He could not help agreeing, which seemed to please Merrick, judging from the way he fidgeted in his seat. In an embarrassed voice, 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 Kendall, and from what Wells could gather she was one of his most generous benefactors. He had no difficulty in picturing her as woman of good social standing, sympathetic to the suffering of the world, so long as they were not on her doorstep. She 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 note that, consciously or not, had slipped into his voice. But at the same time he felt a pang of sorrow, and hoped Mrs Kendall’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 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 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 pedlar 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. ‘Those 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, as he studied his misshapen reflection in the window-pane.
‘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 the other wallowed in his own tragedy. He was convinced Merrick’s only comfort could come from his deformity, which, although it had marginalised him, had also made him a singular being.
‘No doubt you are right, Mr Wells,’ Merrick said, continuing to gaze at his 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 shuffled over to a small cupboard 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 Kendall 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 new-born 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 from 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 be wasting our time. 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 honoured, Mr Merrick, truly honoured.’
He smiled warmly as he said goodbye, 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 emitted a strange sound, as if a cough or grunt had convulsed his body from head to foot, threatening to shake him apart at the seams. Wells listened, alarmed, as the loud, hacking sound continued to rise uncontrollably from his throat, until he realised what was happening. There was nothing seriously wrong with Merrick: he was 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 work table, and sat in front of the 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 to submit them to some sinister test. On the contrary, he was convinced that all Merrick wanted from this limited intimacy was a few meagre crumbs of warmth and sympathy. It was far more likely that Trêves had attributed him with those motives to unnerve guests to whom he took a dislike, or possibly to make allowances for Merrick’s extreme naivety 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 the creature to whom he clung desperately in the knowledge that he would be guaranteed a place beside him in history.
Wells was irritated by the idea of Trêves 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, in the knowledge 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.
Chapter XIII
That was how the wicker basket had come into Wells’s