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FREAKS
:
The
Hideous Wrestler |
Date
Added
JUN 2003 |
Maurice Tillet born in France in 1910,
was a gifted, highly intelligent man who could speak 14 languages and
turn his hand to virtually anything he chose. He could have had
the pick of any career he wanted and, if ever the phrase applied to
one man exclusively, the world really was his oyster.
Then tragedy struck. When he was in his twenties, he developed
Acromegaly, a rare and horrific disease which causes bones to grow
wildly and uncontrollably. From an early age, it tends to turn
infants into fast growing giants. Yet at his stage in life - a
life which had been so rich in promise - it turned Tillet instead into
a hideously deformed parody of a human being. Within months, he
had changed from a smart, reasonably handsome whiz-kid, as we would
have known him today, into a grotesque distortion of a young man,
frightened even to venture into public gaze.
In search of a new identity to fit his chronic disfigurement, Tillet
fled to America, where he cashed in on his shattered appearance in the
only way he could, by becoming a professional wrestler, billed as a
fearsome, freak ogre of the ring. He was an instant success, an
ironic comparison with the time when his life could have meant so much
more to him. Spectators roared with delight as he - cast as a
wrestling 'baddie' - grappled with other men for a living.
He resigned himself to a friendless, lonely existence, even shunning
the charity of others who took pity on his mishappened form.
Bones jutted into awkward positions all over his body, twisting it
into what resembled a huge, anomalous mass. In the ring, he
resembled some kind of nightmare contortionist as his body was so
badly affected.
Yet Tillet himself remained a gentle giant, with the inner soul of a
poet, scholar and serious man. And a few people did, somehow,
manage to befriend him. One was businessman Patrick Kelly, to
whose home in Braintree, Massachusetts, Tillet was often invited.
Together, the two would play chess and, in rare moments of self-pity,
Tillet would raise his deformed head and moan: 'How awful it is to be
imprisoned in his body.'
In 1955, Tillet died. In his memory, Mr Kelly had a death mask
of his tragic friend made, which he placed on his library desk.
It was to mark the last of their chess games: games the two had
enjoyed so much, and which had spawned a bond of friendship between a
businessman and a monster.
In 1980, 25 years after Tillet's death, the games began again.
This spine chilling twist to the tale came after Mr Kelly had
installed a computerized chess machine, against which he frequently
played, beside the plaster cast of Tillet's head. Late one
evening, the computer deviated from its programmed patterns of play
and used an 18th century opening invented by a French master - a
gambit the long-since dead Tillet had used consistently.
'I played out the game, and the next morning noticed that the computer
was not plugged in,' says Mr Kelly. 'But I thought nothing of it
at the time. Yet a few weeks later the computer used a similar
opening - and again it was not connected to any power supply.'
Electronic engineers made a painstaking check of the system for Mr
Kelly - and discovered to their astonishment that the computer could
operate without electricity as long as it was close to the death mask
of the long-forgotten Tillet. Puzzled, the businessman had the
plaster cast X-rayed only to affirm the fact that it was, indeed,
solid plaster.
Only one, haunting answer could remain; the ghost of or, perhaps, the
sensitive, gentle soul of the hideous wrestler had returned to the
place and the pastime he had enjoyed the most in his tortured life -
playing chess with his best friend.
Mr Kelly firmly believes this is the case, and accepts that if the
unplugged computer does not work for a period of days, Tillet's spirit
is absent. 'When I want a game,' he says, 'I set up the pieces
without plugging the set in. If there is no response, I know
that Maurice is not with me for the time being...' |
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