Mr Frankenstein

by Richard Freeborn

  The stage was now completely out of sight except for a couple of tall doors through which scenery could be carried. Large pieces of it were stacked against the walls. Joe was told to sit on a bench. He knew it was no good objecting and reluctantly obeyed. Samuel, it appeared, had been taken off elsewhere. The place was dusty and had an unused smell. Meanwhile, a voice that Joe recognised as Goncharov’s boomed towards the auditorium. In the backstage area it had an indistinct resonance further blurred by one of the security guards starting a fairly loud exchange of views about bonus payments with a couple of men seated beside Joe. They had a grievance to air, it seemed, but even they were shortly persuaded to be quiet. The loudly amplified voice gained the upper hand.

  ‘Reclamation’ came across. The word was given a prophetic ring. Rumbling like a roll of thunder, it led to Goncharov announcing, ‘We reclaim our past’ and this received instantaneous cries of support along with a round of applause. Hushed phrases now followed. They were not clearly audible to Joe but seemed to form a prelude to a loud proclamation of intent.

  ‘We…We… are on the verge…’ the amplification stuttered slightly ‘… on the verge of witnessing… the greatest of human achievements… ever…ever known to humanity.’

  The claims were reverberant, even literally shaking in their effect.

  ‘It is the political legacy we have given to the world… and it is truly enduring…Yes, truly enduring… and now for all time it is personified… I must repeat: personified… in what may be justifiably described as a resurrection.’

  A slight hiss of amazement could be heard, interrupted by one or two rather doubtful, not particularly approving cries.

  ‘We have the right to be proud of our heritage. Here, in the often hostile, bourgeois West, we have the right to demonstrate our unique greatness as a people.’

  A groundswell of approval greeted these words in the shape of repeated shouts of ‘We have the right.’

  ‘We are proud,’ the voice declared, ‘proud to be in the vanguard of science, proud above all to have enacted in our own lives the ideal of which our own great revolutionary leader dreamed at the beginning of the last century. And now, and now we can celebrate not only his legacy… and let us not forget his legacy, my friends, let us not forget it…’ This elicited initially some respectful handclaps, shortly evolving into loud and prolonged applause ‘…but more than this, his actual living son, his own flesh and blood, we must suppose, the greatest accomplishment known to man in all the annals of human history. And it is here and now, in this very place, very, very shortly that we will all be privileged to witness the most remarkable fact anyone has ever witnessed.’

  The voice boomed out these words in all apparent sincerity. To an impartial listener they could not help sounding a little like the ‘Walk up! Walk up!’ mantra of a fairground barker, leading to what Joe felt was a rather incongruous lull in the audience’s enthusiasm for such cajolery. One of the security guards, though, began applauding, which encouraged others seated beside Joe to join in, a little uncertainly at first and in a copy-cat fashion that soon deteriorated into a few solitary handclaps. The booming then began again.

  ‘Now this secret, so well concealed from us all, especially from those to whom it rightfully belongs, is to be revealed to you. It is to be…’

  A deliberate pause now occurred

  ‘It is to be re-pat-ri-at-ed…to be re-pat-ri-at-ed, to be released from its long-time concealment in the underground of the bourgeois West…’

  At this there was a noticeable murmuring, but the words continued unrelentingly despite what, to Joe’s surprise, sounded like one or two laughs.

  ‘…and permitted to enjoy the sunlight and freedom of its homeland, its native land. We can all wish this newly awakened life the heartfelt welcome and happiness our great homeland always offers to its own.’

  A loud round of applause.

  ‘The West may not relinquish its secrets to us as readily as we may hope. Western technology, about which we have so often heard such boastful claims, may not prove as effective as it should be. If the following enactment does not exhibit the fullest degree of resurrection, there is no doubt that in the end true resurrection will be achieved with the further advance of science. Let us now await the moment of truth.’

  ‘The moment of truth,’ Joe thought. The phrase chilled him. He presumed he would now have to face Goncharov in person, but to his surprise a gust of warm, steamy air suddenly blew in his face. One of the tall doors had been opened and heat from the overcrowded restaurant now poured in. By contrast, the stage itself visible through the doorway seemed to remain dark. At that instant Joe recognised Bakhteen was again standing in front of him.

  He had his arm loosely seized, this time without any of the force that had been used earlier, and shortly afterwards found himself guided on to what he assumed was the stage. To the accompaniment of a further flourish of trumpets and his own embarrassment he was in the midst of black curtains that clung to him like so many giant spider’s webs. He had to fight his way through them, he realized, the effort in the semi-darkness amounting to a series of ridiculous forward thrusts with his hands as if he were playing blind man’s bluff. He pushed at them. They responded by moving their webby shapes against his face at each intake of his breath. They could not suffocate him but they clung in their slightly dusty thinness to his hands, now sticky with sweat, as he tried to release himself from them and they insolently kissed him after each attempt to lift the material from his face. Aware of course all the time that almost within touching distance of him there was a large, expectant audience, he nonetheless welcomed the curtains as a temporary protection and concealment.

  The almost total darkness of the restaurant-turned-auditorium meant that attention was naturally drawn to any hint of movement on the stage. He soon realized Bakhteen had gone. Simultaneously one length of curtain crept darkly upwards over his chin and mouth and eyes as it was lifted into the flies, leaving him a glimpse of a large television screen being rolled offstage. It dawned on him then that Goncharov had probably not been there in person at all. Everything had been relayed or pre-recorded. That thought hardly mattered because he remained cocooned in other black curtaining, though thinner now and not so clinging, but allowing him a glimpse of something else being wheeled on to the stage, this time directly towards him. He could not see exactly what it was. All he could see for certain was Samuel directing the operation by pointing to sites where cables should be laid and attached. Meanwhile, he was glad to remain no more than a bystander at best, as still and inconspicuous as possible, virtually deafened by the loudly amplified and reverberant thunder from the loudspeakers and beginning to sweat from both nerves and the rising heat.

  Some words were being spoken close-by despite the overbearing loudness of the amplified music. What he could not see clearly was the large object wheeled on-stage to within arms’ length of him. Though the curtains still clung to him and presumably still sheltered him from the audience, he found himself suddenly more worried by trying to fend off stage crew from treading on his feet as the large object was manhandled into place.

  To his relief Samuel’s voice sounded quite close. ‘Hey, you, buddy, Falcon, this is for you!’

  It was an order as much as an invitation. He was being shown a seat similar to the kind he had sat in at San Jorge. He knew then that this was where his pretence began. He knew he would be expected to press himself against the glass, to prove his power, to do his Frankenstein bit and revitalize who or what was supposedly awaiting revitalization in the large object with which he was now confronted. Because what now came into view as stage lights slowly pierced the surrounding dark was an upright, ornate, glass-fronted casket. A couple of metres high, it was illuminated internally by a quite modest glow that had the effect of showing the outline, hardly more than a silhouette, of a seated figure. To Joe, of course, it was exactly what he had seen in the marble chamber at the end of the San Jorge mineshaft. But to the intently
peering audience it came as a profound shock.

  So profound, in fact, that, as the loudspeakers fell silent, an almost alarming quiet fell upon the crowds of watchers. The final, thin layer of black curtaining had been lifted sufficiently to reveal the object centre-stage, though Joe was thankful that he seemed to remain hidden to one side, but the chair was already forcing him forward close to one side of the casket and what it contained. He was being thrust hard against a cold sheet of glass. One cheek and half his face were squashed against it. He could already sense he might be suffocated by the pressure unless he pushed his sternum forward so that the locket was held immovably against the glass surface and he could feel the reaction.

  It came less strongly at first than he had expected. The glass began to quiver. He pushed against it and slowly, by gradual stages but increasingly strongly, he felt he was being drained of his own strength. His whole body began to quiver in turn, the skin of his shoulders and stomach being drawn forward against all his attempts at resistance, as if some kind of flaying process were peeling the flesh off him. Then, utterly immersed though he was in this painful torture, he noticed out of the corner of his eye that the figure in the chair was moving. He was rising from the chair. He was standing upright. He was, Joe realized, being revitalized. And he, Joe, was demonstrating that he had the power.

  I have the power! I have the power!

  It was unbelievable! A sense of triumph, of enormous personal worth, of huge endeavour and achievement fought against the increasing, almost overwhelming pain of the force thrusting him against the glass. It came like a sharp renewal of the agony he had felt when the ricochet drove the locket so hard into his breast bone that he was forced to the floor at the moment of Ben’s death. The reminder stimulated resistance to the pain.

  I have the power!

  It became a mantra of triumph over torture. His heart beat one drum-roll after another, to the point of breathlessness and fainting, only for the face on the other side of the glass to approach so closely he could see the glittering, unblinking, crystal sheen of the shaded eyes staring at him. Then the unimaginable happened so suddenly Joe quivered more in fear than awe. The glass front of the large casket sprang open and the figure moved forward, solemnly and slowly, in a very elderly shuffling motion, until it had emerged fully on to the stage.

  The sight should have seemed remarkable, and indeed it did set off a wave of gasps among the now stunned spectators, so much so that there was no applause, only a rather horrified, spellbound wonderment. The domed forehead of the small, oval cranium was what seemed most conspicuous at first sight, because the elderly bent back thrust the whole body forward into the already increasing on-stage light. As the figure continued shuffling, the face came more clearly into view, with its grey moustache and small beard, but what could not remain hidden any longer was the wrinkled, utterly bloodless complexion, waxwork stiff in its immobility. This looked like a death mask and had the frightening effect of making the whole figure resemble a dressed-up corpse.

  Shrieks of horror broke out. It became clear from movements in the dark auditorium that people were trying to leave. To Joe, though, the springing open of the glass front of the casket had meant a simultaneous release of a sort of vacuum. He realized that the glass against which he had been pressed so hard had changed from icy cold to a warm, almost molten, composition and was beginning to glow red hot as long as he kept the locket pressed against it. Jerking hard, he managed to force the chair back. It instantly swung aside, the locket was loosened, but in a flash the glass itself became a sheet of flame. So much static electricity had ignited that flames leapt up like a torch, setting fire to the black curtains and causing a sudden tornado of conflagration in which the figure seemed to shrivel and bits of burning material whisked themselves round the area of the stage and out into the dark of the crowded restaurant. Panic naturally ensued.

  What also ensued was the release of ceiling sprinklers. But so intense was the electrical charge pervasive in the atmosphere that the fine shower beginning to fall became a source of conductivity. Luckily this ceased very quickly as did all the lighting. Utter darkness suddenly descended. Fire alarms began ringing throughout the building, then stopped, but nothing stopped the rising pandemonium among the audience. An extremely noisy, panicky scramble had begun for the ground-floor exit.

  In the blackness the air became full of a falling hot snow of flakes from the now smouldering curtains in the flies. Joe desperately brushed them away. As for the shrivelled figure, he had no idea what had happened to it, but his instinct was to dash through the sooty air just like everybody else. Instead, to his alarm and then relief, he was grabbed once again by the arm, although this time it was by Samuel, who muttered something about ‘You done good! You done good! There’s nothing left! Just a pool of stuff!’ and literally pulled him across the stage through what seemed to squelch beneath his feet. For Samuel, though, that was apparently irrelevant. He was taking regular numbered steps in one direction only. It was quite methodical. Joe followed, even tripping over cables and other impedimenta in the darkness, until he recognised he was being led offstage and down what seemed a short flight of stairs into a darkness gradually filling with a different quality of air.

  He remembered that Samuel had said he’d been doing some scouting. This was it, then: the blackout had been anticipated, he supposed. The question about windows suddenly made sense. There was a plan. Jenny’d said there’d be a plan. It would’ve been nice, he told himself a little resentfully, if he’d been told about the whole plan, or whatever possible guarantees there might have been of any rescue at all, but then maybe, maybe, he’d been too worried about the need to pretend to have the power and so they hadn’t trusted him or given any guarantees because they couldn’t be sure he might not freak out and not even pretend to pretend. On the other hand he could now shout out what he had every right to shout out:

  ‘I have the power! I did it! I’ve done good!’

  But he didn’t. There were smells and people shouting and attempts being made to strike matches which flared up and burned themselves to cinders in a few seconds. His buoyancy soon evaporated. The darkness was blinding and he could only vaguely discern a shape ahead of him that was pulling him forward. There was nothing for it now except to accept that he was totally reliant on Samuel. He let himself be guided and soon found himself being led, with the appropriate whispered instructions, into the black gulf of a longer staircase, aware as he did so that many others had begun following behind, their shouts echoing at each downward step in the smelly echo chamber of the sloping stairs. Then the pull of Samuel’s grip became more urgent as they reached what seemed to be a stairwell.

  ‘Use that thing!’ he was commanded. ‘Turn it round!’

  Joe turned the locket round, leaned forward against what felt like a steel door and pushed against it. The automatic locks flicked back and they were out into what was recognisably the underground car park where Joe had first met Ollie Goncharov, this time lit only by light coming down the sloping shaft of the entrance and exit ramps into St James’s Square.

  ‘Close it!’ was the second command.

  Joe repeated the process. The door closed and the locks were re-activated, their movement along with the closure causing a faint echo. Simultaneously a car engine burst into life at the far end of the car park and headlight beams came instantly towards them down the length of parked vehicles. Joe guessed at once what this was. The speed of the car from start and the shriek of tyres meant Goncharov would be making a getaway. Maybe this had been part of the plan. Joe knew now how to stop it. He pulled the locket out of his shirt and pointed it at the oncoming headlights.

  In that moment they were extinguished. The car swerved, struck a pillar, skidded into a line of parked vehicles and swung round, the crumpled metalwork of the smashed bonnet facing Joe at right angles with both nearside front and rear doors hanging open and an abrupt arpeggio of tinkling glass as the shattered windscreen partly disintegrated. The
engine cut out. It happened so quickly that the almost complete ensuing silence in the gloomy car park left only amazement and shock. In any case, the noise had apparently been heard on the other side of the steel door and there came a banging and shouts. But what Joe heard was a groan. Rushing round to the wrecked nearside front door, he found Bakhteen sprawled sideways, the air bag having exploded against him, forcing his head almost out of the car with blood streaming down one side of his face. His seatbelt hung loose. In his hand, though, was a revolver, which slipped from his fingers the further he slumped to one side. Next to him was the driver, bunched up and unmoving, though poor light made it difficult to know what had happened to him. In the back, beyond the glass panel, there was the recognisable white hair of Goncharov himself. He was forcing open the rear door on his side. The next instant he was out of the car and running towards the ramps into St James’s.

  Samuel shouted at him, reaching into the car as he did so to grab Bakhteen’s revolver. The car, having come to rest right across the driveway area of the car park, meant quick pursuit was not possible. Samuel tried to find a way round the back, but slipped in a pool of petrol while trying to raise the revolver, cursed loudly, shouted for Joe to run after Goncharov and hobbled to one side with a hurt knee.

  ‘Get him!’

  It was at that moment that the neon strip lighting flashed on, one strip after another, the length of the car park and simultaneously the locks on the steel door were released. Crowds of people poured out, mostly aiming to escape from the building by whatever means possible rather than attempting to seek out their cars. Joe saw the crowds behind him and dashed forward after Goncharov who ran busily ahead of him and reached halfway up the ramp before glancing back. It seemed he felt he would be safer among the mass of escapees and, indeed, in full view of both Joe and the people hurrying towards him, he started waving both arms in an effort to halt the crowd. His white hair and neatly trimmed beard had a momentary, rather spectacular, effect, but his voice was less forceful without the loudspeaker amplification and he was virtually ignored. People rushed past him, probably unaware who he was, knocking him to one side against the wall of the exit ramp, and it was left to Joe to confront him. It was then he realized why Goncharov had really paused.