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As his children grew older, Ursus left Déa in Gwynplaine’s care while he went out to forage and barter and explore. Sunday mornings Ursus would leave the Green Box, patting Homo’s head on his way out and saying his goodbyes. No one came by to see the Laughing Boy on Sunday mornings, and they had no performances until late afternoon. These were some of Gwynplaine’s favorite times, when he and Déa would talk and tell stories. She always wanted to hear about the baby in the snow, but he loved to tell stories that were warm and distant. Homo curled up by the door and snored softly, blocking out the winter wind with his thick coat. The furnace heated the wagon evenly and soon they were all as cozy and warm as the sleeping wolf. After breakfast, the children took their simple pleasures. Gwynplaine combed Déa’s hair. Déa had lovely hair, finely colored like bronze and light as air.
On performance days past, Ursus had taught Gwynplaine how to braid and array the girl’s hair, and did his best to teach her to do some of it herself. In truth, Déa could do the combing herself, but it soothed Gwynplaine to do it and it soothed her to have it done. He sat her on his lap and she pulled into his touch. It was natural, magnetic. It was something only Déa would do. He combed until the knots were gone and the comb went through her hair like water.
“Why did you stop, Gwynplaine?” Déa asked.
“I don’t want to overdo it,” he reasoned. “You look so pretty. I’d rather let it be.”
“Pretty,” she murmured, “tell me what that means?”
“Beautiful, Déa, you know what that means. You’re beautiful.” In fact, Déa did understand beauty. Beauty was the smell of the peppermint that Ursus extracted oils from, the warmth of the sun on her cheeks. Beauty was stopping in the bitter cold at the sound of an infant’s cry. “Pretty” she didn’t know.
“Nice to look at,” he said simply. Those who can see rarely give thought to such things. To explain beauty to a girl who was blind all her life was to explain an abstraction. It would be just as hard to conjure a sixth sense and explain it to the sighted, who have lived their whole life without it. Gwynplaine wasn’t sure he had the facilities to evoke a new sense, but he would try.
“What makes someone nice to look at?” Déa asked. “Are you nice to look at?” Gwynplaine blushed. By now he had told her, the world had told her, that he was quite ugly. She had walked with him several times and heard women gasp, felt crowds widen their berths. She had heard the nasty words people threw at him. In that way, in the factual way, she knew he was ugly. What did ugliness mean to her? Cruelness, baseness. She knew he wasn’t cruel.
“No,” he said. Déa pondered, then lay her head in his lap, sleepy and sweet.
“You’re nice to be with,” Déa said, holding her little hand out for his, “I’m glad I don’t have to look at you, or maybe I wouldn’t know.”
If there had been any malice in her voice, it would have wounded Gwynplaine. Even the innocence with which she spoke made him shudder. He didn’t want her to think about it. He didn’t want her to realize.
“Still,” she said, “I don’t understand what it means to be pretty. Can you show me?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can papa show me?” she asked, beginning to trace the contours of Gwynplaine’s hand in her own. It was an absent minded habit of hers, one of Gwynplaine’s favorites. He understood how she could like his hands.
Gwynplaine tried to think like Ursus. A thought struck him, and quickly, though careful not to jostle Déa, he leaped to his feet.
“I think I can try.” Gwynplaine unlatched the chest of costumes and puppets that Ursus kept and began to rummage through it, making careful selections. He returned to Déa’s side with a kerchief of silk and an old tarp of canvas.
“Here,” he said, placing one in each of her hands, “tell me what you feel.”
“Some scraps from Papa’s chest.”
“Sure. But tell me about them. What are they like? What does it make you think to hold them?”
Déa held up the kerchief in her right hand and ran it through her fingers. She closed her eyes in a moment of bliss and held the kerchief tighter.
“It’s silk. It’s very light...and soft. So soft.”
“It’s nice to hold,” Gwynplaine prompted.
“Very nice. It must be one of the finest things in all the Green Box.”
“And the other?”
“It’s rough. It’s...” she weighed it in her left hand with thought, “coarse, heavy.”
“Some people, some things, are like that kerchief and some like the canvas. Looking at you is like this. Better than this. That’s what pretty means,” he said, closing his hand over the silk kerchief in hers.
“What are you like, Gwynplaine?”
He didn’t want to tell her. He had told her many times, but she couldn’t understand. This would be different.
“Do you remember last winter when you stepped on that glass in the street? Something like that.”
“It hurts then? To look at something ugly?” Gwynplaine allowed himself to drift for a moment, catching a glimpse of his face in the little mirror hung on the wall.
Unbearably , he thought.
“No,” he said, “not like stepping on glass, you just feel it inside, I guess.”
“I’m sorry it hurts you like that,” Déa reached for Gwynplaine’s face and with a gentle intuition and wiped a tear from his cheek. She pressed her head against his chest and wrapped an arm around him, and he held her tightly. She could hear his heart beating in his chest, steady and persistent. She felt the warmth of his embrace, the softness of his well-worn shirt and the rise and fall of his breathing, and she smiled. It felt pretty.