Mr Frankenstein

by Richard Freeborn

My dear friend, I am not writing about my feelings like you are writing. I am writing because I am grateful to you for your kindness as my teacher of English. Let me also say, dear friend, that I love you and respect you. May your child be strong in heart as you are. May all new life be dedicated to all working people…’ [At this point the text became illegible.]

  I remain your devoted friend,

  Jacob R’

  Joe read it through twice. Was this a love letter? How much warmth was there in the reference to ‘your child’? Did it acknowledge that ‘Jacob R’ was really the father and, if so, was he really Lenin, the father of the gentleman down below? If he were, what he now held in his hand was a most extraordinary historical document. In that case, it could be the real reason for his being branded, the final meaning of the letter burnt into his wrist, the pretext for the enmity and hostility of the Old Believers. He handed it quickly to Harlow.

  ‘Leninskoe zhioltoe!’

  ‘Whadya say?’ Martha queried in response to Joe’s cry.

  ‘A yellow letter. They call them yellow letters.’

  ‘Oh, sure, it’s yellow! But does it mean what I think it means, Englishman? If it does, I don’t want it!’

  ‘But it’s historic! You can’t destroy it!’

  ‘I can do what I like, Englishman! I own everything here – everything!’ She addressed Harlow. ‘Be good enough to put it in the shredder! Thank you.’

  She spoke partly in an old-fashioned, wheedling way, as he could imagine she had always spoken to people who needed to be manipulated. Maybe the only person in the world she had never been able to dominate was her late husband. She presented her wide-open auburn eyes to Joe in a fixed interrogatory look, as much as to say ‘You surely don’t imagine you’ll stop me?’ And he knew he couldn’t.

  ‘You can’t shred DNA,’ he muttered in an access of annoyance. ‘How much proof is that letter?’

  ‘Oh, DN-Nanny-Nanny-Nanny! Oh, letter-tetter-tetter! Oh, Lenin-Ninny-Ninny! Do it! Do it!’

  Harlow took charge. ‘Ma-am, I will consign this material to the shredder.’

  Petulantly, with the arbitrariness of a spoilt child, Martha then swung herself away from the large consol and purred over to where the sections of panelling drew noiselessly apart at her approach.

  ‘’Bye, Englishman!’ she called without turning her head. ‘Go tell that Mr Kamen he done well! An’ you done well, too! An’ you know somethin’, they may think I don’t own San Jorge! They may think I’m just kidding when I say I own every darned thing here! Well, I do! What if I opened that chamber, eh? I can, you know! Why, he’d be out soon enough! An’ who’d own San Jorge then?’ She gave a conquering shake of the head. ‘Oh, an’ he’ll want you, Englishman! He’ll sure need you again!’

  She waved her hand. A fit of coughing again made her lean forward, but by that time the elevator doors had swallowed her into the cabin and she was gone before Joe could say a word. Quite unusual peacefulness suddenly settled on the whole large throne room.

  The two men looked at each other in a startled and slightly embarrassed mutual awareness of their isolation. As if this very awareness was a spur to obedient action, Harlow thrust the sheathed letter into the mouth of a large shredder that consumed it in one automatic gulp. When this was done, he turned to Joe, his chin raised.

  ‘I think, sir, what the mistress has said implies…’ a clearing of the throat ‘…implies that the gentleman down below is now revitalized. In which case, sir, on that satisfactory note, I feel I should accompany you off the premises. This way, sir, if you please.’

  ‘What the hell’s she mean? He’ll sure need me again – what’s that mean?’

  ‘I think it means we should leave here as quickly as possible.’

  There was, Joe recognised, no need at all to dispute this. A sudden frisson left him sensing that he ought to keep on running. At once, though, he defied his own fear. He had done what he had been brought to do, though exactly what that was, including the pain accompanying it, he had little idea beyond perceiving that it was apparently satisfactory. But if he had ‘revitalized’ the gentleman down below, the gentleman would assuredly need more ‘revitalizing’! To be free of that likelihood was all he could now devoutly wish for.

  So in a sudden panic he gladly followed Harlow across the red carpet the full length of the large room. Martha’s behaviour, not to mention what he now knew of her secret, now seemed entirely appropriate to the sumptuous and exotic surroundings. A bizarre, rather childish, grandiose arbitrariness challenged the very normality of life as he had supposed life was. Or was he becoming similarly deluded by this reclusive, confined world?

  They marched down the corridor with the tall windows overlooking the stage-set courtyard and fountain jets and entered the small drawing room with the mirrors and Venetian glass ornaments. Most conspicuous, of course, was the elaborate glass replica of the façade of the house, with the pencil of water still playing over the naked maidens on their dolphins. Joe was drawn to it as much for its toy-like appeal as for its tastelessness. Its glistening, forever sunlit, miniature perfection seemed the ideal of which the real San Jorge was merely an elaborate imitation. He stopped in front of it despite Harlow’s polite attempts to coax him further.

  ‘Is this just the façade? If I look…’

  ‘Sir?’

  It suddenly seemed essential that the model should not be an ornament. If it were a true replica and looked at more closely, surely one might find within it the miniature glass drawing room where they were now standing, the throne room and then, with a still closer look, the elevator leading to the corridor below the earth and the marble chamber and perhaps the ultimate replica there, amid miniature glass flowers, turning to confront the giant human face that peered right into it as if it were hoping to discover not just Martha’s secret but the ultimate secret of life, the semblance of a resurrection.

  ‘Is there,’ he whispered to Harlow, ‘a miniature gentleman down below in there?’

  ‘Sir, if you look very closely – and I mean very closely – you will see the gentleman, yes, sir.’

  ‘Have you seen him?’

  ‘It would not be proper of me to say, sir.’

  ‘In that case, how do you know he’s there?’

  ‘Because, sir, he is the son of a very famous revolutionary leader. He is a reminder that the world we live in is always threatened by revolution from down below.’

  ‘But what if he’s free? What if he needs more, er, more “revitalizing”? Who’s he going to need for that?’

  ‘You, sir, very likely.’ His chin lifted a little arrogantly, Harlow went on: ‘Forgive me, sir, Mr Kamen will be waiting.’ He bowed.

  18

  ‘Well,’ said Leo Kamen, ‘that’s the formal part done.’ He gave Joe a courtesy nod and a half-smile and practically immediately received an equally formal musical summons from a cellphone.

  ‘Your mother,’ he explained. ‘She feels better today. She’s looking forward to seeing you.’ The cellphone was quickly replaced in an inside pocket. ‘We’ll be joining the freeway shortly. Will you tell her what you saw?’

  Normally Joe would have said of course he would, but he knew he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t tell her because the sheer obscene absurdity of it contrasted so completely with the flicker-flicker of tree shadows, the glimpses of house tops and hillside, then, once the jacaranda avenue was gone, the splatter of sunlight on pristine lawns, the neatness of the nameless suburban vistas opening to right and left as they were wafted away from San Jorge in an almost silent, almost perfectly smooth journey. He basked in the comfort of the car’s cool interior with a childlike sense that he was insulated now from the past and its absurdity by the very glitter of sunlight outside.

  ‘No, I won’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I’m branded a cheat, I’m bourgeois filth, I’m not likely to be believed and… and Martha told me not to.’

  It was lame and he knew it. He yawned. Leo s
miled again, looking out at jacarandas, palm trees, lawns, smart homes.

  ‘Your mother’ll believe you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She will.’ Leo leaned back against the headrest. ‘She’s got every reason to believe it.’

  ‘Hell, Leo, tell me!’

  ‘No, let her do it. She’ll tell you in due course. And Martha, she’s mad, right?’

  Joe sighed and pursed his lips. ‘Mad, yes. Not angry, though she’s that, but mad like – well, like San Jorge itself, that’s how mad she is!’

  Leo chuckled. ‘Frankenstein’s widow, more like! She’s one powerful woman, that lady. She’ll use all the power play at her command to keep San Jorge the way she wants it.’

  Joe knew this could be true. He remembered what she had said about being in charge. He was also sweating profusely into his shirt even in the air-conditioned car, more than ever aware that Martha had control over the thing round his neck and the alleged bloodline. Even if he couldn’t be certain what that meant, he had an intuitive sense. He had become part of a daytime nightmare that left him utterly unable to find logic in what he was doing. Most of all, though, he was shaking inwardly as if he had lost hold of any certainties and was very close to breakdown.

  ‘Leo, look, I know the CIA helped bring me here, but what more do they want?’ He found he had bitten his lip so hard it now bled. He wiped the trickle of blood from his chin. ‘I can’t go back there! I can’t! So apart from seeing you and my mother, what am I doing here?’

  ‘What you’re doing here,’ Leo answered, not looking at him but speaking quietly towards the curved brown leather back of the front seat, ‘is helping me and maybe some others. That’s why you’re here. For me you’re here because you can make me money.’ He shook his head in sheepish acknowledgement of such mercenary candour. ‘A lot if you cooperate and I play it right.’ Fixing his dark spectacles over his eyes, he gave a final wry smile before once again leaning back and surveying the passing scene. ‘Your mother’ll be wanting to see you, that’s the first thing. She’s got things to tell you. All the rest’s secondary.’

  It was no good querying what Leo said because Joe knew he had several bargaining counters of his own. The material he had translated was all there in the locket round his neck. Coded, not easily accessible, it justified his being there better than anything else.

  Except, of course, for the real justification, which was his mother. She might not believe him, true. He could never be sure how she might react, that was the trouble, since her volatile, changeable character, despite her natural warmth, made her prone to rows. The changeability could of course be childishly capricious and no more, in which case it was forgivable because it came and went swiftly without leaving a lasting trail of resentment. What it did leave was a respectful wariness of the way she could understand and interpret others’ feelings. Her eyes, exceptionally light blue often when behind gold-rimmed spectacles or softened into a fainter blue by bright sunlight, had the apparent power to read another’s thoughts. She made a habit of looking very directly at people. Joe knew it was a mannerism that could disconcert, but the smile accompanying it would easily allay all doubts. She loved what she called ‘the truth.’ Joe recognised that whatever he told her she might suddenly relegate it to the half-truth, half-believed discard bin of her own honesty and he would be left with her unforgiving demand: ‘Now tell me the truth.’ That was where rows began.

  Leo Kamen’s home overlooked Zuma Beach and the ocean along the coastline north of Malibu. It was on high ground about half a mile back from the coastal highway up a steep drive. Recognisable by a terraced area out front that gave an unimpeded view of the ocean, it had a parking area beneath it and an olde-worlde style upper floor of gabled windows, ivy-clad elevations and smart tiled roof. The whole effect combined practical concessions to the view topped by an icing of Disneyland rural prettiness. It was large, pretentious, evidently opulent, testimony if any were needed to Leo Kamen’s success.

  To Joe on previous visits there had always been an equally large elephant in each corner of practically every room. This had been and still remained the lurking ghost of his father’s dislike of Leo and his mother’s over-anxious attempts to avoid mentioning it. Her willingness to discuss her illness was equally sensitive, though not prohibited. That ‘truth’ was relegated to small talk. ‘Oh, I’m fine,’ she’d say. ‘Never felt better in my entire life.’ It signified that for her, Lois Richter, one-time child of Russian aristocracy, enough had been said.

  She received him in bed in her large bedroom overlooking the ocean. The noise of traffic from the coastal highway came in through open windows like a distant muzak along with a warm sea breeze that made the drapes dance. It was peaceful, fresh, in contrast to the air-conditioned coolness elsewhere in the house. She was sitting up against a tall, silk-upholstered headboard dressed in the capacious blue gown he had often seen her wearing. Its long loose sleeves gave a kind of stateliness to her gestures, especially at the moment he entered the bedroom. She had been speaking Russian to a woman seated by the window and her palm-upward gesture gifting words towards her was stilled at that very instant by her open-mouthed surprise.

  ‘Why, Joe dear, how lovely! Izvinite – moi syn, moi milyi angliiskii syn! Okh, bednyi, u tebia’zhe takoi, nu, izmuchennyi vid! So Leo brought you at last! Oh, how awful of me! I must introduce Nikolenka – Nikolenka Goncharova. Forgive the silly diminutive, it’s just how I think of her. She’s a darling.’

  Each introductory phrase was somehow gilded by the splendour of her gestures. Blonde-haired Nikolenka herself raised a demure, pretty, expressionless face that gradually reformed itself into a broad-lipped, rather sensuous smile as Joe nodded towards her before leaning forward and embracing his mother. She urged him at once to sit down beside her bed and went on fluttering words about.

  ‘Oh, I must go back to English now. Forgive me, Nikolenka dear, my prodigal son just over from England prefers English, you know. And you must take care, my dear, as I was saying. The baby’s too precious to get scared. Oh,’ she explained. ‘it’s because that place up there, San Jorge, is so scary! She really doesn’t want to go there, you see.’

  ‘Doesn’t want to?’ Joe looked from one to the other quickly, recognising the large embonpoint beneath the seated Nikolenka’s skirt.

  ‘Nikolenka, dear thing, is… Oh, I should’ve told you, she’s Oleg’s wife! He’s buying that place. But, well, the truth is,’ she lowered her voice, ‘he’s politically ambitious and he’s unfaithful to poor Nikolenka. Is it true you know him?’

  ‘Mother, how on earth,’ he exploded, ‘did you know that? How did you know Ollie Goncharov?’ Suddenly it dawned on him how wrong he was: if Leo knew him, she would know him. ‘Oh I’m sorry,’ he added, ‘I shouldn’t have…’

  ‘I’ve known him ever since… Oh, because, because, because, it’s so, so boring to explain the whole time!’

  His mother grandiosely gestured away the whole burdensome duty of explanation as if it were no more than a pestering insect. Joe reddened. He hated himself for having shouted. All embarrassment was eased a second later when Nikolenka herself rose to her feet, carefully adjusting her skirt over her bump.

  ‘Lois dear, I am a teeny-weeny bit de trop, am I not?’

  ‘Oh, dear, of course not!’

  ‘It’s been so nice.’

  ‘Oh, but you mustn’t go.’

  ‘I think I must.’

  Nikolenka’s insistence was politely countered by another expressive gesture, although his mother quickly realized she could not prevail.

  ‘Of course. It’s just that my dear boy can be a little abrupt.’ She darted a disapproving glance in Joe’s direction. ‘Come tomorrow, if you can, Nikolenka dear, and we can talk all about you know what.’

  Nikolenka, as if downplaying her privileged role as pregnant wife of a wealthy oligarch, raised both hands in a show of mock surprise and somewhat ceremoniously leaned down to kiss Lois on both cheeks.

&
nbsp; ‘Tout va bien, ma cherie! Au revoir. It’s been so nice, so nice. Be seeing you.’

  A bright sensual smile at Joe, a twiddle of fingers embellished for an instant by the sparkle of jewellery, her loose skirt aflutter, she swept from the room. Joe had hardly had time to get to his feet before she was gone and the door had closed.

  ‘I do wish you wouldn’t raise your voice,’ his mother said. ‘Nikolenka’s a Parisienne, you know. She’s one of our French Russians. My grandfather knew her father, oh, way back. I love collecting people, you know.’

  He had often felt that he was one of those she had ‘collected.’ ‘So you collected her because she’s married to Ollie Goncharov?’

  She nodded. ‘Charming, isn’t she? But there’s a rift. Very sad.’

  ‘Are you trying to mend it? Will you be collecting him, too?’

  ‘No, of course not! He’s not an exile!’

  It took him a moment to catch her meaning. ‘Do you mean her family was exiled after the revolution?’

  ‘Of course, I mean that. Exiled by Lenin. Anyhow, what’s it mean – exile? I suppose I’m an exile here in California. I was an exile in my marriage.’ His mother looked away. ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. It slipped out. Naughty.’ She slapped her wrist.

  Joe knew at this point that a gulf of silence could quickly open. It was the pattern of their relationship. An awkwardness born of the family background might suddenly lead to a row or a silence evolving into a slow succession of polite, often trivial, distancing remarks. A determination to avoid this now impelled him to say against all his former unwillingness:

  ‘You know where I’ve been, mother, don’t you?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Leo took me.’

  ‘I know, dear, I know, I know.’

  ‘So you know why, I imagine.’

  When he turned his head he saw she was already studying him with her very blue, caring gaze, quite unlike the cold glare he had received from Martha. It calmed him to see it. The warmth of his mother’s bright eyes seemed not just forgiving. It suffused her whole broad face with the kindliness he had known her to have before the illness tautened her cheeks and for a while took the lustre from her complexion. That was the mother he loved.