Elephant Nocturne

When he sleeps, he dreams.

He doesn’t sleep often, though it pains him to remain awake so many hours a day. It is hard and painful work, lowering himself into his bed, which is not a bed at all, but instead a chair with a high back, and a long seat that accommodates his legs. It is an ingenuous thing, one of the many conveniences the doctor and his patrons have provided for him. He is grateful for these gifts, and he treasures every last one of them, down to the smallest teaspoon.

His neck aches, but it is a familiar pain, and he accepts it as a burden he must carry until he closes his eyes for the last time. He has a hot water bottle that he heats on his little stove while he makes his evening tea. The kettle whistles; he lifts it, slowly, and pours water into his teapot. Already the rich redolent smell of tea fills his small sitting room – a smell he will always associate with – oddly, he knows – the London Hospital, now his home. The smell almost brings a tear to his eye, although he has shared a cup of tea with so many grand ladies, now, that he has learned to keep these emotions inside. He may not be a man – he may be a hideous creature indeed – but he would never allow a lady to see him cry.

His mind strays. He blinks back the hot tears that threaten to spill.

His first examination by Doctor Treves began with the slow, deliberate brewing of tea. He did not think that grand men like the doctor brewed their own tea – but Doctor Treves did, and still does, in his study.

The rest of the boiling water goes into his hot water bottle. He wraps the bottle in a muffler given to him by her Majesty, the Princess of Wales; she is rumored to have knit it herself. Although he refuses to catalog his pain (his nature is not to be ghoulish or give in to the weakness that is self-pity) the parts of him that hurt the most - his neck, his right hip, and his, admittedly, monstrous right foot, require nightly applications of warmth.

The tea is done. He pours it into his favorite cup – bone china decorated with an elegant design of violets and posies. Though his memories of the Continent are fraught with anxiety, shudders, and the awful threats of violent men, this tea-set – which he purchased with his own money, before it was stolen from him and his life changed forever – is a reminder that he survived indignities unheard of by the decent society in which he now resides. He adds several teaspoons of sugar and a splash of milk. The tea goes on a table next to his chair.

When he settles into his bed-chair, he pulls a blanket across his legs and closes his eyes. With some maneuvering and only a little pain in his malformed hand, he lays the water bottle - wrapped in a green knitted muffler - across his neck.

The tea smells like comfort. He does not drink it; this is his nighttime ritual, the making of tea, the laying down of his tired body (though not, of course, his head), the application of heat to his strained limbs.

His eyelids are getting heavy. Though his window is closed, and it’s late, he can hear, or imagines he can hear, the noises of busy London life up the stairs, beyond Bedstead Square, and into Whitechapel, his home these last few months. He imagines he can hear the slow rambling footsteps of the Daughters of Joy who haunt the streets above (now safe, he is told, from Saucy Jack, who of late seems to have curtailed his reign of terror upon those unfortunate women); he imagines he can hear the clatter of horse hooves, the great beasts ferrying a coach of elegant ladies to an evening at the theatre; perhaps Mr Collins himself is walking up there, above him, gathering images for his next novel. The large grey tomcat that roams the hospital grounds stops at his window, and peers inside, with a flash of its yellow eyes. The cat scratches a bit at the window, then spies a small saucer of milk left at the bottom of the stairs. He cannot see the cat, but he imagines the way it leaps, graceful and feral as a lion.

The tea smells like home. His neck is warm. He wishes, faintly and with only the barest hint of longing, that he could lay his head down, just once, on a pillow. His eyelids are heavy.

When he sleeps, he dreams of elephants.

He saw one, once, in Belgium. The man for whom he worked – a man whose face and name he has, mercifully, forgotten – had traveled to India in search of the turbaned fakir, rumored to float on air and sleep on a bed of nails. The man came back with a caravan of wonders, the most wondrous of all an elephant with long curving tusks and sad eyes. He only saw the creature from a distance (though he judged its eyes sad), and it did not live long – but it was, truly, a wonder to behold. He never touched its skin, but he knew how it would feel – rough, and dry as a potato.

The tea smells like home. His neck is warm. The cat is fed. He wishes, faintly and with only the barest hint of longing, that he could lay his head down, just once, on a pillow. His eyelids are heavy.

In his dream, now, a herd of the great grey beasts are thundering across the savannah towards him. He has never seen the savannah, though he has read about it, in the travel books he so loves. In his dream it is exactly as he imagined it; a vast plain of brown grass, swaying like so many women rocking their children to sleep; leafless trees in the distance; and the elephants, ten or twelve of them, all galloping towards him. The sky is orange, and as the herd rumbles towards him, the sun sinks closer to the horizon. He stretches his neck and looks directly at the sun, a red ball round as a saucer, and warm as tea. He stands next to a shallow pool, and he waits for them – his herd, his family.

Joseph is sleeping, now; Joseph is dreaming.