T. Boyle - T.C. Boyle Stories II - Volume II

It only seemed natural then, that in the morning, when the boy came to him, Itard called him by his new name, the one he’d suggested for himself, an august and venerable name borne proudly by any number of Frenchmen before and since, a name in which the accent fell heavily on the open second syllable: Victor. His name was Victor, and though he couldn’t pronounce the first part of it and perhaps didn’t even hear it and never would, he learned to respond to the second. He was Victor. Victor. After thirteen years on this earth, he was finally somebody.

6

It was around the time of his naming that Victor — or rather, Itard, on Victor’s behalf — received an invitation to attend the salon of Madame Récamier. This was a great opportunity, not only for Victor, whose cause could be promoted among the most powerful and influential people in France, but for Itard too, who, despite himself, had unrealistic social expectations, and like any other man, yearned for recognition. Madame Récamier was then twenty-four years old, a celebrated beauty and wit, wife of a wealthy banker three times her age and doyenne of a château in Clïchy-la-Garenne, just outside the city; anyone who was anyone came there to pay her homage and to be seen. Accordingly, Itard bought himself a new jacket and had Madame Guérin make Victor a suit of clothes replete with a high-collared shirt, waistcoat and cravat, so that he looked like a gentleman in miniature. For a full week before the date of the salon, Itard devised various games and stratagems to teach Victor how to bow in the presence of a lady, with mixed results.

On the evening of the party they hired a carriage, Victor by now having lost his fear of horses to the extent that he stuck his head out the window and shrieked with glee the whole way, startling pedestrians, gendarmes and dogs alike, and proceeded through a cold rain to Clïchy-la-Garenne. At first things seemed to go well, the bon ton of Paris making way for the doctor and his charge, the former savage who was now dressed and comporting himself like any other boy of thirteen, though Victor failed to bow to anyone, let alone his hostess, and persisted in trotting from one corner of the grand hall to the other, smearing his face with whatever foods he was able to find to his liking, the beaded eggs of fish presented on wafers of bread, fungus that had been stuffed, breaded and fried in hot oil, the remains of songbirds skewered nose-to-anus.

Madame Récamier gave him the seat of honor beside herself and even fussed over Itard a bit, trying to draw him out for the benefit of her guests, hoping he might, like a circus trainer, persuade Victor to show off some trick or another. But Victor didn’t show off any tricks. Victor didn’t know any tricks. Victor was mute, unable — or unwilling — even to pronounce his own name, and he wasn’t in the least susceptible to Madame Récamier’s legendary beauty and celebrated eyes. After a while she turned to the guest seated on her other side and began to regale the table at large with an involved story concerning the painter who had recently done her portrait in oils, how he’d made her sit frozen in a single position and wouldn’t even allow one of the servants to read aloud to her for fear of breaking her concentration. The tedium she’d endured. The suffering. What a beast this painter was. And at a gesture from her everyone looked up and there it was, like a miracle, the very portrait of the inestimable Madame Récamier — couchant, her feet tantalizingly bare and her face wearing a dignified yet seductive look — displayed on the wall behind them. Itard was transported. And he was about to say something, searching for the right words, something charming and memorable that would rise above the self-satisfied gabble of his fellow diners, when a crash, as of priceless statuary upended, silenced the table.

The sound had come from the garden, and it was followed, sharply, by a second crash. Itard looked to Madame Récamier, who looked to the vacant seat beside her even as one of the notables at the far end of the table cried out, “Look, the Savage — he’s escaping!” In the next moment, the whole party was thrown into turmoil, the men springing up to burst through the doors in pursuit, the ladies gathering at the windows and fanning themselves vigorously to keep from fainting with the excitement of it all, the servants fluttering helplessly round the vacated places at the table and the hostess herself trying to look as if this were all part of the evening’s entertainment. Itard, mortified, threw back his chair in confusion, the napkin clutched like a lifeline in his right hand. He was immobilized. He didn’t know what to do.

By the time Itard came to his senses, Victor was zigzagging back and forth across the lawn, pursued by a dozen men in wigs, frilled shirtfronts and buckled pumps. Worse, the boy was divesting himself of his garments, flinging the jacket from his shoulders, tearing the shirt down the middle, running right out of his shoes and stockings. A moment later, despite the hot baths, the massages and the training of his senses, he was as naked to the elements as he’d been on the day he stepped out of the woods and into the life of the world — naked, and scrambling up the trunk of one of Madame Récamier’s plane trees like an arboreal ape. Itard moved through the doors as if in a trance, the shouts of prominent citizens — including the august General Jean Moreau, Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, future king of Sweden and Norway, and old Monsieur Récamier himself — ringing in his ears. With the whole party looking on, he stood at the base of the tree, pleading with Victor to come down, until finally he had to remove his own jacket and begin climbing.

The humiliation of that evening stayed with Itard for a long while, and though he wouldn’t have admitted it, it played a role in his attitude toward his pupil in the ensuing weeks and months of his training. Itard cracked down. No longer would he allow Victor to get away with the tantrums that too often put an end to his lessons, no longer would he tolerate any deviance from civilized behavior, which most emphatically meant that Victor would henceforth and strictly keep his clothes on at all times. And there would be no more tree climbing — and no more forays into society. Society could wait.

At this stage in Victor’s education, in addition to constantly drilling him on his vowels, Itard began to employ the method Sicard had used in training his deaf-mutes to read, write and speak. He began by having Victor attempt to match everyday objects — a shoe, a hammer, a spoon — with simple line drawings of them, the idea being that once Victor had mastered the representation, then the symbols that depicted them in language, the words, could be substituted for the drawings. On the table in Victor’s room, Itard laid out a number of these objects, including the key to Madame Guérin’s food closet, an article of which the boy was especially enamored, and then fastened the drawings to the opposite wall. When he pointed to the drawing of the key, for instance, or the hammer, he demonstrated to Victor that this was the object he wanted. Unfortunately, Victor was unable to make the connection, though Itard persisted, perfecting his drawings and drilling the boy over and over while simultaneously pronouncing the appropriate word: “ La clé, Victor, bring me la clé. ” Occasionally, Victor did bring the correct object, but just as often, despite a thousand trials, he brought the hammer when the key was wanted or the shoe when it was the spoon his teacher had requested.

Itard then hit on the idea of having his pupil manually match the objects to the drawings, a less complex task surely. He began by arranging each of the articles on a hook beneath the corresponding drawing. He and Victor sat on the bed in Victor’s room and studied the arrangement — key, hammer, spoon, shoe — until Victor had had time to associate each object with the drawing above it, then he rose, gathered up the objects and handed them to Victor to put up again. For a long while, Victor merely looked at him, his eyes soft and composed, then he got to his feet and put the objects back in their proper order. He was able to do this repeatedly, without hesitation, but when Itard changed the sequence of the drawings, Victor continued to place the objects in their original order — he was relying on his spatial memory alone. Itard corrected him, over and over, and just as often, no matter how Itard arranged the drawings or the objects, Victor placed the things where they had originally been, always relying on memory. “All right,” Itard said to himself, “I will complicate the task.” Soon there were a dozen articles, then fifteen, eighteen, twenty, so many that Victor could no longer remember the order in which they had been arrayed. Finally, after weeks of drills, of firmness, of pleading, of insistence, Itard was gratified — or no, he was delighted, ecstatic — to see his pupil making careful comparison of drawing and object and ultimately mastering the task at hand.