Elephant Man (2 page)

It was Jenny, at ten years old the elder, who saw her father first and ran forward excitedly, calling him.
He wished he’d had time to get away from the freak tent before his wife noticed him, but it was too late now.

Treves looked down at his daughters’ chocolate-covered faces and smiled. Anne, after one glance at the tent, became absorbed in cleaning the chocolate from Jenny’s mouth. Six-year-old Kate bounced excitedly.

“Father, may we go in there?” She swept an arm toward the tent, and Anne’s attention swerved sharply to her.

“All right, your turn,” she said, adroitly swiveling Kate so that she could no longer see the tent with its lurid signs. Treves abstractedly watched Anne at work, rubbing so hard in her nervousness that the child’s face was pulled and distorted into a hideous grimace. Kate wriggled away, and at once her face settled back into its normal pretty lines.

Jenny had not spoken since they had caught up with him. She was not a chatterbox, but a child who seldom opened her mouth unless she had something definite to say. It was a habit that had gotten her branded as sullen except by her father, who had been exactly the same. Now she stood doggedly by his side and pointed to the freak tent.

“I want to go in there with Father,” she said.

“Well you can’t,” retorted Anne in a sharper voice than Treves had ever heard her use before.

Treves shook his head at Jenny. She was his pet to whom normally he could refuse nothing. But he would refuse her this.

“No, you can’t” he agreed. “I’ve already been in there.”

“But why can’t we go again?” she persisted.

“Because you’d be frightened,” he explained, talking to her seriously.

“Why?”

“Because the people in there are horribly ugly.” Treves knew as soon as he’d said this, that it was a
mistake. Jenny was not the little girl to be put off by the idea of horrors. On the contrary, she was as ghoulish a child as a medical father had ever produced, and she had inherited his own delight in the rare and strange. Not for the first time Treves wished she was a boy. Already she showed signs of the chilly, hard-bitten mind a scientist needed. What on earth would a woman do with such a mind?

He knew that the sensible course would be to exert his fatherly authority, to tell Jenny to be silent and obey her parents. But as always he yielded to a desire to know what her argumentative powers, which were already considerable, would produce next.

“Are ugly people frightening?” she challenged him.

He bit back a desire to retort, “Of course they are, you cold-blooded little monster. That’s why you want to go in there.” Instead he settled for, “Most people find them so.”

“Then why do they go to see them?” Jenny’s sharp eyes had flickered to the tent’s entrance where a steady stream of people were passing through.

“Because they like being frightened, I suppose,” he said lamely.

“What about you, Father? Do you like being frightened?”

“They don’t frighten me,” he replied, seeing too late where she was leading him.

“Then why do you go to see them?”

Before he could think of an answer, Anne intervened to put an end to what struck her as a totally improper conversation. The readiness of her elder daughter to take her father up on any point that came into her head horrified Anne almost as much as Treves’ willingness to let his daughter lead him into these arguments. She flung him a look of reproach.

“It’s getting late,” she said. “I think we’d all better be going home, unless—” She looked at her husband doubtfully, “—unless you have something else to do here?”

“No.” He fell into step beside her. “Let’s go home now. I’ve seen all I want to.”

“Did you find whatever it is you’re looking for?”

He was silent so long that she looked at him. He was walking with his head down, studying the ground intently.

“I don’t know,” he said at last. “But I shall—soon.”

The London Hospital stood at the eastern end of Whitechapel Road, bordering on the slums and light industrial factories from which it drew many of its patients. It was a massive, ugly, and relatively modern building, governed by a committee that was justifiably proud of the hospital’s up-to-date equipment and high quality of medicine.

As a surgeon at the London, Treves was more exposed than most to the ravages of industry. It fell to him to operate on the huge sweaty men who were brought in with their bodies gashed open by heedless machines. He hated this part of the business. It was at these moments that his boyhood in Dorset, much of it spent on his grandfather’s farm, came back most strongly. There was something human and comprehensible about a kick from a horse, even if it broke your neck. Ironwork he regarded as the invention of the devil.

Being no more consistent than any other man, he saw no irony in this attitude and his own reliance on the latest medical hardware provided for him by the hospital, and which he used freely. When an operation was in progress the theater closely resembled the fires of hell. A furnace roared within the cast-iron stove, kept at fever pitch by a pair of bellows constantly pumping air into the open grate beneath it. From the mouth of the stove protruded the handles of several cauterizing irons, their heads embedded in the coals.

Close by stood the operating table where Treves would work, the stove casting a ruddy glow over him,
the glistening of his face lit up by the oil lantern he worked by, held up by a nurse whose sole function this was.

The theater was well-furnished with a large sink and a cupboard stocked with dressings and other things a surgeon might need. Always included among these were several sets of manacles. Chloroform was commonly in use for operations, but the exact administering of the right dose was still a rough and ready business. All too frequently patients came round at the wrong moment (that is, if they had not died under an excessive amount), and then the manacles were useful.

Treves did not expect to have to use manacles in the operation he was performing today with the assistance of two fellow doctors, Mr. Fox and Mr. Hill. He had ordered the administering of a large dose to his huge patient, a bull-like laborer who had received a set of gear wheels in his chest that very morning. Fox had protested. Fox was an able doctor and Treves’ closest friend among his colleagues. As such he was one of the few of his peers who ventured to criticize him. Treves did not take kindly to criticism.

“I say, Freddie,” he’d said in his languid voice, “don’t you think that’s a bit—I mean it’s enough to kill him—”

“He can stand it,” said Treves briskly, as he tied on the black leather apron he wore for operations. “It’s coming round that would kill him with a wound like that.”

Hill placed a cotton mask over the man’s nose and mouth and applied the chloroform. The patient struggled for a moment, but soon his moans of agony subsided and he slipped into unconsciousness.

Treves examined the wound, which was fearful. The marks of gear wheels grew progressively deeper as they neared a great open gash in the center of the chest.

“How long has this man been here?” he demanded.

“Three-quarters of an hour,” Fox told him.

At the far end of the table two students held onto
a rope that was tied to the patient’s legs. They were pulling on it with constant pressure.

“Hodges, Pierce, come closer,” Treves ordered them. “Mr. Hill, take hold of the rope, please.” He waited till the exchange was complete before addressing the students again. “It’s a machine accident. I expect you’ll be seeing a good deal of this.”

The two youngsters stared uneasily at the gaping wound, which bubbled bloodily every time the patient took a breath. Together Treves and Fox were doing an expert job of repairing the ripped chest. Treves chatted offhandedly as he worked.

“Abominable things, these machines,” he muttered. “One can’t reason with them.”

“What a mess.” Fox made a face of disgust. There was some part of his stomach that still rose up in outrage at a sight like this and had to be fought down. He felt ashamed of his weakness. A doctor should learn callousness. Look at Treves, a cold-blooded devil if ever there was one.

Treves glanced up at that moment and noticed the students’ faces, which were ashen.

“Irons please, Mr. Hodges,” he said curtly. There was nothing like forcing a queasy student to take a practical part in an operation to make him forget his own feelings.

As the operation progressed, Fox had to admit that Treves had been right about the chloroform. The man’s massive frame had borne it well. If anything, he was not sufficiently asleep, and as the work drew to a close an occasional groan was wrenched from him. But even Treves was not prepared to risk a larger dose. As he cauterized the wound, the other men were all holding down the patient.

The steam from the cauterizing dispersed, leaving Treves’ face sweaty and satisfied. The work was good. He could see this even now. He stood back and threw down the iron, just as the theater door opened to admit a boy of about ten with a scruffy appearance.

“Excuse me, Mr. Treves sir.”

“Yes?” Treves looked up, a sudden tension in his manner that caught Fox’s eye.

“I found it.”

Treves studied the boy carefully. “Did you see it?”

The urchin shook his head slowly.

“I’ll be with you in a moment.”

The head vanished behind the door.

“I say, Freddie,” said Fox in a low voice. “What was that about?”

“Oh nothing—nothing of any importance.” Treves had begun to roll down his sleeves and remove his apron. “Nothing of any great importance. All right, you can take this man away.”

He departed quickly before he could be asked any more questions. He found the boy waiting for him in the passage.

“Where?” he said briefly.

“Turners Road. There’s a line of empty shops. One of ’em is called Collys, it used to be a grocery but it’s not used now.”

“I know the place. Are you sure it’s there?”

“Camping out in the cellar. Don’t s’pose they pay no rent. Mr. Bytes ain’t a great man for payin’ rent.”

“Mr. Bytes would be—?”

“The owner.”

“Owner?”

“That’s what he calls ’imself. Says it’s ’is. ’E bought it from the last owner for a good price. ’E complains somethin’ chronic. Says the p’lice keeps movin’ ’im on and ’e ent made a profit yet.”

“Mr. Bytes has been taking you into his confidence, has he?”

“What?”

“Mr. Bytes has been telling you all this?”

“ ’E tells anyone in the boozer ’o’ll listen. ’E’s known for it.”

“How do you know where he lives?”

“Followed ’im ’ome, didn’t I?”

Treves gave the boy a coin, checked his destination again, and almost ran out of the hospital. An excitement
was growing within him, similar to the excitement he’d felt when he first read his final medical exam and realized that it was going to give him no problems.

Two days he had waited since he’d been forced to leave the fun-fair empty-handed, two days while the urchin had searched London for the mysterious monster—only to track him down barely half a mile from the hospital. From the little he’d seen before the curtain fell, from the uproar the creature’s presence had created, Treves had no doubt that he was on the track of something rare.

The afternoon was cold and wet. The streets glistened blackly with the recent rain and brought a chill to Treves, so recently emerged from the sweltering heat of the operating theater. He looked for a cab but was unable to find one. He shrugged. For half a mile he could manage to walk.

The streets got dirtier the farther south he went. Horse manure and filth of all kinds mingled with the rain, and the air was smoky from peat fires. Once he had to pass through a large butcher yard and was nearly knocked flying by a carcass being heaved up onto a shoulder almost as beefy as the meat itself. He had to stop once and ask the way from a man who was working a machine that belched out steam at an alarming rate without (as far as Treves could see) serving any useful purpose.

He came at last to Turners Road and found the shop he was looking for without any trouble. Heedless of danger from the authorities, Mr. Bytes had grown daring and displayed his poster outside for all the world to see. The canvas covered the whole front of the shop except for the door, which was padlocked. It announced that the Elephant Man could be seen for twopence.

Treves made a futile effort to pull the canvas aside, but all he could see were windows made opaque with dirt. He became aware of a small boy on his left, who was watching him intently.

“Do you know where the proprietor is?” he asked, holding out a coin.

The boy nodded, snatched the coin, and vanished round a corner. It took him only a moment to find his quarry, because Mr. Bytes never believed in going far for his refreshment. He was in luck at the first pub. When informed of his errand, the owner hustled his coat back on, grabbed up the riding crop that he never liked to be without, swallowed the remains of his gin, and crammed the last of a sandwich in his mouth. Then he was ready to go.

The boy, whose name was Tony, kept up with him only with difficulty until they reached the corner of Turners Road. There Bytes stopped so suddenly that his companion cannoned into him and received a cuff. The two of them peered round the building to where Treves could be seen studying the poster.

“He’s not a peeler…,” said Bytes after a moment.

“No, I don’t think so…,” Tony agreed.

“No … I don’t think so …”

Together, and cautiously, they began to advance till their footsteps caused Treves to turn and face them. At once he recognized the man in the twisted stovepipe hat that he had seen quarreling with the alderman in the tent.

“Are you the proprietor?” he demanded.

Bytes stood back and regarded him with suspicion but no recognition. “And who might you be, sir?”

“Just one of the curious,” said Treves, who had no intention of disclosing his true motives. He had discovered that it had the unfortunate effect of raising the price. “I’d like to see it.”

Bytes shook his head with every appearance of sadness. “I don’t think so, sir. No sir, we’re closed.”