Elephant Man (4 page)

He felt a sense of revulsion at the thought of doing business with such a creature, at giving Bytes the right to address him as though the two of them were on an equal level. But for good or ill, it was done now. He had saddled himself with Bytes for as long as he needed the Elephant Man. There was nothing to do but put up with the situation, keep Bytes at arm’s length, and do his best to persuade the man to treat Merrick with more humanity.

A small voice at the back of his mind whispered that it wasn’t going to be that easy. But impatiently
he forced the voice to be silent. There was no point in looking for trouble—especially now, when his ambitions were so nearly within his grasp. He would deal with the problems when they arose.

As he went out into the cool evening air, he was telling himself that they might never arise.

Mrs. Mothershead
was
the London Hospital. An inflexible woman in her early fifties with a hard, powerful face, she had been the Hospital’s Head Matron for fifteen years, which was longer in a position of authority than could be claimed by anyone else—including Mr. Carr-Gomm, the head of the Hospital Administrative Committee. As such she commanded respect. Carr-Gomm himself addressed her with careful courtesy. Young doctors avoided her. Established doctors said “Please.”

Mr. Mothershead had always been a shadowy figure. One doctor, who had been a medical student fifteen years ago, and remained on the staff ever since, maintained stoutly that the husband had no existence, and that Miss Mothershead had slipped gradually into Mrs. about the time of her elevation to the highest nursing post. This was widely accepted as accurate and natural. Somehow authority sat more easily on a married woman, even if the title was only one of courtesy.

Of her background only one thing was known for certain, and that was that she was one of the new breed of nurses that had emerged in the sixties under the influence of Miss Nightingale. Prior to that nurses had been drunks, prostitutes, women of whom so little moral standing was expected that it was actually preferred for them to have had an illegitimate child. Above all they received no training. To be female and squalid was considered enough.

Miss Nightingale altered all that. After returning
from her great work in the Crimea, she set up the very first English training school for nurses, attached to St. Thomas’s Hospital. In July 1860 it took in its first batch of students, one of whom was Mrs. (or possibly Miss) Mothershead.

The school was designed to do two things, to provide future nurses with a whole year’s training and to establish nursing as a profession for decent women. No student was taken in without a certificate of good conduct, and if her standard of personal behavior did not remain impeccably high she was thrown out. The students lived in a nurses home, their outings were scrutinized, and reports about their characters and actions flew back and forth at speed.

It was a revolution, and like all revolutions it produced its fanatics—such as Mrs. Mothershead, who had been told so often in her student days that the whole future of nursing depended on her and women like her that she had never been able to forget it; a woman who still made daily entries in her diary, just as she had done in those long ago days at St. Thomas’s, knowing that at the end of the month what she had written would be studied by Miss Nightingale herself in a frantic attempt to get into her students’ minds and prize out any thoughts that might threaten the success of the experiment.

Mrs. Mothershead watched her own students with the same suspicious eyes that had once been cast on her, demanded that they live like nuns and nurse like saints, froze them with her contempt when they displeased her, but warmed them with her generous praise when she felt they deserved it. She was capable of huge kindness, but she was even more capable of ignoring human emotions in the service of “her” profession.

These days ordinary nursing duties took up less and less of her time. Mostly her life was spent teaching or sitting at the long desk at the end of the Receiving Room. From her position of advantage in this bare, grey-painted hall she made entries, issued certificates,
checked details. The hardest part of this job was shutting out the disturbing noise of frightened people as they entered the hospital and crowded onto the long rows of benches in the hall. Children wailed, men with injuries moaned, and amid it all Mrs. Mothershead tried to get her paperwork right and wished the noise would go away.

On this particular morning she had succeeded in reducing the racket to background so successfully that its sudden cessation affected her like a thunderclap. She looked up to see what had caused the silence and saw two figures walking down the length of the room to her desk.

One was a man of middle age dressed in outdoor clothes and heavily muffled against the chilly day. Mrs. Mothershead recognized him as a cabman who had several times brought patients to the hospital. It was what was walking behind him that drew her astonished eyes.

She could not tell whether it was male or female, as the left hand was the only part visible. This and the fact that it was walking upright were all that identified it as human. The figure was enveloped in a black cloak so long that it swept the floor. In the left side a slit had been cut, and the hand that protruded from this clutched a crude walking stick, with which the creature helped itself to make slow, painful progress.

On its head was a very large black hat with a wide brim, and sewn round the edge of this brim was a grey flannel curtain that dropped down into the collar of the cloak. A small hole had been cut into this about where the left eye would be. As the creature approached it carrried with it the most appalling smell. All Mrs. Mothershead’s years of training had to rise up and do battle to prevent her from retreating.

The cabman reached her first and handed her a card that bore the name of Treves.

“I’m looking for Mr. Frederick Treves, please, ma’am.”

Mrs. Mothershead stared at the approaching swathed
figure, then toward the cabman, her eyebrows raised in a demand for an explanation. But he only shrugged.

“Very well,” she said. “If you’ll wait here, I’ll send for him.”

From further down the room a young male voice called, “Cor, what a stink!” and other voices were immediately raised in agreement and protest. The figure in the black cloak gave no sign of having heard.

To Mrs. Mothershead’s relief Treves himself appeared at that moment. He looked a little startled, though whether it was his visitor or his visitor’s weird clothes that surprised him she couldn’t tell.

“Mr. Treves,” said Mrs. Mothershead quickly, “I was just going to send for you, sir. This man wants to see you.” She handed him the card the cabman had given her.

“Thank you, Mrs. Mothershead. I was expecting him.” Treves looked at the cabman. “Is there no one else with you?”

“No, sir. Just this—er—gentleman.” The man waved a vague, anxious hand in the direction of the creature, who stood silent and immobile. Only one eye could be seen through the slit on the left side of his face, and that was so deep in shadow that the effect was of a blind statue. To Treves this was momentarily more disconcerting than the reality that he knew to be hidden underneath. He pulled himself together and thrust some money into the cabman’s hand.

“Very well. Thank you for your trouble.”

“Not at all, sir. My—pleasure.” The cabman’s voice was filled with relief as he departed.

Still the creature made no move, no sound, gave no sign that he was aware of anything happening around him. Remembering how it had obeyed Bytes’ shouted orders the day before, Treves thought that something, no matter how little,
must
be getting through. But perhaps it was like giving orders to an animal. Only the tone of voice was understood.

He became aware of Mrs. Mothershead staring at him.

“I’ll be in my rooms, Mothershead,” he told her. “I’m not to be disturbed.”

She nodded silently and shifted her stare to the silent figure between them. Treves forced himself to address it.

“Come with me, please.” He turned on his heel and made to leave. At the door he looked back and found that the creature had not moved. The head was turned in his direction, and from a short distance away the impression of blind incomprehension was even more marked. A silence lay over the entire room. Everyone in it was now watching the little scene. At last Mothershead said, “You heard the doctor. Go on.”

Her voice held a firm note of command, and after a moment the creature began to shuffle very slowly to the door. His feet, which he could not lift properly, were encased in old bits of canvas sacking, clumsily sewn together in the rough shape of shoes, and as he walked they made a horrible, scratchy, dragging sound. Treves stood back to allow him to pass through the door and then closed it behind him. Even through the thick oak he could hear the excited babble that broke out immediately.

It took an age for them to climb the two flights of stairs and go down the three long corridors that were necessary before they reached Treves’ office. Treves ground his teeth in frustration. At every point they were stared at by nurses, doctors, even other patients who happened to be out in the corridors. The man shambling painfully along seemed oblivious to this harsh curiosity, but Treves had an uncomfortable sense of being stabbed by knives. He was used to being stared at—with respect by students who attended his anatomy lectures, with awe by patients he was treating, with open hostility by other doctors when he had hot-headedly overstepped the bounds of
professional etiquette. He quite enjoyed the respect and awe, and hostility held no tenors for him.

But these stares were different. They held the jeering curiosity that the normal offer to the different. They were primarily for the clumsily grotesque creature, but they also took in the man with him. Treves got his first experience of being treated as a spectacle, and he did not like it. He felt a twinge of discomfort, remembering that his own first gaze at the Elephant Man had contained something of the same character.

They reached his room at last and he opened the door to lead the way in. The creature paused on the threshold and turned his head uneasily. Treves gave him what he hoped was an encouraging smile and beckoned for him to come in. As the silent figure passed him he tried to get a furtive glimpse at the eye-slit, but whatever was inside was in shadow.

As he closed the door he tried not to gag. In the small room the smell of the Elephant Man was overwhelming. It was an effort to force himself to go close and help the creature to sit down, and when he had done so he went to the window and opened it as far as it would go. When he turned back it seemed to him that the shrouded figure drooped, as if in shame. He told himself not to be fanciful. He could not remember being so nervous before.

“My name is Frederick Treves,” he informed the bent head. “I am a surgeon here at the London Hospital, and I lecture in anatomy at the Medical College.” There was no response of any kind. He went on hurriedly. “I would very much like to examine you. Would that be all right?”

Just how much, if anything, could the thing understand? It sat quite still, staring at the floor, seemingly oblivious to its surroundings. Treves’ sense of discomfort was growing. His own voice had begun to sound ridiculous in his head. He looked at the floor for a moment, then locked his gaze on the figure’s left arm, the one part of it that looked normal.

“Ah—yes. Um—first I would like to ask you a few questions. Would that be all right?”

All the formal words and expressions that had served in other, similar situations now clattered uselessly to the floor between them. Treves made the awkward discovery that when the familiar lines proved inappropriate he had no others at his command. He must go on, reciting the senseless part.

“Good.” He sat down at the desk and picked up a pencil. “Now let’s see, your owner …” The word slipped out before he could stop it and he could have bitten off his tongue. But the Elephant Man seemed to notice nothing. He sat there, immovable in the silent agony of his own world. “Um—the man who—who looks after you—tells me that you are English and your name is John Merrick. Is that correct?”

He had not really expected to receive a reply, nor was there one.

“Do you know where you were born?” he persisted. “Where you come from?”

Still the silence, but the Elephant Man lifted his head very slowly and stared blindly at Treves.

“I tell you what,” said Treves desperately, “I’ll ask you a question, and you shake your head like this for ‘no,’ and nod like this for ‘yes.’ All right?” Silence. “Do you understand?”

After a long interminable moment the ponderous head waved uncertainly up and down, once, and a wheezing sound came from the chest as though the effort had been great. Treves gave a sigh of relief, and his voice became businesslike.

“Have you always been—” He fought for a description that the thing could comprehend. “—the way you are now?” he said at last.

Again there was no response, and Treves wondered if he had taken too much for granted. Perhaps it was beyond whatever existed in that huge head to discern the difference between himself and other people, in which case a phrase like “the way you are now” had no meaning for him.

“Are you in any pain?” he asked.

This time there was a reaction, violent and startling. The creature began to babble in a series of staccato gulps, punctuated by wheezes. Through the tiny slit in the face mask a stream of desperation and distress seemed to flow. Alarmed, Treves interrupted.

“No—just nod your head like this for ‘yes’ and shake it like this for ‘no.’ ” He demonstrated slowly. “Now, are you in any pain?”

This time there was no babble, just a slow shake of the head.

“Are your parents still alive?”

Immobile silence. The thing before him might have been a block of wood. It was exasperating when he had thought he was beginning to get through.

“Do you understand? Are they dead? Your father …” He waited a long time. “Your mother.”

At once a desolate moan filled the room and the Elephant Man began to rock back and forth as if in agony. From behind the mask came sounds that might have been someone trying to weep, but unable to.