“Why is that?” he asked with a friendly smile, providing his host with the opportunity to expound on his tastes.
“Because the Egyptians worshiped gods with animals” heads,” replied Merrick, slightly shamefaced.
Wells stared at him stupidly. He was unsure what surprised him more: the naïve yearning in Merrick’s reply or the awkward bashfulness accompanying it, as though he were chiding himself for wanting such a thing, for preferring to be a god worshiped by men instead of the despised monster he was. If anyone had a right to feel hatred and bitterness towards the world, surely he did. And yet Merrick reproached himself for his sorrow, as though the sunlight through the windowpane warming his back or the clouds scudding across the sky ought to be reason enough for him to be happy. Lost for words, Wells took a biscuit from the plate and began nibbling on it with intense concentration, as though making sure his teeth still worked.
“Why do you think Dr. Nebogipfel didn’t use his machine to travel into the future as well?” Merrick then asked in that unguent voice, which sounded as if it was smeared in butter. “Wasn’t he curious?” I sometimes wonder what the world will be like in a hundred years.” “Indeed …” murmured Wells, at a loss to respond to this remark, too.
Merrick belonged to that class of reader who was able to forget with amazing ease the hand moving the characters behind the scenes of a novel. As a child he had also been able to read in that way. But one day he had decided he would be a writer, and from that moment on he found it impossible to immerse himself in stories with the same innocent abandon: he was aware that characters” thoughts and actions were not his. They answered to the dictates of a higher being, to someone who, alone in his room, moved the pieces he himself had placed on the board, more often than not with an overwhelming feeling of indifference that bore no relation to the emotions he intended to arouse in his readers.
Novels were not slices of life, but more or less controlled creations reproducing slices of imaginary, polished lives, where boredom and the futile, useless acts that make up any existence were replaced with exciting, meaningful episodes. At times, Wells longed to be able to read in that carefree, childlike way again, but having glimpsed behind the scenes, he could only do this with an enormous leap of his imagination. Once you had written your first story, there was no turning back. You were a deceiver, and you could not help treating other deceivers with suspicion. It occurred to Wells briefly to suggest that Merrick ask Nebogipfel himself, but he changed his mind, unsure whether his host would take his riposte at the gentle mockery he intended. What if Merrick really was too naïve to be able to tell the difference between reality and a simple work of fiction? What if this sad inability and not his sensitivity allowed him to experience the stories he read so intensely? If so, Well’s rejoinder would sound like a cruel jibe aimed at wounding his ingenuousness. Fortunately, Merrick fired another question at him, which was easier to answer: “Do you think somebody will one day invent a time machine?” “I doubt such a thing could exist,” replied Wells bluntly.
“And yet you’ve written about it!” his host exclaimed, horrified.
“That’s precisely why, Mr. Merrick,” he explained, trying to think of a simple way of bringing together the various ideas underlying his conception of literature. “I assure you that if it were possible to build a time machine, I would never have written about it. I am only interested in writing about what is impossible.” At this, he recalled a quote from Luciano de Samósata’s True Tales, which he could not help memorizing because it perfectly summed up his thoughts on literature: “I write about things I have neither seen nor verified nor heard about from others, and in addition, about things that have never existed and could have no possible basis for existing.” Yes, as he had told his host, he was only interested in writing about things that were impossible.
Dickens was there to take care of the rest, he thought of adding, but did not. Treves had told him Merrick was an avid reader. He did not want to risk offending him if Dickens happened to be one of his favorite authors.
“Then I’m sorry that because of me you’ll never be able to write about a man who is half-human, half-elephant,” murmured Merrick.
Once more, Wells was disarmed by his host’s remark. After Merrick had spoken, his gaze wandered over to the window. Wells was unsure whether the gesture was meant to express regret or to give him the opportunity to study Merrick’s appearance as freely as he wished. In any case, Wells’s eyes were unconsciously, irresistibly, almost hypnotically drawn to him, confirming what he already knew full well. Merrick was right: if he had not seen him with his own eyes, he would never have believed such a creature could exist. Except perhaps in the fictional world of books.
“You will be a great writer, Mr. Wells,” his host declared, continuing to stare out of the window.
“I wish I could agree,” replied Wells, who, following his first failed attempt, was beginning to have serious doubts about his abilities.
Merrick turned to face him.
“Look at my hands, Mr. Wells,” he said holding them out for Wells to see. “Would you believe that these hands could make a church out of cardboard?” Wells gazed benevolently at his host’s mismatched hands. The right one was enormous and grotesque while the left one looked like that of a ten-year-old girl.
“I suppose not,” he admitted.
Merrick nodded slowly.
“It is a question of will, Mr. Wells,” he said, striving to imbue his slurred voice with a tone of authority. “That’s all.” Coming from anyone else’s mouth these words might have struck Wells as trite, but uttered by the man in front of him they became an irrefutable truth. This creature was living proof that man’s will could move mountains and part seas. In that hospital wing, that refuge from the world, the distance between the attainable and the unattainable was more than ever a question of will. If Merrick had built that cardboard church with his deformed hands, what might not he, Wells, be capable of—he who was only prevented from doing whatever he wanted by his own lack of self-belief? He could not help agreeing, which seemed to please Merrick, judging from the way he fidgeted in his seat. In an embarrassed voice that sounded even more like that of a dying child, Merrick went on to confess that the model was to be a gift for a stage actress with whom he had been corresponding for several months. He referred to her as Mrs. Kendal, and from what Wells could gather she was one of his most generous benefactors. He had no difficulty picturing her as a woman of good social standing, sympathetic to the various types of suffering in the world, so long as they were not on her doorstep, who had discovered in the Elephant Man a novel way of spending the money she usually donated to charity. When Merrick explained that he was looking forward to meeting her in person when she returned from her tour in America, Wells could not help smiling, touched by the amorous tone which, consciously or not, slipped in his voice. But at the same time he felt a pang of sorrow, and hoped Mrs. Kendal’s work would delay her in America so that Merrick could go on believing in the illusion of her letters and not be faced with the sudden discovery that impossible love was only possible in books.
After they had finished their tea, Merrick offered Wells a cigarette, which he courteously accepted. They rose from their seats and went over to the window to watch the sunset. For a few moments, the two men stood staring down at the street and at the façade of the church opposite, every inch of which Merrick must have been familiar with. People came and went, a peddler with a handcart hawked his wares, and carriages trundled over the uneven cobblestones strewn with foul-smelling dung from the hundreds of horses going by each day. Wells watched Merrick gazing at the frantic bustle with almost reverential awe. He appeared to be lost in thought.
“You know something, Mr. Wells?” he said finally, “I can’t help feeling sometimes that life is like a play in which I’ve been given no part. If you only knew how much I envy all those people …” “I can assure you, you have no reason to envy them, Mr. Merrick,” Wells replied abruptly. “Tho
se people you see are specks of dust. Nobody will remember who they were or what they did after they die. You, however, will go down in history.” Merrick appeared to mull over his words for a moment as he studied his misshapen reflection in the distorted windowpane, like a bitter reminder of his condition.
“Do you think that gives me any comfort?” he asked mournfully.
“It ought to,” replied Wells, “for the time of the ancient Egyptians has long since passed, Mr. Merrick.” His host did not reply. He continued staring down at the street, but Wells found it impossible to judge from his expression, frozen by the disease into a look of permanent rage, what effect his words, a little blunt perhaps but necessary, had had on him.
He could not stand by while his host wallowed in his own tragedy. He was convinced Merrick’s only comfort could come from his deformity, which, although it had marginalized him, had also made him into a singular being and earned him a place in the annals of history.
“No doubt you are right, Mr. Wells,” Merrick said finally, continuing to gaze at his distorted reflection. “One should probably resign oneself to not expecting too much of this world we live in, where people fear anyone who is different. Sometimes I think that if an angel were to appear before a priest, he would probably shoot it.” “I suppose that is true,” observed Wells, the writer in him excited by the image his host had just evoked. And, seeing Merrick still caught up in his reflections, he decided to take his leave: “Thank you so much for the tea, Mr. Merrick.” “Wait,” replied Merrick. “There’s something I want to give you.” He walked over to a small closet and rummaged around inside it for a few moments until he found what he had been looking for.
Wells was puzzled to see him pull out a wicker basket.
“When I told Mrs. Kendal I had always dreamed of being a basket maker, she employed a man to come and teach me,” Merrick explained, cradling the object in his hands as though it were a newborn infant or a bird’s nest. “He was a kindly, mild-mannered fellow, who had a workshop on Pennington Street, near the London docks. From the very beginning he treated me as though my looks were no different to his. But when he saw my hands, he told me I could never manage delicate work like basket weaving. He was very sorry, but we would evidently both be wasting our time. And yet, striving to achieve a dream is never a waste of time, is it Mr. Wells? Show me,’ I told him, ‘only then will we know whether you are right or not.’ ” Wells contemplated the perfect piece of wickerwork Merrick was cupping in his deformed hands.
“I’ve made many more since then, and have given some away to my guests. But this one is special, because it is the first I ever made. I would like you to have it, Mr. Wells,” he said, presenting him with the basket, “to remind you that everything is a question of will.” “Thank you,” stammered Wells, touched. “I am honored, Mr. Merrick, truly honored.” He smiled warmly as he said good-bye and walked towards the door.
“One more question, Mr. Wells,” he heard Merrick say behind him.
Wells turned to look at him, hoping he was not going to ask for the accursed Nebogipfel’s address so that he could send him a basket, too.
“Do you believe that the same god made us both?” Merrick asked, with more frustration than regret.
Wells repressed a sigh of despair. What could he say to this? He was weighing up various possible replies when, all of a sudden, Merrick began emitting a strange sound, like a cough or a grunt that convulsed his body from head to foot, threatening to shake him apart at the seams. Wells listened, alarmed, as the loud hacking sound continued rising uncontrollably from his throat, until he realized what was happening. There was nothing seriously wrong with Merrick. He was simply laughing.
“It was a joke, Mr. Wells, only a joke,” he explained, cutting short his rasping chortle as he became aware of his guest’s startled response. “Whatever would become of me if I was unable to laugh at my own appearance?” Without waiting for Wells to reply, he walked towards his worktable, and sat down in front of the unfinished model of the church.
“Whatever would become of me?” Wells heard him mutter in a tone of profound melancholy. “Whatever would become of me?” Wells watched him concentrate on his clumsy hands sculpting the cardboard and was seized by a feeling of deep sympathy.
He found it impossible to believe Treves’s theory that this remarkably innocent, gentle creature invited public figures to tea in order to submit them to some sinister test. On the contrary, he was convinced that all Merrick wanted from this limited intimacy was a few meager crumbs of warmth and sympathy. It was far more likely that Treves had attributed those motives to him in order to unnerve guests to whom he took a dislike, or possibly to make allowances for Merrick’s extreme naïveté by crediting him with a guile he did not possess. Or perhaps, thought Wells, who had no illusions about the sincerity of man’s motives, the surgeon’s intentions were still more selfish and ambitious: perhaps he wanted to show people that he was the only one who understood the soul of this creature whom he clung to desperately to be guaranteed a place beside him in history.
Wells was irritated by the idea of Treves taking advantage of Merrick’s face being a terrifying mask he could never take off, a mask that could never express his true emotions, in order to attribute to him whatever motives he wished, knowing that no one but Merrick could ever refute them. And now that Wells had heard him laugh, he wondered whether the so-called Elephant Man had not in fact been smiling at him from the moment he stepped into the room, a warm, friendly smile intended to soothe the discomfort his appearance produced in his guests, a smile no one would ever see.
As he left the room, he felt a tear roll down his cheek.
13
This was how the wicker basket had come into Wells’s life, and with it he found that the winds of good fortune soon began to blow off the years of dust that had accumulated on his suit.
Shortly after the basket’s appearance, he obtained his degree in zoology with distinction, began giving courses in biology for the University of London External Programme, took up the post of editor-in-chief of The University Correspondent, and began writing the odd short article for the Educational Times. Thus, in a relatively short period of time he earned a large sum of money, which helped him recover from his disappointment over the lack of interest in his story and boosted his self-confidence. He got into the habit of venerating the basket every night, giving it long and loving looks, running his fingers over the tightly woven wicker. He carried out this simple ritual behind Jane’s back and found it encouraged him so much he felt invincible, strong enough to swim the Atlantic or wrestle a tiger to the ground with his bare hands.
But Wells scarcely had time to enjoy his achievements before the members of his tattered family discovered that little Bertie was on his way to becoming a man of means and entrusted him with the task of maintaining their fragile and threatened cohesion. Without taking the trouble to protest, Wells resigned himself to adopting the mantle of defender of the clan, knowing that none of its other members was up to the task. His father, having finally freed himself from the burden of the china shop, had moved to a cottage in Nyewood, a tiny village south of Rogate, where he had a view of Harting Down and the elms at Uppark, and life had gradually washed up the rest of the family in the tiny house. The first to arrive was Frank. He had left the bakery a few years earlier to become a traveling watch salesman, an occupation he had not been very successful in– a fact borne out by the two enormous trunks of unsold watches he brought with him, eating up even more space in the tiny dwelling in Nyewood.
The trunks gave off a loud, incessant whirring sound and rattled about like a colony of noisy mechanical spiders. Then came Fred, his trusting brother, who had been unceremoniously dismissed from the company where he worked as soon as the boss’s son was old enough to occupy the seat he had unknowingly been keeping warm for him. Finding themselves together again, and with a roof over their heads, his brothers devoted themselves to licking each others” wounds, and, infected by their
father’s relaxed attitude to life, soon accepted this latest downturn with good cheer. The last to arrive was their mother, dismissed from her beloved paradise at Uppark because the sudden onset of deafness had rendered her useless and irritable. The only one who did not return to the fold was Frances, perhaps because she felt there would not be enough room for her little infant coffin. Even so, there were too many of them, and Wells had to make a superhuman effort to keep up his endless hours of teaching in order to protect that nest buzzing with the sound of Frank’s watches, that pesthouse of happy walking wounded reeking of snuff and stale beer, to the point where he ended up vomiting blood and collapsing on the steps of Charing Cross Station.
The diagnosis was clear: tuberculosis. And although he made a swift recovery, this attack was a warning to Wells to stop burning the midnight oil or the next onslaught would be more serious.
Wells accepted all this in a practical spirit. He knew that when the wind was favourable, he had plenty of ways to make a living, and so had no difficulty in drawing up a new life plan. He abandoned teaching and resolved to live solely from his writings. This would allow him to work at home, with no other timetables and pressures than those he chose to impose on himself. He would finally be able to live the peaceful life his fragile health required.
Thus he set about swamping the local newspapers with articles, penning the odd essay for the Fortnightly Review, and, after much persistence, managed to persuade the Pal Mal Gazette to offer him a column. Overjoyed by his success, and seeking out the fresh air indispensable to his sick lungs, the whole family moved to a country house in Sutton, near the North Downs, one of the few areas that had as yet escaped becoming a suburb of London.