Elephant Man - Christine Sparks [52]
His life improved to the extent that he was not actually ill-treated. The man did not wish to damage an expensive investment. But the investment proved worthless. The exhibit was closed down in town after town. The “owner” neglected and starved the Elephant Man, and after a year he sold him to a circus.
He was kept a virtual prisoner, housed like an animal, shut off from the world, which he now saw only through a peephole in a showman’s cart. A dozen times a day he would have to expose his deformities before a gaping crowd, who would scream and run from him or stare and poke his growths. When he was not needed for exhibition he would be permitted the only happiness possible to him—to creep away into the darkness and hide. As he crouched there he would hear the laughter of children outside, enjoying the “fun of the fair.”
It was in the circus that Merrick had acquired his strange disguise. The black cloak had originally belonged to “The Great Marvelloso,” a magician who used its capacious folds to hide a good deal of clumsy fumbling around with flags and paper flowers. He had discarded it in favor of another, of more glorious aspect, and his wife, a motherly soul who pitied the Elephant Man from a distance although she was unable to look him in the face, had got to work. She ripped out the red satin lining, set buttons in the front, and cut a slit in the left side, for the arm. Then she shortened the cloak by a foot, and with the spare material she fashioned a hat wide enough to take a huge head. From somewhere she conjured up the grey flannel to make a mask that she sewed all round the brim of the hat, with a hole just big enough for seeing through.
Then she went across to the wagon where Merrick was kept, and presented him with his new attire. She managed to explain it all to him without looking at him, and when he tried to thank her she fled.
To Merrick the cloak brought a grain of comfort, not only because it hid him but because it had a capacious pocket that could take his Bible. Somehow he had managed to preserve it all these years, chiefly because no one else thought it valuable enough to steal. But he lived in terror of losing it, and now he had a place where he could keep it in some kind of safety. When the light was good enough and he was sure he was alone he would take it out and read again and again the words of promise and hope that made his existence tolerable, and that saved him from going mad.
He lived three years in the circus. His “owner” was repeatedly forbidden to exhibit him, but always the circus moved off in time to prevent the order being enforced. After three years the man decided to strike out on his own. He left the circus, taking Merrick with him, but almost immediately they fell on bad times. He was closed down in one city, then another. He began to look for ways to rid himself of the Elephant Man, at a profit. On the outskirts of London he met a man called Bytes, and they struck a bargain.
When Merrick reached this point he stopped and looked timidly at Treves, uncertain how to take his silence.
Treves was standing at the window, his back to Merrick. He was fighting down a raging anger such as he had never known. Much of the story was as he had imagined, except that it was a thousand times worse, but somewhere in the telling of it he had discarded his professional detachment like a too-heavy coat, and now felt the intensity of Merrick’s suffering without any defense.
He was honest enough to admit that part of his anger was directed against himself. Dress it up as he could with worthy phrases about the necessity for medical discovery, the fact remained that he too had used Merrick for his own purposes, and this was very bitter to him now.
“Do you want to know anymore?” Merrick asked.
Treves turned at last. He knew his face must show how shaken he had been.
“Not today, John. I don’t think either of us could stand it.”
When he had made sure Merrick was comfortable