European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman

by Theodora Goss

  Greta had rented the third-floor room for four days, telling the proprietor that they might be going in and out frequently, as they were salesmen, in Vienna to sell their wares (which were, she hinted, a superior kind of hair oil). It was not a particularly attractive room—the paint on the walls was peeling, the mattress on the bed was stained, and the shaving stand had rusted. But it gave them the best possible view of the hospital. The proprietor looked at them from beneath bushy brows—the only hair that grew on his otherwise bald head. He had a long scar down one side of his face, and what seemed to be one glass eye because it was a different color than the other and sometimes moved independently. It was obvious, from the memorabilia behind the bar, that he was a veteran of one of that region’s innumerable wars. What the hell did he care when they came in or out, he muttered through a particularly noxious cigarette clenched in a corner of his mouth, paying them little attention as he wiped down the bar. As long as they paid for their room and did not cause trouble, they could come and go whenever they pleased. From what Justine could tell, at least some of the rooms were occupied by women, and sometimes men, who brought in a series of guests they had evidently just met, for they were still exchanging names on the staircase. Did it bother her that this place was the resort of prostitutes? A little, but for the most part she felt sorry for these sons and daughters of sin. They could not help resorting to such low measures. If the world were only better arranged, if all men truly cared for their fellows as both the Bible and reason bade, such things would not exist. She blamed not the individual, but the system.

  MARY: You really do sound like Justine! That’s a little frightening, actually. It’s as though you can get into each of our heads.

  CATHERINE: I told you I’m a good writer. My Astarte stories aren’t meant to be Shakespeare, thank you very much.

  “All right,” said Greta. “I think we’ve seen what we need to.”

  Justine nodded. She wanted, more than anything else, simply to go back to Mrs. Norton’s apartment and lie down on the sofa in the study, perhaps with a damp cloth over her eyes. The last few days had been such a blur of activity—the train, and then the ferry, and the train again. And then sharing a cabin with Heinrich Waldman, keeping up the pretense of being Justin Frank. It had been exhausting, and since their arrival in Vienna, there had been no time to rest.

  She was strong—physically, stronger than most men. Even Atlas was not as strong as she was. But there is another kind of strength, a sort of sheer endurance, and she had to admit that in that way, Mary was stronger. Mary could simply get up in the morning and go, whereas so much exhausted Justine—the sights and sounds of travel, conversations, the sheer presence of others. Even when she cared about them, as she did Mary and Diana, after spending several days in their company she would find herself developing a headache. In London, she had been able to climb up to her studio and paint. But here, there was nowhere she could escape, and no time in which to do it. They had to rescue Lucinda Van Helsing—all else was subordinate to that purpose. She knew that; nevertheless, she sighed and put her forehead on the windowpane, which felt solid and cool. Sometimes, she had to admit, she longed for the house in Cornwall, near the coast, where she had lived alone for almost a century.

  MARY: Do you really long for that? For that kind of solitude?

  JUSTINE: It does not mean I don’t love you all. It’s simply my nature. I hope you understand.

  MARY: Of course we do. I mean, I’m not sure we really do, because we’re not you. I can’t imagine being alone for a hundred years. But it’s all right.

  DIANA: But you’d want me there, right, Justine? I wouldn’t bother you.

  MRS. POOLE: Your way of not bothering looks exactly like bothering, if you ask me.

  DIANA: Which no one did!

  “Justine, are you well?” Greta was looking at her with concern.

  “Yes . . . Yes, of course. We are done here, are we not?”

  “Unless you’ve suddenly thought of a plan for rescuing Mademoiselle Van Helsing! No? Then I suggest we find our cab and return to Prinz-Eugen Strasse.”

  Justine nodded. It was good, at least, to be able to speak French. She had not realized how much she had missed her native language—the language in which her mother had spoken to her, and Madame Frankenstein had trained her, and Victor Frankenstein had taught her after reanimating the body of Justine Moritz. It came back to her so easily, like breathing. Speaking and thinking in it were so much easier, as though she were back in the mountains of Switzerland, drawing cool, clear air into her lungs, rather than the wet, heavy, sooty atmosphere of London.

  She followed Greta down the stairs, stepping over a drunkard passed out on the second-floor landing. They found the cab where they had asked it to wait for them, in the mews several streets over. Soon, they were once again jostling over the cobbled streets of Vienna.

  As they drove, Justine stared out the window of the cab at the apartment houses and factories in this section of the city. Then she turned back to Greta.

  “How did you know where the Emperor keeps his handkerchief at night?”

  Greta laughed. “That’s the easiest time to steal it from him. As Madame Norton would tell you, the handkerchief of an Emperor, marked by his personal handkerchief maker, is useful in so many ways! It can, for example, convince someone that you are secretly his mistress, and therefore have his confidence. But I don’t want you to think that I stole it from under his head! He was not in bed at the time. The advantage of being a maid is, if you’re wearing the proper uniform, you can go anywhere, and no one will notice. But I don’t think I should tell you any more, Justine, although I’m a good judge of character and you seem to be someone I could trust with the most secret information. I don’t want to betray madame’s confidence, you understand. She . . . well, she saved our lives, my sister’s and mine.”

  “Did she?” said Justine. She hesitated to ask how. She did not wish to intrude into Greta’s personal life. . . . And that, right there, is the difference between Justine and the rest of us. We would not have felt such compunction.

  MARY: I would certainly not have pried!

  CATHERINE: But you would have wanted to. Your sense of propriety would have kept you from doing so.

  BEATRICE: I confess, my curiosity would have prompted me to ask, even if politeness forbade it.

  CATHERINE: Which is why Justine is far and away the best of us.

  JUSTINE: Catherine, that’s ridiculous. I have many flaws. I am sometimes more angry than you realize, and I do not forgive easily. When we were trapped in that castle in Styria, I could not find it in my heart to forgive—

  CATHERINE: I said no spoiling the plot for our readers! Anyway, it’s proof of your goodness that whenever you do anything less than charitable, you immediately feel guilty about it. Granted, I don’t think it’s very sensible of you—guilt never helped anyone change anything.

  BEATRICE: Although guilt may result in ethical action later. One may, for example, determine never to harm another, after having once done grievous harm.

  CATHERINE: Are you taking about your relationship with Clarence?

  DIANA: I never feel guilty about anything.

  MARY: We know!

  Now it was Greta’s turn to stare out the cab window, her face half-turned away from Justine. But the half Justine could see looked thoughtful. There was something soothing about the horse’s hooves clopping on stone. At this point, they were traveling over the larger boulevards in the south of the city, with trees on both sides. Justine waited. Would Greta say anything? If not, Justine would certainly not ask again. When Greta turned back, Justine worried that she had caused the maid—or spy?—distress, perhaps even pain. Greta’s eyes were filled with tears. She sniffed and wiped her nose with the back of one hand; then, as though remembering that she was Madame Norton’s proper maid, she pulled out a rather dirty pocket handkerchief.

  “Our mother died several days after I was born, of childbed fever. Our father care
d for us, but he was a drunkard and a thief. It would have been better if he had been one or the other—as a thief he might have succeeded, for he was one of the best in Vienna, and as a drunkard he might have avoided thievery. But he stole while drunk and was captured. He died in prison, and we were sent to the Institute for Orphans and Foundlings, in the Margareten District. We had never been to school—Hannah knew how to read a little, but I did not know even that. The institute was—well, no better nor worse than many such, built for the warehousing of indigent children. They tried to starve us into submission, and if that failed, the switch would accomplish what hunger could not. Finally, we ran away. We did not know much, but our father had taught us one useful skill—how to steal. We lived on the streets for two years, surviving as pickpockets and thieves. One day, while Hannah was lifting a wallet out of the pocket of a particularly elegant gentleman, while I was distracting him by importuning him for money, we were caught. It seems the gentleman’s manservant had been hurrying to catch up with him after settling a bill, and he had observed our trickery. Unfortunately for us, the gentleman was an official at court, who claimed that his wallet contained important state documents. He accused us of being spies, of conspiring against the state. We were tried and condemned to hang for treason. Hannah was thirteen, I was only eleven years old at the time. We thought we were going to die.”

  Greta turned and stared out the carriage window again. Now they were driving by parks filled with tall trees, and buildings that might have been universities or museums. How different from the small, cramped streets they had come from!

  “One day,” she continued, still staring out the window, “as we were languishing in our prison cell, having given up on the idea of escape—don’t think we had not tried!—a woman came to see us. I still remember how she looked in the dim light from the prison window—in a scarlet coat trimmed with fur, and wearing a fur hat. I’d never seen anyone like her! I thought she might be Empress Elizabeth herself. She was followed by one of the guards, cringing and fawning. She ordered him to let us out of our cell, and he complied, with a ‘Yes, Your Highness.’ We followed her down those dark corridors, out of the prison and into the light of day, which neither of us thought we would see again until the day we were hanged in the prison yard.

  “As soon as we stepped outside the prison, she grabbed our wrists and said, ‘Quick, into the carriage before they discover I’m not any kind of Highness, and your release papers are forged!’

  “We climbed as quickly as we could into the carriage, which had a royal crest painted on it, and then we were rolling through the streets of Vienna, just as we are now—free.”

  “And was that Irene Norton?” asked Justine.

  “Of course,” said Greta, smiling as though she were remembering the episode. “Who else would have so much courage, to simply roll up to the most impregnable prison in Vienna in a carriage painted with the royal coat of arms, carrying false papers, and rescue two criminals who had most definitely committed the crime of which they had been accused? The crime of thievery, that is, not of treason.”

  “Why did she?” asked Justine. “It must have been a considerable risk.”

  “We are almost home,” said Greta. “That is the wall of the Belvedere. In a moment, we will turn onto Prinz-Eugen Strasse. We asked her that as well. She said that if we were indeed spies, she wanted us to work for her, and if we were not, we could be useful to her as thieves. She arranged for us to learn various languages, how to fight with a knife and sword, how to shoot any firearm. She introduced us to the others. . . .”

  “Then there are others like you, working for Mrs. Norton?” asked Justine. That was what Irene herself had implied earlier.

  Greta laughed. “A whole—well, what is the word? Gaggle of us, I supposed. Only Hannah and I live with Madame Norton. For the others, there is a house, the location of which is so secret that I will not reveal it even to you! Although I like you, Justine, and if you ever take to spying—or thievery, either will do, I will certainly recommend you to madame!”

  Justine was astonished. The Baker Street Irregulars seemed amateurish, compared with the operation Irene Norton was running.

  “You see, now I’ve said too much,” said Greta. “Anyway, we have arrived. This is 18 Prinz-Eugen Strasse.”

  Irene was not at home when they entered, and Mary, Diana, and Hannah had not yet returned from meeting with Freud. Greta headed down to the kitchen, saying something about seeing whether Frau Schmidt needed her help to prepare lunch.

  What should she do? Justine knew, but did not particularly want to do it. Well, she would, whether she wanted to or not. If she had read Mrs. Shelley’s book back in London, she might have recognized Heinrich Waldman’s name. She had been putting it off long enough.

  MRS. POOLE: To think he spent two nights in the same cabin with you, knowing you were a woman! No gentleman would do such a thing.

  JUSTINE: I assure you, Mrs. Poole, he did nothing improper. Although he did speak mockingly of Leibniz’s Discourse on Metaphysics, which I admit shocked me a little.

  When Mary returned from the psychoanalyst’s office, she walked back toward the bedroom she shared with Diana—who had already disappeared down the stairs to the kitchen, saying she would starve to death if she didn’t get something to eat tout suite. Well, at least Diana had picked up some French! All Mary wanted, after meeting with Dr. Freud, was to wash her face and put on something more comfortable than a walking suit. As she passed the study, she heard something—what was it? A regular sound, low but steady. . . . Sobs, they were sobs, she could hear them through the door. It was Justine! And she sounded as though she were sobbing her heart out.

  Sure enough, when Mary opened the door—it seemed impolite, but helping her friend was more important than politeness—she saw Justine sitting on the sofa, with her head in her hands. Her shoulders were shaking, and she was crying with a sort of abandon that was frightening in Justine, who was always so gentle, so very calm. Mary walked over, quickly but quietly so as not to startle her, and sat down on the sofa beside her. She put a hand on Justine’s arm.

  Justine sat up and wiped her eyes with her fingers. Mary handed her a handkerchief. That is one of the useful things about Mary: She always seems to have handkerchiefs to hand out.

  MARY: I won’t if you keep losing them!

  “I feel so foolish,” said Justine. “But indeed, I could not help myself.” Her normally pale face was red and splotchy.

  “Is there anything I can do?” asked Mary. What in the world had set Justine sobbing in that way? Had someone been cruel to her? But who would be cruel to her here—not Greta, surely?

  As though to answer her unspoken question, Justine handed Mary the book that had been lying open on the sofa, where she had put it. Was it some work of abstruse philosophy? Justine liked to read those, but Mary rather doubted they would make her cry.

  “There,” said Justine, pointing. “You see?”

  Mary looked at the paragraph Justine was pointing to. Just beneath her long, slim painter’s finger was written:

  The next morning, at daybreak, I summoned sufficient courage, and unlocked the door of my laboratory. The remains of the half-finished creature, whom I had destroyed, lay scattered on the floor, and I almost felt as if I had mangled the living flesh of a human being. I paused to recollect myself, and then entered the chamber. With trembling hands I conveyed the instruments out of the room; but I reflected that I ought not to leave the relics of my work to excite the horror and suspicion of the peasants; and I accordingly put them into a basket, with a great quantity of stones, and, laying them up, determined to throw them into the sea that very night. . . .

  What in the world was this? Mary looked at the cover, on which was written, in gilding on crimson leather, Frankenstein: A Biography of the Modern Prometheus. Ah yes, Justine had said she was going to read Mrs. Shelley’s book! Well, clearly that had been a bad idea.

  “It’s a lie,” said Mary. “Just a lie, Jus
tine. We know he didn’t destroy you—or you wouldn’t be sitting here right now, would you? We know Adam killed him on that island.”

  “Then why did she write it?” asked Justine. “The rest of the book, after that passage—it makes no sense. The monster Adam pursues my father to the Arctic—have you heard anything so improbable, so ridiculous? But reading that, about my own destruction . . . Oh!” And she burst into a fresh set of tears.

  Mary put her arms around Justine. How could a woman who felt so frail—well, tall and frail, because Mary barely came up to her shoulder—be so strong? “It’s all right, my dear,” she said. “Cry all you want to. I’m not Catherine, but I’m here—whether you want to talk or not.”

  For several more minutes, Justine continued to sob. Then she sniffed and once again wiped away her tears, this time with Mary’s handkerchief.

  “I’m sorry, Mary,” she said. “You would think that a hundred years might have healed those wounds. Sometimes I wish my father had indeed disassembled me and thrown my body parts into the sea, rather than reanimating me.”

  “You don’t mean that,” said Mary. “It’s better to be alive—it’s always better to be alive. Think of flowers, and your paintings, and think of us. What would we do without you? Catherine and Beatrice would miss you, and so would I. Besides, you’re the only one who can do anything with Diana. If you had been destroyed, you would not have become my friend, and that would have made me so very sad.”

  “Ah, you would not have known anything about it!” said Justine, but now she was smiling through her tears.

  “You know what I think we need?” said Mary. “We haven’t had lunch yet, and it’s almost two o’clock. Why don’t you and I go down to ask if Frau Schmidt can make us a sandwich or something?”

  “Now that is a very sensible suggestion, and one I was about to make myself!” It was Irene, standing in the doorway, dressed as a man in a brown wool suit and looking every inch the respectable bank clerk or junior partner of an accounting firm. “Oh, honey!” she said when she saw Justine’s face. She walked over to the sofa—she had a much brisker stride in trousers—and took Justine’s face in her hands. She looked at it searchingly—she did not have to lean down far, since Justine was so tall, even sitting. Finally, she said, “You know, Mary’s right. What you need is something to eat, and maybe even a little schnapps. And then some sleep. You’re just tired out, that’s half the trouble. Come on, let’s have a combination Austrian lunch and English tea, with cakes and sandwiches—although I’ll stick to my coffee, thank you. I’ll ask Frau Schmidt what she’s preparing for us—Greta said lunch would be served as soon as we all arrived, and I think we’re here now. Justine, why don’t you wash your face and meet us in the parlor? And seriously, honey, it doesn’t matter what Mrs. Shelley wrote a million years ago. You’re here. You’re alive. That’s the important thing.”