The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein

19

“THE SERVANTS TELL ME,” Byron said as we sat down to breakfast on the following morning, “that a sea monster has been glimpsed in the lake. Surely that is a contradiction?”

“What kind of monster?” Bysshe asked.

“I presume one monster is very like another. I have read of the great serpents that inhabit the deep, but they were never clearly described. But now I have it.” Byron put down his fork. “This is what we will do. We will launch an expedition across the lake. We will hunt the monster! It will be an escapade!”

“Is that wise?” Mary was visibly perplexed.

“If I did what was wise, I would do nothing at all. My boat is properly rigged, if that is what you mean.”

“No. I meant that to chase a serpent-”

“There is no serpent, Mrs. Shelley. I am quite confident of that. But it will be an adventure. We will stand forth as the Argonauts, braving the waves to hunt down a legendary creature. It will be splendid.”

I stayed silent throughout this exchange but, after the meal was over, I agreed to go with them in the two-sailed skiff that Byron had purchased in Geneva. Mary declined the voyage preferring, as she said, to observe the myriad lizards that inhabited the southern wall of the garden. “I prefer my monsters to be diminutive,” she said.

So we set forth, stirred by Byron’s high spirits, on the bosom of the lake. We made for the further shore, so that we might see the setting of the Villa Diodati against the background of the mountains: the prospect was one I knew well, but Bysshe and Polidori professed themselves enchanted. Beyond the banks were slopes of vines, with a number of other villas and gardens situated amongst them. Behind these were the various ridges of black mountains, and towering behind them all was Mont Blanc itself hiding its summit among clouds. The lake was as blue as the sky, with sundry gleamings and twinklings in the varied light of the morning. I looked down into the water, the clearness of which allowed me to see the pebbles in its depths and the occasional shoals of small fish forming and reforming in a galvanic dance. All was pure and limpid. I let my hand trail in the water for a moment.

Suddenly Byron began to sing-or, rather, to wail one high note which echoed across the water. Then he broke into laughter. “That is my Albanian song,” he said. “I learned it from the tribesmen themselves. It is a wild howl, is it not? It may lure the sea-serpent from its lair.” We made our way across the lake, moving steadily further from the shore; Shelley and Polidori were debating the relative merits of Alexander and Napoleon, when our attention was arrested by shouts and calls on the northern bank. A group of people had assembled on an outcrop of rock that jutted into the water, and were pointing towards the middle of the lake. Much to my consternation Byron gave out a whoop of joy, or of excitement, and began steering the craft in that direction. “The good citizens,” he shouted, “have seen some wonder. We must investigate.”

A bank of dark cloud had come down from the mountains, driven by one of those sudden strong winds that are so common in the region; Byron and Bysshe paid no attention to the change in the weather but looked intently ahead. “There is something,” Bysshe exclaimed impatiently. “We must reach it. Over there.” I saw nothing but the black glint of the increasingly turbulent water. “Do you see it now, Byron?”

“I see a shape,” he replied. “It has a peculiar movement. It seems to be writhing in the water.”

“It is the unusual light of the lake,” I told them. “It casts unfamiliar shadows.”

We sailed onward. And then there came upon us a sudden squall, ferocious, that rocked the boat almost to overturning. I had of course heard often of these lacustrine storms, erupting and subsiding in minutes, but I had never before experienced one of them. Then, most strangely, the boat began to turn in increasingly smaller circles; the wind had taken its sails and was spinning it around. More strangely yet, I began to hear a sound of scraping or clawing from beneath the boat. “Did you hear that?” I shouted. “There is something below us!” The others were distracted by the shrieking of the wind and the rapid turning of the boat. We were helpless before the peril of the storm. “Hold fast!” Byron shouted. “It is not over yet!” With brute force and animation he caught hold of the mast and managed to unloosen the sail from it, clinging to the canvas as the boat was still in danger of oversetting. His fingers were pudgy, his nails bitten to the quick. When the sail came down the momentum of the boat was halted. The squall passed, and we drifted back towards the shore. It had been a moment of sudden and intense peril that left us all exhausted. Some workers in an adjacent vineyard ran over to us. I spoke to one of them who described how he and his companions had seen “une forme” sporting in the water. He gave an involuntary shudder of horror, as he described to me its unnatural shape. Yet I still persisted in my belief that this “shape” was no more than an accidental effect of light and shadow, misinterpreted by the superstitious peasantry. I assured myself, too, that the sounds I had heard beneath the boat were the scraping of pebbles thrown up by the tempestuous lake.

The sudden squall presaged a greater storm. When we arrived at the villa, some hours later, the sky had already grown very dark. Mary and Lizzie had been seated in the garden, marvelling at the clouds, but now retreated with us indoors. “It was the most extraordinary sensation,” Byron was telling Mary as we entered the drawing room. “The boat tossed and turned upon the water as if it had no weight at all. I could sense the savage power of nature. It is capricious, like a woman. How I would enjoy being consumed by her!”

“Nature is an action, not an attitude,” Polidori said. “It has no personal intent.”

“You do not truly believe that,” Byron told him. “You think you are right. But you know that you are wrong.”

“On the contrary. My knowledge and belief coincide. Ah. Here is tea.” Lizzie had brought in a copper kettle to place on the fire.

“It is remarkable,” Bysshe said, “that the heat of our bodies has wholly dried our clothes. I was soaked through to the skin. Each of us must have a furnace within.”

“Energy,” I said. “Electrical energy. It pulsates in every living thing. It is the life force.”

“Is that,” Polidori asked me, with the trace of a smile, “the same thing as the human spirit?”

“Oh, no. I think not. That concerns itself with values and with morals. The electrical pulse is purely energy. It is blind force.”

“But energy can be joyous,” Bysshe said. “An infant laughs, does it not?”

“The infant is experiencing life,” I replied. “That is all. It has neither virtue nor vice. It laughs or cries on an instinct. Instinct does not possess qualities.”

At that moment there was a peal of thunder. Bysshe laughed. “You have the elements on your side, Victor. They applaud you. The season of darkness begins.”

“The thunder is electrical too, is it not?” Mary asked me. She was taking up the kettle with a cloth, and pouring the boiling water into a pot. “How is the energy of nature to be distinguished from the electrical force within the body?”

“It is not. It is not different in essentials. It animates all matter. Even the stones in the garden can be electrified.”

“We are surrounded by it, then?”

“I am afraid so. Yes.”

“Why be afraid?” Byron asked me. “What is there to fear in the primal nature of the world?”

It had grown quite dark, and Lizzie busied herself with lighting candles. It was a large drawing room, stretching from the front to the back of the house, and some portions of it were still in shadow. “On such a night as this,” Bysshe told us, “we must amuse ourselves after dinner by telling stories of elves and demons. If there is a lightning storm, so much the better.”

The cook, who came with the house, prepared a meal of veal and boiled cabbage; it was a favourite of the region, but it was not so much relished by our English poets. They complained of too much butter and of pepper in the sauce. We settled down comfortably enough after dinner, however, and Byron brought down from his room a collection of German tales translated into English. He told us that they were all of a wonderfully morbid and eerie nature, coming under the general title of Fantasmagoriana. By the light of the candles, placed on either side of his chair, he began reading one of them aloud. But then he threw the book aside. “This is all very well,” he said. “But it is not the thing. The genuine article. What I mean is this. We must tell our own stories on these dark nights. We must entertain ourselves-with truths, with inventions, what you wish. They will be a wonderful accompaniment to the storms.” He turned to Bysshe. “That is, if you can endure-”

“Oh, yes. I am not of a nervous disposition. I am perfectly happy to take part.”

It was agreed between us that, over the next two or three days, each of us would prepare a tale of terror which would then be read aloud. I retired to my room, that night, in a state of some perplexity. I had one tale that would fill them with horror, strike them to the root, but how could I narrate the history of the last months without my heart beating violently as a testament to its truth? I would seem to them an accursed thing, a manic or an outcast-it would not matter which. No, it could not be done. So at breakfast on the following morning I excused myself from the collective task. “I am not a poet,” I told Bysshe. “I am not a writer of tales. I am a mere mechanic and experimenter. I cannot divine the secrets of the soul.”

“You criticise yourself unjustly,” he replied. “The great experimenters are poets in their way. They are travellers in unknown realms. They explore the limits of the world.”

“But not in words, Bysshe. That is where I will fail.”

Mary had been listening intently. “I have the words,” she said. “I have thought of a story. I remained in the drawing room last night, after you had retired, when all at once it came to me as an idea far more powerful than any reverie. A sequence of images rose up before me, unbidden-”

“I know that sensation,” Bysshe said.

“In the first of them some pale student of unhallowed arts was kneeling beside a man stretched out, but yet it was not a man at all-”

At this moment Byron entered the room. “Have I missed the cutlets?” he asked Lizzie, who was standing behind Mary’s chair. “Be a good girl and rescue one for me from the kitchen.” He sat down beside Bysshe. “Where is the good Dr. Polidori?”

“He has not risen,” I replied. “Fred tells me that he heard him snoring.”

“Only if he put his ear to the door, I suspect. Fred is incorrigible.”

At that instant Polidori came into the room. His shirt was crumpled and his waistcoat undone. “You have not washed your face, Polidori,” Byron said in greeting. “Good day to you.”

“I am late, I’m afraid. I spent half the night in thought.”

“Thought of what?” Bysshe asked him.

“Of a horror.” He looked at me for a moment.

“This is for our feast of stories, I take it?” Mary was also looking at me strangely.

“I think it may be too dreadful to be told.”

“Oh?”

“Have you ever been in the process of thought-or even of a dream-when a face emerges in front of you? A frightful face. Full of terror and malevolence. And at the sight of that face all your most secret and intense fears spring up-the fear of death, the fear of what might happen after death, the fear of fear itself, all those sensations converge upon this malignant face.”

“That is all?” Byron asked him.

“No. Not all. I have a story.”

“Go on.”

“I call it ‘The Vampire.’”

“You have a good beginning,” Byron said. “But do you have a middle and an end?”

“I have set it along the romantic coastline of Whitby. Does anyone know of it?”

“There was a synod there,” Mary said. “The abbess Hilda.”

“Precisely so. The abbey church is perched upon steep cliffs. The rocks below are treacherous, the foam of the beating sea striking high up the stone sides of the cliffs. I have seen it. There, one dark night at the end of the last century, a schooner was making its perilous way among the rough waves. There was a tempest raging, and every dwelling in Whitby was bolted with the windows barred and locked. So no one saw the vessel coming closer and closer to the rocks. Then one great wave lifted the boat higher than before; it reared up on the turbulent sea, and then with a sigh of agony it settled on the rocks at the base of the cliff. There it was suspended, shivering like some wounded thing.

“At the break of day, after the tempest had subsided, the cry of shipwreck went up. The inhabitants of Whitby gathered eagerly on the clifftops and looked down upon their prize; some ropes were lowered and the young men of the town clambered down upon the deck of the broken and beleaguered vessel. There was no crew to be found. There was no captain, or purser, or first mate. The ship was deserted. They reported only one remarkable find. Four coffins had been lashed to the main deck with strong ropes and twine. They had been fastened so securely that they had survived the storm and the shipwreck. Truly this was a ship of the dead. The coffins were taken on a pilot boat to the little harbour, where they were laid in a row upon the shore-”

“Enough!” Byron cried out. “You are all substance and no style. It is too wearisome.”

I sensed that Polidori was enraged, yet he remained to all outward appearance quite composed. I had laughed, and he gave me a look of such malevolence that I should have been warned. “When one of the coffins was opened,” he went on, “there was a voice crying out, ‘What more do you want from us?’”

At this moment Bysshe shrieked and ran out of the room. Mary followed him in consternation. She called out to us for assistance, and, on entering the room, we found Bysshe stretched out on the carpet in a dead faint. With much presence of mind Polidori, bringing in a jug from the breakfast table, poured ale over his face. This revived him a little. “I have a restorative,” Polidori then said to Mary. “Pray give me your handkerchief.” He fetched a small case from his room and, taking out a bottle of green liquid, applied the contents to the handkerchief. He put it against Bysshe’s nose; to our great surprise Bysshe then sneezed, and sat upright. “I am sorry to have caused such commotion,” he said. “The truth is-I had an experience very similar to that which Polidori has just told us!” He raised himself from the carpet, and grasped Mary’s hand. “Shall we go back to the dining room?” he asked us calmly enough. “I am quite recovered.” We resumed our seats and Bysshe, his composure fully restored, told us his story.

“I was in my last year at Eton, living in Dr. Bethel’s house. The name will mean nothing to you, but I mention it here in a desire to be accurate. One evening in one of my restless wanderings I left the school and the town far behind, and found myself walking by the river in the vicinity of Datchet. I came upon a small boathouse here, that had an open gallery on two sides-it was a most curious construction, of which I still have a vivid recollection. It was quite deserted, and the boat itself was gone; I assumed therefore that the owner had decided to embark upon an evening voyage, and I sat down in the gallery to enjoy the silence and seclusion of this restful spot. Who knows what dreams took hold of me? I only know that, in this portion of my life, I delighted in wild fancies and ideas that were only half-formed. My mind was the sky through which clouds passed. Then, after some time taken up in this idle but inexpressibly delightful pursuit, I heard the splash of oars in the water. I sprang up from the gallery and went down to the bank; the sound of the craft came nearer, and I put my hand above my eyes to see it more clearly as it made its way past a small island in the middle of the river. It was a white boat, as purely white as any I had ever seen. Its rower had turned away, looking upstream; he seemed absent-mindedly to move the oars, as the boat drifted gently towards the bank. And then he turned to face me. It was my own image, my double, my second self, staring at me. It opened its mouth, and its words were, ‘How long do you intend to remain content?’ I swooned upon the bank. When I awoke the boat, and its occupant, had gone. The boathouse had vanished. I was lying beside an utterly unoccupied part of the river. So, you see, I shrieked when I heard the words from the coffin in Whitby. It reminded me so forcibly of that moment in my life.”

“You have never told me this before,” Mary said.

“I have never told anyone. I do not know why I am telling you all now. It was the surprise of it, I suppose.”

“Well now, you see,” Byron said, “how our own stories are more interesting than the German tales.” He went over to Bysshe. “That is the most interesting case of the doppelganger I have ever heard. Do you recall if, at the moment it was most alert, you felt weak?”

“I was close to fainting. And then I fell.”

“Precisely. The double image always saps the strength of its source. No doubt it will appear to you again, Shelley. It may offer you advice or counsel. Do not listen to it. It is sure to deceive you.”

“It has no shadow,” Mary added. “At least that is what I have read.”

“Be sure not to confuse it with your husband.” Byron was laughing. “There would be the devil of a row.”

“Who is to say what is true and what is false?” she replied.

“Mary was about to describe her story to us,” I said. “It was concerned with the unhallowed arts. Am I correct, Mary?”

“No. I will say no more about it. I will brood upon it, Victor. I will nourish it secretly, until it is ready to enter the world.” She got up from the table, and walked over to the window. “These storms will never cease.”

“You can sit beneath the awning on the balcony,” Bysshe replied to her. “Then the rain will be delightful. You will see it nourishing the earth. The garden here will be replenished.”

At that moment Polidori leaned over to me and said, in a low voice, “I meant to tell you yesterday. But there was no proper occasion. I have discovered the words for you.”

I knew at once his meaning, but I did not know his intent. “The words for the golem?”

“I have been in correspondence with my old master in Prague. He did not wish to write them down but I persuaded him that, in the interest of science, it would be a noble gesture. It is here.” From his waistcoat he took out a slip of paper. I placed it in the inside pocket of my jacket. I did not wish to look at it. Not yet.