I took this opportunity to get her out of the bath, wrap her in a big bathrobe, dry her and tuck her into bed. Then, while I was taking off my wet clothes and getting into a dressing gown, I got a glimpse of that famous duplicity, that Reynard cunning which I had so far known only from Aesop and other authors. As I suddenly turned around I saw that she was not asleep at all. On the contrary, she was looking at me with those narrow, overbrilliant eyes. A moment later she seemed once more sunk in a deep slumber. I concluded that she was waiting for the first opportunity to give me the slip.
It was at this moment that certain reactions, certain inexplicable feelings, began to stir in my mind. What more could I hope for than that she’d escape? She wanted to recover her freedom, her wild life? Well, do so, my girl! Go back to your forest! No more problems. Good riddance. That’s what should have been the normal effect produced on a reasonable man by this cunning, this transparent plan to regain her freedom. Yet that wasn’t what I was thinking, not at all. I told myself, on the contrary, that if she escaped I would never forgive myself. For if she tried to resume her wild life in the forest, I told myself, she would either die of cold or hunger, or would sooner or later be discovered by the gamekeepers, taken to the village and inevitably sent to some asylum where she would end her life in a strait jacket. I was the only witness to her birth as well as to her true nature; the only one, in consequence, able to understand her. This, then, I went on, dictates your duty, which is to keep her here, even against her will, to shelter her for as long as necessary.
But even as I experienced those exalted sentiments, something within me took a perverse pleasure in mocking them. Your duty? What duty? An asylum or this room, it’s all the same to her. For her this is a prison, for you a pack of trouble. And who appointed you her guardian? Your real duty, my good fellow, is to report her presence to the authorities. It is up to them to disentangle the affair, to decide what is to be done with such a creature. But I was looking down the while at her pointed face, so touching and tender in its feigned sleep, and I was thinking: Don’t go away… I was thinking it with a stupidly anxious, stupidly heavy heart, and I was forced to admit to myself that what I really dreaded was quite simply losing her again-that it was no longer just for her sake in fact that I feared her escape…
Amazed and quite upset by these surprising thoughts, I carefully closed the doors and windows and went downstairs to cook my dinner. While I was stewing some mushrooms, I tried to look at the situation in a sensible way. I was about to keep imprisoned a woman of whom nobody knew or could know anything. She was naked, I had not even a rag with which to clothe her and how could I ask the farmer’s wife for a dress or a shift without attracting undue attention? And how long could I keep this compromising presence secret? I received few visitors, but all the same, in the long run… And the day when, by chance-and the chance was bound to come-she was discovered locked away here, I would most certainly risk being prosecuted. Furthermore, as I would be unable to say anything about her or where she came from, there would be an additional charge of contempt of court-goodness knows what else. Madness. Sheer madness. Come now, go upstairs, wake her up and open the doors for her, you idiot!
But I went on stirring the sauce and knew that I would do nothing of the sort. What I need, I told myself, is someone to whom I can tell the whole story, a friendly soul to share my secret. All right, but who? Rack my brain as I might, I could not think of a confidant. Everyone would think I was crazy-just as they had thought of David Garnett’s poor hero.
Meanwhile my dinner was ready. I swallowed it absent-mindedly, hastily and without pleasure (yet I adore mushrooms). Then it entered my mind that she might be hungry. I found a young capon in the larder and took it upstairs with me. When I opened the door she jumped out of bed and dashed in a panic all around the room, trying to climb up the walls, the curtains. I sat down in an armchair and kept perfectly still, to let her terror abate. She had huddled in a corner of the room, between the wall and the small bow-fronted chest of drawers. She watched me with her bright eyes, not missing my smallest movement. Thus I in turn could examine her at leisure. Did she look like a fox? Yes, if one knew it. The finely chiseled nose, the very high Mongoloid cheekbones, the triangular cheeks and the pointed chin-all subtly recalled her origin. Her hair too, a beautiful red with a hint of tawny here and there. It wasn’t very long, just covering her shoulders. She had an adorable figure, but though her shapely curves revealed that she was a woman, she was so very dainty and frail that one would otherwise have taken her for a very young girl. Her small feet, so long and slender, were positively touching: the ankles were so delicate that one feared they might break like glass. The hands, even slimmer and longer than the feet, never stopped fidgeting, moving this way and that with a perpetual quivering of the fingers.
When I thought the moment had come, I tossed the chicken on the floor in such a way as to make it roll toward her. She immediately started up, her fingers clutching the wall, ready to flee, and remained for a few seconds in this catlike attitude, her eyes turned now on me, now on the bird. Then she relaxed again. The fowl was a step away. She stared at it for a long time, motionless as a stone, with an almost drowsy expression. At last, with a single pounce, she snatched it and carried it off under the bed.
For almost half an hour I heard the crunch of bones. Then, silence. I could not see her, but I guessed that her sharp, slit eyes were watching my feet, observing their movements. I arose, removed my dressing gown and went to bed. I left the light on for a long while, waiting, hoping perhaps, for something to happen. But nothing did: not a move, not a breath. I might just as well have been all alone in my room. At last sleep overcame me and I switched off the lamp.
Chapter 3
WHAT wakened me the next morning was not the noise, but the smell. The reader will have to excuse these disagreeable details. They will help him to understand what difficulties, what unpleasantness I had to cope with at first. What I had interned under my bed was, after all, just a fox, whose human form merely made matters more difficult. I had not foreseen this sort of inconvenience (and would it have made any difference if I had?) and when the odor apprised me of it, I leaped out of bed. At one bound, too, the creature emerged on the opposite side, jumped on a chair, from there onto the chest of drawers, then to the top of a cupboard whence she watched me with her catlike stare. I moved the bed to lift the carpet which I proceeded to shake out of the window, before fetching a basin to give it a thorough wash. As I was doing this, I was stirred by curious feelings. Naturally, as I stood there mopping the rug, I felt a certain disgust. But I was rather touched, too, somehow. I would have to educate her as one trains a puppy, a kitten-as one teaches a baby to be “clean.” With the added complication, however, that she was an adult and that I would first have to gain her confidence. And the prospect of this future confidence melted my heart.
Now I am not sure mine was a very noble emotion. Mothers know well the kind of exaltation one derives from having a human being all to oneself, from keeping it for one’s pleasure, like an object, like a thing. But they feel this for a baby, I was feeling it for a grown woman.