Mr Frankenstein

by Richard Freeborn

  In the same instant he felt guilty at having shouted. The naughtiness of a little boy who suddenly shouted out against rowing parents made him gulp. It was big as a movie screen in his memory. He had stood there and shouted out in the middle of a quarrel between his parents. It had been like a gunshot that startled him as much as it suddenly stopped the angry exchanges. He had looked up then into his parents’ grown-up faces. They were staring down at him. Just as quickly they each separately looked away. He stood there blinking, expecting a scolding, but nothing happened.

  ‘We won’t talk about that now,’ she said. Somewhere or other a car’s tyres made a faint crunching sound as a gust of air disturbed the drapes more than usual. ‘Good, that’s Nikolenka leaving. She has a place up in Glendale. Of course it’ll be sold. No, I don’t want to talk about that. There’s something much more important. It’s Leo.’

  She glanced down at the backs of her hands, raised her head, took in a deep breath and resumed her careful, half-smiling scrutiny of Joe. After a pause she said in a confessional whisper: ‘Leo saved me, you know.’

  ‘I’m glad.’

  ‘Oh, I’m so glad you think so. You do like him, don’t you?’

  ‘I like him because he’s made you happy. But I don’t think he’s one of your collectables.’

  ‘No, he’s not one of my collectables. It’s the other way round. He collected me. He saved me.’ Her eyes were still on Joe. ‘Now I want to save you, too. Please, let me hug you, Joe darling.’

  Both arms were held out to him. He leaned towards her and he let her hug him in silence for a whole minute. Her hold was not firm, but like her gestures it had an elegance about it that was emphasized by the soft feel of her gown. Then she released him with a kiss.

  ‘How hot you are,’ she remarked. ‘What’ve you been doing?’

  ‘Running.’

  ‘Running where?’

  ‘Up at San Jorge.’

  ‘Oh, that!’ She gestured the answer away. ‘No, no, I don’t want to hear about that place! You talked about collectables. It’s about that. I have collected someone. Run down to the terrace now, Joe dear, please! I mean it! You know, the floor below. Go!’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Go!’

  Again, what was he now but the obedient little boy told to go and play by himself out in the yard at the back? He would not be able to disobey. He stood up and for one moment was reluctant.

  ‘Mother, I…’

  She blew him a kiss. Then in a whisper: ‘Go! Please!’

  ‘What am I to collect?’

  ‘You’ll see! Now go!’

  She shooed him away. He reluctantly stood up, saw her draw her gown closely round her and, assuming she wanted to sleep, obediently went out onto the wide landing and down the wide curve of stairway to the lower, air-conditioned floor and through a large, well-furnished room towards wall-high windows that silently parted like curtains to give access to all the heat of a Zuma Beach midday. The windows closed automatically behind him. He was then out on an extensive area of terrace where brightly striped awnings presided over patches of shade, but the midday sun was only truly countered and cooled at one particular point where there was a drinks bar and tables and chairs set out and the balustrade was topped by a length of glass panelling. It made that section of the terrace a private place and served to protect two exotic green shrubs whose tips moved slightly in an upcoming shore breeze.

  On the occasions he had made flying visits to Zuma Beach in the past, this was where they had had drinks. Now he saw Leo had his back to him as he sat at one of the tables and had apparently not heard his approach because he was leaning forward and talking. A young Mexican bar-tender stood up abruptly as Joe appeared, causing Leo to pause in what he was saying and immediately signal that Joe should join him.

  ‘You are acquainted, I think.’

  The introduction was odd and took Joe by surprise. More surprising still was the voice that responded.

  ‘We are, yes.’

  It was a woman who spoke. She had been hidden by one of the shrubs. He knew the voice and then saw her.

  ‘Jenny!’

  ‘Miss Malden’s been telling me about the conference up at Berkeley,’ Leo contributed. ‘Order whatever you like, Joe. You two old acquaintances must be free to re-acquaint yourselves, right?’

  A beer was ordered, but Joe found himself stupidly unable to do anything more except smile. He rushed at Jenny, who rose to meet him, and they held each other close and he felt the supple, sensual litheness of her body. She wore a dark cotton jacket and an open-necked shirt exactly right in their smart coolness for the heat of the morning, whereas he, his shirt still damp and his lip sore from biting it, seemed awkward and rude in failing to match the firmness of her kiss. He stumbled backwards and sat down in an adjoining chair.

  Almost before he had time to draw breath, the bartender was offering him a choice of cold beers. He chose a Budweiser can, snapped it open, sipped the frothy beer over a stinging lip and let it run over his tongue with delectable ease. He did all this knowing he was being watched. He looked across at the intrigued, even puzzled expression on Jenny’s familiar and much loved face. It was strange to him suddenly in its efficient, career-woman appearance. He felt she scrutinised him rather than loved him. He tried to hide his reaction as best he could, though his eyes filled with tears of sheer joy and he turned to look out towards the ocean. The sun’s brilliance on the glass panelling was so bright it made him blink and blurred the ocean into a thin layer of snow stretching to the blue horizon.

  ‘Joe, what is it?’

  His smile was so fixed he could scarcely answer. He took in several deep breaths and shook his head. He still stared at the ocean.

  ‘Well, you two need time to adjust, I can see that,’ said Leo. ‘And I have work to do.’ He stood up, his cellphone in his hand. ‘Excuse me.’

  Someone spoke down the end of the terrace. A young man had come through the sliding windows. Leo acknowledged his arrival with a hand wave, the phone already pressed to his ear. ‘Remember, Miss Malden, one half-hour, no more,’ were his parting words as he walked off. He was already beginning to speak into his phone.

  Joe managed to look at Jenny, the smile still fixed, but his eyes could not dispel the inexplicable mixture of his feelings. She quickly reached across to his hand and held it. He saw the tip of her tongue moisten her lips as she seemed to read his feelings and shake her head to reinforce the effect of what she had to say.

  ‘Joe, I’ve been worried for you, really worried.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Joe, please, let me explain.’

  It came in a burst of words. She had flown down that morning from San Francisco and was due to fly out shortly to Heathrow. She had been with You Know Who at a conference in Berkeley. It had been about fundraising for the third world. In the course of conversations about possible sources there had been mention of HazelltronE Electronics and the name of Richter had cropped up.

  ‘Well, You Know Who said rather casually wasn’t my boyfriend called Richter and was there some connection? He urged me to call our Research back home. Which I did. They talked about a late Mr Richter and how he’d been a donor, but they were much more interested in you because, well, there’d been a warning.’

  He nodded, sipped some more beer and felt his jaw tautening. ‘So?’

  ‘Well, they’d been warned in London from some source or other that another Richter, a Joseph Richter, they said, was being taken to LA courtesy of the CIA. And needed protection, they said. That’s what I was told, Joe – you needed protection!’

  His immediate reaction was to think ‘Gloria!’ ‘What kind of protection?’

  ‘I don’t know what kind. Joe, please!’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ he said, ‘go on.’

  She went on to explain that Leo Kamen was the agent or something for the late Mr Richter and London was able to supply a contact number. She used it and got through not directly to him but to his mo
ther, a Mrs Lois Richter, and it was she who insisted she fly down to LA as soon as possible.

  ‘I’ve got maybe half an hour. It’s so silly.’ She glanced at her wristwatch. ‘What your mother said was if anyone could warn you it’d be me. Well, I’m doing my bit. I’m warning you there’s some kind of danger. Joe dear, I told you – remember? – I didn’t think you ought to get more involved with that translation and that strange friend. Oh, I can’t remember his name! He came to the flat – you know, my apartment.’

  ‘Ben.’

  ‘You said you’d made him.’

  ‘I was his Frankenstein. I put the bits together.’

  ‘And then there’s that mark on your wrist.’

  ‘That’s courtesy of the Old Believers.’

  ‘And now you’re here.’

  ‘Courtesy of the CIA.’

  ‘Joe, why? What for?’

  ‘Because…’

  He could not say anymore. Leo Kamen had returned. He came across the terrace with his cellphone held out towards Joe and annoyance printed on his face in the shape of a row of teeth shining between parted lips. ‘Harlow,’ he muttered.

  Joe heard the well-trained voice the instant he lifted the phone to his ear.

  ‘Mr Joseph Richter, sir?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The mistress, sir, is anxious you should return. The gentleman down below is in need of further, er, re-vi-tal-iz-ing. And you, sir, are essential for the purpose. Or so the mistress says.’

  ‘Tell her I’m not going back there.’

  ‘Oh, but, sir, she will be most distressed.’

  ‘Please tell her I’m not going back.’

  ‘But, sir, it’s an order.’

  ‘No, I’m not going back.’

  He handed the cellphone to Leo, who snapped it off. They exchanged cold looks. Joe knew he had not exactly behaved as Leo wanted, although the demands from San Jorge were clearly as annoying to him as they were abhorrent to Joe. He received Leo’s quite stern verdict with real awareness of his own inadequacy.

  ‘You’ll need to know the truth.’

  What the hell was the truth? Joe looked in bewilderment from Leo to Jenny. Why was he here? What truth was there to tell?

  ‘What truth?’ he asked.

  ‘Whatever you have. It needs to be authenticated.’

  ‘What needs to be authenticated?’

  ‘Tomorrow you’ll go first thing to see the expert,’ said Leo, turning on his heel abruptly and striding back across the terrace.

  19

  Soft-spoken, tweed-jacketed, spindly, the foremost West Coast authority on twentieth-century European revolutionary politics grabbed hold of Joe’s hand. The moment was disfigured by the roar of aircraft overhead.

  ‘Ah, the heavens proclaim tidings of great joy,’ was his bone-dry comment. A desk chair was swung round for him. ‘Good to meet you, Joe. You be seated. I’ve got your material here and I’ve been reading it. I’m Bob.’

  Bob was Dr Robert Reid-Sladek. He dove round the far side of the desk to face Joe and indicate the sheets of photocopied material lying in front of him. Then he sneezed, apologised and blew his nose on a large tissue. For his part, Joe found himself fascinated by two things. The first was a large framed oil painting just behind his host’s head depicting a girl in the exotic scarlets and purples of East European peasant costume driving a number of well-fed geese to market. The second was the adjacent framed portrait of Bob Reid-Sladek himself arrayed in academic gown and mortarboard. He was seated in his present tall-backed armchair with a copy of his well-known biography prominently displayed in his hand. Lean, thin-lipped, with gingery eyebrows and a fringe of sandy hair round the lower rim of the mortarboard, the face was marked by deep vertical lines in either cheek and wore an assured, learned, fixed expression appropriate to formal scholarly portraiture. The real Bob Reid-Sladek, a shade older than his portrait, leaned forward on his desk to study the photograph in front of him and lowered his voice. He spoke suitably softly.

  ‘Didn’t we meet once? In England, in London?’

  Joe recognised him. ‘We did. Outside RGD.’

  ‘We did, yes. It was cold, I remember. We stood on the steps outside your office.’

  Ben had been the photographer. So this, Joe realized, was the wise professor to whom he had been urged by Ben to show the faded photograph with the legend ‘A ma petite’ on the back. But Ben’s photograph would have had Joe’s presence carefully cut out, leaving only an emptiness beside the professor like pieces missing from a jigsaw puzzle. If anything was being proved by this, it was that the professor knew Ben and Ben knew the professor.

  ‘Now this old picture here of the couple,’ he was saying, ‘I gather this was in a box belonging to your father?’ He wiped his nose again.

  Joe explained briefly that it was in what was known as the ‘bank box’.

  ‘I see. And all the rest, the three letters and the, er, other entries?’

  Joe said they were all the material he had received and saved onto memory sticks. As he spoke, he knew he was sweating. Partly it was nerves, partly because the room was warm. Moisture had gathered at the roots of his hair.

  ‘From whom?’

  ‘Do I have to tell you that?’

  ‘No, not if you don’t want to. We both know who it is. Maybe we’ll come to that later.’

  ‘Leo simply wanted you to look at what I’ve translated and, well, give an expert opinion.’

  ‘Verification?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And this is everything, isn’t it?’

  He was assured it was.

  The professor smiled. ‘Well, how can I put it? Yes, it’s private. Yes, private, but historically privileged because of the addressee.’ His voice assumed a soft, expository manner. ‘It relates to Lenin’s first visit to London in 1902.’

  This statement needed a moment’s quiet reflection before it could be fully amplified. The smile became reflective. The professor then stared down at his desktop, nodded thoughtfully, raised his eyes and began to explain.

  ‘You see, he believed that propaganda and organisation were essential to his political purpose and could only be properly served by publishing a Party newspaper that would be smuggled into Russia. The paper was called The Spark. He decided to move the offices of The Spark from Munich to London and to have the paper printed there. He had to avoid the tsarist authorities in everything he did. So he and Krupskaia, his wife, came to London. They rented a small apartment of two rooms on the first floor of 30, Holford St, Pentonville, not far from King’s Cross. It was destroyed by a landmine during the Second World War. Lenin suffered from catarrh and neither he nor Krupskaia got used to English food. All those unfamiliar puddings and so on! You can imagine.

  ‘Meanwhile, all the time he was busy arranging for the printing of The Spark, busy writing and editing and busy establishing clandestine means of having the paper conveyed to Russia and distributed there. For fear of having his correspondence opened by the authorities, he maintained the fiction that he was actually still living in Munich. He even took a German name, Richter. It was in the name of Richter that he and Krupskaia advertised on May 10th 1902 for someone to give them English language lessons. One of those who answered the advertisement was a Mr Rayment. He was certainly known to have been one of Lenin’s teachers while in London. It is very likely your letter-writer was another. But why should her letters have been translated into Russian?’ The professor touched together the tips of his fingers to form a small arch, looked solemnly at Joe and again lowered his voice to a near-whisper: ‘They were quite obviously written in English to start with, weren’t they?’

  Joe explained that he had seen the originals. He also mentioned his own speculation that blackmail or its equivalent, the threat of litigation, might have had a part to play.

  ‘Could be,’ the professor conceded. ‘And you say you saw them burnt?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The professor sucked his teeth. ‘Maybe you
’re right about the father’s doubts. Equally, Lenin himself may have doubted. Things were always complex in his world. You’re probably right that he wanted to get the lady’s side of what she calls her, er, “escapade.” So he arranged for her account to be translated into Russian.’ The professor disengaged his fingers and made an airy gesture. ‘After all, a lot of stuff got translated at that time! For one thing, there was all the copy for the Party newspaper. The Spark appeared fortnightly from July 1902. It was printed in the basement of 37A Clerkenwell Green. In order to keep up a regular publishing schedule, Lenin had to keep in touch with other members of the editorial board who were in Zurich. This entailed a lot of correspondence and a lot of addresses, a lot of postes restantes, referred to in his letters with the names of birds. There was one in Granville Square, King’s Cross, another in Gray’s Inn Road, another in Empton Street. There was a Dr Hazell whose address was used…’

  ‘Dr Hazell? Then surely…’

  Joe’s interjection brought a halt to the recital and an immediate acknowledgement that he might be right.

  ‘It could be the G referred to! H, of course, in transliteration. Yes, it could be! But that doesn’t really matter, does it? What matters is the likelihood that your lady letter-writer met Lenin in Brittany when he was there with his mother and sister for a holiday in July 1902. If that were so, and the relationship was close, perhaps intimate…’ Gingery eyebrows were raised at this possibility but the flow of speculation was not staunched ‘…as we may well suppose it was, though your lady letter-writer with her Victorian sense of propriety knew full well she had to be careful not to reveal it even in her letters. Let us suppose Lenin was anxious to know what her side of the relationship might be. He asks her to give an account of her feelings and it turns out she is not infatuated with him at all, but with G – H, that’s to say. As evidence, of course, this would prove very helpful to him if he were to be accused in court of trying to obtain funds from her. But now I have to speculate in another way by asking you where all this came from and providing my own answer to the question. It came, didn’t it, from…’ He raised eyes to the ceiling as he said this, as if the answer were up there like a cloud of incense ‘… Krestovsky? Didn’t Boris Krestovsky ask you to translate this?’