Fraulein Frankenstein

by Stephen Woodworth

  The pump Ernst held did not circulate blood. Instead, he’d inserted its siphon into a corked flask whose shape and label I recognized from the laboratory. It was the sleeping draught I’d been putting in Raphael’s food. While Raphael struggled to wrench the catheter loose, Ernst pumped in enough of the colored fluid to kill a dozen ordinary men.

  The metal rod still in his back, Raphael wheeled around, jerking the pump from Ernst’s hands. The half-empty flask of poison flew aside to smash and splatter the wall. Already lurching from the drug’s effect, Raphael lunged toward Ernst, hands outstretched. Ernst stumbled backward, but Raphael caught him by the throat, raising Ernst from the floor until his feet fluttered helplessly in a hanged man’s dance.

  With only an instant to act before Raphael snapped Ernst’s neck, I scanned the room for a weapon. I ran to snatch the first thing that caught my eye: the oil lamp on Raphael’s reading table. The glass chimney tumbled off as I swung the lamp down onto Raphael’s head.

  The oil reservoir shattered, dowsing his hair in oil and slicking his face and shoulders with a greasy sheen. The guttering wick struck his scalp immediately after, and Raphael screamed as his dark mane ignited into a halo of fire. Hurling Ernst away from him, he slapped at the flame to put it out, but it engulfed his entire head. His eyes and mouth became black blurs beneath a mask of fire as he flailed blindly about the room, the iron spike of the catheter still protruding from his lower back. I could hear his skin fizz and pop like the crackling of a roasted pig, and the air filled with the stink of burning hair.

  With one hand clutching his neck, Ernst got to his feet, dodging as Raphael nearly careened into him. “Come on!” he rasped, nodding toward the door.

  I gaped, aghast at what I had done. “But we can’t leave him—”

  Raphael blundered against one of the library’s windows. Pawing at the heavy drapes, he tried to wrap himself in them to smother the blaze but succeeded only in setting the lace curtains afire.

  “There’s no hope for him.” Ernst yanked my arm. “We’ve got to get out of here!”

  As I let him tug me from the room, flames lapped at the ceiling and fanned out toward the crisp kindling of the books that lined the library’s shelves. Raphael pirouetted drunkenly amid the inferno, yowling piteously, a mad dervish whirling in Hell.

  Tendrils of smoke followed us into the hall. Ernst dragged me back to his bedchamber, where he hauled a small valise out from under the bed and threw it on the mattress. “Dress quickly,” he commanded. “And take only what you can put in here. Pack valuables we can sell.”

  I didn’t argue. Trying not to think about Raphael, I took the valise into my bedchamber and stripped off my shredded shift. I wriggled into the first outfit I could lay hands on, though I was shaking so badly I could barely lace my ribbons or button my shoes. Without a pause, I thrust what remained of Katarina von Kemp’s jewels into the case, then tossed in some clean undergarments and other small articles of clothing. There wasn’t room for another dress, so I’d make do with the one I wore. All my worldly possessions now fit in a box no bigger than a sewing basket. Despite the warmth of the spreading fire, I put on the heavy, hooded coat I’d worn in the Arctic. The night outside was cold, and I had no idea when we might find shelter again.

  When I returned, I saw Ernst unlock a metal chest he kept in his wardrobe. He withdrew several leather pouches. These he stuffed into a large drawstring knapsack, then crammed a few crumpled shirts in on top of them. He cinched the sack shut and slung it over his shoulder.

  A searing torrent of heat hit us as we hurried out into the hall, toward the stairs. Our travel preparations had been the work of but a few minutes, yet in that time a black cloud had billowed out from the library to fill the corridor. We covered our mouths, choking on soot, and stamped down the stairs. I couldn’t stop myself from casting a glance back at the library doorway.

  Raphael’s cries had stopped.

  Minna and Nadja bustled up to us as we reached the base of the stairs. Each held a lit taper, and both were still barefoot from bed, wearing only nightgowns and kerchiefs.

  “Herr Doktor!” Minna cried. “What is happening? We heard screams, smelled smoke—”

  “The house is on fire,” Ernst said. “We must leave at once. Go wake Oskar and Gert and have them hitch horses to two wagons—one to take both of you into town, and one for me and Fräulein Frankenstein.”

  Minna shook her head. “The house . . . ?”

  “The house is lost.”

  I could not believe it any more than Minna did. Ernst’s beautiful manor. But he was right: by the time the men could fetch buckets of water, it would be impossible to quench the flames.

  “But what’s to become of us?” Nadja pleaded.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll provide for you. Now please hurry.”

  “And what about . . . the other gentleman? Your patient.” Minna glanced downward, obviously thinking Raphael was still confined in the cellar.

  I looked at Ernst, but his expression remained impassive, resolute.

  “He perished,” Ernst told her.

  I had to accept that as fact, too.

  A loud popping and cracking reverberated through the ceiling, punctuated by the thud of some heavy chunk of wood on the floor upstairs. The servants scampered to scavenge what belongings they could bundle into their bedsheets before Ernst shepherded them to safety outside. There was no need to wake the stable hands by then, for the men were already stumbling from their quarters half-dressed, Oskar hopping on one foot as he tried to pull his boot on while running. It was the fastest I’d ever seen him move to complete any task.

  As the men readied the wagons, I had little to do but gaze at the flames gutting the house from within. Every window in the face of the house was still dark, except for the second floor, where the library casements shone a brilliant, flickering orange. The heat had already shattered the glass from the panes, and fire lapped around the windows’ blackening frames. Soon it would spread to the adjacent rooms, consuming the upper story until it collapsed into the ground floor below. Then every window in the stone shell of the manse would be bright with gaily dancing firelight.

  Ernst busied himself with bridling the horses, never looking back toward the ruin of his ancestral home. I took hold of his hands, made him put aside the reins.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said.

  He regarded me somberly, and I feared he was angry. Then he chuckled. “Someday, we shall think back on this night and celebrate it as the beginning of our new lives.”

  He hugged me, his eyes shining brighter than the fire, and I laughed until I cried.

  CHAPTER 23

  VIENNA

  It was impossible to obtain a room at an inn at that hour of the night, so Ernst and I were forced to seek shelter with Minna. Her uncle and his wife lived above their small bakery in Ingolstadt, and Minna convinced them to host us until we could lodge elsewhere. Ernst handsomely rewarded both Minna and the uncle for their kindness, giving them each the equivalent of a year’s salary from the cache of coins he’d brought with him.

  Minna’s poor relatives had little space and no accommodations to offer us, so we slept fully clothed on the floor of the bakery, wrapped in a rough woolen horse blanket, our coats folded beneath our heads as makeshift pillows. Despite the night’s disaster, the loss of everything I’d worked for, and the uncomfortably hard boards on which we bedded, I slept well, safe in Ernst’s embrace.

  Around five in the morning, after only a few hours, Minna’s uncle woke us, for he had to begin the day’s baking. He apologized profusely for having to disturb us and offered us the use of his own bed if we wished to go back to sleep, but Ernst refused.

  “There is too much to do,” he said, and asked if we could have a bit of bread and cheese to eat.

  Before we even finished our breakfast, Ernst drafted glowing letters of recommendation for Minna and Nadja and made a list of his personal acquaintances with whom they might find employment. He then
wrote a missive to a wealthy cousin of his in Vienna, informing her of the calamitous fire that had consumed the family manse and humbly beseeching her to provide a temporary home for him and his “wife.”

  I read the word over his shoulder as he wrote, and Ernst smirked when he saw the uneasy look on my face.

  “A tiny lie for the sake of social propriety.” He took hold of my hands, his smile softening as he looked into my eyes. “I shall make it true as soon as I can.”

  He dipped his fingers in the breast pocket of his waistcoat and took out two rings—one an engagement ring with a brilliant-cut diamond, the other a simple gold wedding band. Following German tradition, he slid them gently onto the third finger of my right hand. “I’m told that these were my mother’s. If you don’t like them, I can get others later—”

  “No, no! They’re perfect.”

  I returned his smile weakly. Ernst had assumed I wanted reassurance that his intentions were honorable. He did not know about the last time that I’d pretended to be someone’s wife and what had become of my prospective bridegroom.

  I sloughed off the memory of Stefan’s severed head as if it were a husk of dead skin. Ernst was right: the purifying fire had burned away our past sins, and we had commenced a new life. Our life together.

  It took us nearly a week’s journey to travel to Vienna, and with each passing day and mile that separated us from Ingolstadt, my heart grew lighter. We stayed at inns and boarding houses as husband and wife, and everyone treated us as if we were any ordinary married couple. We made glorious, intoxicating love in our rooms at night, and nothing bad happened. It began to feel less like an escape and more like a genuine honeymoon.

  When we arrived in Vienna, it seemed we’d entered a whole other world. Compared to the sleepy hamlets of Darmstadt and Ingolstadt, the Austrian capital was a monumental metropolis. Stone facades five stories high flanked the broad avenues and narrow side streets, their neat rows of windows framed with carved pediments of a grandeur and elegance that I had seen only in engravings of the architecture of Paris and Versailles. Palatial public buildings, columned and corniced and domed, ornamented the city like Roman temples. The market squares thronged with more people than I had seen in my entire life, and several times our carriage had to stop to avoid plowing into groups of well-dressed pedestrians and shouting street vendors.

  As we wended our way to his cousin’s house, Ernst pointed out the home where Haydn had died and another where Beethoven still lived. The city breathed life and beauty, and I exulted in it as if seeing the glory of the sun for the first time. At times, I nearly deluded myself into thinking I was just an ordinary woman, young and in love, with the simple joys of a home and family to look forward to.

  But I was not an ordinary woman, and I made sure that my scarf was wound tightly over the scar around my neck before Ernst introduced me to his cousin.

  Her name was Klara, a slender, handsome woman of late middle age whose wig of dark brown ringlets looked a trifle too young to match her shriveling face. Yet her gay manner made her seem younger than her years, and she greeted us at the door of her elegant townhouse with the fawning fussiness of a mother hen.

  “Oh, you poor dears!” She hugged Ernst, kissing him on both cheeks. “First your dear father’s murder, then the house set fire! At least you’re both safe.”

  “Yes,” Ernst said. “Anna and I can hardly repay your kindness—”

  “Oh, nonsense! Think nothing of it.” She took hold of my hands. “And isn’t she lovely? Ernst, you were really quite wicked for keeping her a secret from us.”

  He smiled. “Well, I’m delighted to share her with you at last.”

  “Dear cousin!” She kissed my cheeks as well, then ushered me into a charming antechamber adorned in the latest fashion, accented with golden wallpapers and satin draperies that made the room glow like spring sunshine on a field of daffodils. “I hope you will be comfortable here.”

  “It’s only until I can set up my practice and obtain a place of our own,” Ernst said as the serving girl who’d let us in shut the door behind him.

  “Nonsense! Stay as long as you wish. Now that the children are grown, Friedrich and I hardly have company.” Klara laughed as she led us up a narrow stairwell to the second-floor bedchambers. “Do forgive us for cloistering you in our daughters’ old room.”

  The apartment she presented to us was much smaller than the parlor downstairs but equally quaint. Burgundy diamonds patterned the carpeting while stenciled green vines snaked up the wallpapers. Rows of porcelain figurines lined the shelves of a small china cabinet like tiers of spectators in an amphitheater. All the furniture in the room—the chairs, the writing desk, the dressing table, the wardrobe—appeared to be a size too small, as if fitted for a doll’s house. Two identical beds sat parallel to each other at the far end of the room.

  “We shall have a proper bed for the two of you put in as soon as we can,” Klara promised.

  “It’s perfect,” I murmured. “Thank you again . . . cousin.”

  She smiled graciously. “I’ll let you two refresh yourselves before dinner. There’s a bell rope by the bed if you need to ring for the maid.”

  She withdrew and shut the door. Ernst waited until her footsteps receded down the hall, then pushed the two small beds together to mimic a larger one. He caught me around the waist and pulled me onto the paired mattresses with him. I let out a small squeal of surprise and had to stifle a giggle as the wooden bed frames creaked so loudly under our weight that I was sure the whole house would hear us. The beds were so short, Ernst’s feet stuck out over the floor.

  “Will it do for now, Fräu Waldman?” he purred.

  I ruffled his hair. “Splendidly, Herr Dr. Waldman.” I sighed. “It’s all so like a dream, I’m afraid of waking up.”

  “So let us sleep forever.” Ernst rolled onto his side, massaging my mouth with his in an ever-deepening kiss, and we lost the afternoon in lovemaking.

  #

  For the first two weeks we were there, the dream lingered. Ernst and I dined at lavish parties hosted by Klara and Friedrich, strolled in the shade of the horse chestnut trees in the Prater, attended the latest opera at the Leopoldstadter. Ernst even tried to teach me to waltz, although I danced so badly I joked that Frankenstein must have given me two left legs.

  We might have gone on this way, joyously oblivious, for the rest of our lives if Ernst hadn’t insisted on reading the newspaper during one of our afternoon visits to his favorite local coffeehouse.

  The establishment was among the oldest and most venerable in the city, its interior still boasting the traditional Turkish style, with a high, arched ceiling and floor of brown brick. A large and loyal clientele clustered around its small wooden tables: frock-coated dandies wooing their women, old men frowning over games of chess, self-styled intellectuals debating art and philosophy for the pleasure of hearing themselves talk. We inevitably had to wait to seat ourselves, and it was during such an idle moment that Ernst purchased a copy of the Wiener Zeitung from the proprietor—a portly, mustachioed man robed in purple Ottoman attire.

  A few minutes later, when we at last found a vacant table, this same gentleman poured us each a demitasse of thick, steaming brown coffee from a long-necked brass pot. Ernst settled back in his chair and shook out the newspaper broadsheet, skimming the dense paragraphs on the front page while I stirred sugar into my coffee. He folded back the first sheet to peruse the second page and lifted his own cup, but he set it down before it reached his lips. Some article had captured his attention, and he paled as he read it.

  “What is it?” I asked, wondering what could have upset him so.

  He glanced up, startled, and forced a laugh. “Politics!” he said, shaking his head. He folded the paper and shoved it between his thigh and the arm of the chair in which he sat. “Now, let’s talk about this wedding we’ve been putting off . . .”

  With strained gaiety, he peppered me with questions about where we should hold the c
eremony, what sort of dress I wanted to wear, and whether to invite any guests given that we were pretending to be married already. I mumbled answers that I hardly thought about, and found it difficult to keep my gaze from flicking to that newspaper. I wanted to jump up and snatch it from him.

  Finally, I cut off his trivial chitchat and rose from my chair. “I’m sorry. Would you excuse me?”

  Ernst stood and bowed like the gentleman he was. “Of course, my dear.”

  I moved off in the direction of the side exit to the coffeehouse, which led to the detached privy outside. Before I reached the door, however, I looked back through the crowd to see Ernst retake his seat. As soon as I left him, his false cheer dropped away, and he rubbed his chin pensively, staring at whatever unseen object occupied his mind.

  When I was sure he wasn’t watching, I took a couple of coins from the pouch on my dress, went to the front counter of the coffeehouse, and bought another copy of the Wiener Zeitung. I hurried out the side exit and opened the newspaper to the second page, skimming the blocks of type.

  Each paragraph had a heading of one or two words, and at first they all seemed the usual assortment of international affairs and local events. Then I came to an item titled “Awful Murders.” I braced myself against the outside wall of the coffeehouse to keep from collapsing in despair as I read: “The unidentified madman known as the Fiend of Bavaria has perpetrated another ghastly slaying, this time in the town of Babenhausen . . .”

  I might have dismissed the story if it hadn’t gone on to say that the string of five killings had begun in the city of Ingolstadt just three weeks earlier. My heart sickened as the writer speculated that the murders might be the work of the same lunatic who was responsible for the brutal decapitation of a young man in Dörnberg in the spring of the previous year.

  The present victims, however, all happened to be beautiful young women. The authorities felt certain that the slayings were committed by the same individual, for in each case the malefactor had severed and stolen a different portion of the body, abandoning the rest of the corpse. From one girl, he took the left leg. From another, the right arm. Then a right leg and a left arm. And in the most recent atrocity, he’d absconded with the woman’s torso, leaving her head and dismembered limbs in a jumbled heap like discarded doll parts.