Flesh Failure (8 page)

“Yes, you are correct. I'm not a wealthy man by any means but I can have a few frocks made so that you can feel, pretty. You can even pick out hats with netting to cover your face. Would you like that?”

I nodded, feeling almost shy.

“I would.”

“At your height, it will take the tailor some time to fashion you some outfits. Perhaps we should go to your lodging to retrieve a few pieces to tide you over.”

I nodded.

“I have some dresses that aren't too hideous. My work as a fortune-teller allowed me to dress better than the ladies of the night.”

We left the tavern and made our way back to my room. He stood in the streets, watching the hustle and bustle of people and horses. I found two dresses that would be suitable, and my rather new petticoat. I also decided to put a few items into a small carrying case I had bought from an old gypsy woman one night on the street. He looked back at me, his nose wrinkling at the odour of my domain.

“Take as much as you desire. I'll hail a taxi when you're ready.”

I laughed. “Do you really think a taxi will come along this way and stop?”

“Silly, girl. The taxis all know me. I may not be wealthy but I like to travel by taxi when I have occasion. And this is one.”

At last, I had my belongings together and true enough, he hailed a cab.

His lodgings were a few blocks away, an entire floor in a boarding house. He showed me around, leading me from the front room where we entered, through to a connecting study, a bedroom and then a study. There was another smaller sitting room and then a kitchen. It was an oddly set-up place but it was like a palace to me.

“You have a lot of books,” I remarked as I gazed upon room after room filled from floor to ceiling with books. He also had many strange artifacts. The walls were decorated with tribal masks and maps. In his study, there were many drawings of the human body. The brain, various organs, the skeletal system. It was all intriguing and I eagerly anticipated absorbing it all.

After he had shown me around, he stood and looked at me.

“So now, what to do with you. The sitting room by the kitchen might be the best place for you. We can get you a bed eventually but for now, we'll have to put you on the couch.”

I nodded. “I hope I'm not too big for it.”

We returned to the sitting room and I lay on the chaise lounge. It was slightly too small but it would do.

“This will work,” I said as I reclined on it. “I'm rather tired now that I'm lying down.”

“Why don't you rest and I'll prepare water for a bath.”

“A bath? I've not enjoyed a bath.”

“You will like it but it will take time to heat the water. You rest and I'll get everything prepared.”

As I lay on the couch, he returned to the room a few times to spray it with a lovely rose water fragrance to dissipate my stench, to bring me a basin and water, towels and other little comforts.

He set blankets across the room from me. “You can use them when you're cleaned.”

“Mmm.” I moaned sleepily. I didn't care. I felt like I was home for the very first time.

The next day, he tried to entice me to the hospital with him. He had a few hours before he had to work with the interns and wanted to look at me.

“Will I get to see Joseph Merrick?” I asked as I sipped my tea. The day was bright and I had noticed that he had one electric socket. It may be necessary but so far, it seemed as though the jolt from the tavern continued to sustain me. Perhaps my body parts were all finally working together.

He raised an eyebrow.

“Quite frankly, if you don't today, you very likely will eventually if you accompany me on a regular basis. I will be taking you to the research lab where top-secret patients reside. These are the ones who suffer from the rarest of abnormalities or insanities. We study them to see how they became the way they are and if any of the new treatments are beneficial.”

“Do you have others like me in there?” I asked him.

“What do you mean, like you?”

“I mean, experiments. Half-done, thrown away such as myself?”

He laughed.

“You my dear, are unique.”

I picked up my toast and bit into it.

“Yes, unique.”

He had an assortment of robes and veils in one of his wardrobes.

“Sometimes I enjoy dressing in a theatrical flair to deliver my lectures,” he said as he sorted through his menagerie. At last, he pulled out a black robe.

“Try this,” he said. I clumsily draped the robe around me. It reached to my knees but it would do. He was still rummaging until he pulled out a long piece of black netting.

“We can cut this to pin to one of your hats,” he said.

I nodded. “I can't sew very well but if you could do it.”

“Bring me your hats and let's see.”

I produced the three hats I had chosen to bring. He looked at them thoughtfully then picked a black felt piece with many black ostrich feathers. I had always worn it with a scarf pulled up high on my face. He held up the hat.

“I have some adhesive,” he said and he went into his study. In one of the towering bookcases there were little drawers I hadn't noticed before. He opened and shut a few, bottles rattling and tinkling until he found what he was looking for. He returned with a small brush and a bottle of something. When he opened the bottle a strong smell filled the room and immediately I grew lightheaded.

“A few drops should do it,” he said as he stroked the hat gently with the brush. He took the netting and pressed the edging of it to the adhesive. It stuck.

“I should have found scissors first,” he sighed as he gently placed the hat on the table. He returned to his study. The smell of the adhesive was strong, rendering me dizzy. I sat down on my chaise lounge.

He returned with scissors and held up the hat.

“Aren't you feeling well?”

“The smell…”

He chuckled. I knew what he was thinking. That the smell of the adhesive was worse than the smell of me.

“It's making my head dizzy,” I said.

“Another reason you should come with me, the place can air out while we're gone. And we can stop at the tailor on the way home to have you measured for some new dresses, yes?”

“Yes, you're right. I can.”

The screams of the damned leached out from the lunatic wing as we crossed into the hospital. The smells of death and medicine were familiar; I knew I had been here before.

The halls were filled with people, the hospital staff rushing around, patients moaning and wandering or just lying against a wall, waiting.

I tried not to look at any of them, though they wouldn't have seen me looking from my black-veiled barrier. We walked slowly, my feet unsure on the slippery floors.

We pushed through several sets of doors, winding through a labyrinth of hallways until we reached a new set of strong oaken doors. A sign on the door informed us that this was private with no trespassing.

The mood of the hospital changed. It was dark and quiet. No, quiet wasn't the word as moans and screams filled the air. But the atmosphere didn't have the same hustle and bustle of urgency. Here time was slow, torturous. My senses tingled as pain of the people behind the closed doors we passed reached through and gripped me in the heart. My stomach clenched and several times senses overwhelmed me. The emotions of the patients whirled and swirled, their sobbing laments causing me to wonder at my own fate.

We reached a door and Dr. Rueben produced a set of keys.

“My office,” he said as he led me in. I looked at the pictures on the walls, at the horrific renderings of barbaric surgical instruments. One painting in particular intrigued me. It was of a body lying on a slab with several men sewing through it with long needles and threads. From buckets around them, body parts hung out; an arm, a foot, a leg.

I continued to stare at the bloody, garish painting.

“Is this me?” I asked.

“How could it be you? This picture is decades old.”

“I mean, is this the type of creature that I am? Sewn together from pieces in pails?” I looked down at the faint scars on my wrists, my fingers, all down my arms. Patches sewn here and there. Scars of needle and thread, there was no denial. The hideous marks in my face that never wanted to completely heal were proof of that.

“I don't know your origin, Agatha. I don't know how you were created.”

“I'm sure I do.” I continued to stare at the picture while he busied himself at his desk. I studied the picture so long that he had written several pieces of correspondence and was eager to begin whatever it was I was to experience.

We walked down the long, cold corridor until we arrived at a very large white room. There were beds everywhere. Most of the beds were covered with sheets that had the outlines of human bodies beneath.

“This is where we store the newly dead. Wrapped up so that their disease won't infect others.”

I nodded.

“Remove your hat, your dress. We need to examine you for the notes.”

I stripped naked, modesty not being part of this new self, and watched his face as he laid eyes on the horror of my body. He gulped as he indicated for me to turn around in front of him. I did so, with no reason to really care. It was a joy to be relieved of the foul clothing and standing in the cool room. My wounds throbbed, though they weren't seeping pus. It was odd to me that they hurt at all since they appeared healed.

My heart pounded as I studied his face while he looked me up and down. What was he seeing? He would look at a scar or a mark and then write it down in his book. He drew pictures of me; I watched him, and made lines where my marks were, where I was sewn together.

He was most interested in my head.

“What magnificent work, you can hardly see the scars at all.” He seemed proud, whistling. The more he looked, the more excited he became.

My intuition was pulsing harder. I closed my eyes, listening to his crowing.

It was him.

It was him all along.

I opened my eyes, anger flooded me with this new revelation. I reached out and grabbed him by the throat. He dropped his ruler and pen.

“Agatha, what's wrong?” he cried out. His feet lifted from the ground as I held him in the air.

“You,” I accused.

“What?”

“You lied to me.”

I pinched his neck tighter, his feet swung as his hands tried to pry mine from him.

“You're so strong. How can it be?”

“You made me this strong… So what do you think?”

“I think you should put me down.”

“I should just kill you now, you pathetic, lying beast.”

“I didn't do anything.”

“Yes, you did. You helped to make me and then you abandoned me. Both of you. You left me for dead in the woods like an animal. No grave marker. No sorrow.”

“We thought you were dead. Where should I have buried you? You're an experiment, a secret, a mistake. And
who
are you...really? You're made from so many parts. A marker indeed.”

His pithy words had barely left his lips when I threw him across the room. He hit the wall and crumpled into a heap.

“I'm sorry, I'm sorry,” he cried. “Please don't kill me. I was only helping…at the last minute. I didn't know until it was too late.”

“I want to kill you,” I said, pacing. “I want to kill you for all the suffering you've given me. How is it to live like this? And then to abandon me to fend for myself? How cruel.”

“But I'm helping you now, right? Remember?”

I stopped and stared at him.

“I'm helping you and don't you forget it,” he said. “You could be locked up in an institution by now. And remember, we're going on tour. Together.”

“So who is he then?” I asked, pulling myself up to my full height. Dr. Rueben stared at me, cowering as his lips and eyelids began to swell with bruises.

“I can't tell you. He'll destroy me. My career, my livelihood, my life.”

“I'll destroy your life if you don't tell me who made me and why.”

“You already know the why. You sat through a whole lecture of it.”

“I don't believe you. I believe there was something more.”

“No, people are curious. They yearn to play God. As technologies advance, we're able to unravel more of life's mysteries. It's only human nature to take something apart and then put it back together again. Why shouldn't that concept apply to taking a man apart and putting him back together?”

“But he didn't do that. He took many women apart and sewed us back together, although I suspect he used a few man pieces such as some of the skin grafts and my feet.”

I raised my foot above his head where he crouched on the floor in the darkened doorway.

“Agatha, why don't you go home? We've done enough for today,” he said softly.

I lowered my foot and stared at him.

No, I couldn't crush him. I needed him. We had to go on tour.

I never saw the Elephant Man that day or even the next. But there was a day when I was walking through the halls and several nurses wheeled a very large man with a covered face towards my direction. The nurse knew me by now as Dr. Rueben's assistant, and let me stop the entourage. I approached the figure in the wheelchair. He wore a hat with a light-coloured fabric that draped down to his lap. Two small holes allowed him to peer out at me. His eyes twinkled and I wondered what he thought of me, in my own netted hat. Did he wonder if I too had some horrible disfigurement?

“Joseph Merrick,” I said, holding out a black-gloved hand. He nodded to me and shook my hand.

“We have much in common, you and I,” I said to him. He spoke to me but under his headdress, I couldn't make out a word he said.

“I wondered, is it worth it? The sideshow life?” I asked.

He shook his head and I understood the word “no” very clearly.