Unknown - The Genius

But she does not beat him too often. Most of the time she is tender and he loves her like a mother although he does not have a mother and Mrs.

Greene will not let him call her that. He doesn’t understand where he came from, but he doesn’t worry, he has everything he needs, food and Mrs. Greene and paper.

They walk all around the property. Mrs. Greene teaches him the names of the flowers and he studies their petals up close. There are bees but he never gets stung. He stares at a flower until he sees it in his mind perfect, then he goes back to the cottage and draws. Mrs. Greene calls him an odd duck but she smiles when she says it. Victor, you’re an odd duck. Look at that daffodil. Look at that dandelion. Foxglove, chicory, and clover, they all have different shapes. You’re an odd duck, you are, but you are quick with a pencil.

He is six. He sees other children moving along the road on funny things and she says Those are bicycles. They move so fast! He wants one. Mrs. Greene says No, you cannot leave the property. He replies that he will not leave the property, but please oh please give me a bicycle.

No.

Victor hates her. To get back at her he waits until she has fallen asleep in the afternoon, which she often does, and then he pulls a stool over to the wall where the key hangs on a ribbon. He unlocks the front door and the front gate and walks all the way into town. He has been to town before but always hanging tightly to her hand. Before the town seemed exciting but now it is loud. A car honks at him. A dog barks at him. He feels dizzy and to escape he goes into a store. The storekeeper looks at him like he is a big bug. It starts to rain and he cannot leave. He stays in the store for hours. He gets hungry. He wants something to eat but he has no money so he takes the first thing he sees, some rock sugar. He puts it in his pocket and runs out. The storekeeper chases him. Victor runs as fast as he can. The storekeeper slips in a puddle and falls and when Victor looks back the man is blotched with mud brown-and-white like a cow. But he is no longer chasing. He yells still and still Victor runs. By the time he gets to the front gate his feet hurt and fire burns in his chest.

Mrs. Greene is not in her room. Victor climbs on the stool and puts the key back and goes to his room and lies on his bed, wheezing and touching the sugar rock in his pocket. He is not hungry anymore. He doesn’t like sweets, he should have taken something he liked more. He doesn’t like to eat very much at all, and so he is very skinny and not too tall, he knows this because when the man with the mirror and the tongue stick came to visit he told Mrs. Greene that the boy needed to eat more, his growth was already stunted. And she replied that didn’t he think she had tried. The man was a doctor. He left. Mrs. Greene said he would return.

Victor takes the sugar rock out of his pocket. He likes the way it feels, sharp and hard and delicate. He plays with it until it begins to melt in his hands. He puts it on the table and observes the way it bends the sunlight. He takes a piece of paper and traces the jagged shape. He starts to shade its different faces and then Mrs. Greene bursts in with her face red like a chicken’s. She says she knows what he has been up to, she has been half mad looking for him. Where did he think he was going, what did he think he was doing? Never again oh you wicked boy, you must learn, you are a fool. She smashes the sugar rock on the floor. Then she puts him over her knee and paddles him until he wails. You wicked boy. She takes his half-completed sketch and tears it to pieces.

But most of the time she is kind. She takes him to church. Victor likes the windows. They show the Annunciation and the Sermon and the Resurrection. They shine with blue and purple fire. Victor likes to imagine them when he lies in bed at night. He likes their colors but more so their shapes. Mrs. Greene teaches him to pray and he often lies awake at night and whispers the rosary.

Another man comes to visit. He comes in a long black car. He wears a big felt hat like Victor has never seen. Hello, Victor. The man knows his name. He has a moustache. Victor wants a moustache. He thinks of what it would be like to have a friendly pet on his face all the time. He would never be alone the way he is. He is often alone but does not often feel lonely. Sometimes he feels very lonely, though. Why is that?

The man with the moustache comes often. Sometimes they are walking the property and when they come home the man is waiting for them, reading the newspaper. When Victor is lucky the man forgets to take the newspaper when he leaves. Victor tears it into strips and saves them for future use.

He likes the man’s visits. They are brief and they always end with a gift. The man brings Victor a model ship and a big glove and a ball and a spinning top. Victor puts on the glove and it is like his hand has gotten bigger. He doesn’t know what to do with it until Mrs. Greene tells him that you use it to catch the ball. But who will throw the ball to him? Mrs. Greene says she will but she never does. The glove goes unused. The ship he likes to draw. The top he can make spin for a long time.

When the man with the moustache comes he spends a great deal of time looking at different parts of the house, poking his head into rooms. He opens and closes doors. When they squeak he makes a sour face. He wipes his finger along the tops of the tables and rubs his fingertips together. Then he asks Victor questions. What is three multiplied by five? Write your name for me, Victor. If Victor gets an answer right the man gives him a nickel. If he gets it wrong, or if he does not know, the man frowns, the fuzzy creature on his upper lip standing up in disgust. Victor aims to get as many right as possible, but as he gets older the questions become more complicated. He begins to dread the man’s visits. He feels ashamed. He turns seven and the man says We must get him some lessons.

A few days later another man comes to the house. His name is Mr. Thornton and he is the tutor. He carries a stack of books, which to Victor’s amazement and joy he leaves behind. Victor has never seen so much paper in his life, and that night he sets to it like a fiend, scribbling in the margins, making patterns, stars, faces. When the tutor comes back the next morning and discovers that not only has Victor failed to do the assignment but that he has ruined three brand-new textbooks, he paddles Victor much harder than Mrs. Greene ever would. Victor cries out but Mrs. Greene is in town buying groceries. The man beats Victor’s bottom hard enough to make him bleed.

Lessons are not all bad. The man teaches him how to weigh things on a scale; how to look at plants under a microscope. The shapes are beautiful snowflakes. They are called cells. Victor hopes the man will leave the microscope for him to use, but alas he packs it back into its leather case and takes it away when he leaves. Victor draws the cells from memory. He does not dare show the results to the tutor, who has already shown his distaste for Victor’s drawings.

One time while Mrs. Greene is in town the tutor tells Victor to stand up and take off his trousers. Victor screams because he does not want to be paddled again. He has done nothing wrong! He screams and the tutor grabs him and puts his hand across Victor’s mouth until Victor cannot breathe. Victor tries to bite the tutor’s fingers but the tutor slaps him flat. The tutor unbuckles Victor’s belt and pulls his trousers down. Victor prepares himself for pain but the tutor touches his legs and Victor’s bottom and then he puts his hand on Victor’s privates. Then the tutor tells him to get dressed and they study some grammar. Sometimes this happens.

The next time the doctor comes he tells Victor to take off his trousers and Victor screams. He bites the doctor on the elbow and runs around the room until Mrs. Greene grabs his arms and the doctor grabs his legs and they tie him to the chair with a garden hose.