The Frankenstein Papers

Chapter 15

March 13,1783

Somewhere between Paris and Ingolstadt

I now have true marvels of which to write. All that has gone before in these pages, everything, save perhaps my own creation, is commonplace, compared to this. And yet, what is the real miracle after all? Something whispers to me that I have not yet found it.

It is not my intention to detail here the entire course of our pursuit, through the streets and byways of Paris, by Saville's agents; it will be enough to relate the means by which we effected our escape. Suffice it to say that the devils had somehow contrived to enlist some sizable body of French troops in their cause. And that our cause, as dawn drew near, was beginning to appear entirely hopeless.

Freeman, as on one or two previous occasions during the course of our adventures, might have vanished into one group of humanity or another, and got clean away. But he would not desert me. As for myself, a giant over seven feet tall stands out in a crowd no matter what he attempts to do in the way of a disguise.

Twice, as we fled in a circuitous route across the city, we had attempted to buy or rent vehicles, and each time our pursuers, closing in, had come near capturing us before we could conclude our bargaining. We had at last taken shelter in a park, which we had reason to believe was now thoroughly surrounded; Freeman more familiar with Paris than I was, told me it was the Place des Victoires, close by the Palais Royal. Despite the concealment offered by the park's vegetation, it fell short of providing an ideal shelter, for a crowd of people were nearby, inside the park and along one edge. The little that we could see and hear clearly suggested that they were engaged in some kind of purposeful activity. The sounds of heavy foot traffic came to us, and, though Carnival was over, torches and bonfires were keeping one section of the park illuminated.

We rested for a few moments, having immersed ourselves in the deepest shadows we could find.

"If we cannot bargain for a vehicle of some kind, then we must contrive to steal one," Freeman declared in a whisper. "Then you can ride concealed in the back while I drive."

"Well. We cannot remain here long, and there are no wagons in these bushes. Maybe over there, where there are lights." I could hear horses, and the creak of wheels. "We must take a look."

Having caught our breath, we worked our way closer to the sounds of undefined activity, until we were on the very fringe of it, near a path where workmen occasionally came and went, bearing what looked like heavy burdens.

Freeman plucked at my sleeve, and pointed.

Beyond the last barrier of bushes, near the center of the torchlight, there rose a looming shape, rounded, big as a small house, but wobbling almost as if it were alive. A vast bubble, of what looked like fabric painted gold and blue. The shape and size of it somehow pricked fiercely at my memory. I ought to know…

Somehow, dimly, I did.

But of what use this academic, abstract knowledge? Behind us, as we faced the lights of the workers who were busy around the balloon, I could hear the voices of another detachment of the searching soldiers, coming closer.

Freeman heard them too. "Join the workmen," he whispered. It was a stroke of madness, or of genius; I could not decide. But there was little choice. We crept forward, out of the fringe of bushes, and got to our feet, I remaining in a grotesque half-crouch, the best I could do to try to disguise my tallness.

One or two of the workmen gaped at us in puzzlement as we boldly made our way in among them. They were carrying weighty glass flagons and heavy boxes, in one of which I glimpsed a fine, glinting substance, like metal filings. It was obvious to me now that the object of all this labor was the inflation of a very large balloon, very large at least by the standards of anything these people could have seen before. The process must have been going on for hours already, and was now near completion. The monster strained at the ropes that held it above its basket. No doubt some kind of an ascent was planned for dawn, now near at hand.

Freeman, at my side, did not grasp what was going on as quickly as I did. But then he suddenly nudged me, and whispered: "Of course, I've heard something about this. The Robert brothers, they have a fabrics manufactory here in Paris. Great rivals of the Montgolfiers in trying to construct an aerostat that will—what are you doing?"

I was tugging him closer to the balloon, and closer still. My eyes had picked out the largest guy rope of those holding back the balloon from its ascent. I said: "We need a vehicle."

I saw again, stacked amid the orderly mob of laborers, what must be iron fillings stored in boxes, evidently great quantities of them on hand. Add water and sulphuric acid—vitriolic oil, they'd probably call it here—the mixing must be going on in that covered pit—conduct the resulting gas through airtight tubes to the balloon you wanted to inflate_yes, there were the tubes—the resulting gas, of course, would be—

"Hydrogen," I said aloud. "I believe that Lavoisier has named it that. The simplest atom in the universe, the lightest gas, but very flammable. Pray that they keep those torches at a distance."

"What? What did you say?" Freeman was crouching at my side, as I moved on to the next rope. His voice was a whispered agony; some of the soldiers had come into plain sight now, and were looking in our direction. There was a closer outcry as some of the workers realized that we should not be doing what we were doing.

"I said, we need a vehicle. Jump for that basket, now!" Freeman jumped, and vanished headfirst into the wicker work. I had to smash in the face of a worker who thought we should be stopped. I could only hope that the great bursting gas-bag was indeed capable of lifting two men, one twice the normal weight; but there did not seem to be many other options from which to choose.

I, reaching out from inside the basket, quickly sliced the remaining ropes. At some risk I tore loose the hose of rubberized fabric that was still conducting hydrogen to the balloon. Instantly we were ascending, the lights of torch and bonfire dropping silently away below. There rose after us a great outcry of human voices and even a gunshot or two, that must have been badly aimed. In another moment we could see the uncountable window lights of the great city, also falling lower and lower beneath, our feet.

It is a small basket to which we cling, barely large enough to contain us both. I wonder who were the intrepid aeronauts whose glory—whose transportation, at least—we have stolen?

The winds at our present altitude, which I estimate at between three and four thousand feet, are bearing us in a stately fashion to the east, which fortunately is the direction that I desire to go. Dawn overtook us shortly after our ascent. We will be plainly visible to hundreds, thousands of people; and I have no doubt that our enemies on the ground will be able to carry out an effective pursuit as soon as they can recover from what must have been the stunning effect of our escape.

Freeman of course has been overcome, since the beginning of our ascent, with the ecstasy of it all. He has never imagined that such a thing might be possible. But I—how can I analyze my own reactions? I am delighted to be in this balloon, and I do not believe that I have ever been in any similar vehicle before—no, I do not believe so—yet I am not astonished, either by the flight itself, or the magnificence of the view which it provides. The appearance of the earth from our unnatural elevation is something that, for me, trembles on the threshhold of familiarity.

The experience seems natural and not natural at the same time. Is it possible that my brain was once that of a mountaineer?

And at the same time, my thoughts are occupied on quite another level, still trying to understand what happened during my encounter with Mesmer. What did I really cry out, and in what language? Is it possible, possible at all, that I might actually be the peasant called Big Karl?

Freeman, when we first discussed the possibility, quickly pointed out the absurdities that such an identification would entail. What peasant, to begin with, could possibly know all the languages that I can speak?

My body of course might be, for all I know, that of Big Karl, my brain that of someone else entirely. Is it conceivable that the body, in mesmeric trance, remembers its right name even when its original brain is gone, and is able to communicate that knowledge with a shout?

And, as always, there is the mystery of my face. I still have no idea whose that can be. No one's, probably, but mine. Some mistake by Frankenstein, that he was always too secretive to acknowledge.

From the start of our flight, I had some idea that the air would grow colder as we rose higher, and such has proved to be the case. A suspicion has crossed my mind as well that the air will eventually prove too thin to breathe, if we rise high enough; but it seems after all that we shall not have to worry about that on this little trip. The bag is of some crudely rubberized cloth fabric, and I am sure it must be leaking. We are already beginning a descent. I pray it does not become too precipitous; there is little or nothing available for us to throw out to lighten ship.

Later_There are clouds—I think they are clouds and not hills or mountains—off on the horizon to the south, and Freeman is determined to believe that they may be the Alps. He is permanently awestricken, it seems, and I have a hard time getting him to concentrate on what seems to me more important.

"Freeman, exactly what did I say when Mesmer had cast me into that extraordinary state? Was there anything else, besides those two words that might have been a name?"

But he is unable or unwilling even to try to think about it just now. Every minute—and we have been aloft for hours, the day is well advanced_he is still pointing out some new marvel.

The roads below us and behind us now lie in full sunlight, and I scan them for evidence of the King's cavalry, or whatever other pursuers there may be. So far I can detect no sign of our enemies below, and I am somewhat heartened.

I do see peasants in the fields below, interrupting their early morning labors to point upward at us and gesticulate. Work stops altogether as we pass, and many little figures go running off to spread the news. There will be plenty of witnesses to tell our pursuers which way we are drifting.

Later_We came down, sooner than I had hoped we would, and rather hard, though fortunately on nothing harder than a plowed field. There was an incident of peasants and pitchforks. We were fortunate to get away unscathed; and the balloon, taken for some kind of demonic messenger, was attacked and totally destroyed. My last glimpse of the scene, as my friend and I vanished over an adjoining hilltop in a stolen farm wagon, showed a man who must have been the local priest, approaching the tattered ruin as if reluctantly, and well armed with holy water.

On to Ingolstadt! I am now consumed with the idea that the answers I must have are to be found nowhere but there.

Later_I have evolved a theory, but cannot decide if it is sane or not. Suppose that, somehow, Frankenstein's electric treatment not only restored life to what are now my brain and my body, but somehow altered me in both substance and appearance. So that now the personality and the body of Big Karl, along with those of one or more other contributors, still exist, but in an altered state, or each only intermittently or partially.

Looking at the words after writing them down, my theory strikes me as utterly confused at best. If I were Frankenstein, I could explain it all by reference to the electric fluid. But to me that term explains nothing.

Another thought: if I am Big Karl, entirely, then what happened to the dead body, or assemblage of dead bodies, that Frankenstein was attempting to animate on that November night? I remember seeing no such charnel exhibit in the room. Nor did Frankenstein and Clerval ever report seeing anything of the kind when they reentered the laboratory on the following morning.

And what am I to make of Saville, that hard-headed man of business, and his oft-repeated solemn assurance that on that night he and Clerval had seen incontrovertible evidence of my creator's unqualified success? Saville would lie, of course, if he stood to gain by lying; but he was convincing when he said that he would not have staked his fortune and years of his life in pursuit of a goal whose basis remained to him unproven.

But more and more I am convinced that I was not dead before that November night of lightning and of change. Whatever else may eventually be proved to be the truth, that at least has the ring, the feel of truth to me. I am not, I think, Frankenstein's creation after all; Franklin seemed doubtful that I could be. Then I am someone else…

I remember—never shall I be able to forget—the awe with which Victor regarded me during that first daylight meeting between us, in the Bavarian forest. I look again at my own yellow skin, at the networked veins and tendons running underneath it. How could this body ever have been anything but what it is?

And yet the same thing might be said of every human body. What magical transformations of growth, development, disease, decay, are worked in each of us by simple time and patient nature_how little we are able to understand any of these changes.

Freeman and I are forging on our way, toward Ingolstadt and the nearby village where Big Karl is supposed to live. God grant that there the truth, or some substantial portion of it, is waiting to be found.