Persistent rumours of the existence of a wild creature proved well founded when it was captured by a local villager in Songi yesterday. The bestial figure is presumed responsible for a series of break-ins and the death of a dog.
The creature apparently approximates the guise of a young girl, aged 9 or 10 years old, has Negroid black skin and was dressed in rags. Curiously, she is said to have the palms of a little girl and yet the enlarged fingers and thumbs of a Simian.
Apparently she startled onlookers with her habit of lapping water like a cat, but offended the weaker sex with her predilection for raw meat.
Viscount d'Epinoy, recently wed, has returned home to the village in haste.
* * * * * * The blackness leached into the stout copper tub and Vivienne knew in an instant that this creature was nothing more or less than a small girl. The dimpled skin on the fleshy upper arm and breast were indeed milk white. Still, she would say nothing. She had recognised from a young age that learned men were not to be reckoned with and that the word of a maid was a hollow sound to them.
She stared into the wild, untamed eyes of the girl they had called Memmie. What mysteries did those pools of blackness hide? * * * * * *
Those first few months whirled by in a mass of confusion for Memmie. She yearned for the certainty of her wild home. Every stolen glance of the world beyond walls reinforced her belief that she belonged there. She caught glimpses of herself too, and that image chilled her. In that one brief moment she recalled a small deer who had wandered onto her path two seasons ago. In the second it took to dispatch the chance meal, she saw and smelt its pathetic sense of fear and vulnerability. Though her senses were dimmed she saw and smelt her own fear.
In the wild she was free of such distractions. To live was to eat; to die was to be eaten.
If she could somehow communicate to these curious figures that seemed to babble on endlessly she would ask the questions forced upon her through the long hours of forced idleness.
Why do they keep me here? Why do they stare? Why do they serve the pale, skinny man who seems ill equipped to lead such a large pack? Why do those who hunt and prepare serve the other's food? She had seen mothers feed their chicks, but why such maternal care for men so old?
* * * * * *
17th February 1732 Your Worship,
The noble reclamation of the wild girl Memmie has begun. The path to spiritual salvation lays in the elimination of her bestial diet. How can we expect to tame the soul when she feasts on carrion?
Although the subsequent loss of the patient's teeth and nail's is disconcerting it will, in the fullness of time, be part of her path to God.
All of us here at St Maur's Hospital hold in great esteem, Dr Poulet, who is to bleed the child next week. The natural increase of French blood in her veins will, it is hoped, allow her to fully express her true human condition and accept her part in the creator's grand scheme.
Yours Sincerely,
Dr L.M. Bonchance
Head of St Maur's
* * * * * * The scales had fallen from her eyes. The deaf could hear and the dumb could speak. She had embraced the one true God and saw now what a pathetic creature she was. She was tormented by her ugliness. It was clear that some unspeakable crime had caused her fall. The sins of her family, no doubt, had corrupted her soul. She saw her path clearly. She would hide her still savage face away. Penance would lead to her salvation. She knew what she must do.
AMDG
13th March 1738 My Dear Memmie,
It is my sad burden to inform you that your desire to join us here at St. Chalons cannot be fulfilled. I do not doubt that Our Lord dwells within you but I fear that many of our sisters are haunted by your former-self. They find those . You, no doubt, have seen their insinuating glances and when I see you revile from them your shame betrays you. I wish you well my dear child and trust that you will feel more tender mercy from Our Lord than we sinners could ever offer you.
Yours in Christ,
Mother Marie-Magdalene Delacour (SMM)
* * * * * * Memmie gently parted the musty blinds and stared out, past the throngs of people who had mostly long forgotten the freak who lived there. Her apartment on the Rue St Antoine, like her, turned its back on the old church and faced instead towards the river where she now gazed.
She shuffled to the door to occasionally suffer the indignity of peddling cheap books on "The Savage Girl" to leering strangers. Her darting eyes had slowed, she no longer ran like the wind, climbed like a squirrel or sang like a nightingale. She searched her face for the trace of wildness some still saw in her. Burnett was dead. Madame Hecquet had gone. She was on her own now.
Splinters of her first life still remained. Memories of an alien land, long white houses, a language long forgotten, the frantic swim for survival from the sinking slave ship. Fleeting but familiar faces from her past.
More vivid images of her life in wild. The warm, thick sluicing blood of freshly killed rabbit. The bitter meat of the fox. Days spent clambering in silence as wolf packs roamed. But, for all that knowledge, while in the primal struggle for survival, she had never actually thought. Plans, yes, strategies for hunting, yes, but never one real consideration of who she really was, where she really belonged. She had read once the words of a man called Descartes. His cry was "I think, therefore I am." Where did that leave her? She knew she was now a child of God. She knew she was out of the wild. She knew what it meant to be human; but in the silence of the night the call of the wild still beckoned her and offered its embrace.
* * * * *
The Speech of Burnett to the Royal Scientific Society
Burnett cleared his throat before commencing this, the most disconcerting part of his speech. He tugged at his tailcoat, gently checked the grey powdered wig and evened his white cuffs and collar. The educated, self- assured scientist was suddenly nervous, self-conscious. His piercing, sad eyes glanced at those who watched him.
"What then to make of this savage girl. I have already outlined three prior conditions of humanity. Peter the Wild Boy- silent, alone and uncivilised. The orang-outang, still mute but possessing the social attributes and vocal mechanisms of speech, and then- Marie-Angelique Memmie Le Blanc, social and language-using yet separated from full humanity by the smallest discrepancy in nature. Memmie Le Blanc represents a time past. Her state is a window to what we essentially were, the world from which we have grown. Like the orang-outang she is a kind of mirror for us. She can mimic us and has done so remarkably, much more so than an orang-outang. She drinks like a lady. A master mimic she has done what we all have done in our infancy "
The audience shifted uneasily in their seats. Coughing sounds bounced around the hall intermittently. Burnett had drawn a straight line from monkey to man, the same heresy espoused by some of the lesser scientists of the age. Burnett sensed it too. He could see them whisper and confer. "What is he saying!" Some scoffed, "Am I just a mimic too?" Burnett stared at the old man from Oxford. He had been prepared for this.
"Gentlemen, Gentlemen- do not be so alarmed! I do not talk of monkeys as our distant forefathers! Memmie, and others like her belong to that savage and animalistic place from which we have emerged. We stand here today a people, for whatever reason, who have rejected the depraved life of the savage. Our quest is to understand what has made us take this is only through the study of man in its most primitive form, that we can solve this mystery that has haunted us, the great minds of our times, and our colleagues Locke, Hume and Berkeley. Their failure, unlike the triumph that comes with a gift like Memmie, is that they sought enlightenment from the study of the pinnacle of human achievement. There is much to be learnt from studying a prize bull if you are a farmer. Yet you will find yourself marvelling at its grandeur. is only when one studies the sick, malformed excuse for a bull that one can see the gross impediment that need to be overcome. We need to look backwards before we can move forward."
Burnett had now reached fever pitch. He was the new man of the scientific age and the audience burst into thunderous applause. Each new round of adulation washed over him. As he glanced down at his papers the sketch of Memmie stared back, snarling in a way he had never noticed before. In an instant the sickening cause of his confusion was clear. He had betrayed her. He did not dare reveal to the listeners what he knew, what he had always known, Memmie was as human as he could ever could be.
The applause mocked him, a hollow sound of flesh on flesh that would shadow his every thought on earth.
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