Read Wild Boy for Free Online Page B

oil lamps that hung from ropes strung from one side of the street to the other.
    The carriage would stop in front of a house glowing with candle- and lantern light.
    Inside, the table would be set with the wild boy’s favorite dishes. He would make sounds to the hostess, asking her for what he wanted. If she pretended not to hear him, he’d put his plate beside the dish and stare at it longingly, then rap on his plate with a fork. And if
that
didn’t work, he could wait no longer.
Whoosh!
He’d empty the dish onto his plate with a spoon or even his hand.
    The wild boy always knew when they were going out to eat, because Dr. Itard would appear in the late afternoon wearing his hat and carrying a clean, folded shirt. The boy would change into it as fast as he could, then follow Itard out the door.
    Itard had a name for his pupil now. He called him Victor.
    Victor
. It had a nice ring to it. A
victor
— a winner — is someone who triumphs over all obstacles.
    Dr. Itard wrote that he chose it for the wild boy’s name because in French, the name Victor has an “oh” sound in it — it’s pronounced “veek-tOHr”—and Dr. Itard had noticed that the wild boy seemed to turn his head when he heard people say the sound “oh.”
    But Dr. Itard may have had another reason, too, for choosing
Victor
— the hope that someday, the wild boy would live up to his new name.

E VERY MORNING , Victor would have breakfast with Madame Guérin and her husband, Monsieur Guérin. Every day, he would set the table with three places. Often, she’d send him down to the Institute’s kitchen to bring back food for their meals.
    He’d trot down the hall. Then, when he got to the marble staircase leading to the first floor, where the kitchen was, he’d listen carefully. If he heard echoing footsteps and the laughter of other students, he would stay back until he was sure to avoid them.
    Victor liked the neatness and order of the Guérins’ apartment. When something was left out of its proper place, he’d put it back.
    Sometimes he went down the hall to Dr. Itard’s study and sat on the sofa.
    From time to time, curious visitors came to the apartment. But now if Victor decided they’d stayed too long, he would present them with their hats, gloves, and walking canes, push them gently out the door, and shut it firmly behind them.
    Each day, he seemed to grow more like other people. He dressed neatly, in a gentleman’s waistcoat like Dr. Itard’s. A person who didn’t know Victor might even mistake him for “an almost ordinary child who cannot speak,” Itard wrote proudly.
    In the evenings, after Victor had gone to bed, Dr. Itard would sometimes stop by to say good night. Victor would sit up for a hug, then pull him close, until Dr. Itard was sitting next to him on the bed. The boy would take Dr. Itard’s hand and put it on his own head — his eyes, his forehead, his hair — and let it rest there for a long time.
    Sometimes Victor would pat the knees of Dr. Itard’s velvet pants, rubbing the fuzz this way and that and then, sometimes, putting his lips two or three times to Itard’s velvet knees.
    At times like these, Dr. Itard was not a teacher, but as close to a father as he knew how to be. “People may say what they like,” Dr. Itard wrote, “but I will confess that I lend myself without ceremony to all this childish play.”
    The wild boy’s new family also included Madame Guérin’s husband, Monsieur Guérin, but very little is known about him.
    And there was still one more member, an even more mysterious figure: a girl named Julie. She was eleven or twelve years old, just about Victor’s age.
    She was Madame Guérin’s daughter.
    For some reason no one knows, she didn’t live in the apartment with Monsieur and Madame Guérin. But on Sundays, she came to visit. And in time, Madame Guérin began to notice that when Julie came, the boy made a sound that no one had ever taught him.
    “Lee!” he’d say happily. “Lee!