Sylva

IS there any need to go on? My aim, in starting this notebook, was to write the story of a metamorphosis. It is done. Reliable authors assure us that the human species is a schism: a piece of nature in revolt, vainly struggling from the time of its origin to lift the mask behind which is hidden all raison d’être. Had not my little vixen now taken the decisive step beyond which there is no return, had she not passed over entirely to the schismatics? What remained of her earlier state? Hardly a memory. She was henceforth human, to the very depths of her soul. Certainly it was up to us now to educate her, to “raise” her in every sense of the word-but from now on this would be above and beyond the transformation. The metamorphosis was accomplished.

So what could I relate other than the type of progress which a child could make in the hands of efficient educators? Dr. Sullivan had warned me at the time: “She will start putting questions, you’ll have your work cut out!” She had not started immediately-it had required a more formidable motive power than her self-recognition in a mirror. But now, good Lord! Everyone has known the kind of children who daze you with questions about everything and nothing. They are angels of self-restraint compared with what Sylva was during that time. With the aggravating difference that she had an adult brain and that one could not fob her off with the vague replies which seem to satisfy children. Yet her questions were of a thorny type and most embarrassing: “Why does one live? Why die?” Poor Baron’s death was still dimly reverberating on the direction her mind was taking, since her mind itself had in a way been “hatched out” by this shock. What Sylva wanted to know was nothing less than the beginning and end of things.

For all that had left her untroubled, unintrigued, as long as she still had a vixen’s mind, now filled her with a frightened awareness: Why the day, why the night? What is the sun? The moon? The stars? Where does the sky end? Until the day when she asked, “And why does one exist, all of this?”

Frankly, at the time, this decisive question struck me with its form rather than with its meaning: for the “one” certainly referred to Sylva herself, but so did just as certainly the “all of this” that followed. “One” and “All of this,” Sylva and the universe, thus still seemed confusedly mixed up in her mind; the schism was not yet very clearly marked. Besides, the tone of the question had not gone beyond a certain perplexity, or rather a sort of bewilderment in a strange new region full of disconcerting mazes, alarming horizons-it did not yet betray excitement, the first quiver of indignation, the foreboding of a boundless outrage. She did not yet suspect (how could she?) that she would not receive, would never receive, an answer to her question.

What finally severed her last links with her former nature and made the schism final and complete, was her hearing me admit that “why we exist, my poor sweet, is something I would gladly tell you, but unfortunately nobody knows.” And hearing me say it not once but ten times, because she refused to believe in spite of my explanations that to such a simple and obvious question there existed no enlightenment; because she thought for a long time that, for some inexplicable reason, I was hiding the truth from her. But then, oh, I remember her amazed little face, her mouth opening in incredulous suffocation, her eyes flashing with growing anger, I remember how violently she stamped her foot and snapped in an accusing voice that broke with a little sob:

“But then, why, one knows nothing!”

I had to agree that men indeed know nothing, that they are born, live and die in a profound mystery and that it is precisely the greatness of science to try and pierce it… She interrupted me with even greater violence:

“Why, what greatness? Why must one seek? Since one lives, one ought to know why. Why doesn’t one know? Is it on purpose? Are we prevented?”