Elephant Man (16 page)

His life improved to the extent that he was not actually ill-treated. The man did not wish to damage an expensive investment. But the investment proved worthless. The exhibit was closed down in town after town. The “owner” neglected and starved the Elephant Man, and after a year he sold him to a circus.

He was kept a virtual prisoner, housed like an animal, shut off from the world, which he now saw only through a peephole in a showman’s cart. A dozen times a day he would have to expose his deformities before a gaping crowd, who would scream and run
from him or stare and poke his growths. When he was not needed for exhibition he would be permitted the only happiness possible to him—to creep away into the darkness and hide. As he crouched there he would hear the laughter of children outside, enjoying the “fun of the fair.”

It was in the circus that Merrick had acquired his strange disguise. The black cloak had originally belonged to “The Great Marvelloso,” a magician who used its capacious folds to hide a good deal of clumsy fumbling around with flags and paper flowers. He had discarded it in favor of another, of more glorious aspect, and his wife, a motherly soul who pitied the Elephant Man from a distance although she was unable to look him in the face, had got to work. She ripped out the red satin lining, set buttons in the front, and cut a slit in the left side, for the arm. Then she shortened the cloak by a foot, and with the spare material she fashioned a hat wide enough to take a huge head. From somewhere she conjured up the grey flannel to make a mask that she sewed all round the brim of the hat, with a hole just big enough for seeing through.

Then she went across to the wagon where Merrick was kept, and presented him with his new attire. She managed to explain it all to him without looking at him, and when he tried to thank her she fled.

To Merrick the cloak brought a grain of comfort, not only because it hid him but because it had a capacious pocket that could take his Bible. Somehow he had managed to preserve it all these years, chiefly because no one else thought it valuable enough to steal. But he lived in terror of losing it, and now he had a place where he could keep it in some kind of safety. When the light was good enough and he was sure he was alone he would take it out and read again and again the words of promise and hope that made his existence tolerable, and that saved him from going mad.

He lived three years in the circus. His “owner” was
repeatedly forbidden to exhibit him, but always the circus moved off in time to prevent the order being enforced. After three years the man decided to strike out on his own. He left the circus, taking Merrick with him, but almost immediately they fell on bad times. He was closed down in one city, then another. He began to look for ways to rid himself of the Elephant Man, at a profit. On the outskirts of London he met a man called Bytes, and they struck a bargain.

When Merrick reached this point he stopped and looked timidly at Treves, uncertain how to take his silence.

Treves was standing at the window, his back to Merrick. He was fighting down a raging anger such as he had never known. Much of the story was as he had imagined, except that it was a thousand times worse, but somewhere in the telling of it he had discarded his professional detachment like a too-heavy coat, and now felt the intensity of Merrick’s suffering without any defense.

He was honest enough to admit that part of his anger was directed against himself. Dress it up as he could with worthy phrases about the necessity for medical discovery, the fact remained that he too had used Merrick for his own purposes, and this was very bitter to him now.

“Do you want to know anymore?” Merrick asked.

Treves turned at last. He knew his face must show how shaken he had been.

“Not today, John. I don’t think either of us could stand it.”

When he had made sure Merrick was comfortable for the night he went straight to Carr-Gomm. The Chairman took one look at him and poured him a large whisky. Then he sat in sympathetic silence while Treves spewed out the savage shame he felt for his own species.

“With the exception of Donner he seems to have brought out the worst instincts of just about everyone
he’s ever met. He’s had a life that a fiend might have invented in hell. He’s had no childhood, no happiness—nothing to look back on but horror, and nothing to look forward to but more years as a spectacle, and the workhouse at the end of it.

“And yet—the incredible part is—” Treves fumbled for words to express his astonishment at what he had discovered, while Carr-Gomm waited patiently. “—the incredible part is that he has not become brutalized by this life. As a doctor I’ve seen too much pain and suffering to subscribe to the myth that it ennobles people. Mostly it makes men self-centered and callous to the needs of others. Yet in John Merrick I’ve met the one man in ten million who could react differently. He doesn’t hate his fellow men, who have done so much to deserve his hatred, nor has he degenerated into a despairing melancholic.

“He’s remained sensitive, intelligent—and lovable. His nature is gentle and affectionate. He’s without cynicism or resentment, and in all he’s told me I’ve never heard him utter an unkind word about anyone.”

“Remarkable,” said Carr-Gomm in a quiet voice. “And yet I can believe it. The little I saw of him bears it out. What do you think about this story of the mother?”

“I can’t believe it. Whoever his real mother was she obviously dumped him at the first conceivable opportunity. To protect himself from the pain of rejection he’s invented a fantasy figure in her place. Maybe once, a long time ago, some woman was kind to him briefly, and he’s convinced himself that that was his mother. He’s clung to the memory because he had to cling to something to make his life bearable, and over the years he’s endowed her with every virtue. She was beautiful, she was motherly, she loved him—I’m sure he really believes all this, but as far as I’m concerned she’s an invention of his own imagination.”

Carr-Gomm sighed. “I’m afraid you must be right. Well, Treves—” His manner became abruptly businesslike.
“—we have to marshall our forces. The Committee is meeting in two days’ time, and it
must
be persuaded to allow Mr. Merrick to remain. Obviously he cannot stay in the Isolation Ward, so I propose to put him into those two little rooms that look out onto Bedstead Square, and which I understand are empty at the moment.”

“Bedstead Square—of course. The ideal place.”

The two rooms in question stood on the ground floor at the back of the hospital, looking out onto a large courtyard which had acquired the unofficial title Bedstead Square because it was here that the iron beds used by the hospital were taken for painting or repair. The rooms were seldom used, being inconveniently placed at a distance from the main wards. But their very seclusion would be an advantage now.

“They’d need some work to make them ready,” Treves mused. “The smaller one will have to be fitted up as a bathroom because John needs a bath at least once a day.”

“Then perhaps you will be good enough to give the necessary orders. If there is any question you can say you have my authority. And I should like you to be ready to attend the Committee meeting with all the facts at your command, and some of these.” Carr-Gomm indicated the file of photographs that lay open on his desk. “As far as I can see the only obstacle might be Broadneck. He has enormous influence over the others … not an easy man to impress.” This was Carr-Gomm’s diplomatic way of expressing his opinion that Broadneck’s mind had long ago scarred over with ignorance and bigotry. “In any case, if worse does come to worse we still have the British and Royal Homes to fall back on, don’t we?”

When Treves did not answer Carr-Gomm gave him a sharp look.

“Don’t we?”

“No, we don’t,” said Treves. “Their committees have informed me that they’re unwilling to take Mr.
Merrick, even if they were supplied with funds. They don’t want him.”

“Well,” said the Chairman in an unperturbed voice, “it’s up to us then, isn’t it? Don’t worry, Treves. We’ll make them see it our way.” He lifted one of the pictures. “They’ve eyes, haven’t they?”

Treves knew that both he and the Chairman had miscalculated about the Committee meeting even before it started. He knew it when he encountered Carr-Gomm with Ebeneezer Broadneck in the corridor, and Broadneck said briskly, “Ah Treves, I wanted to talk to you. Strange rumors going about—patient of yours I understand. Taking up the Isolation Ward when there’s nothing wrong with him. Can’t have that now. Still, I expect you can explain yourself.”

The idea that he was to “explain himself,” as though he were in disgrace, was so totally unexpected to Treves that for a moment he was too stunned even to be angry. By the time his temper flared Carr-Gomm had managed to catch his eye with a silent warning. He also read in the Chairman’s face a reflection of his own realization that this was a disaster. Instead of being able to introduce the subject of the Elephant Man in his own way Carr-Gomm had had it thrust on him by Broadneck in a way that put him on the defensive.

“Mr. Treves will be coming to address the meeting later, Broadneck,” the Chairman put in hastily. “We have a lot of other business to get through first. Thank you, Mr. Treves, don’t let us detain you from your patients.”

He steered Broadneck ruthlessly away, keeping him from further observations by the simple expedient of not ceasing to talk himself. Treves could hear Carr-Gomm’s voice going on and on right down the corridor and into the Committee Room. He gave an appreciative
grin at these effective tactics, but all the same he was worried. Carr-Gomm had previously identified Broadneck as the most likely cause of bother; now it looked as if the problem was to be more serious than either of them had suspected.

Broadneck fancied himself as a leader among men. It galled him that he was not Chairman of the Committee, and that his place on it was no higher than that of any other ordinary member. The owner of a string of abattoirs across the country, he was constantly searching for ways in which his considerable wealth could buy him social as well as material advancement. He yearned to be a public man, and his seat on the Committee was intended to be but a step in that direction.

“A status seeker,” Carr-Gomm had once called him, with all the aristocratic contempt of one whose own status seeking had been conducted in more genteel circumstances.

Broadneck’s immediate aim was to get himself noticed, and to this end he became a troublemaker. No Committee meeting was allowed to pass by peacefully. The most trivial change of policy would have him on his feet yapping about “the good of the hospital.” And although most of his fellow Committee members were antagonized by behavior that made meetings last long past the time that a gentleman would have preferred to depart for his club, their dislike had not made them immune to his influence.

It became plain that afternoon that his influence had already been at work. As he had said, Broadneck had heard rumors, and on the basis of those rumors had got to work on the other members, mostly with success. The Committeemen were good, decent Englishmen. They would none of them have kicked a dog or refused a coin to a beggar that stood in their path. But like most decent Englishmen they were nervous of what they did not know. When, after three hours, Treves finally entered the Committee Room, in response to a summons from Carr-Gomm, he knew at
once, with a sinking heart, that their hostility had been marshaled in advance against Merrick.

Carr-Gomm addressed the meeting strongly, hoping to recover the initiative from Broadneck. He gave a brief account of Merrick’s introduction into the hospital and the piteous nature of his deformities. Broadneck leaned back with a weary air.

“Mr. Chairman,” he said, “the rules of this hospital are quite specific. No incurables are to be admitted. That is a wise injunction. If we were to take in every person with some deformity or other …”

“Mr. Merrick’s misfortune is far from being ‘some deformity or other,’ ” Carr-Gomm interrupted. The Chairman was normally the most courteous of men, but he was determined not to allow Broadneck to take over the meeting. “Mr. Treves—?”

Treves, who was standing behind Carr-Gomm’s chair at the head of the table, knew what was expected of him, and promptly fished out the photographs with which he had armed himself for this meeting. Two showed Merrick full-length, the other three were various views of his head. Treves had carefully chosen the most explicitly horrible pictures. As he passed them round the table there was a shocked silence which at first gave him hope, but it was soon replaced by a rumble, not of pity but of disgust.

Before anyone could recover, Treves, who had returned to the head of the table, began to address them in a tense voice.

“Gentlemen, the London Hospital must not abandon this poor creature. There is no other place for him. Both the Royal Hospital and the British Home have turned him down, even if sufficient funds for his care were provided. The workhouse is certainly out of the question. The patient has an overwhelming fear of returning to the horrors of his past. His appearance,” Treves pointed to the photograph that lay on the table, “is so disturbing that all shrink from him. He cannot, in justice to others, be put in a general ward of the hospital. The police rightly prevent his
being exhibited, and he is mobbed in the streets wherever he goes. What is to be done with him?”

He turned his hands toward them in a slight gesture of appeal. Before it could take effect Broadneck had cleared his throat and waded into the fray. His piggy eyes gleamed with dislike. His voice too had something of a pig’s squeal about it.

“I, for one, am sick and tired of this competitive freak-hunting by these overly ambitious young doctors, trying to make names for themselves.” He fixed his eyes on Treves to leave no doubt of his meaning. Treves gave him back stare for stare, but he was conscious of a feeling of unease in his conscience. “To parade them about in front of the Pathological Society is one thing. Mr. Treves, but to waste this Committee’s valuable time with requests for shelter for these abominations of nature is quite another.”