Fraulein Frankenstein

by Stephen Woodworth

  I threw aside the black lace that covered the portrait above the fireplace and gazed long at the painted face.

  There could be no doubt: that visage belonged to me. But what about the rest? The woman in the portrait wore a low-necked gown. Her lovely throat bore no scar, as mine did. And her eyes expressed a complacency that I had never felt and could not share.

  I grew melancholy as I thought of the maid’s shriek of revulsion, the housekeeper’s grunt of disgust, the sobs of a husband whose face I could not recall. Even here, at “home,” I was a stranger. But I thought when I saw my husband, perhaps I would finally recollect myself. Until then, I would be a woman living under an assumed identity.

  CHAPTER 8

  THE ONCE AND FUTURE HUSBAND

  From then on, Fräu Hauptmann devoted every waking moment to my education. She drilled me on my elocution until I became fluent in German. Not content that I should speak only my native tongue, she tutored me in French, Italian, and English as well. Overwhelmed by the chore of learning even one language, I asked her what sort of people used these other strange words and why I would ever want to speak with them. She actually cackled at that, the only time I ever heard her laugh.

  “Because you are a fine lady, Katarina,” she reminded me, “and your knowledge should reflect your breeding.”

  When she taught me to write, she was not satisfied with the crude block letters that Birgit had shown me, nor even with the spiky cursive scrawl I struggled to practice with unaccustomed fingers. Rather, she spread the yellowed leaves of an old letter before me and insisted that I replicate its elegant, florid calligraphy, right down to the flamboyant curlicue that crossed the “t” in the signature “Katarina.” I learned to mimic the other woman’s script so well that it became habit, an unintentional exercise in forgery.

  In the same fashion, Fräu Hauptmann sought to mold every aspect of my being as if shaping wet clay. How I sat, how I walked, how I held my head, how I held my fork—no detail or mannerism was too fine to escape her notice. As tedious and exasperating as her constant criticism could be, I absorbed the lessons eagerly, thrilled that I was actually becoming someone.

  There were other aspects of my schooling, however, that I did not like.

  Although Bettina overcame her initial revulsion at my appearance and proved a polite and dutiful servant, she remained stiff and timid around me. It saddened me to think I caused the mousy young girl such anxiety, and I strove to put her at her ease. I dressed and undressed myself in private so my grotesque scars would never upset her again, and she soon seemed to forget about them, even began to smile in my presence.

  Then, one morning before Fräu Hauptmann came to tutor me, Bettina entered with a small bunch of fresh peonies and shyly presented them to me. “They’re the first of the season,” she explained when I stared, uncomprehending, at the flowers. “The mistress—I mean, you—always liked to put them in your hair.”

  Sensing a chance to befriend the girl, I smiled broadly. “That is . . . very kind of you, Bettina,” I said, taking care to use the proper German grammar I’d learned. “Would you show me how to do it?”

  She smiled and curtsied. “Of course.”

  As I sat before the vanity mirror, the maid took strands of my blonde hair in her thin, nimble fingers and wove the stems of the flowers into a ropelike braid that twined across my scalp like a floral tiara. The pink petals brought out the luster of the gold of my hair and the blue of my eyes, and for the first time I felt a tickling pleasure in my appearance.

  When Bettina had finished, I laughed gaily and snatched up the rest of the scattered blossoms. “But look how many blooms are left! It would be a shame to waste them.” I stood from my stool. “Here—let me put the rest on you.”

  The maid blushed and shook her head. “Oh, no, Fräu von Kemp. I couldn’t.”

  I encouraged her to take the stool. “Please.”

  Bettina let out a nervous giggle and seated herself. “Well . . . if you insist . . .”

  She removed her maid’s cap and permitted me to thread a flower into her wispy brown hair. Although not as adept as she was, I did my best to imitate her skill. Bettina chuckled and teased me as I fumbled, but with her instruction, I soon had a blossom woven into the locks above her left ear. We took turns admiring each other, mincing and preening before the looking glass and laughing. I realized I had never felt such kinship with another being before, a camaraderie of equals. If I had known what such a thing was, I would have called Bettina my friend.

  Then the razor of Fräu Hauptmann’s voice severed the two of us. “Bettina! What are you doing?”

  The maid jumped to her feet. “Nothing, Fräu Hauptmann. I—”

  The housekeeper pointed to the open bedchamber door behind her. “Get back to your duties. And take that thing off your head.”

  “Yes, Fräu Hauptmann.” Bettina winced as she tugged the flower from the tangle of her hair. She put her maid’s cap back on and scurried from the room, her manner again fretful and withdrawn.

  Mortified, I glared at Fräu Hauptmann. “Why were you so harsh with her?”

  She frowned. “Why were you so indulgent?”

  “She did nothing wrong,” I protested.

  “It is beneath you to be so familiar with the servants, Katarina. You are a fine lady—wife of one of the wealthiest landowners in Bavaria—and you must remember your place.”

  I bristled. For me to disdain Bettina because of her social class seemed as cruel and unjust as Frankenstein reviling the monster simply for its ugliness.

  My expression hardened into one of cold condescension. “These servants you speak of . . . would they include you, my housekeeper?”

  The old woman seemed taken aback. “Yes,” she answered.

  “In that case, you are dismissed, Fräu Hauptmann.”

  The housekeeper stood quivering a moment, as if mortally offended. Then a chilling calm of satisfaction smoothed her scowl and she bowed deeply. “As you wish, Fräu von Kemp.”

  After she departed, I turned to the mirror. The face there was so prideful, so aloof, so like that in the painting above the mantel, that I covered it with my hands, wanted to claw it off like a hideous mask. If this was what it meant to be Katarina von Kemp, I wanted nothing to do with her.

  #

  At such times, I longed to return to the simple affections of Birgit and Pastor Georg. I sat at my bedchamber window and sighed, watching the sunset and wondering if my adoptive parents prayed for the return of their Liesl. If they were searching, I doubted they would find me, for even I did not know where I was.

  I briefly considered escape on several occasions. Although I was confined to my apartments—bedchamber, parlor, and library—it would have been an easy thing to overpower Fräu Hauptmann and take her keys. But there was still so much I didn’t know about my history in that house—elusive secrets that taunted me at night as I lay awake, listening to the keening cries from the room upstairs.

  After weeks of incarceration, I could stand it no longer. I begged Fräu Hauptmann to let me go outside before I went mad from confinement. She finally acquiesced, on two conditions: she would choose the time, and she would remain at my side from the moment I left my rooms until I returned.

  Her hovering presence nettled me, but I ceased to care as soon as we stepped out into the soothing warmth of a late-spring morning. The estate included a breathtaking manicured garden, with islands of sculpted shrubs rising from dazzling seas of flowers. As we strolled along one of the pebbled paths that crisscrossed the grounds, ranks of tulips in yellow, red, and orange stood in regiments at either side of us like uniformed troops for review. The misty scent of morning dew still freshened the air, and the mélange of jasmine and orange blossom scents from the surrounding trees created a perfume that smelled far sweeter to me than the bottled odors of the colognes on my vanity table. I inhaled deeply and lifted my face to the sun to bask in its radiance.

  “Here, use this.” Fräu Hauptmann handed me a
parasol. “Too much sunlight will ruin your porcelain skin.”

  She was not looking up at the sun as she said this, however, but instead glanced back toward the house, eyeing a darkened window on the third floor.

  The housekeeper walked at my elbow, dressed in black as ever and carried a parasol of her own to keep herself in shadow. “Herr von Kemp put in this garden after your trip to Paris, you know,” she mentioned idly, never missing an opportunity to indoctrinate me in the details of my life as Katarina. “He saw how much you enjoyed the grounds of the Tuileries and wanted to surround you with the same sort of beauty. Oh, how in love you were!” She gave a rhapsodic sigh.

  The mention of my still-faceless husband clouded the glorious day.

  “How did I meet him?” I tried to make the question sound eager rather than anxious.

  “Your late father introduced you, of course,” the housekeeper replied. “Herr von Kemp had noticed you in the salons of Frankfurt and the two of them agreed that you would be a splendid match.” She sniffed with an oddly rueful expression and glanced again toward the grand house behind us.

  “When shall I see him?” I asked, my attention drawn in the same direction.

  “Soon,” Fräu Hauptmann replied tonelessly. “Very soon.”

  She stared at a window on the third floor of the black-timbered Bavarian manse. A hand held aside one of the burgundy drapes, as if a theater performer were evaluating his prospective audience before the curtains parted. I could not distinguish the hand’s owner in the dimness of the room beyond the window, and as soon as I glanced up, it let the drape fall back into place.

  #

  Fräu Hauptmann never specified when I was to be reunited with Herr von Kemp, but I gathered the time must be drawing nigh from the way she redoubled her efforts to prepare me. More and more, she insinuated memories of Katarina into our conversations, memories I was expected to absorb and parrot as my own.

  “This was always your favorite aria,” she murmured on one occasion as she played a few measures from one of Susanna’s solos in Le Nozze di Figaro on the pianoforte in my parlor. “Won’t it be wonderful to go to the Staatsoper again, Katarina?”

  I did not even know what opera was—my only experience with music was what I had heard in the Stadtkirche—but the melody pleased me. I readily accepted it as my favorite aria . . . whatever an aria might be.

  “Not too much rouge on your cheeks, dear,” she said at another time as she instructed me in the mysterious art of cosmetics. “You know how Joseph hates that.”

  I knew no such thing, yet I apologized and said I’d simply forgotten his preference.

  So my husband’s name is Joseph, I thought, wondering why Fräu Hauptmann had never told me his Christian name before and why she spoke of him so intimately now. She seemed to realize her faux pas and reverted to calling him “Herr von Kemp” for the rest of the day.

  Finally, after supper one evening, the housekeeper came to my bedchamber bearing a lavish gown trimmed with ribbons and lace. “Come, Katarina,” she said, “put on your lovely new dress.”

  I shivered with apprehension. “That’s not a new dress.”

  She smiled, amused. “No. It’s not.”

  It was, in fact, the dress worn by the woman in the painting above my mantelpiece. Fräu Hauptmann did not need to tell me why I was to wear it that night.

  My heart fluttered as I put on the gown. When I’d first tried it on a week earlier, it had been too snug in places, too loose in others, as if tailored for another woman, but since then it had been altered and now fit perfectly.

  “Remember how to greet him.”

  “Yes, Fräu Hauptmann.”

  “There is no need to be afraid. Remember, he worships you. And I will be there with you.”

  At her signal, I followed her upstairs to the bedchamber directly above mine—toward the wellspring of muffled weeping that I could hear even now, through the closed door. As we entered the room I smelled the heavy scent of cologne, and, under that, a dry, papery, stale smell—the odor of an old man.

  He sat at the far end of the room, before a crackling fire in the grate. The high-backed chair was angled toward the fireplace, and I could only see the forearm that rested on the right side of the chair. An arthritic hand freckled with liver spots gripped the silver knob of a walking stick. A gold wedding band encircled the hand’s third finger.

  Fräu Hauptmann motioned for me to wait.

  “She is here,” the housekeeper announced.

  The lamentations abruptly ceased. The man in the chair became flustered, sniffing and coughing to clear his throat. Leaning heavily on the cane, he pushed himself to his feet. I noticed his hair first—a long white mane that fell past his shoulders. Old-fashioned knee britches and stockings covered legs that looked stick-thin. He did not face me immediately but instead wiped his cheeks with his free hand and drew his skeletal frame up to its full height. The ramrod stiffness of his posture suggested the bearing of a former military officer. Then he turned to regard me with rheumy brown eyes.

  “Katarina?” He hobbled toward me, extended his trembling hand. “Can it really be you?”

  “Good evening, dear husband.” I genuflected as I had been taught.

  To my shock, he dropped the walking stick and fell on his knees before me, his fists clutching the silk of my gown as he bowed to kiss its hem. I recoiled from those grasping hands, and in my mind I heard the monster’s needy, possessive rasp. Mine.

  “No, no, my dearest! Do not fear me!” Joseph von Kemp looked up at me, tears rolling down his withered face. “Don’t you see? God has brought you back to me. If He can forgive, then surely you . . .”

  “She has forgotten all that,” Fräu Hauptmann interjected. “There is no need to speak of it.”

  As I stood in awkward discomfiture the housekeeper stepped between us, reached down to help von Kemp stand. Taking her arm, he struggled to his feet, propping himself on the cane he’d recovered.

  “You are right, Fräu Hauptmann.” His crooked fingers quavered as he brought his hand up to stroke my face. Only pity kept me from flinching away. His eyes roamed lower, first to the lace ribbon that concealed the scar around my neck, then to my bosom and waist. Von Kemp moistened his lips, his eyes glazing over. “If you would leave us alone . . .”

  “I do not think that would be wise.”

  Von Kemp started. “Not wise? Why not wise?”

  “She needs time, Herr von Kemp. Time to reacquaint herself with her former life. Time to get . . . accustomed to you again.” When he opened his mouth to object, she fixed him with a piercing glance. “Before you can be alone. You want everything to be perfect for dear Katarina, do you not?”

  My husband shuddered with frustrated longing, but to my relief he nodded. “Yes. It is for the best.” He took my hand. “You will permit me to dine with you tomorrow evening, won’t you, my dear?”

  I looked to Fräu Hauptmann for guidance. Almost imperceptibly, she inclined her head. In turn, I nodded to von Kemp. He bowed, and, to my surprise, placed his lips upon the back of my hand, making that slurping sound I had heard before.

  I had just received my first “kiss.” I still couldn’t understand why anyone would desire one.

  CHAPTER 9

  THE RIVAL

  The following morning, Joseph von Kemp began a halting, almost adolescent courtship of me, his supposed wife. I awoke to find an enormous bouquet of fresh-cut roses on my dressing table along with an embossed card inscribed, “For my Heart’s Treasure. Your Abject Servant—J.”

  Despite this written expression of ardor, in person he remained as shy and skittish as a schoolboy. He forbade me to visit him until our scheduled supper, as if afraid to let me see his withered countenance in the unforgiving light of day.

  When I arrived in the dining room that evening, I saw he had tied his white hair back with a black ribbon, as if it were a powdered wig of the last century, and wore a frock coat whose fit flattered his trim frame, making hi
m appear less frail than before. In the subdued light of the room’s candelabra, I could easily imagine the dashing figure he must have cut in his youth. Yet his manner still wavered between yearning and shame; he stared wistfully at me when my face was turned yet averted his eyes whenever I looked at him directly.

  “You see that I have had chef prepare all your favorites, my dear.” He made a grand gesture toward the repast on the long dining table, using the excuse to look at the food rather than my eyes. “Braised stag, pheasant eggs, sautéed truffles, and, of course, a mince strudel for dessert.”

  He smiled at me for a moment, then lowered his head as though I were some goddess upon whom he was not permitted to gaze.

  I surveyed the delectable array of dishes laid out on the sterling service before me, none of which I could recall ever tasting before. The mingled aromas of sweet and savory spices smelled delicious, and I knew I would accept these foods as my favorites as readily as I had adopted Mozart as my composer of choice.

  “How thoughtful!” I exclaimed, genuinely touched by his desire to please. “But you shouldn’t have gone to such trouble, Herr—” Fräu Hauptmann admonished me with a look, and I corrected myself. “Dear Joseph.”

  The endearment felt stilted, as if I were speaking lines in a play written for someone else. My awkwardness didn’t bother Herr von Kemp, who beamed as I called him by his given name. With charming gallantry, he pulled my chair from the table so that I could seat myself.

  The dinner was exquisite, although the conversation consisted mostly of nostalgia from Herr von Kemp and polite nods from me as I pretended to share his recollections.

  “Ah!” he sighed in one instance, raising his cut-crystal goblet to admire the garnet-hued fluid within. “We brought this wine back from our first visit to Burgundy.”

  “Oh, yes!” I chimed in. “The vineyards were so lovely.”

  Fräu Hauptmann, who stood to one side of the table with folded hands, smiled at my improvisation.