The Map of Time (13 page)

It is hardly surprising that after such inauspicious beginnings, Wells’s relationship with his mother should continue in the same vein. Once the pleasant respite afforded by his broken leg had ended—after the village doctor, who, without being asked, had kindly prolonged it by setting the bone badly and being obliged to break it again to correct his mistake—little Bertie was sent to a commercial academy in Bromley, where his two brothers had gone before him although their teacher, Mr. Morley, had been unable to make anything out of them. The boy, however, quickly proved that all the peas in a pod are not necessarily the same. Mr. Morley was so astonished by Wells’s dazzling intelligence that he even turned a blind eye to the non-payment of the boy’s registration fees. However, this preferential treatment did not stop his mother from uprooting her son from the milieu of blackboards and school desks where he felt so at home, and sending him to train as an apprentice at the Rodgers and Denyer bakery in Windsor. After three months of toiling from seven thirty in the morning until eight at night, with a short break for lunch taken in a cramped, windowless cellar, Wells feared his youthful optimism would slowly and inevitably begin to fade, just as it had with his elder brothers, whom he barely recognized as the cheerful, determined fellows they had once been. And so he did everything in his power to prove to all and sundry that he did not have the makings of a baker’s assistant, abandoning himself more than ever to his frequent bouts of daydreaming. It came to the point where the owners had no choice but to dismiss the young man who mixed up the orders and spent most of his time dreaming in a corner. Thanks to the intervention of one of his mother’s second cousins, he was then sent to assist a relative in running a school in Wookey where he would also be able to complete his teacher training. Unfortunately, this employment, far more in keeping with his aspirations, ended almost as soon as it began when it was discovered that the headmaster was an impostor who had obtained his post by falsifying his academic qualifications. The by now not so little Bertie once again fell prey to his mother’s obsessions, which deflected him from his true destiny, sending him off on another mistaken path. And so it was that aged just fourteen, Wells began working in the pharmacy run by Mr. Cowap, who was instructed to train him as a chemist. However, the pharmacist soon realized the boy was far too gifted to be wasted on such an occupation and placed him in the hands of Horace Byatt, headmaster at Midhurst Grammar School, who was on the lookout for exceptional students who could imbue his establishment with the academic respectability it needed. Wells easily excelled over the other boys. They were on the whole mediocre students, and he was instantly noticed by Byatt, who contrived with the pharmacist to provide the talented boy with the best education they could. But his mother soon frustrated the plot hatched by the pair of idle philanthropists by sending her son to another bakery, this time in Southsea. Wells spent two years there in a state of intense confusion, trying to understand why that fierce wind insisted on blowing him off course each time he found himself back on the right path. Life at Edwin Hyde’s Bread Emporium was suspiciously similar to a sojourn in hell. It consisted of thirteen hours” hard work, followed by a night spent shut away in the airless hut that passed for a dormitory, where the apprentices slept so close together that even their dreams got muddled up. A few years earlier, convinced her husband’s fecklessness would end by bankrupting their china shop business, his mother had accepted the post of housekeeper at Uppark Manor, a run-down estate on Harting Down where as a girl she had worked as a maid. It was to here that Wells wrote her a series of despairing, accusatory letters, which out of respect I will not reproduce here, alternating the most childish demands with the most sophisticated arguments in a vain attempt to persuade her to set him free from his captivity. As he watched with anguish the future he so longed for slip through his fingers, Wells did his utmost to try to weaken his mother’s resolve. He asked her how she expected him to be able to help her in her old age on a shop assistant’s meager wage, pointing out that with the studies he intended to pursue he would obtain a wonderful position; he accused her of being intolerant, stupid, even threatening to commit suicide or other more dreadful acts that would stain the family name forever. But none of this weakened his mother’s resolve to turn him into a respectable baker’s boy. It took his former champion Horace Byatt, overwhelmed by growing numbers of pupils, to come to the rescue, offering him a post at a salary of twenty pounds for the first year, and forty thereafter. Wells was quick to wave these figures desperately in front of the nose of his mother, who reluctantly allowed him to leave the bakery, tired of all her vain efforts to keep her son on the right track. Relieved, the grateful Wells placed himself at the orders of his savior, whose expectations he was anxious to live up to. During the day he taught the younger boys, and at night he studied to finish his teacher training, eagerly devouring everything he could find about biology, physics, astronomy, and other science subjects. The reward for his titanic efforts was a scholarship to the Normal School of Science in South Kensington, where he would study under none other than Professor Thomas Henry Huxley, the famous biologist who had been Darwin’s lieutenant during his famous debates with Bishop Wilberforce.

Despite all this, it could not be said that Wells left for London in high spirits. He did so more with a feeling of deep unhappiness at not receiving his parents” support in this huge adventure. He was convinced his mother hoped he would fail in his studies, confirming her belief that the Wells boys were only fit to be bakers, that no genius could possibly be produced from a substance as dubious as her husband’s seed. For his part, his father was the living proof that failure could be enjoyed just as much as prosperity.

During the summer they had spent together, Wells had looked on with dismay as his father, whom age had deprived of his sole refuge, cricket, clung to the one thing that had given his life meaning. He wandered around the cricket pitches like a restless ghost carrying a bag stuffed with batting gloves, pads, and cricket balls, while his china shop foundered like a captainless ship, holed in the middle of the ocean. Things being as they were, Wells did not mind too much having to stay in a rooming house where the guests appeared to be competing for who could produce the most original noises.

He was so accustomed to life revealing its most unpleasant side to him, that when his aunt Mary Wells proposed he lodge at her house on the Euston Road, his natural response was to be suspicious, for the house was to all appearances normal, warm, cozy, suffused with a peaceful, harmonious atmosphere, and bore no resemblance to the squalid dwellings he had lived in up until then.

He was so grateful to his aunt for providing him with this long-awaited reprieve in the interminable battle that was his life that he considered it almost his duty to ask for the hand of her daughter Isabel, that gentle, kind young girl who wafted silently around the house. But Wells soon realized the rashness of his decision.

After the wedding, which was settled with the prompt matter-of-factness of a tedious formality, not only did he confirm that his cousin had nothing in common with him, but he also discovered that Isabel had been brought up to be a perfect wife. That is to say, to satisfy her husband’s every need except, of course, in the marriage bed, where she behaved with a coldness ideal for a procreating machine but entirely unsuited to pleasure. In spite of all this, his wife’s sexual frigidity proved a minor problem easily resolved by visiting other beds. Wells soon discovered there was an abundance of delightful ones to which his hypnotic grandiloquence gained him entry, and so he finally dedicated himself to enjoying life now that it seemed to be going his way. Immersed in the modest pursuit of pleasure that his guinea a week scholarship allowed, Wells not only gave himself over to the joys of the flesh, to making forays into hitherto unexplored subjects such as literature and art, and to enjoying every second of his hard-earned stay at South Kensington, but he also decided the time had come to reveal his innermost dreams to the world by publishing a short story in The Science Schools Journal.

He called it The Chronic Argonauts, and its main character was a mad scientist, Dr. Nebogipfel, who had invented a machine which he used to travel back in time to commit a murder. Time travel was not an original concept; Dickens had already written about it in A Christmas Carol and Edgar Allan Poe in A Tale of the Ragged Mountains, only in both of those stories the journeys always took place during a dream or state of trance. By contrast, Wells’s scientist traveled of his own free will and by means of a mechanical device. In brief, his idea was brimming with originality. However, this first tentative trial at being a writer did not change his life, which to his disappointment carried on exactly as before. All the same, this first story brought him the most remarkable reader he had ever had, and probably would ever have. A few days after its publication, Wells received a card from an admirer who had read his story and asked if he would take tea with him. The name on the card sent a shiver down his spine: Joseph Merrick, better known as the Elephant Man.

12

Wells began hearing about Merrick the moment he set foot in the biology classrooms at South Kensington. For those studying the workings of the human body, Merrick was something akin to Nature’s most amazing achievement, its finest-cut diamond, living proof of the scope of its inventiveness. The so-called Elephant Man suffered from a disease that had horribly deformed his body, turning him into a shapeless, almost monstrous creature. This strange affliction, which had the medical profession scratching its heads, had caused the limbs, bones, and organs on his right side to grow uncontrollably, leaving his left side practically unaffected. An enormous swelling on the right side of his skull, for example, distorted the shape of his head, squashing his face into a mass of folds and bony protuberances, and even dislodging his ear. Because of this, Merrick was unable to express anything more than the frozen ferocity of a totem. Owing to this lopsidedness, his spinal column curved to the right, where his organs were markedly heavier, lending all his movements a grotesque air. As if this were not enough, the disease had also turned his skin into a coarse, leathery crust, like dried cardboard, covered in hollows and swellings and wartlike growths. To begin with, Wells could scarcely believe such a creature existed, but the photographs secretly circulating in the classroom soon revealed the truth of the rumors. The photographs had been stolen or purchased from staff at the London Hospital, where Merrick now resided, having spent half his life being displayed in sideshows at third-rate fairs and traveling circuses. As they passed from hand to hand, the blurred, shadowy images in which Merrick was scarcely more than a blotch caused a similar thrill to the photographs of scantily clad women they became mixed up with, although for different reasons.

The idea of having been invited to tea with this creature filled Wells with a strange mixture of awe and apprehension.

Even so, he arrived on time at the London Hospital, a solid, forbidding structure located in Whitechapel. In the entrance, a steady stream of doctors and nurses went about their mysterious business. Wells looked for a place where he would not be in the way, his head spinning from the synchronized activity everyone seemed to be engaged in, like dancers in a ballet. Perhaps one of the nurses he saw carrying bandages had just left an operating theater where some patient was hovering between life and death.

If so, she did not quicken her step beyond the brisk but measured pace evolved over years of dealing with emergency situations. Amazed, Wells had been watching the nonstop bustle from his vantage point for some time when Dr. Treves, the surgeon responsible for Merrick, finally arrived. Treves was a small, excitable man of about thirty-five who masked his childlike features behind a bushy beard, clipped neatly like a hedge.

“Mr. Wells?” he inquired, trying unsuccessfully to hide the evident dismay he felt at his offensive youthfulness.

Wells nodded and gave an involuntary shrug as if apologizing for not demonstrating the venerable old age Treves apparently required of those visiting his patient. He instantly regretted his gesture, for he had not requested an audience with the hospital’s famous guest.

“Thank you for accepting Mr. Merrick’s invitation,” said Treves, holding out his hand.

The surgeon had quickly recovered from his initial shock and reverted to the role of intermediary. With extreme respect, Wells shook the capable, agile hand that was accustomed to venturing into places out of bounds to most other mortals.

“How could I refuse to meet the only person who has read my story?” he retorted.

Treves nodded vaguely, as though the vanity of authors and their jokes were of no consequence to him. He had more important things to worry about. Each day, new and ingenious diseases emerged which required his attention, the extraordinary dexterity of his hands, and his vigorous resolve in the operating theater.

He gestured to Wells with an almost military nod of his head to follow him up a staircase leading to the upper floors of the hospital. A relentless throng of nurses descending in the opposite direction hampered their ascent, nearly causing Wells to lose his footing on more than one occasion.

“Not everybody accepts Joseph’s invitations, for obvious reasons,” Treves said, raising his voice almost to a shout. “Although, strangely, this does not sadden him. Sometimes I think Joseph is more than satisfied with the little he gets out of life. Deep down, he knows his bizarre deformities are what enable him to meet almost any bigwig he wishes to in London, something unthinkable for your average commoner from Leicester’.

Wells thought Treves’s observation in rather poor taste but refrained from making any comment because he immediately realized he was right: Merrick’s appearance, which had hitherto condemned him to a life of ostracism and misery, now permitted him to hobnob with the cream of London society, although it remained to be seen whether or not he considered his various deformities too high a price to pay for rubbing shoulders with the aristocracy.

The same hustle and bustle reigned on the upper floor, but a few sudden turns down dimly lit corridors, and Treves had guided his guest away from the persistent clamor. Wells followed him as he strode along a series of never-ending, increasingly deserted passageways. As they penetrated the farthest reaches of the hospital, the diminishing numbers of patients as well as nurses around was clearly due to the wards and surgeries becoming progressively more specialized. However, Wells could not help comparing this gradual extinction of life to the terrible desolation surrounding the monsters” lairs in children’s fables.

All that was needed were a few dead birds and some gnawed bones.

While they walked, Treves used the opportunity to tell Wells how he had become acquainted with his extraordinary patient. In a detached, even tone that betrayed the tedium he felt at having to repeat the same story over and over again, Treves explained he had met Merrick four years earlier, shortly after being appointed head surgeon at the hospital. A circus had pitched its tent on a nearby piece of wasteland, and its main attraction, the Elephant Man, was the talk of all London. If what people said about him was true, he was the most deformed creature on the planet. Treves knew that circus owners were in the habit of creating their own freaks with the aid of fake limbs and makeup that were impossible to spot in the gloom, but he also bitterly acknowledged that this sort of freak show was the last refuge for those unfortunate enough to be born with a defect that earned them society’s contempt. The surgeon had few expectations when he visited the fair, motivated purely by unavoidable professional curiosity. But there was nothing fake about the Elephant Man. After a rather sorry excuse for a trapeze act, the lights dimmed and the percussion launched into a poor imitation of tribal drumming in an overlong introduction which nevertheless succeeded in giving everyone in the audience a sense of trepidation. Treves then watched, astonished, as the fair’s main attraction entered, and saw with his own eyes that the rumors circulating fell far short of reality. The appalling deformities afflicting the creature who dragged himself across the ring had transformed him into a misshapen, lopsided figure resembling a gargoyle. When the performance was over, Treves convinced the circus owner to let him meet the creature in private. Once inside his modest wagon, the surgeon thought he was in the presence of an imbecile, convinced the swellings on his head must inevitably have damaged his brain.

But he was mistaken. A few words with Merrick were enough to show Treves that the hideous exterior concealed a courteous, educated, sensitive being. He explained to the surgeon that the reason why he was called the Elephant Man was due to a fleshy protuberance between his nose and upper lip, a tiny trunk measuring about eight inches that had made it hard for him to eat and had been unceremoniously removed a few years before.

Treves was deeply moved by this creature’s gentleness, by the fact that despite the hardship and humiliation he had suffered, he apparently bore no resentment towards humanity, faceless humanity, whom he, Treves, was so quick to despise whenever he could not get a cab or a box at the theater.

When the surgeon left the circus an hour later, he had firmly resolved to do everything in his power to take Merrick away from there and offer him a decent life. His reasons were clear: in no other hospital records in the world was there any evidence of a human being with such severe deformities as Merrick’s. Whatever this strange disease was, of all the people in the world, it had chosen to reside in his body alone, transforming the wretched creature into a unique individual, a rare species of butterfly that had to be kept behind glass. Clearly, Merrick must leave the circus at the earliest opportunity. Little did Treves know that in order to accomplish this admirable goal he had set himself in a fit of compassion, he would have to begin a long, arduous campaign that would leave him drained. He started by presenting Merrick to the Pathology Society, but this only led to its distinguished members subjecting the patient to a series of probing examinations and ended in them becoming embroiled in fruitless, heated debates about the nature of his mysterious illness, which invariably turned into shouting matches where someone would always take the opportunity to try to settle old scores. However, his colleagues” disarray, far from discouraging Treves, heartened him. For ultimately it underlined the importance of Merrick’s life, making it all the more imperative to remove him from the precarious world of show business. His next step had been to try to get him admitted to the hospital where he worked, where he could be easily examined. Unfortunately, hospitals did not provide beds for chronic patients, and consequently, although the hospital management applauded Treves’s idea, their hands were tied. Faced with the hopelessness of the situation, Merrick suggested Treves find him a job as a lighthouse keeper, or some other occupation that would cut him off from the rest of the world.

However, Treves would not admit defeat. Out of desperation, he went to the newspapers, and in a few weeks managed to move the whole country with the wretched predicament of the fellow they called Elephant Man. Donations poured in, but Treves did not only want money; he wanted to give Merrick a decent home.

And so he decided to turn to the only people who were above society’s absurd, hidebound rules: the royal family. He managed to persuade the Duke of Cambridge and the Princess of Wales to agree to meet the creature. Merrick’s refined manners and extraordinarily gentle nature did the rest. And that was how Merrick came to be a permanent guest in the hospital wing where they found themselves at that very moment.

“Joseph is happy here,” declared Treves, in a suddenly thoughtful voice. “The examinations we carry out on him from time to time are fruitless, but that does not seem to worry him.

Joseph is convinced his illness was caused by an elephant knocking down his heavily pregnant mother while she was watching a parade. Sadly, Mr. Wells, this is a pyrrhic victory. I have found Merrick a home, but I am unable to cure his illness. His skull is growing bigger by the day, and I’m afraid that soon his neck will be unable to support the incredible weight of his head.” Treves’s blunt evocation of Merrick’s death, together with the bleak desolation that seemed to permeate that wing of the hospital, plunged Wells into a state of extreme anxiety.

“I would like his last days to be as peaceful as possible,” the surgeon went on, oblivious to the pallor beginning to spread over his companion’s face. “But apparently this is asking too much.

Every night, the locals gather under his window shouting insults at him and calling him names. They even think he is to blame for killing those whores who have been found mutilated in the neighborhood. Have people gone mad? Merrick couldn’t hurt a fly. I already mentioned his extraordinary sensibility. Do you know that he devours Jane Austen’s novels? And on occasion, I’ve even surprised him writing poems. Like you, Mr. Wells.” “I don’t write poems, I write stories,” Wells murmured hesitantly, his increasing unease apparently making him doubt everything.

Treves scowled at him, annoyed that his companion would want to split hairs over what he considered such an inconsequential subject as literature.

“That’s why I allow these visits,” he said, shaking his head regretfully, before resuming where he had left off, “because I know they do him a great deal of good. I imagine people come to see him because his appearance makes even the unhappiest souls realize they should thank God. Joseph, on the other hand, views the matter differently. Sometimes I think he derives a sort of twisted amusement from these visits. Every Saturday, Joseph scours the newspapers, then hands me a list of people he would like to invite to tea, and I obligingly forward them his card. They are usually members of the aristocracy, wealthy businessmen, public figures, painters, actors and other more or less well-known artists … People who have achieved a measure of social success and who in his estimation have one last test to pass: confronting him in the flesh.

As I already explained, Joseph’s deformities are so hideous they invariably evoke either pity or disgust in those who see him. I imagine Joseph can judge from his guests” reaction whether they are the kindhearted type or on the contrary ones riddled with fears and anxieties.” They came to a door at the far end of a long passageway.

“Here we are,” said Treves, plunging for a few moments into a respectful silence. Then he looked Wells in the eye, and added in a somber, almost threatening tone: “Behind this door awaits the most horrific-looking creature you have probably ever seen or will ever see; it is up to you whether you consider him a monster or an unfortunate wretch.” Wells felt a little faint.

“It is not too late to turn back; you may not like what you discover about yourself.” “You need not worry about me,” stammered Wells.

“As you wish,” said Treves, with the detachment of one washing his hands of the matter.

He took a key from his pocket, opened the door and, gently but resolutely propelled Wells over the threshold.