Elephant Man - Christine Sparks [1]
As Treves pushed ahead he could hear a growing noise behind him, and without warning he was shoved aside by two policemen who swept down the corridor with a purposeful air. Up ahead they apparently encountered some difficulty, for they were shouting “Make way, Make way!”—an injunction to which nobody seemed to be paying heed.
Treves almost collided with a man coming back down the corridor holding a small boy in his arms. The child was clutching his father’s neck in terror, while the man muttered to no one in particular.
“This is too much. They should not allow it—they should not allow it.”
Treves’ excitement quickened. He felt like a hound that has scented the prey, and he realized that he had somehow become the leader of a little crowd all bent on the same ghoulish errand.
At the far end the passage widened to accommodate a stage that was sideways, so that he could not see what it contained. A woman brushed past him, pulling a little girl with a frightened face. Getting closer to the commotion Treves could see four policemen and a well-dressed, official-looking man, whom he guessed was an alderman, arguing with a disreputable individual who wore shabby clothes, four days’ growth of beard, and a stove-pipe hat that looked as if someone might once have taken a punch at it. He was paying little heed to the alderman’s attempts to remonstrate with him, as his attention was taken by a hysterical woman who was pummeling him about the head and shoulders, crying, “Beast beast …”
Apart from his presumed occupation as freak exhibitor, there seemed nothing particularly beastly about the man. The horror therefore lay on the stage. But as Treves moved sideways to see if he could get a good view, he found his way blocked by one of the policemen.
“No, that’s right out. Sorry sir, no more viewing,” the policeman turned and yelled over his shoulder. “Drop that curtain.”
As the curtain fell Treves’ darting eyes managed to catch a glimpse of baggy trouser cuffs, out of which projected two horribly deformed feet—so knotted with veins and lumps, and so covered with scaly skin that at first he took them to be roots. He felt a sense of shock, for even that quick sight had been enough to convince him that this exhibit bore no relation to the frauds he had seen earlier that afternoon. Whatever was behind that curtain was genuinely monstrous.
For an irritated moment he contemplated arguing with the policeman who was barring his way, then he abandoned the idea. There would be no getting past that implacably solid face.
The woman who had been attacking the owner had now been pulled away and was sobbing on the shoulder of an embarrassed policeman. The owner brushed himself down and yelled at the alderman. Though husky, his voice had an oddly cultivated accent at variance with his appearance and method of earning a living.
“You can’t do that!” he was protesting. “I’ve got my rights!”
“I have the authority to close you down,” the alderman said firmly, “and I’m doing just that.”
Treves edged away from the policeman to where he could get a good view of the front of the stage, now covered by the curtain. His sharp eyes had spotted a boy of about ten staring at the curtain with the same ghoulish glee most people reserved for the actual exhibits. When he got closer Treves could see why.
The creature depicted there could have been possible only in a nightmare. It was a crudely painted, life-size portrait of a man turning into an elephant. Palm trees in the background suggested the jungle habitat in which this perverted creature might once have roamed. To Treves the most horrible aspect, as he suspected it was intended to be, was that the transformation was less than half complete. There was still more man than elephant. Through the crude garish strokes the artist had somehow managed to depict the agony of a man undergoing a hideous transformation that he had no power to stop.
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