Fraulein Frankenstein

by Stephen Woodworth

  “See, Raphael—see how beautiful you are!” I stroked his cheek so he could see that he was the Adonis in the glass. “My beautiful, beautiful Raphael.”

  At first he peered at himself with the same mixture of curiosity and trepidation with which he regarded everything in the unfamiliar world around him. Then he touched his face, stroking his cheek the way I had, and watched his twin do the same. For the first time, he mimicked the smile of delight I wore.

  #

  I’d naively hoped that I could take Raphael to his room and put him to bed for the night so that I could sleep as well. I suppose I should not have been surprised that, having been roused from the slumber of death, Raphael refused to consider even a nap. He meandered about the room, peering and prodding at every object in a state of wonderment.

  I stifled a yawn and shambled along behind him. The euphoria of the birthing process had dissipated, leaving me in cathartic exhaustion. But since it seemed Raphael would give me no rest, I decided I might as well begin his education at once.

  “Stool,” I said as he stooped to run his palm over the dressing table’s polished wooden seat. “Raphael . . . stool.”

  I pointed to him, then to the furnishing, as if introducing the two of them.

  His eyes lost some of their idiot-dog stupor, acquired new depth. “Sssooool.”

  I smiled and nodded, repeated the pronunciation with exaggerated movement of my teeth and tongue. “St-st-stool.”

  “Sssst-sssst-stooooool.” His expression brightened with comprehension, and he gestured to the dressing table excitedly.

  “Table,” I said to keep the word simple. “Ta-ble.”

  “Taaaaa . . . llllll.”

  “Ta-ble.”

  His mouth struggled to shape the syllables. “Taaaaa . . . buh-buh-bllllle.”

  “Yes! Good. Now say it again. Ta-ble.”

  Too eager for repetition, Raphael yanked me by the hand to the next item and the next, his pointing finger demanding to know the name of each. Mantel, wall, wardrobe, door, bed, bowl, candle, curtain—we played the game for hours, until we’d named everything in the room. Now I knew how Birgit must have felt when teaching me, and I prayed that I might have her patience.

  More than once during the night, I lay on the bed for a brief respite, but Raphael would shake me awake, bleating my name.

  “Nana! Nana!”

  “Anna,” I corrected him. “An-na.”

  “Na-na!” he repeated, more emphatically this time.

  I let it go. There would be plenty of time to teach him later. With a groan, I sat up in bed and pointed to the stool. “What is that, Raphael? What is that?”

  Hours passed, and the storm abated. Raphael’s nakedness—the press of its solidity against me—I could think of nothing else when he was so close. The soft hair of his arm would tickle the bare skin of mine, and my gaze and mind would wander to the curly thatch between his legs, wondering what that hair would feel like against the delicate skin of my midriff and thighs. At such times, I had to shut my eyes and count to ten to regain my concentration.

  As the windows grayed with the light of a gloomy dawn, I again lay back on the pillow, eyes aching for sleep. But before the lids drooped shut, I caught sight of Raphael at the chamber door, frowning as he rattled the handle.

  I vaulted off the bed and pulled his hand from the locked door.

  “Let’s continue our game, shall we?” I smiled weakly.

  For an instant, Raphael lost interest in the door, but Minna chose that same moment to knock. “Fräulein? Are you still . . . occupied?”

  Stark naked as ever, Raphael grabbed the latch and shook it, snarling and pounding the wood when it refused to open. I heard Minna yelp.

  I clamped both of Raphael’s hands in mine with a stern look. “Give us a few minutes,” I told Minna.

  As the maid’s footsteps scurried off down the hall, I tugged Raphael toward the center of the room, away from the door. “I have a new game to play,” I announced.

  I shook out the folded nightshirt Minna had left on the dressing table and moved to drape it around Raphael’s shoulders. He backed away with a scowl of distaste.

  “No, it’s all right.” I pulled at the fabric of my chemise. “See? Like this.”

  I unfurled the nightshirt again, but Raphael yanked it from my hand and flung it aside. Then he grasped at my dress and ripped at the bodice, intent that I should be as naked as he was.

  “No!” I batted his hands away and retreated toward the door, one hand on my bosom to hold closed the frayed rip. “Very well. We shall have to work on that later.”

  I fumbled to take the key from around my neck and unlock the latch. “Stay here,” I commanded Raphael, as though he would actually understand and obey me.

  I exited into the hallway and locked the door behind me, hoping that it would hold Raphael inside until I came back. Hurrying downstairs, I found Minna waiting anxiously in the kitchen.

  She noted the tear in my clothing with alarm. “Oh, fräulein! Are you hurt?”

  “It is nothing.” I scanned the room, saw the iron pot hanging in the fireplace. “I need two bowls of stew. Immediately!”

  “Yes, fräulein.”

  The maid ladled the food into two wooden bowls and placed them on a tray. “Would you like me to . . . ?”

  “No. I’ll take it.”

  I carried the tray from the kitchen, but before I returned to the bedroom upstairs, I went to the laboratory and searched the shelves of Ernst’s medicines and tinctures until I found a brown bottle of sleeping draught. With no idea how much I would need to sedate Raphael, I poured more than twice the dose for a normal man into one of the bowls of stew.

  “Here, Raphael,” I said as I soon handed him this same bowl. “Let me show you how we eat.”

  I lifted the other bowl—the one without the narcotic—to my lips and drank the broth. A lesson in utensils would have to wait until I was better rested.

  Seated across from me on the floor, Raphael sniffed at the thick soup and seemed surprised by its savory, beefy aroma. Imitating me, he sipped from his wooden bowl. The flavor must have appealed to him, for he ravenously gulped the rest, nearly choking on the chunks of meat until he learned to chew before swallowing. Gravy dribbled down his chin and onto his chest, and he swabbed the bottom of the empty bowl with his hand, licking the residue from his fingers. He thrust the bowl toward me, demanding more.

  “Here.” I exchanged his bowl for mine with a sigh.

  Did I not use enough of the sleeping potion?

  His energy undimmed, Raphael gorged himself on the rest of my stew and badgered me for more.

  “Later.” I wiped his face and chest with a towel from the washbasin, then took his hand and led him to the bed. “Let me teach you another word.”

  I reclined on the eiderdown-stuffed mattress and pulled Raphael to me. Leaning against the carved mahogany headboard, I coaxed him to lay beside me. He looked at me with expectant curiosity, those extraordinary eyes alight with celestial innocence. The eyes of an angel.

  “And this is ‘love,’” I whispered, and caressed his sculptured chest.

  Despite the frigid night, his skin smoldered feverishly beneath my fingertips. I traced every rise and ridge of rib and sinew from his breastbone to his stomach to the thicket of dark hair between his naked thighs. The lolling serpent of his manhood shivered and awoke, thickening and lengthening as I touched its pulsing veins.

  Raphael gasped, startled that he had lost control of part of himself. Before he could cry out, I put my mouth to his—a kiss I had rehearsed on his cold corpse. This time, his lips were supple and warm, and I dug both my hands into his mane of wild hair to hold him there. In that moment, I lived that awful, wonderful, maddening dream that had plagued me for months.

  Then Raphael’s mouth went slack, and he began to nod. He blinked and shook his head but could not shake off the drunken drowse into which he sank. The sleeping draught had finally taken effect.

&n
bsp; I pressed his drooping head to my breast, and he did not resist. Before long, he slipped into the placid doze of an infant. I fought the overwhelming temptation to keep kissing his sleeping form, to have my way with his helpless body.

  For the better part of an hour, I didn’t dare to move although his sprawled bulk weighed heavily on me. The nearness of his flesh, his heat . . . my heart thumped so hard that I feared its beat alone would wake him. When he did not stir, I gingerly edged out from under him, cradling his head in my hands until I could rest it upon a pillow. I eased out of bed and crept from the room, glancing back to make sure he hadn’t moved before locking him alone in the bedchamber.

  Lust had drained the last of my vigor, and once I’d left Raphael’s presence, exhaustion collapsed upon me like a demolished tower. I wanted only to go to my own bed and sleep the day away. It was midafternoon by then, and I could hear Minna and the cook already puttering with dinner down below. I also heard other activity that I could not identify: a rapid thudding of wood against wood on the stairs.

  I peeped over the top landing’s banister and saw Ernst dragging a large cedar chest up the stairwell, banging it over each step as he went. His rumpled shirt and shadowed, sunken eyes told me that he, too, had spent the night sleepless, which made his current exertion all the more perplexing.

  I pattered down to the second-floor landing and followed him as he carried the chest into the hallway. “Are you leaving?” I asked.

  “No. You are.” Ernst hefted the chest through the doorway into my bedchamber, dropped it on the floor, and threw the lid open. He grabbed the gowns from my armoire in a great, sloppy bundle and stuffed them in the wooden box.

  “Stop it!” I scrabbled to keep him from plucking fistfuls of underthings from the drawers of my dresser. “What are you doing?”

  “You’ve got your handmade lover. It’s time you were off on your honeymoon.” He jammed petticoats and chemises in with the dresses.

  “You can’t send us away now. Raphael . . . he isn’t ready. He doesn’t know how to behave, can hardly speak.”

  “That is none of my concern. As I recall, I never invited you to spend the rest of your life in my house, and I certainly didn’t invite him.”

  “But your father’s work—”

  Ernst seared me with his expression of disdain. “Ha! Your only interest in my father’s work was using it to populate your bed.”

  I stayed his hands as he moved to seize my slippers. “Please, Ernst. You’re my friend—the only one I have. As a friend, I am begging you for a little more time. Enough to prepare Raphael for the outside world. Then we’ll leave, if that’s what you want, and you’ll never have to see us again.”

  Ernst turned his head away as if determined not to look at me. When he finally did, the taut anger on his face fell into sad weariness.

  “Very well,” he said. “You have a month.”

  CHAPTER 20

  THE EDUCATION OF RAPHAEL

  Ernst’s ultimatum hung over me like the waiting blade of a guillotine. How on earth could I possibly civilize Raphael in only a month? I might as easily have schooled the horses in the stable to speak Latin in that time.

  Although I was so tired I could have slept for days, I planned to nap for only four hours before dealing with Raphael again. The instant Ernst left my room, I crawled into bed without even shedding my clothes. But it seemed I had barely shut my eyes before I heard an explosive crack of splintering wood accompanied by the shrieks of a woman.

  Not enough sleeping draught, I thought, even before I heard the petulant shouts of “NANA! NANA!” I ran upstairs to find Raphael cornered in the hallway, the white starbursts of his irises flickering wildly as he glanced around like a feral hyena. Behind him, the broken bedroom door canted on one bent hinge.

  “Those eyes!” Minna whimpered. “He’s possessed by a devil, surely!” She cowered before him, covering her face either to keep him from striking her or to keep herself from staring at his nakedness.

  Ernst stood beside her, a pistol aimed at Raphael’s heart. “Back, you beast,” he commanded, the way we talk to dogs we know cannot understand us.

  I gasped, remembering how I had first learned the power of a gun. Raphael had no concept of how much danger he was in.

  He caught sight of me as I came up behind Ernst. “Nana!”

  He started forward. Ernst cocked the pistol, but I rushed in front of it. “It’s all right,” I told them both. “I’ll handle this.”

  Ernst lowered the gun, his hand shaking. “See that you do. Otherwise, I might reconsider my decision. Come, Minna—he won’t harm you now.” Ernst put an arm around the sobbing maid’s shoulders and gently led her away.

  As soon as they were gone, Raphael clutched me with a greediness that reminded me of my brother’s first embrace. “Nana.”

  Again, I wrapped myself in his unquestioning adoration as if it were a fur coat. But such pleasures would have to wait—there was too much to do.

  While I coaxed Raphael back into the bedchamber, I glanced at the wreckage of the ruined door. Obviously, I’d have to find some other place to house my impetuous angel until he could be tamed.

  Before I did that, however, I had to find some way to clothe Raphael so he wouldn’t scandalize the servants. The problem was that Raphael couldn’t fathom the use of clothing. Despite the drafty house, he padded around the bedchamber like an unadorned Adam, chest, haunches, and buttocks covered only in downy, dark hair. When I tried to throw a red satin brocade robe around his shoulders, he swatted it away and scowled at me as if I’d tried to snare him in a net.

  “No, Raphael, you don’t understand.” Struck by inspiration, I pulled him toward the mirror where he’d first admired himself. “See how beautiful it makes you?”

  I draped the robe about him like a royal cloak. “You remember what ‘beautiful’ means, don’t you? See how beautiful you are now!”

  It was true. He looked like the pasha of some exotic princedom. He stroked the unfamiliar fabric as he peered at his reflection in the glass, seeming to enjoy the feel of its smooth gloss against his skin.

  “Here—let’s put it on you.”

  Raphael let me slide first one arm, then the other into the robe’s sleeves. The garment was almost too small for his colossal musculature, but he smiled and preened, a peacock pleased with his new plumage.

  I showed him how to tie the sash that held the robe closed in front. At least now he wouldn’t embarrass the staff. But that still didn’t solve the problem of how to keep him from breaking out of his quarters to roam the house or even, God forbid, the outside world. Short of chaining him to a wall, I could see only one way to make sure he remained in seclusion.

  I would have to stay with him. At all times.

  “Let’s show the others how handsome you are.” I led him out of the bedchamber and down the stairs. The staff would have to become accustomed to Raphael as soon as possible . . . and so would Ernst.

  We found them huddled together in the kitchen. Ernst hunched in a chair at the small wooden breakfast table, arms folded, his expression as bitter as the black coffee in the half-empty cup in front of him. Next to him sat Minna, shivering and hyperventilating. Nadja, the cook, who stood only as high as Minna was seated, urged her to swig a dram of sherry to calm her nerves. The moment Raphael lumbered into the room, Minna yelped and leaped from her seat.

  “Don’t be afraid.” I gestured to Raphael. “You see, he means you no harm.”

  Still panting, she blinked up at him fearfully. He simply stared at her with those luminescent white eyes, as sharp and impenetrable as an owl’s.

  “I need your help,” I told Minna. “I need you to make up a room in the wine cellar. Have the stable hands put two beds down there—cots will do—and—”

  Now Ernst jumped to his feet, bumping the table so that it rattled the china. “Have you lost your mind?”

  When Raphael cocked his head in sudden interest, Ernst eyed him with heightened alarm. It ha
d evidently not occurred to him that Raphael might understand what he said.

  Ernst moved closer to me, lowered his voice to a whisper. “Do you actually intend to share a room with him?”

  “He needs supervision,” I murmured. “Constant supervision. Surely even you would agree with that.”

  Ernst grimaced. “One month,” he reminded me, as if I had forgotten. “In the meantime, I’ll see that your bridal suite is prepared.”

  I looked at the floor as he pushed past me and went to fetch his men.

  #

  Ernst and I didn’t speak for days after that, but I was too consumed by my work with Raphael to regret the fact. Ernst’s sarcasm had stung, however, so I insisted that the makeshift bedchamber in the cellar be furnished with two narrow cots rather than one large bed.

  My attempt at propriety did little good. Every evening Raphael crawled in beside me, nuzzling his naked heat up against me like a languorous cat. His broad frame took up so much of the mattress that I was forced to sleep on my side, my head pillowed on the hard hill of his pectoral muscle. All night, I felt those moon-white eyes peering at me through the basement’s darkness. I slept little, and woke exhausted from the effort of frustrating my own lust.

  Not yet, I kept telling myself. Only when he’s ready.

  I felt certain that wouldn’t be long. Every day he grew more independent and more restless. I let him roam the house in hopes that this small measure of freedom might pacify him for confinement in the cellar at night. Minna fled every room he entered, of course, while I had to hitch up my skirt and scamper at his side to keep watch on him.

  I tried to occupy his attention to keep him out of trouble, and so took him into Ernst’s library one afternoon to show him an enameled globe of the world and the collection of pickled frogs and reptiles displayed in jars on the bookshelves. But Raphael gravitated instead toward the nearest window.

  “Out,” he breathed, gazing hungrily at the green pastures that surrounded the Waldman estate and at the clustered buildings of Ingolstadt in the distance. “Out!”