Elephant Man - Christine Sparks [16]
The lecture lasted nearly an hour. By the end of it his audience were leaning forward, anxious not to miss a word, and Treves was experiencing the rising sense of exhilaration that success always brought him.
“So then, gentlemen, owing to this series of deformities: the congenital exostoses of the skull; extensive papillomatous growths and large pendulous masses in connection with the skin; the great enlargement of the right upper limb, involving all the bones; the massive distortion of the head; and the extensive areas covered by papillomatous growth, the patient has been called ‘the Elephant Man.’ ”
At a signal the curtains closed round the stall. Treves laid down his stick with an air of finality. The applause was thunderous. At the last minute Treves had to restrain himself from yielding to an instinct to bow. That would have been a crass touch of theatricality.
He wondered if the entire talk had been a mite too theatrical. He knew his lectures to students at the hospital were popular because of their witty racy style, so different from the dry assertions of fact favored by other lecturers. He’d tried to keep that aspect of things muted this afternoon. The men of the Pathological Society were distinguished doctors who would have marked him down at once as a mountebank had they detected any whiff of the footlights. Treves was glad of the hour of questions and discussion that followed his talk. It served to calm the atmosphere down.
Afterward he could hardly get through the corridors, which seemed to be packed with men wishing to congratulate him. But he escaped from them at last and made his way back to his office, where he’d given instructions that the Elephant Man was to be waiting for him.
He found him there, shrouded in his all-enveloping disguise. Merrick made no sound or movement of recognition as he came in and Treves realized for the first time that this blankness was something he was coming to rely on. It made it possible to maintain the necessary attitude of scientific detachment if you had a patient who displayed no more awareness than a stone or a tree. Some of the terms he had used that afternoon—“perverted” and “degraded,” for instance—would have been impossible in the hearing of a man who understood what was being said about him.
He took out his notebook on the Elephant Man (he was now on his second) and began to enter into it points that had arisen out of the discussion. He had enough now, he decided, to start writing the paper that would consolidate this afternoon’s work. He wrote on and on as things came back to him, hastening to get it all down while it was still fresh in his mind.
“Hmm?” Treves looked up, recalled to the present by a vaguely heard noise. He was alone except for the statue-like creature in the chair before him.
“What?” he said inquiringly, wondering if the noise had really come from that quarter, and if it would be repeated.
But there was silence. What he had heard—if anything—had been no more than a sigh. Of weariness possibly.
“It’s been a long day for everyone,” Treves agreed.
He closed his notebook and rose. “You’ll need a cab. Stay here.”
As soon as he was alone a change seemed to come over the Elephant Man. With his left arm he grasped the arm of the chair and levered himself upright. When he was on his feet indecision shook him and he looked round, first in one direction, then the other. At last he began to shuffle tentatively round the room. He lingered a long time by the wall, where hung the various certificates that proclaimed Treves to be a member of various learned societies, and reached up a hand to touch them. The cold feel of the glass seemed to puzzle and repel him.
He moved on to the desk and began touching things. He ran his hand slowly over the calipers. Then he paused as