Wonder (11 page)

A
S A CHILD
, A
UGUSTUS
E
DWARD
H
OUGH
L
OVE
was not so much precocious as different. And to tell the truth, just a bit unsettling. He said his first word at around the same age as his brothers and sisters, but while the older siblings had mumbled the traditional “papa” and “mama,” Edward trumpeted a resounding and perfectly clear “fourteen.” That was how the story, not totally false but not rigorously true either, that he’d learned to count before he could speak entered the family mythology, a legend his mother kept alive with pride tempered with perplexity.

During the months following that first and founding exclamation, he refused to express himself in any way but by numbers, assigning to each of them one or more meanings known, alas, only to himself.

These seemed to vary according to where the numbers fit in the complicated design the child worked out the way others built towers with their wooden blocks. When finally he agreed to enrich his speech with some
nouns and verbs, he continued to show a preference for numbers, pronouncing them slowly, rolling them around in his mouth with delight.

He went through several enigmatic phases when he applied himself to creating series that would allow him to organize the world to his own satisfaction. Going out to the garden to make sure he wasn’t doing anything he shouldn’t, the nurse would find him sitting quietly in the grass in his short pants, legs stretched out on either side of a pile of loot made up of bird feathers, pebbles, lumps of coal, an old bolt, a piece of shoelace, and what looked very much like a dried-up rabbit’s turd, objects with nothing in common except that they were all as black as ink. Another day, he got it in his head to pick up everything round that he could find – including coins his father had left on his chest of drawers and the hoop from his sister’s crinoline, scissored out of its envelope of cloth, feats that sentenced him to bed without supper, thus depriving him of the opportunity to add plate, bowl, and saucer to his collection.

Unlike so many little boys, Edward didn’t tear open the objects to see how they were made. Rather he would press his ear against anything that interested him, as if he were trying to locate its breathing or its intimate palpitation.

His mother, seeing him motionless like that for the first time, his head against the belly of a rag doll, thought to herself that maybe he had the soul of a physician – after all, that is not an occupation to be sniffed at. When she found him a week later in the same absorbed posture but this time with his temple pressed against a big stone at the back of the garden, she didn’t know what to think.

“Edward, what are you doing there?” she asked impatiently.

“Listening,” he replied in a low voice, as if to avoid startling a bird.

“Listening to what?”

“To what’s underneath.”

She went on, determined to get to the bottom of it. “Underneath what?”

He replied, as if it were the most normal thing in the world: “Underneath the rock.”

She did not let go, presenting in a tone of cold observation: “Edward, what’s underneath the rock is earth.”

Now it was the little boy’s turn to ask: “And under that?”

“Under what?” Her impatience was growing in spite of herself.

“Under the earth,” the child reminded her.

She wondered how the devil her son could have become so obstinate. “Under the earth, young man, there is more earth.”

Then, to cut short this discussion that was obviously going nowhere and from which she had no hope of emerging victorious or even of learning more about this small individual to whom she had given birth, she added sharply: “And earth is dirty. Look at yourself. Now hurry and change or you’ll be late for tea.”

No doubt it was best, all things considered, that little Augustus Edward did not dream of becoming a disciple of Asclepius, for he was so awkward he was often a threat to himself and others. During the first ten years of his life he:

There was a time when he counted everything: the number of times he ran the comb through his crow-black hair every morning; the number of peas on his plate; the number of flagstones in the main foyer (this operation
presented an extra challenge, for those that ran along the walls had been cut and he had to reconcile the fractions); the number of footsteps between the house and the duck pond and between pond and chapel. Then he tackled some more difficult matters, endeavouring to estimate with complex formulas how many hairs there were on the dog and pieces of gravel on the paths in the garden, eventually spending weeks with his nose to the sky trying to calculate the quantity of stars in the firmament. Around the same time he began to suffer from migraines.

Even once he’d given up his mania for counting everything to grapple with problems both more wide-ranging and more difficult, at moments of nervous tension, worry, or doubt he kept up the habit of reciting to himself long series of figures that made sense only to him, and that he seemed to invent even as he calculated, chanting:

0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233 …

1 4 1 5 9 2 6 5 3 5 8 9 7 9 3 …

… or in a case of extreme distress:

6, 28, 496, 8128, 33 550 336, 8 589 869 056, 137 438 691 328 …

The entire Love family got its first strong inkling of its youngest son’s remarkable skill at dinner one evening in
April, 1894, when he was twelve years old. On the menu there was mutton, a meat Edward hated because he thought it tasted like wool and he stuffed his portion in his pockets so that later he could give it to the dog.

Theresa Love shared the latest news about the household with her husband, the colonel. He listened abstractedly, having no interest in a visit by a fabric merchant – she had acquired more than ten metres of Italian silk which would be used to make new drapes for the small study – and even less in discussions with the gardener on the location of various roses – a bush supposed to produce red flowers having been covered instead with yellow buds the summer before, so that this spring an entire bed had to be reorganized. She was now at matters of household management, which were still submitted to the head of the household so he could ratify his wife’s decisions. He did so methodically, only too happy that she was taking charge of it all, although he nevertheless insisted on having the last word.

“Mary asked for Saturday off to attend the wedding of one of her sisters in Yorkshire,” said Mrs. Love. “I told her, ‘You poor dear, I don’t know how many sisters you have, but if they all decide to marry one after another, each in a more out-of-the-way place than the one before, you’d be well advised to buckle your suitcase for good.’ Just think, she’s been with us barely eighteen months and already
she’s been away twice for some such nonsense. I hope she realizes she can’t take advantage of our kindness.”

“Twenty-two,” Edward said in a low voice.

“What’s he muttering?” roared the colonel, determined to make a man of this slender and withdrawn son. “Speak up, boy.”

“It’s not eighteen months that Mary’s been with us, it’s twenty-two.”

“That doesn’t matter,” continued Theresa who didn’t intend to get flustered over such a minor detail.

The colonel, who valued precision in all matters, congratulated Edward, surprising everyone because children were not supposed to join in adults’ conversation.

“Well done, son! Twenty-two months. No matter what the circumstances, accuracy is essential.”

“Actually,” Edward went on, slightly encouraged, “she joined our staff exactly twenty one months, three weeks, and five days ago, but I thought it best to round it out.”

Around the table, everyone had stopped chewing. The mutton was congealing on their plates. Wanting to dispel the uneasiness he’d provoked, Edward added affably:

“It was a Monday.”

Once the initial surprise was over, the colonel was favourably impressed by such an unusual talent. He sent for calendars of the preceding years, then the twenty-two volumes of the nineteenth edition of the
Encyclopaædia
Britannica
thus far available and questioned his last-born son until the lad’s mouth was dry, his head spinning. Not once, however, did the child make a mistake. Without hesitation he could state on what day the Battle of Agincourt had started, on what days Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth I had died, on what day Christopher Columbus had first set foot on American soil, and even, after a very brief pause, on what day Our Lord was born (Saturday), though that was impossible to confirm.

When they finally got up from the table, the sun had long since disappeared behind the hills. Edward realized then that he had not been able to say the one thing that had struck him as important, the very reason he’d spoken up: both of Mary’s absences were not for her sisters’ weddings but for their funerals.

The Love boys’ private tutor was a thin, melancholy, feverish young man who spent his days writing fiery missives to the woman who had left him for a young man who was not just rich but – supreme outrage – horribly handsome. For the most part then, Edward and his brothers were left to themselves, their teacher content to set before them volumes from the manor’s library or his own collection, paper, and pens, and to give them some
perfunctory instructions. After that, with his bulging forehead resting on his fine and trembling fingers, he began to search for an adjective to rhyme with
cruel
.