Frankenstein

by Spike Milligan

  I cannot describe to you how the eternal twinkling of the stars weighed upon me, so I won’t. I listened to every blast of wind – blast! blast! it went as it blew the fountains all over me again.

  Morning dawned before I arrived at the village of Chamonix soaking wet and with hyperthermia. I took no rest, but returned immediately to Geneva. Even in my own head I could give no expression to my sensations – they weighed on me with a mountain’s weight, and the result was I had to walk bent double. Thus, I returned home, and entering the house presented myself to my family bent double with mountains. My haggard and wild appearance awoke intense alarm. They called the fire brigade; I would answer no questions from the fire brigade. “Are you on fire?” they said. “No,” I said. With pulleys they removed the mountains off my back; I was able to stand straight for the first time in three days.

  VOLUME THREE

  CHAPTER I

  Day after day, week after week passed away, as did my Granny. On my return to Geneva I could not collect the courage to re-commence my work. I feared the vengeance of the disappointed fiend and his grieving for a wife and cigarettes. I could not compose a female without again devoting several months to profound study and laborious disquisition. My father saw the improvement in me and turned his thoughts towards the best method of eradicating the remains of my melancholy: he recommended an audience with the Pope but he was too busy and sent a bottle of Holy Water which I drank – it gave me typhoid.

  It was after this that my father called me aside and thus addressed me: ‘Victor Frankenstein, 10 Le Grande Rue, Geneva, Switzerland’. I wonder if I ever got that. It was marked ‘Return to Sender, Not Known Here’.

  “I am happy to remark, my dear son, that apart from your typhoid you have resumed your former pleasures and seem to be returning to yourself. Where from I do not know, but you seem to be returning. My son, you seem still unhappy; like yesterday, you never finished up your spotted dick. You know how ideal spotted dick is for people with typhoid.”

  I trembled violently at his exordium, which he played brilliantly, and my father continued:

  “I confess, my son, I have always looked forward to your marriage with dear Elizabeth.”

  Oh fuck, now he was trying to marry me off. There were no ends he wouldn’t go to get rid of me.

  “You were attached to her from your early infancy by a chain.”

  “My dear father, my future hopes and prospects are entirely bound up in the expectation of our union, that is The Tradesmen and Miners.”

  I remember also the necessity imposed upon me of journeying to England and studying at the Bexhill-on-Sea Body Building Centre. I must absent myself from all I loved while thus employed in creating a female monster. Putting a pair of boobs in place would be a good start.

  At Bexhill-on-Sea there was a morgue where they had the bits I needed. It was the city of the aged where many of the limbs would fall off in the street. These I would gather after dark. I was capable of taking pleasure in the idea of such a journey. My father hoped that the change of scene would restore me entirely to myself. Finally he talked me down from my position on top of the cupboard.

  I now made arrangments for my journey to Bexhill-on-Sea. One of them was Chopin’s Eb Nocturne for the spoons. In the time given it was the best arrangment I could do.

  We travelled at the time of the vintage and heard the song of the labourers. I lay at the bottom of the boat in the hold under the luggage where I could be alone from that chatterbox Clerval. As we drifted down the Rhine we saw groups of labourers who had been hiding behind the trees from their work. Oh, surely the inhabitants would retire to the inaccessible peaks of the mountains where they hurl themselves to death rather than pay income tax.

  Clerval! Even now it delights me to record your words – unending bloody yakking. He was a being formed in the very poetry of nature: it would take him two bloody hours to describe a tree. His soul overflowed with ardent affections and his friendship was of that devoted and wondrous nature, it is just that he would never stop bloody yakking. To satisfy his eager mind he took up kung fu.

  And where does he now exist? [He doesn’t, he snuffed it. Ed.] Is this gentle and lovely being lost forever? [Yes. Ed.] Has his mind perished? [Yes. Ed.] does it only exist in our memory? [Yes, if you want it to. Ed.] His favourite poem:

  The sounding cataract

  Haunted him like a passion: the tall rock,

  The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,

  Their colours and their forms, were then to him

  An appetite; a feeling, and a love,

  That had no need of a remoter charm

  By thought supplied, or any interest

  Unborrow’d from the eye.*

  ≡ Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey [author’s footnote].

  We arrived at Rotterdam; it was a clear morning. At length we arrived in England where we saw the numerous steeples of London – St Paul’s, the Tower, Angus Steak House, Deep Pan Pizza, Boots, The London Dungeons, Garfunkels…

  CHAPTER II

  London was our present point of rest; we were determined to remain several months in Neasden for Clerval to study Hindus. This wonderful city desired the intercourse of men of genius. They were fishmongers, plumbers, bricklayers, green grocers and King Edward. Company was irksome to me, especially A Company of the Irish Guards.

  Clerval’s design was to visit India, in the belief that he had in his knowledge of its various languages, starvation, plague and leprosy. And he believed in trade – importing chicken vindaloo and exporting fish and chips. I tried to conceal myself as much as possible and I wore a clown’s mask. I often refused to accompany him, alleging another engagement like mud wresding. I had finally found a good pair of boobs to start on my female monster.

  We received a letter from a person in Scotland; that is, it had no stamp on it. He mentioned the beauties of his native country – Rangers and haggis and bagpipes and whisky. Clerval was eager to accept the invitation and I wished to view again mountains and streams. I packed up my chemical instruments and bits of body. I’d finish my labours in some obscure nook in the northern highlands of Scotland. To blend with the natives around I wore a kilt and, following tradition, under it I wore nothing. Every morning, to make sure, I stood on a mirror. We saw a quantity of game and herds of stately deer, which tasted delicious.

  We visited the tomb of the illustrious Hampden and the field on which that patriot fell – he tripped over a stone.

  To my horror I discovered the monster had followed me and he said, “Have you finished her yet? Hurry up, I want a shag.”

  To keep out the wind, I wore an ankle length kilt.

  On an island there were three miserable huts, and eighteen miserable tenants. One of these tenants was vacant. One of the tenancies was also vacant. It contained two rooms and these exhibited all the squalidness of the most miserable penury. The thatch had fallen in, the neighbours had fallen out; I ordered it to be repaired. The walls were unplastered and the door was off its hinges. The cottagers had been benumbed by want and squalid poverty. When they spoke their brains hurt and they fainted to the floor.

  It was a monotonous yet ever-changing scene. Its hills are covered with veins, as were the legs of the islanders. Starting my experiments, my mind fixed on the consummation of my labour and my eyes shut to the horror of my proceedings. Thus, I kept walking into the walls. I looked towards the completion of my work with tremendous hope which I dared not trust myself to question but which was intermixed with obscure forebodings of evil that made my heart sicken in my bosom. [What a lot of bollocks! Ed.]

  CHAPTER III

  One evening the moon was just rising from the sea, dripping wet. I trembled, and my heart failed within me. [Where else? Ed.] Looking up I saw by the light of the moon the daemon at the casement with his ghastly grin. He had followed me in my travels; he had swum the English Channel. He had swum up the Thames to Scotland. He stubbed his cigarette out on the roof. His wife-to-be was in bits – her boob
s were on the cases, her legs on the floor and her bum on the table.

  Several hours passed, and three buses, while I remained at the window gazing out to sea. A fisherman called out. “Och ter mukty.”

  “Fuck you too,” I replied. I was hardly conscious of extreme profundity, until my ear was suddenly arrested by the sound of the local police. They took my ear to the police station where it was questioned and finally released.

  Back home, I heard footsteps along the passage, the door opened and the wretch appeared.

  “You have destroyed the work which you began; what is it that you intend?”

  “I intend to sweep it up in the morning,” I replied.

  “Don’t you dare break your promise to me,” he said. “I have endured toil and misery. I left Switzerland with you and crept along the shores of the Rhine. I swam the English Channel and I’ve swum the stinking Thames.”

  “Begone! I do break my promise; never will I create another like yourself. I gave you cigarettes; what more do you want?”

  The monster saw my determination and knashed his teeth at speed; they sounded like castanets. To make a living, he’d been on exhibition in the circus as the ugliest man in the world.

  “I have journeyed the Sandy McNab desert,” he said. “It was small compared with the Sahara. How in heavens I survived it I do not know; it was a miracle of survival.”

  “Leave me, I am inexorable.”

  “It is well I go, but remember – I shall be with you on your wedding night.”

  In a few moments I saw him in his boat, which shot across the waters at a 100 miles per hour with an arrowy swiftness and was soon lost amidst the waves.

  All was again silent, but his words rang in my ears; ‘ding-a-ling, ding-a-ling’ they went. I burned with rage; smoke billowed from my shirt. The trouble was, I could not swim at a 100 miles per hour. Why had I not followed him and closed with him in mortal strife. Because he would have beat the shit out of me. I shuddered to think who might be the next victim to be sacrificed to his insatiate revenge – some poor bloody crofter would suddenly find himself being hurled over a cliff. I resolved to fall before my enemy without a bitter struggle.

  Leaving thoughts of my bride, I went for a walk along the shore. When it became noon I lay down on the grass, and was overpowered by a deep sleep. I awoke to find I had been washed out to sea; I was a mile from the shore.

  Napoleon had gathered his army for Moscow

  To his assistance I must go

  When we got to Moscow it was on fire

  So we all had to retire

  The British arrested Napoleon and to him couldn’t be meaner

  They imprisoned him on St Helena.

  Coming ashore, I received a letter which recalled me to life and I determined to quit my island at the expiration of two days. Yet before I departed there was a task to perform, on which I shuddered to reflect. I must pack up my instruments – my thermoreck, my buzzometer, my nauseaometer and the small porcelain statue of a milkmaid. The next morning, at daybreak, I summoned sufficient courage and unlocked the doors of my laboratory. The remains of the half-finished creature, whom I had destroyed, lay scattered on the floor. She was everywhere. I paused to collect myself, then I collected her. With trembling hands and revolving knees I conveyed the instruments out of the room. I put all the apparatus, and bits of the woman, in a basket.

  Between two and three in the morning the moon rose, and so did I; then, putting my basket aboard a little skiff with a great quantity of stones and some ham sandwiches, I sailed four miles offshore. At one time the moon, which had before been clear, was suddenly overspread by a thick cloud, and I took advantage of the moment of darkness to cast my basket into the sea – and also to eat my ham sandwiches. Having reached the shore, I slept soundly, awakening every now and then to eat another ham sandwich. As there were twelve, they kept me awake until the morning.

  I pushed the boat from the shore. The wind was north-east, and must have driven me far from the coast. I looked upon the sea; it was to be my grave. “Fiend,” I exclaimed, “your task is already fulfilled!” For some reason I thought of Elizabeth; I thought of my father and of Clerval and also of the 3rd BN Irish Guards.

  Some hours passed thus; but by degrees the sun declined away into a gentle breeze and the sea became free from the breakers. Mind you, from the age of this boat it should have been at the breakers a long time ago. Suddenly, I saw a line of high land towards the south.

  The dreadful suspense I had endured for several hours suddenly caused a flood of tears to gush from my eyes which started to fill the boat and I had to bail out. I resolved to steer directly towards the town as a place where I could most easily procure nourishment, beans on toast and Horlicks. Fortunately, I had money with me, money which I would invest as soon as I was ashore.

  I addressed some of the natives. “My good friends, would you be so kind as to tell me the name of this town and a bank where I can invest my money.”

  “You will know that soon enough,” replied a man with a hoarse voice – so I offered him a throat pastille. “Maybe this town will not prove to your taste.”

  I did not understand. So far I had not tasted anything. I was surprised to receive so rude an answer from a stranger. I was disconcerted at the frowning and angry countenances of his companions. “Why do you answer me so roughly?” I replied. “I want my throat pastille back.”

  “I do not know,” said the man, “what the custom of the English may be, but it is the custom of the Irish to hate villains.”

  Oh fuck! I had ended up in Ireland. I perceived the crowd rapidly increase from six to 10,000.

  A man said, “Begorra! you must follow me to Mr Kirwin’s, to give an account of yourself.”

  “My account? Why? It stands at £102 overdrawn. Is that a crime in this country?”

  CHAPTER IV

  I was soon introduced into the presence of the magistrate. He looked upon me, however, with some degree of severity. At college he had taken a degree in Severity. He asked for witnesses.

  About half a dozen men came forward and collided. One had landed a boat on the shore the night before. It was very dark and he had to walk alongside his boat. He walked, taking parts of the fishing catch – in this case a whale which filled the boat – and that is why he had to walk alongside. As he was proceeding up the beach, he struck his foot against something and fell full length; they found that he had fallen on the body of a man.

  The first part of his deposition did not in the least interest me, but when the mark of the fingers was mentioned I remembered the murder of my brother and felt myself extremely agitated; my limbs trembled and a mist came over my eyes obscuring my face. The magistrate observed me and propped me up with his walking stick.

  I entered the room where the corpse lay, and was led up to the coffin. How can I describe my sensations on beholding it? I feel yet parched with horror. When I saw the lifeless form of Henry Clerval stretched before me I gasped for breath and threw myself on the body, managing to climb out just in time before they nailed the lid on. My friend Clerval, my friend, my benefactor, and monumental bore.

  The human frame could no longer support the agonies that I endured; some bits of me fell off. I was carried out of the room in convulsions – the bits of me that were left.

  A fever succeeded to this. I lay for two months on the point of death; my ravings, as I afterwards heard, were frightful. I said ‘fuck’ eighteen times. Fortunately, I spoke my native language.

  Why did I not die? [Yes, why didn’t you? Ed.] But I was doomed to live and in two months I found myself as awaking from a dream, stretched out on a wretched bed surrounded by gaolers, chains, turnkeys, bolts and a pot. When I looked around and saw the windows and the squalidness of the room in which I was, all flashed across my memory. I was in the nick; I groaned bitterly.

  This disturbed an old crone who was sleeping in the chair beside me. She was a hired nurse. “For Christ’s sake, shet up!” she said. I think she mean
t ‘Shut up’, I have no idea what ‘shet up’ meant. She seemed to characterise that class who travel Economy on Spanish airlines. Her face was a mass of criss-crossed lines that spelt ‘arseholes’.

  “Are you better now?” she said.

  I replied in the same creep language, with a feeble voice, “I believe that I am still alive to feel this misery and horror.”

  “For that matter,” replied the crone, “if you mean about the gentleman you murdered, I think hanging will end all your suffering.”

  I turned with loathing from the woman who could utter so unfeeling a speech to a person just saved yet on the very edge of death. I was unable to reflect on all that had passed – six trams, twelve buses and four dust carts. My temperature went up to 190° and they had to switch on the air conditioning.

  There was no one near me with a gentle voice of love; no dear hand to support me with a bottle of Liebfraumilch. The physician came and prescribed medicines. The old woman prepared them for me; but utter carelessness was visible in the first. Who could be interested in the fate of a murderer, but the hangman who would gain his fee? He charged £1 for every pound of body weight. For me he would get £14. When he came he wore ear plugs. His visits were short – they lasted three minutes.

  Occasionally, a friendly gaoler would give me a bottle of Liebfraumilch. Such were my thoughts when Mr Kirwin entered. He expressed sympathy; he spoke,“ Voire chat denotre tante est dans le jardin.”

  Then he said, “Can I make things better for you?”

  I said, “Out, would you like to book une chambre at the Savoy Hotel for me?”

  He replied, “I am sorry, the Savoy Hotel don’t take gaol birds.”

  “I mean after the hanging.”

  He replied, “The Savoy Hotel don’t take dead people.” – Mr Kirwin went on to say, “Immediately upon your being taken ill, all the papers that were on your person were brought to me, the Daily Mail, The Times and the News of The World. I found several letters, all from the Midland Bank asking for you to clear your overdraft of £100. But you are ill, even now you are trembling; you are unfit for agitation of any kind.”