The Frankenstein Papers

Chapter 13

February 21, 1783 Somewhere in Kent

It is now my turn to write, whilst my short companion watches. I suppose he may very well be curious, as was Father Jacques, as to what I am so industriously setting down in my worn notebook. I did not read Freeman's letter to his famous parent, but I have assured him, as I assured the priest, that he may read in my journal if he likes. But Freeman says that he is too weary to read anything, and that the light is bad—and now I see that despite the cold and the wet he is asleep. It is almost a cave, this embrasure in the seaside rocks where we are huddled. The sound of the surf is loud, and at high tide I suppose there will be spray—but by then, if all goes well, we shall be gone.

From the moment I identified Freeman as the son of Benjamin Franklin, I was determined to make use of him somehow. But now I confess that I am coming to like him as well.

It has been an exhausting day, for man and creature alike. Too much happened for me to be able to remember it all in proper detail. Yet it is necessary that I write down what I can… though when I think of it, why should it be necessary that I write down today's events, or indeed, that I keep this journal at all? I cannot tell why. I only know that the urge to record my experiences is nearly as powerful as my desire to live. Did my brain once belong to a natural philosopher?

One thing I should certainly record as carefully as possible is my final interview with Frankenstein—I suppose that encounter under Saville's highest roof is likely to be the last meeting that my creator and I will ever have. I felt a reluctance to talk about it with Freeman, immediately afterward—I had known him only a few minutes—and so told him that I had been unable to reach Frankenstein in his high laboratory. Perhaps—who knows?_we should all be better off if that were true.

Clinging precariously to the wall, in the darkness outside the high, barricaded window, I had watched Frankenstein for several minutes before attempting to get his attention. I wondered as I watched him if now he were really going mad. His arms were filthy up to the elbows with the fat, blood, and offal of murdered women—or perhaps these latest specimens had not been murdered, but how could he know? I supposed that he was persisting in his efforts to create a female—if he is anything he is persistent. I assumed further that the bodies that surrounded him, in several stages of dismemberment, were those of women. But from the angle of the window I could not really tell.

His gaze was wild, and a certain new look of indecision in his movements suggested to my experienced eye that his mind was under strain, if not actually unbalanced. He was muttering to himself as he went through the laboratory procedures that I knew so well from watching him in Scotland.

As I watched him from outside, I was on the verge of deciding that there was no point in my trying to talk to him again.

But in the end I tapped at the window. It must have been a loud sound in his quiet room, but he went on with the task before him, suturing something, and did not hear me until my tapping had sounded for the third time.

Once Frankenstein's attention had been caught, he came over to the window at once, and looked out at me without demonstrating any great astonishment. To my surprise he behaved almost as if he had been expecting such a visit.

Victor opened the glass and the shutters of the window from inside, but the iron bars that guarded it were fixed in stone. Exerting all my strength, I managed to wrench one of the bars from its sockets, and, squeezing through the space thus created, climbed in to confront my creator.

I closed the shutters behind me, and for a long moment we stood staring at each other, I dripping with rain, he, less copiously, with preservatives and blood. We must have looked like two men—or two monsters—who had never met before and who perhaps might have nothing to communicate to each other. Seeing him at close range for the first time in many months, I thought that he looked ill.

It was left to me to utter the first words. "You have come back to them." The way I spoke the sentence made it an accusation, and I saw his face tighten.

I continued: "But never mind that. The window is open behind me, and if you wish to get away I will see you safely to the ground, and outside the wall of the estate. Beyond that your fate is up to you."

Frankenstein shook his head. "I suppose young Freeman has somehow communicated with you. But I do not wish to flee. You should do so, though, and quickly, for you will be in great danger if you are discovered here."

"I am not the only one."

He did not understand me, and shrugged irritably, thinking, I suppose, that I meant him. "I intend to stay," he replied. "It is the only way I have found that will allow me to do my work. It is not the money, I have that of my own. But I need privacy, protection. Saville has promised there will be no more—no more excesses on his part. I have exacted a solemn promise from him, and from Walton too."

"I see," I replied, after a moment. What I saw was that, with Frankenstein, argument would be as hopeless as remonstrance. There are some humans, like Molly, who insist on walking to their own destruction. And I had another purpose in climbing to his new laboratory, one that I felt was more urgent than trying to save him from himself. "Tell me," I pleaded. "Withhold no secrets from me now. Who am I? Where did my brain come from? And the parts of my body?"

He did not hesitate, but made a gesture embodying hopelessness. "I do not know."

"Not know! How is it possible that you should not know?"

"Because of the methods by which I worked." My creator seemed irritated, that anyone should bother him with such a question. "I should have kept better records, but I thought I could not take the time. Every minute I wanted to press on with the work itself—Metzger and Big Karl brought me my materials. They might remember, but I have never considered it important."

"Not important!"

"I told them what I wanted, the physical types and conditions, and paid them, and left the details to them. I cared nothing for the names of the people who had inhabited the bodies before I got them."

"You're telling me you don't know whose brain you used? Was it a single brain, can you at least tell me that?"

"Oh yes, yes." Frankenstein made a gesture of surprise and impatience, and looked at me as if I should have known better than to ask such a stupid question. "The brain is a very delicate organ anyway; the nervous connections are incredibly complex. Even with a single brain, the grafting would have been impossible, had I not been able to rely upon the almost miraculous effects of the electric fluid. I wouldn't have attempted to use parts of more than one."

"But—you can't say whose brain it was? What kind of a head did it come in?" I gestured helplessly.

"Oh. I can't say where the head came from. It was a man's, of course. Large, as I recall. There was something—noble—about the face, though of course in fact one gets that impression sometimes even in peasants. The medical school at Ingolstadt had a constant requirement for bodies, and the suppliers got them whenever people died in the homes for the poor and indigent in that area. Also…" He let his words trail off. Something changed subtly in his face.

"Also what?" I promoted, after a brief silence. "You have said that my brain is not that of a condemned criminal."

"No." Frankenstein shook his head judiciously. "I have no reason to think that it is that."

"What, then?"

"Well," he admitted reluctantly, "besides the poorhouses, that contributed bodies for research, there were the asylums."

A silence fell between us. But I felt no shock. With something of a thrill of pride I realized that I had become firmly confident in my own sanity. Calmly I asked: "Are you telling me I am a madman, then? But the languages I know, the history, the natural philosophy—how do you explain it all?"

"I cannot explain it," Frankenstein said simply. Then the tones of a professor crept into his voice. "A madman may know many languages. Or some stimulation by the electrical fluid may have had a healing effect upon the mind as well as the body. And the effect upon the body is undeniable. Even the marks of the sutures are gone—"

"Bah." Talking to him, trying to find out from him the facts of his science, was worse than useless. The electrical fluid dissolved everything, facts and logic along with all doubts, all questions. I had experienced it many times before, but never before so clearly realized the fact. Was it a clever reluctance to reveal secrets, as I had assumed for a long time, or was it possible that my creator really did not know what he was babbling about?

How could that be possible? He possessed a facility with jargon, certainly, and who, listening to an expert discuss his own field, really expects to understand all that they hear?

"Victor," I said. "I am less than seven and a half feet tall."

"Eh? But what has that…" He blinked at me, and became authoritarian again. "You are eight feet tall."

"No."

"There may have been some slight shrinkage."

"It isn't that."

"Then someone has been lying to you, or has taken faulty measurements. You are the work of my hands, and you belong to me, and I know everything there is to know about you." He cannot manage his own life, but has perfect confidence in what he knows, or thinks he knows, of mine.

I turned back to the window. "I am going, then," I told him over my shoulder. "If you are ready to decide that what Freeman says is true—if you are now ready for yet another change, and would like to be free of Saville and his friends once more_then come with me now, and let me see you safely outside the grounds."

He turned from me to stare at the table, where his work awaited him. "Freeman misunderstood me if he thinks I want to leave. That cannot be, just now. This experiment is on the verge of completion."

I could see that, indeed, the body on the table looked as alive and ready as any of his experimental bodies ever did. It was female, and it—or most of its parts—had recently been young and healthy.

"Now," I insisted. "Now, or never."

"I cannot."

Without another word I departed. In the space of a few minutes I had picked up Freeman's letter to his father, and had deposited it at the gatekeeper's lodge. I left it there in the middle of a stack of other outgoing communications, where no literate person will cast eyes upon its address, or pay the least attention to it, until it is far from that estate.

Then I returned again to Freeman's room. I tried to move cautiously, but something, perhaps my continued scrambling around on the outside of the house, or the noise I had made in breaking the bars on the laboratory window, had already given us away. Saville's household had been quietly alerted. An ambush had been set.

The timing with which the trap was sprung was excellent. Scarcely had I reentered Freeman's room than the door burst open—if he had locked it, it had been silently and almost immediately unlocked from outside—and our enemies, armed, burst in upon us. Saville himself was in the center of the doorway, with Walton on his right hand and Small on his left. A crowd of armed footmen were gathered at his back.

Trusting that Saville still did not wish me dead, I ignored the deafening shouts for my surrender, and the firearms that were leveled at me. Immediately I lunged for the window and scrambled back out onto the roof. No shots were fired.

Freeman, who had been caught too far from the windows to attempt such an escape, reacted with remarkable quickness of wit. He staggered and fell, away from me, as if I had thrown him to the floor. Then, pointing after me with a quivering arm, he immediately set up a cry of alarm. The impression was conveyed that I had been attacking him, and that he was glad to see our host and his armed retainers break in. Meanwhile he gave me to understand with a wink that I should not take all this too seriously.

I, crouched once more on the narrow ledge just outside the window, hesitated, ready to spring either direction.

Small aimed a firearm at the window where I was, and again cried for me to surrender, but he did not fire when I ignored him. Walton and Saville were shouting at me simultaneously, and I could not distinguish the words of either one. Mrs. Saville's face had now appeared in the bedroom doorway behind them, and I could see that she too was armed with a pistol.

Freeman, who had scrambled to his feet now and was talking excitedly to the others, was in no immediate danger. Also I wanted firmer footing, so I abandoned my precarious post outside the window and moved away across the roof. The rain had stopped at last, but the roof tiles were slippery. Lights below me caught my eyes; down there in the grounds were more men, what looked like a small army of footmen and others, all equipped with torches and clubs, and controlling unhappy dogs.

I climbed carefully up one gable, then slid down a new slope slowly, looking the situation over, whilst the crowd of footmen rushed around a wing of the house to get below me again. I wondered what would happen if I were to leap down among them, and came to the conclusion that they would probably jump out of my way, and I would break a leg. Besides, I was not yet ready to leave Freeman.

Once more I moved; once more the roof sloped up before me, then angled down again. People inside the house were running from window to window, trying to keep me in sight. With all the wings, gables, and angles that the house possessed it was a fairly even game.

We reached a temporary stalemate at last. I could still be seen from below, but thought my back was relatively secure. Walton, leaning out a window a few yards below me and in front of me, began a determined effort to keep me talking, my attention fixed on him. I suspected the plan called for others to use the opportunity to sneak up on me from behind and somehow capture me alive.

Mrs. Saville, her lovely figure framed in another window beside Walton's, tried, or pretended to try, to make peace among us all, though she could not keep the anger out of her voice. We all of us ignored her, which I suppose fueled her rage.

Captain Walton, ready to dazzle me with his wit and erudition, freely admitted that he had somewhat abused his poetic license in the creation of that notorious book.

I said: "I do not approve of my memoirs, as you have created them for me."

"You are of course free to compose your own."

That was said, naturally, in perfect, serene confidence that I should never be able to do anything of the kind.

"I intend doing so."

He took it well. Such a statement, from me, could make no impression on him, really. "I should imagine that the effort will bring you to a better appreciation of what I have done. Even if you die tonight, as you seem determined to do, people are going to remember you because of me. What I have written of you."

"Indeed."

"I even went out of my way to add a touch of sympathy to your character_and a touch of intelligence and elegance."

Saville, who had been out of my sight for a while, had now evidently given what he considered the necessary orders to his footmen. He came forward, in the next window over, as if he had been attending to me all the time, and picked up the conversation. He seconded what Walton had said. Saville was rather proud of the book too, and regretted that it had to be put forward as a fiction.

It was at about this time that I realized that some time had passed since I had seen Small. Obviously he would be busy, probably behind me somewhere. But doing what? My back was against a wall, and the roof above that would be exceedingly difficult, I thought, for any mere human to clamber about on.

"Then," I asked Saville, "you think that readers are not really likely to believe it?"

"More of 'em will read it, since we called it fiction. As to belief, perhaps. Perhaps not. Matters are never that simple where books are concerned." Saville sighed. "I genuinely regret," he added, "not being able to keep a closer control over the writing and editing. But then, one cannot do everything. There is never time."

More faces and guns, in yet another window. There was Freeman, looking rather grim. Still I might have got away, as I thought, fairly easily, a feint in one direction, a quick scramble in the other. None of these people were really aware as yet of how quickly I could move. But I continued to feel a reluctance to abandon Freeman, who I was sure could seal his father's loyalty to me. His pretence of enmity towards me had been well performed, but I was not convinced that all of the audience had been thoroughly taken in. Once I was gone, temporarily out of their reach again, they would have time for some leisurely discussion among themselves, and Freeman, now being ignored, might not fare so well.

A new factor entered the equation, a new face appeared at the window beside Saville. Our noise had been enough to disturb even Victor Frankenstein in his eyrie; or else Saville had dispatched a messenger to bring him out.

My creator no sooner saw what was taking place, than he wanted to act as an intermediary. He wrung his hands. "Oh God! That what I wanted to accomplish has come to this!"

He wished aloud that we could all let bygones be bygones, with regard to the injuries we had all done one another.

Saville paused, as if for very careful thought; then said, as if granting a great concession, that he was willing to do so.

Frankenstein thought back with agony upon the night, his wedding night, when he had found his bride murdered. He expressed his sorrow that the book blamed me—he does not think that I am guilty.

I said, with a sudden glimmer of light dawning: "Nor do the ones who wrote and published it."

"Done merely for dramatic purposes, old, uh, old fellow." That, with forced jollity, from Walton.

"They have a more direct knowledge of the truth." It was a shot almost at random, but I think it told. Saville's jolly expression appeared to have frozen in place.

I called to my creator: "What success is your work having now, Victor? Does Molly breathe again?"

His gaze turned stony. "Death comes to us all_her glory lies in the chance that through her something greater may be accomplished."

"And what of Bess? You failed with her. What of William? Of Clerval? You were not there to try to bring them back. Odd, that there have been so many deaths around you. It has taken a whole book of lies to explain them."

There were cries of rage.

"Victor. What of Elizabeth? Where was Small on the night she died?"

Fresh cries of rage burst from our enemies' throats. I saw the truth, though dimly and without fully understanding it. Victor as always saw only what he wished to see.

I shook my head. "Enough of this. Saville, tell us, tell Victor and the rest, what it is you really want. I know you have no intention of letting me go free." I was certain that at the very least he was determined to recapture me for study and eventual dissection. My death would serve him better than my freedom, but he would much prefer to have me in his grip alive. Somewhere within me there lies the secret of godlike power and he means to have that secret at all costs.

A sharp outcry alerted me, and I turned. Small was there, on the roof above and behind me, approaching from an angle where he must be invisible to Freeman in his window at my side. But my creator had seen him, and had cried a warning. The little man was creeping forward on all fours across the roof, in his hand what looked like a short arrow or a long dart. The weapon, I realized, must be meant to paralyze and not to kill me.

The chief assassin, somewhat in advance of his cohort, the climbing footmen and gardeners with their darts and nets who were following close behind him, came within reach of my lunging arm. I caught Small at his treachery, dragged him from the roof, and wrenched the weapon from his hand. He screamed, for once not threats, but in sheer terror.

I held him over the edge of the roof, above a fall that ought to cripple if it did not kill outright. Then, twisting his arm, I urged him to confess what I now seriously suspected, that he had killed not only Clerval but Elizabeth, and perhaps William as well, with at least the tacit consent of Saville and Walton.

Elizabeth had been determined to keep Victor from returning to his nasty work, and she appeared to have at least a fair chance of succeeding. Small had also been scouting out the Frankenstein family, at Saville's orders, when William was killed.

There was a shout of great outrage from the master of the house, and bullets began to fly at me.

Small went over the edge of the roof, I presume to his death.

Freeman in the confusion got out of the house to me, grabbing a pistol on the way. The gun blazed in his hand, and I saw a liveried footman topple from the roof above, his own pistol discharging a ball that sang sadly past my head.

I gathered my strength and leaped for a tree branch, then clung to it with one hand and caught Freeman when he leaped after me.

From then on our flight was comparatively easy, and we successfully fled the estate.

My companion and I are now in agreement that we should make an effort to reach France. He is skilled and experienced in arranging clandestine Channel crossings, and he assures me that, working together, we stand a much better chance of surviving than would either of us alone. I am touched by this fairly obvious lie—clearly he, traveling alone, would stand a much better chance than when burdened with the company of such an obvious monstrosity as myself. Nevertheless I have accepted his help, and am determined to repay it when I can.

I watch him sleeping now, and I reflect upon America, as represented by this young man, and her meaning to the world. Some kind of a new beginning, certainly.

How is it possible that I know enough of history to reflect upon such matters? And yet I do.

Later_Talking again with Freeman. I had supposed that once we were able to reach France we should be free of pursuit, or very nearly so. But he has convinced me of what seems, upon reflection, to be no more than logical, viz., that the peace treaty is not yet concluded, though probably very close to being so. And Franklin himself has warned his son that nothing must be done to upset the negotiations at this most delicate stage. For Franklin to be implicated in the accusation of a prominent Englishman on charges of murder, kidnapping, and other foul crimes, would create the most dangerous sensation.

I have no wish to provoke a fresh outbreak of war. But still there are many scores that must be settled.