Ralph Helfer by Modoc: The True Story of the Greatest Elephant That Ever Lived Read Free Book Online Page A

other could send messages no outsider could know. Sometimes, to add softness to the pillow, Marigold would be placed on the thickness of her own hair, the waves and curls billowing around her. She had the look of a flower emerging from the comfortable bed of its golden petals. Circus audiences often left her presence feeling transfixed, as if having succumbed to an ethereal vision of spiritual enlightenment.
    Mesmera, the snake dancer, featured Slip, a fifteen-foot Indian python. A sinuous lady, she was the epitome of controlled body movement. Her slender and graceful physique, undulating muscles, and stretching tendons all moved in juxtaposition. Her eyeswere as awesome as her body. Once transfixed on another pair, they overwhelmed, forcing the other to look away as one does from looking into the sun. Her head seemed to be the only part of her body that held her steady and balanced. Voluptuous breasts heaved.
    While all this mastery of extremities continued, Slip slid his bulk around her throat, down the earthquake-ravaged stomach, settling in the violent sea of her hips, content to let his muscles grasp her torso with such strength that he followed her exact movement without being bumped or jostled. She ended her act by kissing him on his hard, shiny, scaled mouth as his quick thrusting tongue slipped from a small orifice between those nontelling jaws.
     
    Sweet Little Marigold, the Torso Lady, and Karl Schulz, the Seal Man, were getting married! Whether it was a marriage for love or companionship, no one could say. Little Marigold had been born of normal parents, who had sent her to a home for invalids in Dusseldorf. The home was called Baselfeld, an establishment funded by the wealthy, where parents of deformed children could hide their offspring.
    “Mother told me that she loved me,” Marigold reflected in a conversation to Bram, “but because I was different, I couldn’t live a normal life. She felt that being with others of a similar kind would be better for me. I cried and told her I was afraid, that other people scared me. I was so lonely. Down deep I knew that she abhorred me. She never helped me with my personal needs, you know—like bodily functions. Why, she never even held me in her arms. But then, you see, back home we had maids at my beck and call. Not that I was spoiled, or anything like that, pas de tout ,” Marigold hastened to add, “I just never quite realized how helpless I was until I went to that horrible place.”
    Bram looked at the little woman, whose kind eyes were glistening at the memory. Curpo had told him places like that existed, but he had never known anyone who had actually lived at one. “It must have been awful, Marigold. But they did take care of you, didn’t they?”
    “They took care of us, all right,” she said. “There was never enough staff, or decent food, and the place was always drafty. Sometimes, when I was sitting in the dark, all the spooky demons in my mind would come out. If I sneezed, or my nose dripped and grew cold and chapped, I couldn’t wipe it. If I was chilled and needed my shawl, I stayed chilled. That’s when I let my hair grow so long; it helped keep me warm. The worst was if I had to go to the toilet. I had to sit in my wet urine all night. You see, I have these tubes under here”—she glanced down—“and, well, I was petrified thinking of what could happen, like if I started to fall—or fell face down! Why, I couldn’t breathe if I did that!” Marigold’s face was flushed now, her eyes wide at remembering.
    “A bee might crawl on my face, or they would leave me in the sun too long. Once I saw a large rat enter my room and I couldn’t see where it went! I knew it could do anything it wanted to me, crawl on my face or bite me—and there was nothing I could do! I thought I felt something on my back. I gasped, and when I did, I swallowed some of my hair. Every time I tried to breathe, I swallowed more. I was choking and there was no way to