Wild Child (37 page)

“The Savage,” Sicard spat, and he was so worked up he could barely get the words out.

Itard got up from his desk in alarm and took up the water pitcher and the glass beside it. “Abbé,” he said, already pouring, “can I get you a glass of water? Would you—?”

Sicard was in the room now, swiping one open palm across the other, his robe in a riot of motion. “That animal. That—God help me, but he’s incurable. That idiot. That self-polluter, that, that—”

Itard gave him a stricken look. “What’s he done?”

“What’s he done? He’s exposed himself in the flesh before the assembled female inmates and Sister Jean-Baptiste as well. And, and manipulated himself like one of the idiots in the Bicetre—which is where he belongs. Either there or prison.” He glared at Itard. His breathing—the ratcheting of the air through his nostrils—was thunderous. His eyes looked as if they were about to dissolve.

“But we can’t just abandon him.”

“I will not allow him to corrupt this institution, to pollute the innocent minds of these children—our wards, doctor, our wards.

And worse—what if he acts on his impulses? What then?”

From outside the open window came the cries of the children at their games, the sound of a ball thumped and bodies colliding.

Laughter. Shouts. Children at play, that was all it was. Only the sound of children at play, and yet it depressed him. Victor didn’t play. Victor had never played. And now he was a child no longer.

Itard had tried everything, removing meat from the boy’s diet, as well as any other foods that might contribute to unnatural excitation, giving him long baths again in the hope of calming him, and when he was most worked up, bleeding him till the tension flagged. Only the bleeding seemed to work, and then only for a few hours at a time. He saw Victor’s face suddenly, rising before him in his consciousness, saw the pale descending slash of it in the corner of his room as he sat rocking over his feet and jerking at himself, saw the sheen of the eyes that pulled the whole world back into that primeval pit from which the first civilized man had crawled an eon ago. “He’s not like that,” he said lamely.

“He’s incurable. Ineducable. He must be sent away.”

There was a solution that had occurred to Itard, but it was something he couldn’t discuss with anyone, certainly not the abbé or Madame Guérin. If Victor were able to express himself carnally, to experience the release every healthy male needs if he’s not to become mad, then maybe there was hope yet, because this regression of his, this inability to focus and absorb his lessons—to speak like a human being—was perhaps somehow tied to his natural needs. Itard thought of hiring a prostitute. For months he’d wrestled with the notion, but finally he saw that he couldn’t do it—it was one thing to rescue a child from savagery, hold him up to examination as a specimen, train his senses and his mind, and it was quite another to play God. No man had that right.

“We can’t do that,” he insisted. “He’s a ward of the state. He’s our responsibility. We took him from the woods and civilized him and we can’t just throw up our hands and send him back—”

“Civilized him?” Sicard had spread his feet apart as if he expected to crouch down and grapple over the issue. He’d refused a seat, refused the water. He wanted one thing and one thing only.

“You have no more to say about it.”

“What about the Minister of the Interior? My report to him?”

“Your report will say that you’ve failed.” His expression softened.

“But not for lack of trying. I appreciate the energy you’ve put into this, we all do—but I told you this years ago and I’ll tell you now: give it up. He’s an idiot. He’s filthy. An animal. He deserves only to be locked up.” He snatched up the glass of water as if to examine its clarity, then set it down again. “And more: he should be castrated.”

“Castrated?”

“Like a dog. Or a bull.”

“And should we put a ring through his nose too?”

The abbé was silent a long while. The breeze picked up and rustled the curtains. A shaft of sunlight, golden as butter, struck the floor at his feet. Finally—and he had to raise his voice to be heard over the cries of the children—he cleared his throat and said, “I don’t see why not. Truly, I don’t.”

The report, the final report Itard prepared for the Minister of the Interior, was a trial, a kind of crucifixion of the soul that made him want to cry out every time the quill touched the page. It was an admission that he’d wasted five years of his life—and of Victor’s—in assaying the impossible, and that for all his brashness and confidence, all his repeated assurances to the contrary, he had failed.

Ultimately, he had come to understand that the delimiting factors of Victor’s abandonment were insurmountable—that he was, as Sicard insisted, ineducable. In the interest of science and in small measure to justify his own efforts, Itard listed these factors for the official record: “(1) Because he cannot hear the speech of others and learn to speak himself, Victor’s education is and will remain incomplete; (2) His ‘intellectual’ progress will never match that of children normally brought up in society; (3) His emotional development is blocked by profound egotism and by the impossibility of channeling his awakening sexual feeling toward any satisfactory goals.”

As he wrote, the pen seemed to drag across the page as if it were made of lead, every moment of hope he’d experienced in his association with Victor—the boy’s rapid progress in those first few months, his first word, his naming, the leap he’d made in distinguishing written words—rising up before him and then vaporizing in despair. It took him several days and pot after pot of coffee before he began to understand that even in his failure there had been at least a muted success. Victor shouldn’t be compared to other children, he argued, but only to himself—he was no more sentient than a plant when he’d first come out of the woods, differing only from the vegetative state in that he could move and vocalize. He was then the Savage of Aveyron, an animal-man, and now he was Victor, a young man who despite his limitations had learned to make himself useful to society, or at least the society of his guardians, Monsieur and Madame Guérin, for whom he was not only able but eager to perform household tasks such as cutting wood for the fire and setting the table for meals, and in the course of his education he had developed some degree of moral sensibility.

Some degree. He had no sense of shame, but then neither did Adam and Eve before the serpent came into the Garden, and how could he be blamed for that? Perhaps the most wrenching lessons Itard had felt compelled to give him were the ones designed to make him stretch beyond himself, to understand that other people had needs and emotions too, to feel pity and its corollary, compassion.

Early on, when Victor was used to stealing and hoarding food in his room, Itard had tried to teach him a version of the Golden Rule in the most direct way he could think of—each time Victor filched some choice morsel from Itard’s plate or old Monsieur Guérins, Itard would wait his opportunity and swipe something back from Victor, even going so far as to slip into his room in his absence and remove his hoard of potatoes, apples and half-gnawed crusts of bread. Victor had reacted violently at first. The minute he turned his attention to his plate and saw that his pommes frites or broad beans were missing—that they were now on his teacher’s plate—he threw a tantrum, rolling on the floor and crying out in rage and pain.

Madame Guérin made a face. Itard held firm. Over time, Victor eventually reformed—he no longer took food from others’ plates or misappropriated articles he coveted, a glittering shoe buckle or the translucent ball of glass Itard used as a paperweight—but the doctor could never be sure if it was because he’d developed a rudimentary sense of justice or, simply, that he feared reprisal in the way of the common criminal.

That was what led the doctor, sometime during the third year of the boy’s education, to the most difficult lesson of all. It was on a day when they’d drilled with shapes for hours and Victor had been particularly tractable and looking forward to the usual blandishments and rewards Itard customarily gave him at the end of a trying session. The sun was sinking in the sky. Beyond the windows, the clamor of the deaf-mutes in the courtyard rose toward the release of dinnertime. The scent of stewing meat hung on the air.

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.

In the years to come, Victor rarely left the house or the small square of the yard, hemmed in as it was by the walls of the surrounding buildings. Madame Guérin became too frail eventually to take him for his walks in the park and so he stood at the window instead for hours at a time or lay in the yard watching the clouds unfurl overhead. He took no pleasure in eating and yet he ate as if he were starved still, still roaming La Bassine with his stomach shrunken in disuse. The food thickened him around the middle and in the haunches. His face took on weight till he was nearly unrecognizable. No one knew. No one cared. He’d once been the sensation of Paris, but now he was forgotten, and even his name—Victor—was forgotten too. Madame Guérin no longer called him by name, no longer spoke at all except to her daughters, who rarely visited, wrapped up as they were in their own lives and passions. And the citizens of Paris, if they remembered him in passing, as they would remember the news of another generation or a tale told round the fire late at night, referred to him only as the Savage.

One morning Sultan vanished as if he’d never existed and before long there was another cat asleep in the chair or in Madame’s lap as she sat and knitted or stared wearily into the pages of her Bible.

Victor barely noticed. The cat was a thing of muscle and hidden organs. It stalked grasshoppers against the wall in the sun and ate from a dish in the kitchen, and with a long, languid thrust of its tongue it would probe itself all over, even to the slit beneath its tail, but mostly it lay inert, sleeping its life away. It was nothing to him.

The walls, the ceiling, the glimpse of the distant trees and the sky overhead and all the power of life erupting from the earth at his feet: this was nothing. Not anymore.

He was forty years old when he died.