Elephant Man (30 page)

His new friends did much to make Merrick’s life slightly more bearable, but there was one difference between himself and them that no bridge could cross. They were their own masters. Not one of them had been bought and sold as he had. They had the normal use of their limbs and could defend themselves against anyone who tried to take advantage of them. Even George and Bert, physically handicapped as
they were by possessing only half a body each, were in possession of two shrewd brains that had largely protected them from exploitation except on their own terms. Many of the freaks were their own managers. They paid the circus a percentage of their earnings, but otherwise they were free. Those who were managed by others had struck bargains out of which they did very well. There was not one who, like Merrick, was treated as a possession. Even Marcus could give as good as he got.

Marcus was a dwarf who continually went about in a plumed hat, trailing a little wooden ark on wheels, drawn by a string. Merrick often wondered about that ark, as it seemed to add nothing to Marcus’s grotesqueness, which consisted only in being small and very ugly. Marcus never spoke of his ark, but he would not be without it.

He spoke, in fact, very little to anybody. To Merrick he had never addressed so much as a word. But he was constantly looking at him, frowning. Sometimes he came over to watch Bytes put the Elephant Man on exhibition. Merrick first noticed him one day when the show was drenched in a thunderstorm. It seemed to make no difference to the crowd’s appetite for horrors, for they huddled round the freak wagons almost as much as ever.

Bytes would deliver his patter just as he had always done, regardless of the fact that most of his audience probably could not understand a word. The back of the wagon was covered in the painted canvas poster, and before this Bytes would stand, gabbling through his words, and waving Merrick’s silver-topped walking cane. He had had time, while hiding in Merrick’s room, to look round him and pocket most of the expensive gifts, including the gold cigarette case and the ring. They had all been sold by now, but Bytes kept the cane, both for its usefulness and because he liked its elegance. He felt it gave him an “air.”

At the appropriate moment Tony would haul up the painted canvas and reveal Merrick standing in
the back of the van, his head larger now, his few hairs turning gray. The crowd would gasp and shriek as crowds had always gasped and shrieked, and Bytes would swing into the full performance.

“Turn round—hurry up—”

Merrick turned slowly; he found movement more difficult now. Pain seemed to cover his body like an extra skin, and the increased weight of his head was hard to manage.

“Dance,” Bytes commanded.

Merrick began a series of awkward lifting movements, the closest he could get to a dance. Without his walking stick he could hardly manage to keep his balance, but he obeyed blindly, blanking out his mind from all consciousness save the oft-repeated prayer that death might come soon. Somewhere on the fringe of the crowd he was aware of Marcus, frowning, with a savage look in his eyes.

Merrick faltered suddenly and came to a stop, wheezing. But Bytes was not satisfied. This shortened performance would bring meager takings. So he hopped nimbly into the wagon and managed to jab Merrick with the stick, catching him in the back out of sight of the audience.

“Dance!”
he rapped.

Merrick could not contain his groan of pain. As he began again making the awkward movements the audience began to throw coins. Some of them hit him, but most of them landed on the floor, where Tony busily scooped them up into a hat. Marcus had vanished.

After the afternoon performance came the meal, potatoes and slops, doubly revolting after the better food he had become used to. Bytes stood over him in the back of the wagon, to make sure he left none of the muck. The sharp deterioration in Merrick’s condition worried and angered him. It would be just like the spiteful so-and-so to starve himself to death just when he was paying dividends.

“Eat, my treasure,” he enjoined. “You always liked it before.”

Merrick looked wearily at the bowl but made no move to touch it.

“Eat,” said Bytes angrily. “I said eat.”

Merrick closed his eyes. The quiet movement gave Bytes the feeling of having been simply put aside, and enraged him.

“Eat, damn you!”
he yelled. He knelt and grabbed the bowl, jabbing it at Merrick as if he would have liked to ram it down his throat.

“I said
eat
.”

But Merrick did not move, and Bytes, oblivious to everything but his own temper, hurled the contents of the bowl at him. Merrick lapsed into a coughing fit, and Bytes abandoned the attempt for the day.

When morning came Merrick found himself violently hungry, hungry enough to try the revolting potatoes. But after a few mouthfuls nausea overcame him again and despite a hefty kick from Bytes he could eat no more.

He grew weaker. When Bytes tried to vary their performance by making him stand on a wooden stool in the center of the crowd he could barely keep his balance. Bytes walked round him, jabbing his exhibit now and then with the stick, while the crowd pressed in for a closer view, and Merrick turned round and round obediently, sometimes seeing Marcus’s frowning face on the edge of the circle, sometimes not.

When it became obvious that Merrick had not the strength to keep upright on the stool Bytes abandoned this method and reverted to using the back of the wagon. But even these performances were becoming too much for him. The simple movement of turning round involved slow, agonizingly painful movements. Dancing became impossible. His attempts at rhythmic movements faltered into cumbersome lunges that left the audience disappointed and hostile.

Bytes was becoming desperate. His takings had fallen off and it was this creature’s fault. One day he
threw caution to the winds and brought out the stool again, thrusting it up onto the wagon beside Merrick.

“Up! Up!” he rapped.

Already exhausted, wheezing and coughing painfully, the Elephant Man made futile efforts to climb onto the stool, but he could not manage even that little ascent. The audience shouted its disapproval, booing and hissing both the Elephant Man and his exhibitor. Bytes swore and banged with his stick on the wagon floor. Again Merrick tried to mount, but again he failed.

Frantic to save his failing show, Bytes climbed into the wagon and grasped Merrick by the arm, forcing him up onto the stool. As soon as he let go, Merrick tottered dangerously, his head swaying from side to side. Bytes rapped the stick.

“Give the call of the elephant,” he commanded.

Merrick hesitated and Bytes banged the stick again. The audience quietened down, willing to be entertained, but the few quavering sounds that Merrick could manage soon had them grumbling their disappointment again.

“Louder,” demanded Bytes.

Merrick tried again but there was no improvement. A dozen jeering voices came from the audience. A dozen different languages exhorted him to make the noise of an elephant. He swayed on the stool and tried to save himself by stepping down, but it was too late. He had no strength left to do anything but collapse in a heap on the wagon floor. The crowd, no longer scared of this piteous helpless mass, burst into fury, screaming their disappointment and pelting the wagon with filthy objects.

Bytes, at first humiliated, became swiftly angry.

“Get up, you miserable bastard,” he screamed.

But the heap on the ground only moaned and wheezed, and seemed not to have heard him.

“I said, get up!”

He jabbed Merrick a few times with the silver-tipped walking cane. The jeers of the crowd grew
louder, and to them was joined a clap of thunder from overhead. Bytes spat his disgust.

“I’m beating a dead horse,” he said, half to himself.

He made nothing on that performances, and the very small profits from the two performances earlier that day were quickly expended on a bottle of cheap wine. He consumed it that night sitting over a small, damp campfire and brooding on his wrongs. He felt put upon. Everything conspired against him.

The wine was making him quickly drunk. He was more used to gin, which he could drink in huge quantities with little ill-effect. Wine, being unfamiliar, got to him quickly. From the wagon behind him he could hear Tony urging Merrick to eat, almost pleading with him. Bytes growled. To his mind Tony was too soft with that creature. Once or twice recently he had seemed almost sorry for him.

Finally Bytes rose to his feet and stumbled clumsily over to the back of the wagon. He pulled aside the canvas.

“Another bleeding heart,” he mumbled.

Tony was crouched over Merrick, holding the plate out to him. The Elephant Man, to Bytes’ fury, looked little better than a corpse. Bytes pointed a menacing finger at him.

“You sly bastard. You’re doing this to spite me, aren’t you?”

“Aw Bytes,” said Tony, “he’s sick …”

“He’s doing it to spite me, I tell you. And it’s got to stop.”

“He’s sick, Bytes.” More and more often now Tony dropped the “Mr.” A rising contempt for Bytes was rapidly robbing him of his fear. “He’s going to die.”

“If he does, it’s his own fault,” said Bytes furiously. “But I’m not burying that swollen bag of flesh.”

His arm shot into the wagon, grasped Merrick’s arm, and hauled him out, whimpering, onto the grass.

“What are you going to do?” said Tony, scrambling out after them.

“I’ll show you! I’ll show you.”

He dragged Merrick across to a small monkey wagon. The monkeys began to scream at his approach, and screamed louder when the door was opened and Merrick thrust viciously inside.

“Don’t,” yelled Tony, in horror.

“Shut up,” Bytes told him.

He slammed the door and latched it, then wheeled back and started off for his own wagon. Tony tried to grab him.

“Bytes, please …” In another moment he was sprawling from a blow from the back of Bytes’ hand. He lay on the ground, watching Bytes stagger back to the wagon and fumble about inside. After some muffled sounds Merrick’s food bowl came flying out followed by the stick, cloak and hood.

“Out,” Bytes’ voice screamed from inside the wagon.

Tony picked himself up and turned to look at Merrick, who was cowering into a corner, trying to keep away from the monkeys who shrieked at him. But the wagon was too small for him to get far away, and they were soon swarming over him like ants. Tony shuddered, and made his way back to the camp fire. As he neared it he could hear Bytes muttering curses from inside the wagon. He wondered if Bytes would come out again, and stood, hesitant, ready to vanish if Bytes appeared. But nothing happened. The cursing sank to a rumble, and after a moment Tony sat by the camp fire and pulled a blanket round him.

He felt uneasy with the darkness, uneasy with what he could see was happening to the Elephant Man, and uneasy about the eyes he knew were on him. They were the eyes of the freaks, who always seemed to be close when this kind of thing happened (and it happened more and more often these days). Tony looked up suddenly, and caught sight of Marcus standing nearby. But Marcus was not looking at himself, he was relieved to notice. He was staring at the monkey wagon, and there was a frown on his face.

Merrick had pressed himself as far as possible into
the corner of the cage, and for the moment the tumult seemed to have died down. But wherever he looked there were wizened monkey faces, eyes glinting at him out of the darkness, watching him, waiting…

Suddenly one of the monkeys darted forward with a scream, nipped him sharply on the arm, and darted quickly away. Merrick yelped with pain and struggled to move further back, but there was nowhere to go. By now the other monkeys had got the idea. Following the lead of the brave one, they began to move warily toward Merrick, screeching all the while in a threatening way. Another one shot forward and clung to his shoulder, biting and scratching in furious glee at having a victim to attack, and what was better, a victim that seemed incapable of fighting back. Merrick cried out, but his voice seemed to vanish into the darkness.

His heart was thundering violently in his breast, pumping so hard that he could feel the pain of it. He thought it would fail him—he hoped it would, for then he might die here and now and it would all be over. As he crouched there, cowering, he remembered incongruously, all the bright dreams that had come to him when he lived in the hospital. Dreams of a different life that had been held out to him, only to be snatched away. He wondered if it would have been better never to have known that life than to have known it and lost it, but he could not bring himself to believe that, not even now. Better anything than not to have known Treves, the friend he loved with his whole heart, and whom he would never see again.

A whole contingent of monkeys fell on him, all restraint removed now by their recognition of his terror. They jumped onto him with savage screams, biting him on the head, neck, and shoulders. He flailed his arms uselessly but they came on and on without a break, until at last he bent his head and covered it with his arms as best he could, and sobbed out his despair and terror into the stony night.

Exhausted at last, the monkeys fell back and sat
staring at him again. Merrick never moved, fearful that the slightest shift from him would bring on a renewed attack. He sat with his head resting on his knees, his arms covering it. Gradually the monkeys fell silent, but he kept his ears strained for their chatterings. There was nothing though, and as the camp slept the silence seemed to descend on him like a blanket.

He became aware at last that it was being broken by another sound, the sound of whispering. Slowly, nervously, he looked up, and found himself being regarded by an audience. Almost every freak in the circus had congregated outside his cage and was staring at him with sympathetic eyes. In the front stood Marcus.

Top, the female pinhead, reached into the cage and took Merrick’s hand, which she patted gently. Top was a German who could speak no English, and on her visits to Merrick she had always held his hand and gone away again. She took it now between her two hands and gave it a soft squeeze. Her eyes were full of tears.