T. Boyle - Wild Child and Other Stories

For several minutes now Victor had been looking up expectantly, awaiting the conclusion of the exercises and anticipating his reward.

But instead of reward, Itard gave him punishment. He raised his voice, told Victor that he’d been bad, very bad, that he was clumsy and stupid and impossible to work with. For a long while he continued in this vein, then rose abruptly, seized the boy’s arm and led him to the closet where he’d been confined, as punishment, when he’d been particularly recalcitrant during the early days of his education.

Victor gave him a look of bewilderment. He couldn’t fathom what he’d done wrong or why his teacher’s face was so contorted and red and his voice so threatening. At first, mewling plaintively, he let himself be led to the door of the closet, but then, as Itard was about to force him into it, Victor turned on him in outrage, his face flushed and his eyes flashing, and for a long moment they struggled for dominance. Victor was bigger now, stronger, but still he was no match for a grown man, and Itard was able to shove him, pleading and crying, into the closet. The door wouldn’t shut. Victor wouldn’t allow it. He braced his feet against the inside panel and pushed with all his strength and when he felt himself losing the battle he lurched forward suddenly to sink his teeth into Itard’s hand before the door slammed shut and the key turned in the lock. It was an emotional moment for the doctor. His hand throbbed — he would have to treat the wound — and the boy would hate him for weeks, but he rejoiced all the same: Victor had developed a sense of justice. The punishment was undeserved and he’d reacted as any normal human being would have. Perhaps it was a small victory — would the Savage of Aveyron, dragged down from his tree, have grasped the concept? — but it was proof of Victor’s humanity and Itard included mention of it in his report. Such a child — such a young man — he argued in conclusion, was deserving of the attention of scientists and of the continued support and solicitude of the government.

The report ran to fifty pages. The Minister of the Interior had it published at government expense, Sicard included with it a letter praising Itard’s efforts, and Itard received some measure of the recognition and celebrity he’d craved. But the experiment was over, officially, and Victor’s days at the Institute were numbered. Sicard militated for the boy’s removal, writing the Minister of the Interior to the effect that for all Itard’s heroic efforts the boy remained in a state of incurable idiocy, and that further he was a growing menace to the other students. It took some time — months and then years of depletion and vacancy — but eventually the government agreed to continue in perpetuity Madame Guérin’s annual stipend of one hundred fifty francs to care for Victor and to award her an additional five hundred francs to relocate, with her husband and the boy, to a small house around the corner from the Institute on the impasse des Feuillantines.

If Victor was at all affected by the move from the only home he’d known, from the room he’d occupied all this time and the grounds he’d roamed till he had every twig and leaf, furrow and rock memorized, he didn’t show it outwardly. He was a great help in moving the Guérins’ furnishings, and the new environment seemed to excite him so that he got down on all fours and sniffed at the baseboard of the walls and examined each of the rooms minutely, fascinated to see the familiar objects — his bed and counterpane, the pots and pans, the twin chairs the Guérins liked to pull up to the fire — arrayed in this new place. There wasn’t much of a yard, but it was free of deaf-mutes, and it was a place where he could study the sky or apply the axe and saw to the lengths of wood Madame Guérin required for the stove, where he could lie in the sun alongside Sultan, who had grown yet fatter and more ponderous as he aged.

And each day, just as she’d done for years, Madame Guérin took him for a walk in the park.

And Itard? He made an effort to visit, at least at first, and on hearing his voice, the boy would come running to him for a hug, and the reward — a bag of nuts or an orange — the doctor never failed to produce. Victor was in his twenties now, shorter than average — short as a child — but his face had broadened and he’d developed a rudimentary beard that furred his cheeks and descended as far as the scar on his throat. When he went out for his walks he still trotted along in his unique way, but around the house and the yard he began to shamble from place to place like an old man. Itard regarded the Guérins as old friends — almost as comrades in arms, as they’d all gone through a kind of war together — and Madame always insisted on cooking for him when he visited, but there was an awkwardness between him and his former pupil now, all the physical intimacy of their years together reduced to that initial hug. What was the point? What could they possibly say to each other? Victor spoke with his eyes, with certain rude gestures of his hands, but that was a vocabulary in which Itard was no longer interested. He was a busy man, in constant demand, his fame burgeoning, and with time his visits became less and less frequent until one day they stopped altogether.

At the same time, the Guérins, now effectively retired from the Institute, were aging in a way that made it seem as if the weeks were months and the months years piled atop them. Monsieur Guérin, ten years his wife’s senior, fell ill. Victor hovered in the doorway of the sickroom, looking out of his neutral eyes, uncomprehending — or at least that was the way it seemed to Madame Guérin. The more her husband needed her, the more Victor seemed to regress. He demanded her attention. He tugged at her dress. Insisted that she come into the next room to fix him his pommes frites at any hour of the day, to pour him milk or massage his legs or simply to look and marvel at something he’d discovered, a spider making its web in the corner where the chimney met the ceiling, a bird perched on the windowsill that was gone by the time she turned her head. And then Monsieur Guérin was gone too and Victor stood bewildered over the coffin and shrank away from the strange faces gathered above it.

The day after the funeral, Madame Guérin didn’t get out of bed until late in the afternoon and Victor spent the day staring out the window, beyond the projection of the building across the street, and into the view of the open lot beyond. He poured himself glass after glass of water, the original liquid, the liquid that took him back to his time of freedom and deprivation, and stared out to where the grass stood tall and the branches of the trees caught the wind. When the light shifted toward evening he moved to the cupboard and set the table as he’d been trained to do: three bowls, three mugs, three spoons and the twice-folded cloth napkins.

Ducking his head, he went into Madame Guérin’s room and stood over the bed gazing at the heaviness of her face, her skin gone the color of ash, the lines of grief that dropped her chin and tugged at the corners of her eyes. He was hungry. He hadn’t been fed all day.

The fire was dead and the house was cold. He motioned to his mouth with his right hand and when Madame Guérin began to stir he took her arm and led her to the kitchen, pointing at the stove.

As soon as she came through the doorway, he knew that something was wrong. She pulled back, and he could feel her arm trembling against his, and there was the table, set for three. “No,” she said, her voice strained and caught low in the back of her throat,

“no,” and it was a word he understood. Her shoulders shifted and she began to cry then, a soft wet in-suck of grief and despair, and for a moment he didn’t know what to do. But then, as tentatively and cautiously as he’d stalked the things he trapped in the grass a whole lifetime ago, he moved to the table and took up the bowl, the cup, the spoon and the napkin and silently put them back where they belonged.