The Doctored Man

by Maurice Renard

  Hopkins meditated upon this while deploring it, for he knew that Mr. Patpington’s derangement was born of the redoubtable and methodical plausibility of the fantastic story and that the story—yes, truly—contained things so finely observed that one had difficulty believing that they had been deduced from a nonsensical premise by rigorous logic.

  With a critical eye, Hopkins followed the unfortunate Griffin through the tribulations that his invisibility inflicted upon him. Nothing! he complained. Nothing to find fault with! Griffin’s invisible, that’s all. He’s invisible because light is no longer reflected by his surfaces. He’s invisible because light traverses his body without even being refracted. Now, present-day science doesn’t tell me whether light, on penetrating our organs, is liable to affect any of their functions. One can’t see, in that fashion, why the stomach, integrally illuminated, should cease to digest, or why the heart, impregnated with daylight, should refuse to beat, the ear to hear, the eye…

  “May I be damned!” cried Hopkins. “Old Pat hasn’t thought of that. Neither did Wells!”

  He went up the stairs four at a time and went into the laboratory like Aeolus, the god of winds.

  Mr. Patpington, seated before his figures with his nose in an equation, waved his plump hand to demand silence. Whether he liked it or not, Hopkins had to paw the ground for a few minutes.

  “Well?” said Mr. Patpington, finally. “What’s the matter?”

  “Well,” said Hopkins, “it’s this: the story’s false! Yes, yes, it’s understood, you’re a chemist of the first order; I have no doubt that you’ll find a means to render yourself invisible—but you won’t be able to employ that means!”

  “And why not?”

  “Because,” Hopkins cried, triumphantly, “one can’t become invisible without becoming blind—and Wells is pulling a fast one when he shows us an invisible man who can see!”

  “It’s true that he can’t see himself,” retorted Mr. Patpington, “since he’s invisible. Wells points that out…”

  “An invisible man can’t see anything at all. First of all, the eye is a camera obscura; the eye needs a dark space to produce vision. That’s quite sufficient to prove my point. But wait—there’s more! With what is it filled, this camera obscura, this dark space which light must only penetrate through the round hole of the pupil? Tell me, with what? With refractive substances, isn’t that so? Substances which, in order to play their optical role, have to refract the luminous rays. Thus, if you take away that property from them, how do you expect them to fulfill their function? And that’s not all! Not content with functioning in their entirety like a single lens, some of these substances function individually as mirrors. Now, is a mirror that no longer reflects anything still a mirror? And finally, on what screen can these images be projected, in an invisible man, since, hypothetically, his retina will be incapable of interrupting the slightest ray?”

  “Ooooh!” groaned Mr. Patpington, exhaling his discomfiture.

  “In the order of luminous facts,” continued Hopkins, somewhat excitedly, “whoever says invisible says non-existent! An invisible eye is inoperative. An invisible man is inevitably a blind man. Griffin is a myth. Conclusion: Uncle Patpington must give up the attempt to imitate him—isn’t that so?”

  The stout fellow had reckoned without the heroism brooding in the old scientist’s heart. He was amazed to see Mr. Patpington, crushed as he was, straighten up tremulously, a pink and resolute little man who seemed to be reinflating with the effect of a noble inhalation. Intrepidity furnished his black pupils with the glint of well-carved jet. “The game’s worth the candle!” he declared. “I’ll be blind, but I’ll be invisible!”

  There’s nothing to be done with him! Hopkins raged.

  “Anyway,” Mr. Patpington went on, “I shan’t embark upon invisibility without being assured, first, of a means of becoming visible again—and, in consequence, I’ll only expose myself to a temporary blindness.”

  His attitude was determined, his tone peremptory; he was animated by a slight resentment. Hopkins judged it perilous to persist. As the maniac sat down again before his algebraic formulas, with the obvious intention of losing himself therein, Hopkins withdrew, his head bowed, conclusively vanquished.

  Eighteen days went by between the scene that has just been described and the explosion in the laboratory. During this lapse of time, Mr. and Mrs. Hopkins could only render justice to the gaiety, the friendliness and the joyful charm of Mr. Patpington. Had it not been for his mania, what an adorable companion that dear old uncle would have been! And how could they pluck up the courage to prevent Bob and Lily from leaping on to his knees after the meal and maltreating him like a huge doll brought in a box by the man from the toyshop?

  Mr. Patpington, however, worked all day, only mingling with the living at meal-times. On the day when Hopkins visited the laboratory, he employed a lie by way of excuse. He pretended to have a toothache, which, he said, entirely robbed him of his appetite—but when the noise of cutlery filled the dining-room, Hopkins climbed up to the chemist’s laboratory, curious to know exactly what the fellow had been doing all day.

  In the wake of this investigation, Hopkins seemed singularly preoccupied. Mrs. Hopkins, alarmed, interrogated him. All day, he pretended not to understand her insistence, but he could not sleep all night. The following day, his nervousness betrayed a fit of anxiety and indecision. At 5 p.m., when the laboratory exploded, Hopkins called himself a complete idiot as he climbed the stairs.

  “It’s necessary to take immediate action!” he mumbled. “Send him and all his reagents packing! It was bound to happen. Give house-room to a madman—oh yes, that’s stupid! We’re in a fine mess now!”

  Good luck had limited the material damage to the destruction of alembics, heaters, test-tubes, retorts and other utensils employed in practical chemistry. The windows, it is true, no longer framed a single pane and the doors had come off their hinges, but the blast had been so powerfully felt throughout the house and the detonation so thunderous, that it was a miracle still to find four walls and a roof there.

  Followed by his wife, who was whiter than a sheet, Hopkins went in circumspectly and sniffed the sharp odor that was dissipating rapidly, along with a green smoke. Mr. Patpington was lying on his back, in a tranquil attitude, seemingly fast asleep. The explosive mixture, blowing up under his nose, had nevertheless singed his eyelashes, his eyebrows and his trimmed moustache and covered his face with a green layer, which terrified Mrs. Hopkins at first sight.

  Hopkins carried him to his bedroom, laid him down and washed his face. While Mrs. Hopkins went downstairs to reassure the neighbors that the explosion had brought running, the physician ascertained with agreeable certainty that Mr. Patpington had no external cuts or bruises of any sort. The faint ended, thanks to Hopkins’ attentions; immediately, Mr. Patpington recovered his color and the use of speech—to the astonishment of his nephew.

  “Victory!” he cried. “Victory!”

  Transported by delight, Mr. Patpington, propping himself up on his elbow, passed his trembling hands back and forth across his face.

  “What? What?” interrogated Hopkins.

  “Oh, you’re there, Arthur! Well, do you still doubt my genius? Invisible! I’m invisible! Patpington, the great Patpington, has found the secret of invisibility! I’m invisible!”

  Hopkins understood that Mr. Patpington was blind.

  It only required a few seconds for the doctor to take account of what had occurred in his uncle’s brain. The accident had taken Mr. Patpington by surprise in the course of one of the perfectly incoherent experiments that his hobby-horse had suggested to him. He had woken up deprived of sight, for reasons that a subsequent medical examination would ascertain, but, still pursued by his obsession and with his memory disturbed by virtue of the sudden commotion, the eccentric had imagined an entire glorious sequence of events. According to him, his efforts had been crowned by success; he had lost consciousness at the conclusion of th
e operation during which his body had abandoned all appearance, and, knowing that invisibility was inseparable from blindness, Mr. Patpington believed himself to be invisible to everyone, while only being so, in truth, to himself.

  No one wanted to disillusion him. Mr. Patpington was such a nice chap! And he manifested such joy at being invisible! Who could have been so cruel as to transform that innocent happiness into despair? Who would take the responsibility of saying: “Not invisibility, my dear chap, but blindness, pure and simple!” A double heartbreak! No, no, the only thing to do was to praise the Lord for having sustained the illusion that gratuitously completed an infantile desire and draped an infirmity in the very purple of glory.

  Thus it was done; and then commenced the most touching comedy. Mr. and Mrs. Hopkins played it admirably, and there is no shame in saying that they kept it up for three months. Yes, for exactly ninety-five days they succeeded in maintaining Mr. Patpington in his salutary aberration. It is true that the deceived individual wanted to be deceived, and that the task was reduced, in sum, to supporting an autosuggestion; all the same, if one considers the normally mistrusting nature of the mentally disturbed and the exceedingly sharp perspicacity with which Mr. Patpington was still endowed, it must be admitted that Mr. and Mrs. Hopkins were worthy of all praise. As for Hopkins, one could not congratulate him too much for the veritably dazzling manner in which he brought the adventure to a close, for the benefit of everyone—especially dear old Mr. Patpington.

  We shall draw a rapid sketch of the life that the Hopkinses led during those 95 days. One might say that that life was dominated by the work of benevolent deception and regulated by the obligation to nourish Mr. Patpington’s error.

  Fortunately, Hopkins was able, from the outset, to isolate Mr. Patpington, and, in consequence, to avoid the blunders that strangers would have been unable to avoid making in his regard. In fact, Mr. Patpington had put his once-famous memory to a stern proof, but was unable—for good reason—to recall the formulas that, according to him, conferred invisibility. Hopkins, affirming that the formulas had been burned, persuaded him without difficulty that his mental genius would enable him to recover them, but that it was necessary in the meantime to keep the whole affair secret.

  “Otherwise,” he argued, “people would be able to believe that the phenomenon was accidental; some of them would even reckon your invisibility diabolical—and it would all give rise to misapprehensions. It’s therefore appropriate that you only go out in my company, dressed from top to toe in effects that conceal your absence, as Wells’s hero did. Like Griffin, you’ll wear gloves and a large hat pulled down a long way. I’ll buy you a wig and dark glasses. For the face, there’s the solution of a mask or thick make-up, but I prefer bandages, again like Griffin—it’s safer and more natural. We’ll say that the explosion in the laboratory has disfigured you and rendered you blind. Furthermore, as I fear some indiscretion on the part of the children, I’ll ask you only to appear in front of them in the same get-up.”

  Mr. Patpington was docile and delighted, and it is only fair to say that he submitted immediately to Hopkins’ ascendancy. That very affectionate nephew lent him his eyes, so to speak, and Mr. Patpington surrendered himself to his fate. For him, henceforth, nothing existed but the voice of his guide.

  That is why the inhabitants of Iping saw Hopkins taking a stroll every day with a bizarrely-muffled stout little man. It was winter, though, and, thanks to the precaution of only going out after dark—under the pretext that sunlight was harmful to the wounded man’s eyes—the matter did not give rise to any comment.

  In other respects, Hopkins and his wife became ingenious in treating Mr. Patpington as an invisible man; they did so scrupulously. When one of them went into the blind man’s room and they perceived Uncle Pat there, with his clothes on. Mr. and Mrs. Hopkins did not neglect to exclaim: “My God! I’ll never get used to it! What a strange sight it is to see a man without a head and hands!” And immediately, Mr. or Mrs. Hopkins would be repaid for their painful lie by the smile of gratitude that spread across the round and rosy face of the beloved Mr. Patpington.

  Once, however, in an analogous circumstance, Mrs. Hopkins almost demolished the entire edifice of their pious plot. This is how it happened. Mr. Patpington had a slight cold, which explains why Mrs. Hopkins was bringing him a hot toddy. She knocked on the uncle’s door. He was expecting her; a jovial voice replied: “Come in!”—and Mrs. Hopkins went in, without paying any heed to the joyful laugher contained in the voice.

  All the charity, excellence and energy of Mrs. Hopkins is measurable in the fact that the toddy was not spilled on the floor, that her scream was strangled into something sufficiently imitative of a cough, that the saintly woman succeeded in going in, in spite of her irreproachable upbringing, and that she exclaimed, in a surprised tone: “Why, there’s no one here! Where are you, then, Uncle Patpington?”—even though Mr. Patpington was, in truth, standing in front of her, wearing nothing but a jester’s smile, covered in nothing but ridicule.

  Oh, that wheeze was no sinecure! It demanded constant vigilance, perpetual self-control, the anticipation of all eventualities and a penetrating surveillance over oneself and everyone else. To recruit Bob and Lily into the familial comedy was unthinkable; it was therefore necessary to forbid them access to the room where Mr. Patpington slept, took his meals and lived for most of the time. The little ones obeyed without prevarication, but when the cat was sold, Bob and Lily were in floods of tears.

  Hopkins sold the cat because he had a confused suspicion of the beast and its instinct. He had enough things to worry about on his own account and that of his nearest and dearest, without exposing the success of such a complicated and praiseworthy deception to the gaffes of an animal.

  One example will give an idea of all the precautions that it was necessary to take with Mr. Patpington to nourish his delusion. As one may imagine, it was Hopkins who undertook the daily care of the aged infant. Well, what would have happened if, in order to cut Mr. Patpington’s fingernails, Hopkins had not thought of first coating them with some kind of paste? Mr. Patpington would have said: “Oh, Arthur, how can you cut my fingernails without being able to see them?” And all would have been lost, exactly as if Madame Hopkins had screamed and fled on the day of the toddy.

  But we have talked for too long about Mr. Patpington’s blindness without mentioning that Hopkins did what was necessary to figure out its nature and its cause. Here again the inevitable problem arose: to avoid disillusioning Mr. Patpington, and, in this instance, to conceal from him that he was being subjected to an eye examination—since he was convinced that his eyes were invisible.

  As chance would have it, Mr. Patpington, never stopped asking his nephew for continual clarifications regarding the optical prodigy of which he believed himself to be the object. The phenomenon of digestion, among others, excited his interest keenly. In The Invisible Man, as we know, Wells supposes that the aliments ingurgitated by Griffin only become invisible themselves gradually, as they are assimilated. It was, for Mr. Patpington, a veritable feast to have Hopkins describe the phases of his digestion and the progressive disappearance of the alimentary substances. Hopkins improvised some very nice balanced accounts on that subject; he maintained that such observations were of considerable medical importance, but instead of looking at Mr. Patpington’s stomach, or rather his pancreas—which would only have informed him as to the pink plump surface of his uncle’s paunch—he took the opportunity to examine, with all the discipline of his art, the eyes that were no longer seeing clearly.

  Hopkins could not distinguish anything particular therein. Then he discussed Mr. Patpington’s case with a former colleague who was now a celebrated oculist in London, and they concluded together that it one of those commonplace amauroses in which the eye does not present any apparent lesion, and which often have a purely nervous origin. No local treatment could remedy it.

  Why should we hide the fact that this result caused Hopkins t
o rejoice. He had done his duty in obtaining all that science could teach him about Mr. Patpington’s blindness, but, having accomplished that duty, he was content with an impotence that permitted him to leave Mr. Patpington to the delights of his illusion. For, in the end, if a treatment had been possible, would Hopkins have had the right to neglect its application? Could he have done otherwise than nag Mr. Patpington to give him back the sight whose deprivation made him so strangely happy? The case of conscience did not arise, and we can easily understand that Hopkins was glad of it.

  At any rate, Mr. and Mrs. Hopkins rapidly became accustomed to the new requirements that Mr. Patpington’s condition imposed upon them. Now, disemburdened of their initial anxieties, fully adapted to the strange role that they had to play, they drank deeper of the pleasure of being benevolent—to which another pleasure, rarer and more mysterious, would soon be added.

  What was that?

  It consisted, simply, of enjoying the miracle. It consisted of behaving as if a phenomenal being was living under their roof. It consisted of bringing their actions into accord with a marvel, even though that marvel did not exist.

  Destiny, taking them by the heart, had obliged Mr. and Mrs. Hopkins to enter into Mr. Patpington’s game as into some childish round, and because of that, they felt the mysterious vibration of an obscure, ambiguous and precious sensuality within them. It seemed to rise up from the utmost depths of their being; it returned from the remotest origins of their infancy. As before, the phantoms of their imagination took on substance, to the influence of which they were subject. The enchantment that they interpreted constantly ended up by taking on a sort of artificial form, in the same way that false gods end up being constituted by the smoke of sacrifices. The invisibility that they affirmed incessantly acquired in their affirmation a sort of psychological existence—and such is the prestige of a marvel that its shadow sufficed to generate pleasure.