Elephant Man - Christine Sparks [15]
“That’s because I shall need him for a lot longer today,” Treves told him. “I’ll send him back when I’ve finished with him.”
“When d’you want him again?”
“I don’t know. Not for a week or so.”
“How long?” Tony was dismayed. “But you ’ave ’im most days.”
“I know. But I shan’t be needing him nearly so much in the future. I’ll let you know.”
He steered the Elephant Man into the College and gave him into the hands of the two assistants who were to display him to the audience. When he was sure they understood their instructions he left them and went to his room to take a last look at his notes. When he had read them through completely he took a deep breath. He would no longer need notes to help him. He had every inch of the Elephant Man’s body imprinted on his memory. He had done all he could this last two weeks with the chance that had been offered him. He wouldn’t fail now.
He advanced on the Lecture Hall with a feeling of tension that had nothing in it of fear. Rather it was an anxiety to begin, a straining at the leash.
It was early yet but the hall was already filling up, and he was pleased to see that several names of considerable eminence had placed themselves prominently along the front rows. No doubt some rumors had got around. The comings and goings of a shrouded figure for the last fortnight must have attracted attention. Good. Treves smiled inwardly. This was his moment at last, the moment that always came to you if you were sufficiently determined that it should, if you spent your life watching for it. He had worked for it, he had a right to it, and he was going to take it.
He made a last check with his assistants, who had brought the Elephant Man to sit behind a curtained stall from where he could be produced quickly. The man, wearing nothing except a loose loin cloth, sat silent and motionless as he always did. The smell from his body was overpowering.
When the hall was full Treves took up his pointer stick, advanced to the front of the podium on which he was standing, and tapped the stick against the small raised desk to indicate that he was ready to begin. The noise of many male voices died down, but a murmuring hum still came from several parts of the hall. Treves ignored it. He would soon have their attention.
He began by a brief introduction of himself, and a carefully censored version of how he had happened to run across the Elephant Man.
“He is English, he is twenty-one years of age, and his name is John Merrick,” he told them. “Gentlemen, in the course of my profession I have come upon lamentable deformities of the face, due to injury or disease, as well as mutilations and contortions of the body, depending on like causes; but at no time have I met with such a degraded or perverted version of a human being as this man.”
The moment had come. Treves signaled to his assistants, who opened the front doors of the stall. The low mutter in the Lecture Hall became a startled roar, then died away completely. Treves could hear his own footsteps as he went to the stall, ready to indicate various parts of his specimen with the stick. He felt excited and gratified. He had them now.
“I wish to draw your attention to the insidious conditions affecting this patient. Note, if you will, the extreme enlargement of the skull …” He pointed with the stick, “and upper limb, which is totally useless. The alarming curvature of the spine … turn him, please …” It took several moments to get Merrick positioned to his satisfaction. “… the looseness of the skin, and the varying fibrous tumors that cover 90% of the body.”
A faint air of discomfiture that he had first sensed in his audience had vanished. The attention of each man there was riveted.
“And there is every indication that these afflictions have been in existence, and have progressed rapidly, since birth. The patient also suffers from chronic bronchitis. As an interesting side note, in spite of the aforementioned anomalies, the patient’s genitals remain entirely intact and unaffected.”
The assistants untied