The Genius (38 page)

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.

What in the world has gotten into him.

I don’t know.

Dear Lord look at him.

The doctor points a light in Victor’s eyes. Does he do this a great deal?

No.

Hmm. Hmm. Off goes the light. Well, it’s very strange.

They go into the next room. Victor can still hear them.

Does he have fits?

No.

Anything else?

He speaks to himself. He has imaginary friends.

That’s perfectly natural for children.

A boy his age? He speaks more to them than to me. Something is out of joint.

Hardly surprising.

He isn’t like his mother.

No. But feeblemindedness takes many forms.

It’s not natural to keep him here.

It isn’t our decision.

It can’t go on like this. How long?

I don’t know.

I won’t stay here forever.

Victor wriggles his hands against the hose.

Mercy says Mrs. Greene. Mercy.

I’ll talk to Mr. Muller.

Please do.

I’ll tell him that something needs to be done.

Where has he been? I’ve heard nothing in months.

He’s abroad. He went to London. They’re building a wharf.

Dear Lord. Is there nobody in the world besides you and I?

At the moment, no.

It isn’t right.

No.

Oh.

Mrs. Greene.

Oh. Oh.

I am at your disposal.

Oh.

The hose starts to loosen. Victor pulls his arms free. Then he unties his feet. He creeps to the door and sees Mrs. Greene and the doctor standing close together. The doctor’s hands are inside her blouse. She stands away and together they go into another room. They are gone a long time. When Mrs. Greene comes back for Victor she does not seem surprised to find him at his desk, drawing. She gives him a mug of hot chocolate and kisses him on the head. She smells like bathwater.

Soon after that he sees Mrs. Greene’s body. He crouches at the keyhole while she takes a bath. The steam makes it hard to see but when she steps from the bathtub her bosoms shake, they are large and white. He makes a noise and she hears him and she puts on her towel. She opens the door as he is running away. You’re a dirty boy. He runs to his room and hides under the bed. She comes in wearing a dress that she put on inside out. Her hair drips, it sprays as she pulls him from under the bed. He scrapes at the floor but she is stronger. Dirty dirty boy. She does not paddle him, though. She sets him on the edge of the bed and scolds him in a loud voice. You must never. That is not what a good boy does. You must be a good boy not a bad boy.

He wants to be a good boy.

Time passes. The man with the moustache comes to visit. He looks unhappy.

It’s simply intolerable sir says Mrs. Greene.

The man paces the room, pulling on his ears. I understand.

Victor is amazed. He likes to pull on his ears, too. Mrs. Greene does not like him to do that, she slaps his hands and tells him to stop being such an odd duck. Yet here is the man with the moustache, so tall and majestic in his big hat, pulling on his ears just like Victor does. It makes Victor feel proud.

He needs to be in school sir.

I’m aware of that. I’ve asked Dr. Fetchett to find a more suitable place for him. It’s not as simple as sending him to Priestly. The man with the moustache stops to look at one of Victor’s drawings, which Mrs. Greene has stuck on the wall. This is quite good.

I can’t take credit for that sir.

You mean—really.

Yes sir.

All of them? My goodness. I had no idea. I always assumed they were yours.

No sir.

He’s quite talented. He should have paints.

Yes sir.

Let’s get him some, then.

Yes sir.

I’ll be back soon. I’ll talk to Fetchett, we’ll figure out a way.

Yes sir.

And the lessons? Any progress?

No sir. He still will not do his work. He tears it up.

The man sighs. You must discipline him.

Don’t you think I’ve tried.

Mind your tone.

I am sorry sir. I’m at the end of my tether.

I understand. Here is something for you.

Thank you sir.

And buy the boy some paints, please.

Yes sir.

Be a good boy, Victor.

He never sees the man again.

Time passes. He is eleven. Mrs. Greene makes a birthday cake for him and when she brings it to the table she starts to cry. I cannot. I simply cannot.

Victor wants to help her. He offers her some of his cake.

Thank you dear. That’s very kind of you.

A new car comes. Victor stands at the window and watches as it rolls up. It is gray. A man in a blue jacket jumps out and runs to the back door and opens it for a woman with a big swirl of hair and a hat high and brown like a toadstool. Mrs. Greene runs to answer the door and the woman in the hat walks past her. She stands in the middle of the room and looks down her nose at everything. Then she looks at Victor.

He is filthy.

He has been playing in the yard mam.

Don’t answer me back. The boy’s filthy and that is all there is to say. Well do you have anything to say for yourself ?

The woman is talking to him. He says nothing.

He isn’t the talkative sort mam.

You shut up. The woman in the hat moves around the room, picking up plates and tossing them down roughly. And this place is a pigsty, too.

I’m sorry mam. Usually I do the washing in the afternoon, after—

I don’t care. Clean him up. He’s leaving.

Mam?

You are not to be faulted for my husband’s poor decisions, but you must recognize that he is gone and the decisions are now mine and mine alone. Do you understand me?

Yes mam.

Now clean him up, I can’t bear to look at him.

Mrs. Greene draws him a bath. He does not want to take a bath; he already took a bath the day before. He struggles and she begs him. Please Victor. She sounds like she might cry and he allows her to take off his clothes and put him in the tub.

The woman in the hat says The car will be here in an hour.

Where are you sending him mam.

That’s no concern of yours.

With all due respect… I’m sorry mam.

You may stay here as long as you’d like.

I wouldn’t like to at all mam.

I don’t blame you. My husband was a damned fool. Well don’t you think that this is an idiotic plan?