The Frankenstein Papers

LETTER 13

April 3,1783 Munich

To: Victor Frankenstein, c/o Saville Enterprises, Paris

From: Roger Saville

My dearest Victor—

I hasten to reply to your communication sent to me in care of my banker here in Munich. As for the absurd and poisonous suggestion you say you have received from "an eminent person now residing near Paris"—I can guess who that is—it does not really deserve an answer. But out of respect for your agitated state of mind, I hereby assure you that neither I nor any of my employees or associates had anything at all to do with the tragic deaths of your beloved Elizabeth, your brother William, or our dear friend Henry Clerval.

With that calumny, I trust, disposed of, I must urge you as strongly as possible to give up this wild thought you say you have, of leaving Paris. Or, rather, do not leave that city for anywhere but London, where your laboratory and your work are waiting for you. I wish you had heeded my urgings to remain there; it was a mistake for you to come to Paris in the first place. You say that there are times when you despair of ever succeeding in your work; I answer that a great man like you must never speak of despair, you must put all such foolish thoughts entirely from your mind! We have, both of us, the best reasons in the world to expect renewed success from your labors, and that in the very near future. We have both seen, with our own eyes, the embodiment of your earlier success, walking about the world on two legs like a man.

There, in my London house, my friend, inside your laboratory, is where your future (I might say all our futures) lies.

On the other hand, there is certainly nothing at all that can be gained by your attempting to come on here. As for clearing the air between us, as you put it, I should hope that the atmosphere between two such fast friends cannot be poisoned by the maunderings of one old man, no matter how crafty and demoniacally clever he may be, no matter how much he may love to sow discord between friends, even as he has sown it between a mother nation and her colonies.

But I have things of more importance to communicate.

I urge you to leave to me the problem of recapturing the monster, and of dealing with the criminal agent Freeman. Whether the matter of the stolen aerostat can be hushed up, in the interests of peace, is to me a matter of indifference.

We have not yet cornered Freeman and the fiend, but I am confident that we soon shall. That man, I insist, deserves whatever happens to him, while the unhappy creature of your creation will, as soon as he has given up rebellion, experience only kindness at my hands. I pledge you that I will show him every mercy that circumstances allow me to bestow.

Some of the measures I contemplate against Freeman—and others—may seem stringent to you. That is due to the natural kindness of your heart, and your sweet unwillingness to see the evil of the world in its true blackness. I hope you are still confident that I have at heart only your welfare and that of the world at large (which has so often seemed to me ungrateful for both our contributions, your efforts at research, mine in spreading the blessed effects of commerce and civilization). There is a tone in your letter that implies I have sometimes acted only for personal gain, a tone that would wound me deeply, except that I know you are overwrought by prolonged strain and sharp personal tragedy.

As for the book, that you have only lately taken the time to read in its entirety, I am sure that a moment's calm reflection will suffice to assure you that neither Captain Walton nor myself has ever had the slightest intention of portraying you or any member of your family in any light but the most truthful, and therefore the most complimentary. Those bungling editors, I assure you, shall be made to pay, for introducing falsehoods and exag-gerations on such a scale. I should not be at all surprised to discover that Franklin, the old bookseller and printer, was behind those machinations too.

But all these difficulties, dear Victor, lie properly in my sphere of activity and not in yours. How I wish, my dear friend, that I could persuade you not to waste your precious time upon these affairs of the world of sordid commerce and politics. Your domain is properly that of the spirit, and of the intellect; there you reign as monarch. We all look to you as to the father of the new age that is struggling to be born. The entire world_though in large part still unknowingly—awaits the additional marvels that you are going to create.

Still, I hope you will allow me to leave such considerations, important as they are, aside for now, and proceed to the main purpose of my letter. It is to set your mind totally at ease regarding chances of your continued success in your most vital work—something you must never be allowed to doubt!

Do you think, my friend, that I am an impractical man? My enemies have called me many things over the years, but never that. As sure as I am of your skill and your veracity, do you believe that I would have invested years of my life and thousands of my money, in pursuit of a scheme as impractical-sounding (I must be blunt) as yours? Would I have credited the claim of any man, even you, to be able to revive the dead, had I not the most unimpeachable evidence to support it—the witness of my own eyes and intellect?

I purpose to set down here, for the first time, a true and complete account of what the circumstances were, that operated to convince me, absolutely and completely, that you did in fact accomplish exactly what you had claimed to do.

As I have told you in the past, Henry Clerval (who alas is no longer able to speak to confirm my words) and I were both present on that fateful November night that saw the creature's animation. Not until now have I told you in detail exactly what we saw and heard. We had concealed ourselves among the branches of a large tree, the one that, you may remember, grew almost overhanging the sloping roof of Frau Bauer's lodging house. We were able to establish ourselves in such a position that, by looking into one window, we commanded the top of the front stair, and most of the length of the uppermost hall of the house. We also had the door to your laboratory in view, and at certain very important moments we were afforded glimpses into the very room where you had been conducting your experiments.

Let me admit at the start, that our original purpose in establishing ourselves in the tree might be subject to misinterpretation—that is one reason why I have never told you these details until now. We had come there, to put it bluntly, with pranks in mind. Not that I, at least, let me hasten to add, ever intended any such thing as playing a prank on you. But as you are doubtless aware, your reputation among certain of your fellow students (who were unable to conceive of the nobility of your work) was that of someone well suited to be the butt of verbal jests. There was some question of your becoming the object of even lower and more practical attempts at humor. It was widely rumored that you worked with dead bodies, in secrecy, and with this supposition as a base, the most objectionable and fantastic absurdities were freely invented by some of the students, and accepted by others as likely to be facts.

Clerval and I, therefore, had begun an investigation to ascertain the facts. I myself knew you but slightly at the time, yet I could not credit the wild rumors. It would have shamed me to ask you about them directly—you who were even then beginning to be my friend. Nor could Clerval credit them. Rather we two were determined to investigate, to convince ourselves of the seriousness and importance of your work, that we might better be able to refute the ideas of those among our acquaintances who might otherwise have launched a childish persecution against you.

In our endeavor to convince ourselves, we succeeded beyond our wildest dreams.

Before establishing ourselves as observers in the tree that chill, wet night, we had already learned enough, in the preliminary phases of our investigation, to feel sure that you were indeed conducting experiments upon dead bodies. More—that your work, carried out in such secrecy, involved something more than the usual simple dissection of the medical schools. We had already gone so far as to talk to Karl, who was then your servant, with a view to accumulating more information that we might be able to use in your defense. But the peasant stubbornly maintained a pose of complete ignorance, no doubt fearing that if word of your work leaked out some trouble would descend upon himself.

Clerval and I had reached our positions in the tree at a fairly early hour of the night, well before the worst of the rain commenced to fall. The upper hallway within the house, clearly visible through the window not two yards from our eyes, was faintly lighted, by the glow of a lamp somewhere on or near the stair below. The door to the room that we knew must be your laboratory was closed. Light showed around the edges of that door, from which circumstance we deduced that you were presently in that room, and at work. The sole window of the laboratory was of course closely shuttered, and to our disappointment we could see nothing when we endeavored to look directly into it.

We had been for some little time in this situation, and were debating whether we were likely to gain much information if things continued as they were, when the door to the laboratory suddenly opened. Both Clerval and I saw you emerge, an agitated expression on your face. Without pausing, you traversed the upper hall and continued down the front stairs, to what level we could not see. The light that had been in the laboratory was now extinguished; but what excited my determination to investigate further was that the door of that room had been left slightly ajar behind you.

Thinking it my duty to pursue my inquiries as thoroughly as possible, I swung quickly from one large branch of the tree to another, until I was able to climb quietly onto the edge of the roof.

In another moment I had entered the house, through the open hall window. Henry was only a moment behind me.

We reached the door of the laboratory and silently opened it. As we peered together into the mysterious room, the moon emerged momentarily from behind a wrack of flying clouds; its rays fell through the shuttered window strongly enough to bathe in a ghostly illumination the long table in the center of the room, and the long body of that table's occupant. The body was only partially covered by a sheet. The countenance, visible in chiaroscuro, was as solemn and hideous, and (as we then supposed) as irremediably lifeless, as that of one of the stone gargoyles carved upon Notre Dame.

Henry had already turned his attention elsewhere. "A charnel house," he whispered to me softly. Tearing my eyes away from that monumental figure upon the table, I looked about me, beholding various human parts, limbs and organs, preserved in jars and bottles, as well as the several varieties of medical and philosophical equipment with which, as you of course remember, the room was filled.

While Henry and I were still in the midst of our observations in the room, there came to our ears a faint sound from the direction of the back stair, such as might have been caused by the closing of a door somewhere below. In another moment both Clerval and myself were out of the laboratory, and in a few seconds we had made our exit through the hall window and were once more observing events from our place of concealment in the tree.

I ought to mention here that even during this retreat there was never a moment in which we were out of sight of the laboratory's only door; no one could possibly have entered the room during this time without our seeing him, any more than someone could have been concealed inside while we were there. We had both looked under the tables, and there was no other imaginable space in which to hide. I had even tried the shutters of the room's one window, and found them securely fastened from the inside. In any case, it would also have been impossible, short of magic, for anyone to have approached that window, by means of roof or tree, without encountering us.

The sound from below, whatever its cause, proved a false alarm. Another hour passed, while we remained in the tree, at the moment comfortable enough, and debating in whispers between ourselves whether we ought to maintain our vigil or abandon it. Shortly after you descended from the upper hall, we had seen a light appear in one of the rooms on the next floor down, and had assumed you were there. The rest of the house was in darkness.

I shall be eternally grateful that we decided to remain at our posts. For presently we heard another sound, this time unmistakably that of someone entering the rear stairs at the bottom and softly climbing. The peculiar layout of the house and grounds had allowed the newcomer, whoever he was, to approach the house without attracting our attention.

When Big Karl appeared in the dimly-lighted upper hall, we were able to recognize him immediately. Not only by his great size, but by a certain rolling peculiarity that I had noticed earlier in his gait; and he was humming, very softly, as I had heard him do before.

Our eyes were riveted on Karl as he approached the laboratory door. He paused in front of it, evidently struck by something, most probably the fact that the door was not tightly closed. Whatever his thoughts in that moment, in the next we were all distracted.

The lightning struck.

It was one of those violent preliminary bolts of a considerable storm, and it hit very near us. Clerval and I were both momentarily blinded, and almost stunned with the shock. I must admit, giving fair credit to an enemy, that it may have been only Franklin's iron points, installed upon the roof, that saved the house from destruction.

Both Clerval and I rapidly recovered our senses. We were in time to see Big Karl—I have no doubt that the figure I saw was still his—recover himself also, give his huge head a shake, and go on into the room.

In the moment of silence before the rain began in earnest, I heard a low cry, like a single, mumbled word, come out of that dark doorway. Now, looking back into my memory, I assume that it must have been uttered by the peasant, who on entering must have observed some sign of life in that great figure on the table. Naturally enough, the uncouth man knew superstitious terror at the success of an enterprise which, though his labors had served to advance it to some degree, was fundamentally beyond his comprehension. At the time, Clerval and I could only continue to watch with the greatest interest, and speculate on the reason for his outcry.

After crying out, Karl reached back to close the door behind him. He then remained in the room for several minutes, without lighting any lamp. Before our whispered speculations as to what he might be doing could arrive at any conclusion, the stalwart peasant again emerged into the hall. This time, the brief glimpse I was given of his face in the dim light suggested to me that he must be, like his master before him, in a state of extreme agitation. Karl had been empty handed when he went into the laboratory—I am sure of that—but when he came out he was carrying a heavy canvas bag. I want to emphasize at this point that it could not have been an entire body that the peasant was removing; the shape of the burden, if not its size, was absolutely wrong for that. And in any case the bag was not large enough to have contained a large body like the one we had examined on the table. The contents of the bag doubtless consisted of the various spare and disconnected human parts we had seen about the laboratory, and which were not there when we reentered the room with you next morning. I remember that someone remarked upon their absence at the time, but in the flush of our great discovery we none of us bothered to pursue the matter.

Karl departed at once, going down the back stairs more silently and much more swiftly than he had come up. In his haste to leave, he had again left the laboratory door slightly ajar; and now a gust of wind, part of the onrushing storm, opened it a little farther. The moonlight had now been completely obliterated by the hurrying clouds, but the intermittent flares of lightning were bright and numerous enough to allow us, in momentary flashes, quite a good view of the interior.

Gazing in—with Henry at my side, seeing the same things, and able to testify to them later—I saw the body on the table stir. The first movements that I beheld were moderate, only slightly disarranging the cover that until then had shrouded most of the form. Clerval, may his soul know peace, many times confirmed with me in later conversations that he had witnessed the same thing exactly.

When the next very bright flash came, almost enough to dazzle us again, the body was completely gone from the table. Only the coarse sheet remained there, and it was now completely disarranged.

Dear Victor, when these last things happened, there could hove been no one in that room except the creature himself.

A few minutes passed, in which we held our breaths, oblivious to the cold and soaking rain, and wondered.

Presently, to our unutterable astonishment, the sole door to the laboratory was pushed open—from the inside. And a moment later, the unmistakable figure of your giant creation, that most savage enigma that I have tried to shelter, and have been forced to pursue across most of Europe, walked for the first time into human sight. It shambled along the hallway and went down the stairs.

My dearest Victor, that pursuit now nears its climax. We shall yet bring it to a successful conclusion. I have sworn, on the graves that both of us hold dear, to da so. But that part of the game, if such a deadly serious matter may be so called, is not yours to play. I beg of you to allow yourself to be guided by my judgment in this matter, just as I have always allowed myself to be ruled by your wisdom, in any matter of the laboratory. Stay in Paris and await us; or, if you prefer, return to London and there resume your all-important labors. Walton and I will rejoin you, in either case, as soon as possible.

Your Friend,

Roger Saville