The Frankenstein Papers

Chapter 1

May? 1782?

I bite the bear.

I bit the bear.

I have bitten the white bear, and the taste of its blood has given me strength. Not physical strength_that I have never lacked—but the confidence to manage my own destiny as best I can.

With this confidence, my life begins anew. That I may think anew, and act anew, from this time on I will write in English, here on this English ship. My command of that language is more than adequate, though how that ever came to be God alone can know.

How I have come to be, God perhaps does not know. It may be that that knowledge is, or was, reserved to one other, who has—or had—more right than God to be called my Creator.

My first object in beginning this journal is to cling to the fierce sense of purpose that has been reborn in me. My second is to try to keep myself sane. Or to restore myself to sanity, if, as sometimes seems to me likely, madness is indeed the true explanation of the situation, or condition, in which I find myself—in which I believe myself to be.

But I verge on babbling. If I am to write at all_and I must—let me do so coherently.

I have bitten the white bear, and the blood of the bear has given me life. True enough. But if anyone who reads is to understand then I must write of other matters first.

Yes, if I am to assume this task—or therapy—of journal-keeping, then let me at least be methodical about it. A good way to make a beginning, I must believe, would be to give an objective, calm description of myself, my condition, and my surroundings. All else, I believe—I must hope—can be built from that.

My surroundings: I am writing this aboard a ship, using the captain's notebook and his pencils. He was wise not to trust that ink would remain unfrozen.

I am quite alone, and on such a voyage as I am sure was never contemplated by the captain, or the owners, or the builders of this stout vessel, Mary Goode. (The bows are crusted a foot thick with ice, an accumulation perhaps of decades; but the name is plain on many of the papers in this cabin.)

A fire burns in the captain's little stove, warms my lingers as I write, but I see by a small sullen glow of sunlight emanating from the south—a direction that here encompasses most of the horizon.

Little enough of that sunlight finds its way in through the cabin windows, though one of the windows is now free of glass, sealed only with a thin panel of clear ice.

In every direction lie fields of ice, a world of white unmarked by any work of man except this frozen hulk. What fate may have befallen the particular man on the floor of whose cabin I now sleep—the berth is hopelessly small—or the rest of the crew of the Mary Goode, I can only guess. There is no clue, or if a clue exists I am too concerned with my own condition and my own fate to look for it or recognize it. I can imagine them all bound in by ice aboard this ship, until they chose, over the certainty of starvation, the desperate alternative of committing themselves to the ice.

Patience. Write calmly.

I have lost count of how many timeless days I have been aboard this otherwise forsaken hulk. There is, of course, almost no night here at present. And there are times when my memory is confused. I have written above that it is May, because the daylight is still waxing steadily—and perhaps because I am afraid it is already June, with the beginning of the months of darkness soon to come.

I have triumphed over the white bear. What, then, do I need to fear?

The truth, perhaps?

I said that I should begin with a description of myself, but now I see that so far I have avoided that unpleasant task. Forward, then. There is a small mirror in this cabin, frost-glued to the wall, but I have not crouched before it. No matter. I know quite well what I should see. A shape manlike but gigantic, an integument unlike that of any other being, animal or human, that I can remember seeing. Neither Asiatic, African, nor European, mine is a yellow skin that, though thick and tough, seems to lack its proper base, revealing in outline the networked veins and nerves and muscles underneath. White teeth, that in another face would be thought beautiful, in mine, surrounded by thin blackish lips, are hideous. Hair, straight, black, and luxuriant; a scanty beard.

My physical proportions are in general those of the race of men. My size, alas, is not. Victor Frankenstein, half proud and half horrified at the work of his own hands, has more than once told me that I am eight feet tall. Not that I have ever measured. Certainly this cabin's overhead is much too low for me to stand erect. Nor, I think, has my weight ever been accurately determined—not since I rose from my creator's work table—but it must approximate that of two ordinary men. No human's clothing that I have ever tried has been big enough, nor has any human's chair or bed. Fortunately I still have my own boots, handmade for me at my creator's—I had almost said my master's_order, and I have such furs and wraps, gathered here and there across Europe, as can be wrapped and tied around my body to protect me from the cold.

Sometimes, naked here in the heated cabin, washing myself and my wrappings as best I can in melted snow, I take a closer inventory. What I see forces me to respect my maker's handiwork; his skill, however hideous its product, left no scars, no visible joinings anywhere. Such skill as he was unable or unwilling to exert again, when the time came_but I anticipate.

My navel might once indeed have been the terminal of the cord of birth—but I know that it was not. My two arms, both huge and muscular, seem, like my two legs, a matched pair—did each limb once live and grow upon a different body? And what of my brain? Could it conceivably be compound too, with all the languages that it contains? And the strange, fleeting memories, that sometimes come and go, and puzzle me. He would never tell me whence it came.

And, surely, no single human individual was ever cursed with this face I bear. Oh my creator, whose handiwork in other details approaches wizardry, if not Deity, why did you curse me so?

And why did you not give me a name?

Was hatred for me growing in you even then?

The earliest memories of my present life are not yet three years old. But in trying to sound even such shallow depths, I must part clouds more thick than any polar darkness. It seems to me that the first language that I ever spoke was German. But I cannot be sure. It may have been French, for I have spoken and can speak that too, and quite well. In whatever body my brain first grew, it learned much there; and some of what it learned, for good or ill, has come to me.

The first remembrance I can call up is of a tiny room. It is high up under someone's roof, because it has a slanted ceiling. Though the window is par-tially open, within closed shutters, the atmosphere is tainted with the smell of rotten meat, and acrid with chemicals and electricity. Logic—and perhaps other things as well—assure me that this is the room at the top of the house where the student Victor Frankenstein then lodged, in an old and quiet quarter of the Bavarian university town of Ingolstadt,—where he lodged, and where he did his secret work.

I am standing beside an empty table—there is just height enough for me to stand upright under the pitched roof—and feeling overwhelmed with the narrow meanness of this cramped and noisome room, that forms the only world that I as yet have known. Fitful flashes from a thunderstorm provide the only real illumination. The shelves that occupy most of the walls of the room, and the two other tables besides the empty one, are filled with jars, bottles, electrical apparatus, whose meaning I but dimly comprehend.

I am alone, and it is night, rain beating on the single window and dripping on the sill, thunder grumbling not far away. A sleepy human voice or two, in other, distant rooms of the big house, are murmuring about the dormer. A bolt has just struck somewhere in the near vicinity.

Though as far as I can tell this is the very beginning of my consciousness, I am not an infant mentally. I can walk. I do not foul myself with my own wastes. My hands are fumbling with something around my collar—somehow I have already acquired clothing, real clothing, much better than the rude wrappings that I am wearing now.

I know what a door is, and how to open one. And this door, anyway, is already standing very slightly ajar.

Moments later I am in another room, this one on the next level of the house down from the top. This is a small bedchamber; I draw back the curtain of the bed, and by the light of a guttering bedside candle I behold a young man lying there, fully dressed in good but neglected clothing, fitfully asleep. It was, of course, none other than Victor Frankenstein who lay before me, though I did not yet know his name. In some senses I recognized him. I think I understood even then, somehow, that he was someone of great importance to me.

The young man stirred as I gazed at him, and opened bloodshot eyes. He stared back at me with the horrified gaze of one who awakens to find that what he had thought a nightmare is indeed reality. His movement in the bed, edging away, wafted toward me a wave of fumes, strange to me then, but now, in memory, identifiable as those of brandy.

I stretched out a hand toward him, and uttered an inarticulate sound. What purpose was behind my gesture I do not know, but I intended no harm. He uttered a choked cry and rolled out of the bed on the side away from me. A moment later he had sprung past me and was out the door, and I heard the quick sounds of his booted feet descending stairs.

Exactly what I did immediately after that, what I thought, what I felt, I am not sure. I know only that I must have fled the house.

I find I must pause now in this effort. Those early memories are too strong for me.

Later_I must keep on with this journal for the sake of my sanity. And soon I must search the ship again, and more thoroughly, for provisions. Though if, as I suppose, her crew abandoned her when threatened by starvation, there seems little chance that any substantial stores remain.

For now, back to the fierce chore of remembering.

The next scene to come clearly out of the mist is set out of doors, in a gloomy November forest that must have been near Ingolstadt. It is early morning, shortly after dawn, some days after my first clear memory.

I have been sleeping, and today is my turn to be awakened. Someone, using a hound, has tracked me down. I emerge from chaotic dreams and stick my head out of my shelter, a half-fallen tree, to see two human beings and one hound staring down at me.

The young men are much too well dressed to be peasants. I need a moment to realize that one of them, dark-haired and slender, is the same man I saw lying in bed amid brandy fumes a few days earlier, terrified of me. Now, in daylight, the expression on his face is different, more complex, harder to describe or to understand. Fear has not vanished from his countenance, but it has been joined there by elation, shame, disgust, and pride, all struggling to dominate. His breathing is heavy, I think more because of this emotional turmoil than with the exertions of his trot through the woods behind his hound. The animal, not liking me—dogs seldom do—backs a little way into a thicket, grumbling.

"There you are," the young man said to me, confronting me, fists on hips. I have not the words, in English or any other tongue, to describe the mixture of feelings evident in his tone.

The other young man has hair of a lighter brown, and a frame not really much bigger. But somehow he seems hardier and sturdier than slender Frankenstein. He is so far exhibiting little except sheer astonishment. From the way his jaw works he would like to say something pertinent as he gapes at me, but thus far he is speechless. I will come to know him later as Henry Clerval.

Frightened, I too am wordless as I crawl forth and stand erect. As I leave the tree my movement pulls out with me the nest of leaves and grass that had kept me warm enough to sleep. I was on the point of running away, even as last time he, now my discoverer, had fled from me.

"Stay!" he said to me sharply. "I am Victor Frankenstein. I am your creator."

"Creator." Dazed by the idea, I mouthed the word back at him numbly. Standing, towering above him, I took an uncertain step toward him, once more reaching out a hand.

Frankenstein took a quick step back, and his hand went near the curve of a short wooden handle at his belt. I took no more steps forward. I understood the meaning of a pistol even then. Beside him, Clerval stood as if paralyzed.

"The power of speech is yours, then, "the youth who had already spoken-muttered in a strange, almost feverish tone. "Repeat my name!" he commanded briskly.

"Victor Frankenstein."

"Ah. Good. And some degree of understanding."

He turned to his companion. "The cerebrum is not decayed after all, Henry, or at least… residual memory in the fibers. As I had hoped." He spoke confidently but gestured vaguely; his companion gaped at him, hoping intently for enlightenment, not getting much.

Regaining his assurance, Frankenstein stepped forward. For the moment pride and wonder were uppermost in him, his fear and loathing put aside.

"I made you," he murmured to me, and in his voice were tones I have since heard in the prayers of the devout. "I really did."

And was it French that the three of us were speaking together on that day? But no, I think that it was German.

Whatever the language, I could not at first believe that statement when he made it, that simple claim to be the author of my being. And yet I think that, on some deep contradictory level of my being, I already was convinced.

The hound, after circling me uneasily a time or two, had lain down, while Victor paced back and forth under the dripping trees, hands clasped behind his back. Clerval had gradually overcome his paralysis; I could see that he was thinking now, staring at me as he stroked his chin. I stared back, trying to comprehend the marvel that I had just been told.

Frankenstein stopped his pacing suddenly and said: "I am going to write about him to Priestley in London, and to Franklin in Philadelphia. To others as well. Cavendish, I suppose, though he'll never answer. Let me see. Mesmer. Lavoisier. And to Edinburgh, the medical school there…"

"I think that Franklin is not in Philadelphia," said Clerval softly. He was preparing some kind of additional objection, I thought, when I interrupted him.

"What is my name?" I asked. My voice is strong and deep, but I have been told that it is not unpleasant.

Frankenstein appeared surprised at the question, almost as if it had come from one of his laboratory animals.

"I do not know," he replied at length. "I never gave you a name. I suppose that now you are at liberty to choose one for yourself, should you feel the need." Awe grew in his voice as he was speaking, and as he uttered the last words he was staring at me again in simple wonder.

I did feel the need for a name, or I should not have asked the question. For that moment at least it had seemed of immense importance. Yet I had no idea of what name I ought to have.

As I stood dumbly by, my creator was starting to make plans with Clerval. "He cannot stay here. Obviously. There's no telling what trouble he might get into. And I cannot bring him back to the house…"

"No, hardly," Henry cautiously agreed.

"Nor, I think, anywhere in Ingolstadt. I think he must be taken to Geneva… or somewhere near there." In ecstasy and agony, he stared at me again. "I must have time to think. To plan."

"I'll help you," Henry Clerval assured him. Then Henry addressed me boldly, while holding one hand, perhaps unconsciously, near his own pistol. He demanded: "How do you live here? Are you troubling the local peasants? What do you eat?"

"I sleep here." I pointed to the hollow tree from which my dried leaves had spilled. "I eat—what I can find. Sometimes the people—the peasants—see me, but they always cry out and run away when that happens. I don't try to follow them. Victor, I am—"

"You are not to call me 'Victor'." Frankenstein said quickly. I believe he shuddered. "By rights it should be 'master', I suppose."

"Master." I tried the word out on my tongue; French, German, English—in whatever language, I like it not, and did not like it then. Though it is hard now for me to remember just what I was thinking then. Perhaps I was scarcely capable of thought at all, but only dealt with things as they happened in the world around me, and grasped at memories—odd things, mostly fragments that came and went before they could be seized and examined closely. My mind, perhaps, had not yet cleared from the electric trauma of my birth.

The two young men began to take food from their wallets and put it before me, setting some of it on the ground, as if I were an animal—or some minor deity being offered sacrifice. I was hungry, as always—I fell to and began to eat. Bread, cheese, sausage. The food they provided was better than anything I had yet been able to find in the forest.

Victor—it was not long before he changed his mind and gave his tacit consent that I should call him that; what closer relationship could two beings have?—Victor, I say, went on pacing and thinking aloud. Soon they had the rudiments of a plan; between them they were starting to work something out.

I was commanded to stay where I was, by which they meant near the spot where we were presently standing. In a few days they would return, bringing more food, and meet me on a disused road nearby. They would be driving an old carriage, a wagon, some kind of inconspicuous vehicle which they would obtain in the meantime.

Clerval insisted that someone named Roger would have to be consulted on the scheme—Roger was spoken of, by both of them, with uncertainty and respect. Frankenstein was uncertain about everything, and plainly relieved to have the support of his friends in dealing with his so passionately sought responsibility—that is to say, myself.

When they had brought the wagon, I would ride concealed in the vehicle while they drove. Somehow I would be taken to Geneva, the city where Victor's family lived and where he could be sure of additional help. Somewhere in the vicinity of Geneva I would lie concealed, while my creator-master and his friend Henry—presumably still in conference with the mysterious Roger—pondered what to do with me next.

I listened to it all, bemused, uncertain, not knowing what part of the strange world around me I ought to trust, unless it should be this man who said he had created me, and his companions. Rather than listening to the planning so intently, I should have watched their faces, and tried to gauge the depths within their souls. But how could I have done that then?

In any event, their plan, as I shall relate, was altered drastically.

Again I find that I must pause in my struggle with these memories. At the same time I must continue writing, to retain a hold on sanity, and on my newly-restored determination to deal with the world around me. I have conquered the white bear…

Let me relate more of what has happened since I came to be the sole voyager upon this ice-bound ship. Oh yes, it is indeed a voyage that I now endure, and not sheer immobility. The ice is moving. The sounds it makes are proof enough of that, even if it were not possible to see the great cakes sliding and crumbling along the Mary Goode's stout timbered sides. Toward what destiny the ship may be drifting, and how rapidly, are questions I cannot hope to answer while there are no real landmarks to be seen. Only rarely in the midst of this months-long day, darkened only by brief periods of twilight can I even glimpse the stars or moon. And the sun, never moving far from the horizon, is of but little help in determining my location. I can make a rough judgment of south and north, and that is all.

Have I not already mentioned the circumstances of my first arrival at the ship? It came at the end of a flight of nearly a year, that had begun in Paris when I realized that Franklin was unable to help me, and that my enemies, Frankenstein among them, were closing in on me again.

From Paris I traveled ever north and east, thinking to lead my pursuers ever farther from the lands with which they were familiar, and in which their wealth and power had their roots. Month after month I fled from them, by coach, on foot, and at last, from the vicinity of Archangel, by dogsled.

When I came upon the Mary Goode I was staggering on foot over the ice, my dogs long since eaten or drowned. I had abandoned the last platform-portion of my sled when most of my supplies were gone and it would no longer serve me as a raft. In such a plight I came sliding and scrambling toward the ship, because in all the vast white emptiness there was no other goal in sight.

Exhausted by my long flight, I dragged my hungry, weary body aboard the hulk. Here in this cabin I found lamps, oil, a stove, and wood aplenty. I contrived to start a fire. That done, I pulled the bedding from the captain's bunk and, wrapped in what had once been the captain's blankets, fell into a slumber so intense that it was akin to a swoon.

How much time I have been asleep since reaching the ship I cannot say, only that most of my time aboard has been spent in that condition. There have been intervals of full wakefulness, in each of which I have been increasingly aware of hunger. Each time I awoke I fed the stove, and melted ice and snow on it to drink. Then I fell into oblivion again, wrapped in furs and blankets. Sometimes on awakening I ate sparingly from the small stock of provisions I still had. Later, somewhat rested, and increasingly aware of my plight, I began to search the ship more or less methodically. I found only frozen crumbs.

So things stood when the bear came.

I was sleeping, as usual, on the cabin floor beside the berth, when sleep was broken by an awakening sharper, more sudden, and more complete than any that had preceded it. Hunger was my first thought_that the beginning of starvation had again tipped the balance against exhaustion. For a moment, still wrapped in fur, I lay in the endless twilight, staring up into the gloom of dark planks above my head. The ship creaked around me, with the ponderous, glacial movement of the ice shifting its grip.

A moment later I was sitting bolt upright, throwing off my furs and blankets. Another moment and I was on my feet. A rhythmic component of the sound had separated itself from the inanimate noises of ice and water—a heavy, padded shuffle on the deck above.

I was not the only inhabitant of that frozen gloom, nor the only one who hungered fiercely. But that sound emanated from no human agency. Thus I first heard the tread of the white bear.

Moving swiftly to the cabin door, I made shift to close and block it with such poor materials as were at hand. My effort came none too soon; a hungry snuffling and a heavy scraping soon began outside the door. The keen senses of the beast had led it unerringly to warmth, motion, and potential food.

On my first arrival, I had noticed a musket leaning in the corner of the cabin, as if it had been set down there by some careless or distracted hand, and then forgotten. I could picture the captain, tormented by the fear of some mad mutiny, and then abandoning his precaution when another danger became more real and pressing. I had supposed, without giving it much thought, that the weapon must be loaded. Whether the powder in the pan might still be dry and ready was something I might have ascertained earlier, but now had no time to try; my slight barricade at the door was already about to fall.

Gripping the weapon in one hand, I smashed out one of the ice-covered windows in the stern, and made shift to clamber out and up, quickly gaining the poop deck.

When I reached the deck I realized that my escape from the cabin had availed me only momentary respite. As always, the eternal icefields stretched away in all directions to an indeterminate horizon. Out there lay only death and desolation. My only chance for life was here aboard the Mary Goode, and I suddenly discovered that life was, in spite of all, all-precious to me.

The bear, on discovering the cabin empty, and hearing my movements on the deck above, was not long in coming after me. The only delay was the few seconds required for the bulky animal to turn itself around in the cramped quarters below. Then as I had expected, it reappeared on deck. But to my consternation it came up by a different companion-way than the one where I had aimed my musket.

I swung my aim quickly toward the animal, and pulled the trigger. Almost to my surprise, the musket fired. But I had not aimed accurately enough. The musket-ball, that at point-blank range could have slain the beast instantly, instead tore into the furry neck and shoulder, producing as its only immediate effect a most savage roar. A moment later, the bear had lurched free of the companionway onto the open deck, and with a blow of its paw had knocked my now-useless weapon from my grasp.

With all my agility I sprang away, just in time to avoid the next sweep of that deadly arm. Leaping to grab the frozen shrouds, I swung myself from line to line, across the ship and back again. I might have climbed one of the masts and got my-self well above the monster's reach; but I perceived at once that such a maneuver would only leave me hopelessly trapped, in a place from whence I must eventually climb down, or fall, or freeze in place if I did not.

There was nowhere to flee, nor did I wish to. A mad rage was upon me, and I roared as fiercely as did the bear.

I maneuvered myself above the wheel, and certain crates and other obstacles upon the deck, more quickly than the bear could dance around them, and thus attained the position of advantage that I wanted. Then, giving a howl compounded half of rage and half of despair, I sprang upon the monster from behind. Locking my right forearm under its throat, I gripped my hands together with all my strength, while my legs clamped the great body of the beast between them. With eyes closed I sank my teeth into my adversary's hairy ear, adding the strength of my jaws to that of my arms and legs in the effort to keep my position as the huge body thrashed and rolled and bellowed beneath me.

The horizon of ice and snow and sky spun round me, and the masts seemed to be toppling together upon my head. Indeed, when the beast rolled over in an effort to dislodge me, I thought that they had done so. Yet still, with the strength of rage and fear combined, I persisted in maintaining my grip.

The slavering, roaring jaws of the bear were only inches from my face, yet he could not turn the inches necessary to fasten those great teeth into my skull. The four mighty limbs of my enemy worked with pile-driving force, yet almost helplessly, for I remained out of their reach while the claws tore splinters from the mast and deck. I tasted the blood torn by my own teeth from my enemy's flesh, and I gripped the furred body ever harder with both arms and both legs. Again and again I was battered and bruised as the massive weight rolled over me, pounding me against the deck, the rails, I know not what. Fighting for breath, certain at each moment that in the next I must be torn off and devoured, yet I clung on, my whole being concentrated on maintaining my grip, and even tightening it.

A moment came when the bear roared no longer, because it no longer had the breath to roar. How long the grim contest continued after that I could not tell, only that it was a long time before the struggles of my opponent ceased. A long time later still I dared release my hold. Quivering, gasping, bruised in every fiber of my body, I dragged myself away, and lay for long hazy minutes on the verge of fainting before I could regain my feet.

Probing the dead carcass with a knife has confirmed my first impression about the musket-ball: The damage done by it was hardly more than superficial. With my teeth, my hands, my arms, the strength of my body, I have slain the white bear.

No human being could possibly do such a thing. My creator, in some ways, wrought exceedingly well.

That was the day on which I began this journal. Since then I have feasted on the bear's meat, scorched over the fire in my stove. I have fitted a sheet of clear ice over the cabin window from which I broke the glass in my escape.

And since my fight with the bear I have looked long into the captain's frozen little mirror. The face that gazes back at me is still smeared with traces of the bear's blood, and is undoubtedly inhuman. But it is no less alive and worthy for all that.

Whatever the mirror may tell me, whatever answer the universe may hold to the riddle of my existence, I am determined now to remain alive. So much has the bear accomplished for me.