The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein

20

A FEW MORNINGS LATER, Mary confessed to an alarming sensation in her stomach; she complained of a great ache accompanied by a tingling pain. Bysshe and Byron had not yet appeared, so Polidori and I sat alone with her in the dining room. She could not eat, and sat on a small sofa by the window. “There is a blockage somewhere,” Polidori told her. “The fluids are hindered. Will you allow me to help you?”

“By all means,” she replied. “Lord Byron has told me of your magnetising.”

“May I sit opposite to you? Here.” He moved a chair from the breakfast table, and brought it over to her. “Now, will you allow yourself to become quite inert? Let your arms hang by your sides. Let your head fall. Good. You are now relaxed?”

“Am I allowed to speak?”

“Of course.”

“Yes. I am relaxed.”

Polidori drew his chair close to Mary, so that their knees touched. Then he leaned over and took her arm. “I am applying a gentle friction,” he said. “Do you feel anything as yet?”

“No. Not yet. Yes. Now I do. I sense a warmth in the shape of a circle. A small coin.”

“Now, Mary, I am not being indelicate. I wish you to put your knees between mine so that we are in a manner locked together. Will you do that?”

“As long as my husband does not see us.”

“Shelley approves of my work already. Fear nothing. Where exactly is the pain?”

“Here. Just above the abdomen.”

“That is the site of the hypochondriac organ. I do not need to put my hands there. I will place them on your temples. They are well named. If you will be so kind as to lower your head. Just so.” He put his fingers to the sides of her head, and began a series of stroking movements. “What do you feel now?”

“There is a warmth in my big toe. On my right foot.”

“Well now. Visualise that warmth moving upwards through your body. See it as a fire. It will burn away the impurities as it progresses.” I was about to speak, but with a look Polidori urged me to keep my silence. “The body,” he said to her, “is made up of little magnetic centres comprising the great magnet of the human frame.” He looked at me for confirmation.

“So the electrical fluid is beginning to flow freely through me? Is that it?”

“Precisely so. Do you not feel, Mary, the warmth of the current?”

“Oh, yes.” She sighed. “The pain is dissolving.”

“It will soon pass altogether.”

“I must sleep,” she said. “I want to sleep.” She rose from the chair and, without looking at us, left the room.

Polidori looked at me, almost slyly. “She is drawn to magnetic slumber,” he said. “All of them feel the need to sleep.”

“I believe, Polidori, that you are on the wrong path. Magnetic slumber is not the cause. It is the effect. The consequence of far larger powers.”

“I do not understand you.”

“There are forces of which you know nothing.”

“Then I will be obliged if you inform me of them.”

“It is premature, Polidori.”

I believe that, from this time forward, he decided to pursue me with all the subtlety and cunning at his command. He became the hunter, I his quarry.

“At any rate, Frankenstein, will you allow me to indicate the pulses in your own body?”

“If you wish it,” I said.

“Oh, yes. Most certainly.”

When Byron came down to breakfast he found Polidori leaning over me with his hands upon my thighs. “We used to do that at Harrow,” he said, apparently not in the least surprised.

“I am instructing Frankenstein in the mysteries of magnetism.”

“Is that so? I thought you were about to bugger him. Where are the kidneys?” Byron surveyed some dishes laid out on a side-table. “And answer came there none.” He piled some smoked bacon upon a plate, and carried it over to the table. “Where shall we travel today? Where in this region will we beat a path? Tell us, Frankenstein.”

“Well, my lord, we might climb. We have mountains.” In the presence of Byron it was impossible for Polidori to continue his instruction, so I moved over to the window.

“I think not.” I had forgotten, for a moment, his deformed foot. He had never alluded to it, but I believe that it was a source of embarrassment to him. I knew, too, that deformed persons are often born with strong passions. “Now that we are beside the lake, we must use the lake. Water is my element. Did you know that I once swam across the Hellespont?”

“There is a small castle further along the shore,” I told him. “You might care to visit it. It was once a fortress and a prison.”

“Like the famous Chateau de Chillon?”

“Not so striking,” I said. “But it is picturesque. It is rumoured to be haunted.”

“Do you believe in ghosts?” Polidori asked Byron.

“I deny nothing. But I doubt everything. We must encounter these ghosts, gentlemen. Shelley will faint.”

“Mary will support him,” Polidori said.

“Yes,” Byron replied. “She is the stronger of the two, I think. It is a question of the hen fucking the cock.” I was shocked by his language, but took care not to show it. “Depend upon it, that girl has steel within her.”

“She has the electric force within her,” Polidori said. “I have just calmed her with it.”

“Did you stroke her thighs?”

“I applied some friction to her skin.”

Byron was about to say something else, but broke off as Bysshe entered the room dishevelled and dazed from sleep. “Well, Shelley,” Byron said to him, “good morning to you. We are going on an expedition to a prison. What is this place called, Frankenstein?”

“The Chateau de Marmion. It belonged to a family of that name. I do not know who owns it now.”

“We will leave our cards, at any rate. Eat up, Shelley, I long to be gone.”

I retired to a small alcove, where I was hidden from them by a screen that divided the breakfast table from some scattered chairs and tables on which newspapers and journals were piled. Shelley soon left the table, confessing that he needed a chamber pot, so that Byron and Polidori were alone together. I began to read an essay on the merits of the Clapham sect, and disregarded the murmur of their voices. But then I began to listen to them. “She has two faults unpardonable in a woman,” Byron was saying. “She can read and she can write.”

I could not hear Polidori’s muttered reply.

“Forgive me,” Byron said to him. “I am as unsocial as a wolf taken from the troop.” It seemed that they were not aware of my presence.

“You seem convivial enough,” Polidori replied.

“I do my best to conceal my feelings. I do not want them to be wasted on anyone other than myself.”

“You are very magnanimous.”

“I have my silent rages, though, when to the world I seem indifferent. You know that.”

“Oh, yes. I have witnessed your contortions. You go a very bright red. But some of your rages, my lord, are not so silent. Do you recall that evening in the Haymarket, when you struck that man down?”

“My dear Polidori, I always have screams and insults at my command. Did you know that I can cry at will? Watch. I will show you.” There was a silence for a few seconds.

“Bravo,” Polidori cried out. “They look like the genuine thing.”

“They are the genuine thing. I just need a reason for them.”

I did not catch the next few words between them: I think that Byron had gone over to a side-table and poured more coffee. When he came back he must have been standing, for his voice became more distinct. “You know, when I was a child, I could not bear to read out loud any poetry without disgust. Now I am unaccountably attached to the habit.”

“As long as it is your own poetry.”

“No. Not necessarily. Tell me who wrote this.” Then his voice changed to one richer and more melodious:

“Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay

To mould me man? Did I solicit thee

From darkness to promote me?”

“ Milton!” I called out from behind the screen.

“What? Are you here?”

“Yes. Paradise Lost.”

LATER THAT MORNING WE set sail. Mary had expressed a desire to join us, professing herself quite well; so there were five travellers on board the Alastor, as he had named her. The chateau was some three miles distant, along the eastern shore, and as we sailed slowly towards it in a fitful breeze I recalled my childhood wanderings in the same lakeland region. Many times I had walked among the pines, or laid myself down in the scrub, in an ecstasy of communion with the world. Those happy far-off days now came before me again. “There it stands,” I said to them, leaning on the prow and pointing towards the shore. It was an old fortress of darkened stone, rising above an escarpment by the lake; there had been some upheaval here, in earlier ages of the earth, for the bank at this point was made up of rocks and boulders long since deposited. “Look at the loneliness of it,” Bysshe said.

“It will be a damned hard job to secure our mooring.” Byron stood by the prow, with the rope in his hands. “I can get no purchase on these rocks.”

“There is a landing bay there,” Polidori said. “By that outcrop of stone.”

Within a few minutes we were standing on the shore. There was a path leading from the landing stage and climbing upward to the chateau itself: I went on ahead, to introduce the party to the present residents. When I knocked, the door was opened by a young man of no very prepossessing appearance; he had a weak left eye, and the purple stain of a birthmark on his left cheek. Assuredly, one side had let down the other. I introduced myself as one of a party of travellers, among whom was a famous English lord of great family. My lord had expressed an interest in visiting the fortress. Would it be possible for our party to be admitted? He replied in French that he and his wife were caretakers and that the owner, a German businessman, was away from home. I knew at once the language he would most easily understand. I brought out my purse and offered him a French louis, which he most gratefully accepted. By this time the others had reached the door.

The young man led us into the master’s quarters, as he called them, a suite of rooms on two floors from which the windows looked out upon the lake and the Jura mountains. “We have not come to see the views,” Byron said to me. “Will you ask him to take us to the dungeons?”

The caretaker had recognised the last word and, with a glance at Byron, he beckoned us to follow him down a stone staircase. There were two floors in the lower part of the fortress. On the higher of them were three cells, side by side, each of them with a narrow window carved out of the rock. They were in such a state of preservation that the leg-irons and manacles were still embedded in the walls. Shelley seemed ready to swoon, and Mary took his hand. “It has passed,” she said.

“No. It has not passed,” he replied. “The doom is still in the air.”

Byron had entered one of the cells and was carefully examining the leg-irons. “They are rusty. What do you think, Polidori? Caused by water or by blood?”

“A witches’ brew of both, I should think.”

“And here are marks in the floor,” I said, “where the chains scraped into the stone. Do you see these grooves?”

“They are the marks of woe.” Bysshe had gone over to the last cell, and was holding onto the bars with a keen half-tremulous and half-expectant look. “I am trying to summon them up,” he said to me as I walked over. “I am trying to find them.”

“They are long gone, Bysshe. Why should they wish to stay here? Of all places?”

“Where suffering is most intense, we will find traces of it.”

“I wonder who made up this jolly crew,” Byron was exclaiming to Polidori. “Poisoners? Heretics? It is all one now. The prisoners and the gaolers have all gone down to dust. And where are you going, Mary?”

“To the lower depths. There is another staircase here.”

I followed her down the narrow stone steps, which led into an enclosed space. There were no cells here, but I experienced an indescribable sense of menace and privation at the first sight of the stone walls and the stone floor. The caretaker came down behind us. “This was the place of execution,” he said to me in French. “Do you see that?” There was a blackened wooden beam running beneath the ceiling. “There the rope was suspended.” I translated this for Mary.

“And this?” she asked. “What is this?” She pointed to a wooden trapdoor in the middle of the floor.

“The waters of the lake were higher then,” the caretaker said to me.

“I think,” I told her, “that this was a sluice gate for the bodies of the condemned.”

“Alive or dead,” he said. “The living were bound with ropes.”

“He tells me that they were dropped into the water.”

“Then this is the condemned hold.” She looked at me steadily. “Abandon hope.”

“I think,” I replied, “that we should join the others.”

We climbed the stone staircase, to find Byron and Bysshe arguing over the proper name for the manacles that fastened the prisoners to the wall. “Gyve is a verb,” Bysshe was saying.

“It is a noun,” Byron replied. “They are called gyves.” He turned to Mary. “You have been in the lower reaches?”

“I feel as if I am sleepwalking,” she said. “Sleepwalking among the dead.”

“Then we must revive you. Why not retire with Frankenstein to the upper mansion? There will surely be wine for you.”

I asked the caretaker if we might rest in the living quarters, for a short while, and he willingly assented: no doubt he was anticipating another louis. He brought us two glasses of the sweet wine of the region, and we sat by a window overlooking the vineyards of the estate. “I cannot say I like this place,” Mary said. “In fact I have a distaste for it.”

“Byron revels in it.”

“Oh, he has a passion for excitement. He would visit Hell itself, just for the sensation of being there.”

“He may have no choice in the matter.”

“I am surprised at you, Victor.”

“I am sorry. To speak of a friend in that way.”

“No. Not that. I did not know that you believed in Hell.”

“As far as I can see, Mary, Hell is all around us. We live in a fiery world.”

Byron and Bysshe came into the room, followed by Polidori. “What was that about fire?” Byron asked me. “We have need of one here. Can one be lit?”

“It would have been cold enough in those dungeons.” Bysshe had gone over to the window. “And there is another storm coming. Thank God we are off the lake.”

There was a sudden flash, followed by a roll of thunder. Byron called out for wine, and showed every sign of joyful anticipation. The gathering storm clouds darkened the room in which we were sitting and the young caretaker, after kindling a fire, lit several candles in sundry old corners giving an effect of what Mary called “ghastly gleaming.”

“I have an idea,” Byron said. “We must take advantage of this gloom, as Mary thinks it. We must hold a seance.”

“Here?” Polidori asked him.

“It is the best place in the world. Shelley has no doubt concluded that there are ghosts in the dungeon.”

“I do not exactly think that.”

“Where better to raise the spirits?”

“The Swiss are a practical people,” I said to him. “They do not harbour ghosts.”

“All lakes are haunted, Frankenstein. Large bodies of water attract lost souls.”

“They may not wish to be called,” Mary said.

“They will be in fighting form then. Ready for a tussle with the living. Do not be alarmed, Mary. I always have a firearm in my pocket. We will sit at this table in the corner. Bring over the chairs, Polidori.”

Byron then pulled the heavy velvet curtains over all the windows, so that the tremulous light of the candles became more intense. The storm was raging outside, as if all the elements were in contention.

“You are acting,” Bysshe said, “as if you were the stage-manager of chaos.”

“I know it. I was born for my own ruin. We need one more chair, Polidori.”

So we sat around the table, our hands spread in a circle with our fingers touching. The table was in a dark corner of the room, but it was favoured by the heat of the fire.

I felt ill at ease from the beginning, not least because of the intensity of my companions. I had expected Byron to be a sceptic in all spiritual matters, but he took part with all the excitement of a fervent devotee. I had long suspected that the English, despite their air of business and practicality, were a wholly credulous and superstitious nation. Why else do they love the tales of horror, as they call them? We all waited in darkness as Byron attempted to address “the spirits.” After he had finished his conjuration I thought I heard something move beneath the table. Mary heard it, too, and glanced at me. Byron spoke aloud once more, and then there was a hiss. I felt something crawling upon my feet. I screamed aloud, and then this-thing-leapt upon me. All was confusion. Polidori lit another candle, by the light of which his face was a mask of terror, and then he pointed at my lap. “A cat!” he said. “We have disturbed the cat sleeping beneath the table!”

Bysshe sat through the proceedings with the strangest expression of apprehension upon his face. Mary was looking at him, no doubt recalling his reaction to Polidori’s tale. But he did not relapse into the same state. He began to laugh, a quiet convulsive laughter that racked his entire frame. She went over to him and put her arm around him. “I am calm,” he said. “Nothing whatever the matter.”

Polidori opened the curtains. “I can see,” he said, “some faint patches of blue coming over the mountains. The storm is abating.”

“Great God, I hope not.” Byron rose to his feet. “I live in storms.”

I believe that it was at this moment that I decided I would leave my companions. I had warned them already that at some point I would make my way to the family estate at Chamonix. I wished to visit the graves of my father and my sister, unseen by me since the time of their deaths; but in truth I also craved solitude and silence. The endless chatter of this journey had wearied me. When I announced my decision that evening, on our return to the villa, Mary looked at me with something like resentment-I believe that she envied my departure to the Alpine regions of frost and snow. Bysshe urged me to stay, remonstrating with me in the most flattering terms of friendship, but I was not to be moved even by his persuasions. Byron said nothing, obviously considering my decision to be of little or no consequence to him. I had in fact conceived a certain dislike for his lordship. He gave the impression of being a great predator, both spiritually and morally, who would feed on one’s substance before casually casting one aside. He was a born actor, also, who at all times took pleasure in his performance. Such men are dangerous.

I retired to my room, where Fred had put out my sleeping clothes, and lay down to rest. I must have slept for an hour or so, when I was awoken by a tapping at my window.