, I let go of the stick, which dropped to the ground; Sylva gave a hedge sparrow’s chirp, picked it up, carried it away to the house frisking and gamboling, laughing with joy, put it back in its place behind the chest and, running back to meet me, flung herself at me just as I was passing the door with such strength that I stumbled and fell with her onto the carpet, where she hugged and licked me and nibbled my ear. Her body on top of mine was beginning to sway so gently and suggestively that I had to throw her aside so as not to lose, before the uproariously laughing Nanny, all decency together with her respect and my dignity.

And I was wondering, with growing perplexity, by what means it would ever be possible to teach my innocent little vixen, if not a sense of sin, at least a semblance of modesty.

This latter characteristic was indispensable if I hoped to be able some day to invite friends to the house or take Sylva visiting. I imagined with scowling embarrassment one of those overaffectionate displays that Sylva might indulge in, without any warning, amidst a circle of friends. If I were its object, I might put a stop to it quickly enough, but if it was some visitor she took a sudden fancy to?

I confided my apprehensions to Nanny, and we pondered them at length. I don’t know what people will be thinking about Freud in the 1960’s. As for me, I had only just discovered psychoanalysis, as had the rest of the civilized world. The aim of this method is not, of course, to implant complexes in people who don’t suffer from them, but rather to uproot them where they are burgeoning.

Still, we told ourselves that if in Sylva’s case it were possible to provoke the growth of some reasonable inhibitions it would make our life in the future a good deal easier. It was patently obvious that Sylva was absolutely devoid of those dark nooks and crannies in which the human being hides away his impure or odious impulses. If we wanted to turn Sylva quite simply into someone respectable (we were not presumptuous enough to hope we could make a lady of her), we would first of all have to build up against her appetites some of those foolproof impediments which at times no doubt are conducive to neuroses, but without which she would go on behaving with the innocent, savage shamelessness that foiled all efforts to civilize her.

So we both reread the major works of the inspired Viennese. Since they laid down suitable methods for unearthing sexual inhibitions, we were able to hope we might inversely discover some means of injecting them. But to our great regret it appeared that there was only one means to that end: to grow up in society from earliest infancy. Nothing proved applicable to a fox changed into a woman long after puberty. We also read the works of Jung, who ascribes our subconscious life to the existence of ancestral archetypes in our atavistic selves. Unfortunately, as far as Sylva was concerned, there were no ancestors other than foxes. Finally we were forced to conclude that all these explanations of the origin of our inhibitions merely shoved the mystery further away in order to side-step it more effectively.

We, however, were confronted with a human creature in a state as pure as that prevailing on the day after the first mutations, without ancestors and without a social environment, descended among us, as the doctor said, brand-new from its animality.

Chapter 22

I HAD not dared bother Dr. Sullivan again, either by driving over to him or asking him to come and see me. After what he had told me on my last visit, I could only wait for him to give me the first sign.

But he gave none. I was growing vexed with impatience, more and more convinced that I bore some blame. It was all because of my living with Sylva the way I did, I said to myself. Nanny had understood the need for it and did not blame me any more; Dorothy too had pretended to concur, but perhaps it had only been a face-saving device to make her appear broad-minded and hide her jealousy? Sylva’s and my equivocal propinquity had probably pained her after all, wounded her pride. And- perhaps-her unavowed love?