Frankenstein's Monster

by Susan Heyboer O'Keefe

  Today I arrived at the Piazzetta early and settled in a corner, enthralled with the conversations around me. An hour after I arrived, a blind man took up position a few feet away and held out a wooden bowl to be filled. Instead of sitting in silence as I did, he harangued every person who walked by, grabbing at the air to try to catch a skirt or pantaloon if someone passed without giving.

  “Alms for the poor and blind,” he said coaxingly. “I am blind, my wife is feeble, and our baby is sick. Alms! God hears the prayers of the poor, especially when they pray for their generous benefactors. Alms!” When the coins did not fall quickly enough, his speech became louder and included threats and curses.

  Never in a week have I collected half of what he earned in hours. As his bowl filled, I could not help but imagine what I might buy if the money were mine. I could purchase books I truly desired, rather than stealing or stumbling on random titles. For a brief moment I considered his feeble wife and sickly babe, then dismissed the thought. Even if the story were true, he was richer than I simply to possess their companionship.

  I crossed to him noiselessly and bent close.

  “I have learned to fear the rich,” the beggar said. “Must I fear the poor as well?” From inside his ragged cloak, he pulled out a chunk of bread, tore it in half, and held a piece toward me. “If Venice has been that tightfisted with you, my friend, I should not be. It’s an unprofitable business all around when beggars must steal from beggars.”

  Though his eyes wandered slackly, each filmed as if with a caul, he addressed his words in my direction and held the bread before my face.

  When I did not reply, he laughed. “You are thinking now, is he really blind? And if he isn’t, can I take the money anyway and outrun him?” He gestured again with the bread. “Go ahead, take it, even if you mean to steal from me besides.”

  Surprise at being openly, even kindly, addressed fixed me to the spot and made me more hungry for the spoken word than the written.

  “How did you know anyone was there?” I asked. I sat down and accepted his bread. “Are you sighted?”

  “I’m blind, but for every fifteen coins that clinked in my cup, one would clink a little away from me. How long have you been practicing the noble art of begging?”

  “Not long. I arrived in Venice just a few days ago.”

  “And not from elsewhere in Italy either, judging from your accent. Well, you’re too silent, my friend. Here, you must fight for every penny. You must speak up. Beg loudly, pray for those in the crowd, curse them, grab them, jeer at them, make them know you are here. They know Lucio’s here. That’s me. They cannot escape Lucio.”

  Lucio talked and talked, as though—robbed of his eyes—he had grown two tongues. When crowds moved our way, without a break in breath he resumed his loud beseeching. I began to leave, and he seized my cloak.

  “Stay. You will starve without me. How could I sleep at night with that on my conscience? Besides, you are an amiable conversationalist: you say ‘yes’ and ‘I understand’ at all the right times.” Laughing at his own remark, Lucio asked me my name. I gave him the first one I thought of; so quickly was it gone from memory that I cannot record it here.

  When the beggar departed for the night, he earnestly sought my assurance that I would return tomorrow to the same place. He also made me promise that, sometime soon, I would accompany him to the lean-to he considers home and share his dinner.

  “It is little more than a hovel,” he said, “and the food may be meager, depending on the day’s luck, but I promise you the conversation will be filled with sparkling wit! You will do me the greatest honor, my friend, for what could any man want more than the sound of his own voice being listened to?”

  Lucio has told me of his wife and their babe of six months: yes, they are real, but neither is sickly. Because of them, his hovel for me would be as grand as a palace. I doubt that I shall go there, however. His wife is not blind.

  May 6

  I am almost fearful to commit my thoughts, my experiences, to paper. Experience—what a strange word for one such as I who lives too much in the mind. Something has happened. I have had an experience.

  To Lucio’s sincere delight I returned to the Piazzetta. The little beggar touches a place in me I did not know was there. He talked and talked, and, when it came time to appeal to the crowds, he included me in his rantings, asking for alms for the “poor devil beside me too dimwitted to beg for himself.”

  It was a day such as I have never had, and my story has not even begun.

  At sunset Lucio left and I remained. The city quieted down around me till I could hear only the gurgle of water from the nearby basin and the rats as they crept out of hiding. Despite the peaceful night, I began to feel tense anticipation. I grew restless, yet was reluctant to leave. The dank air pressed in around me and urged me to stay. The darkness thickened as I waited; it held me in and thwarted my attempts to move.

  At last a gondola from the basin was drawn close, and men climbed out of it. I edged round the column of St. Mark’s Church so as not to be visible. I heard a weak, muffled moan, followed by a rush of whispers.

  Two men were dragging a woman across the Piazzetta; she was gagged, bound, and blindfolded. The scene was disturbing enough; the contrast between the men and the woman made it more so. The men were dressed in rich velvets with feathered caps, their plump hands bejeweled with rings. The woman was thin and dirty, wearing cast-off clothes from several disparate outfits. Weeping, she fell onto her knees, only to be kicked till she stood again.

  I emerged from behind the column, hobbling and bent low.

  “Who’s there?” one of the men challenged. I was enormous, yet to him, still just a lame, hunchbacked beggar with his alms bowl. “Go away. This does not concern you.”

  “What is your business with this woman?”

  He looked incredulous to be confronted.

  “I tell my business to no man, much less garbage from the street.”

  Wine and heat exuded from them in sickening waves. I limped closer till they were within reach.

  “What will you do with her?” In answer, they laughed. “Let her go and I will not harm you,” I said, which only set them laughing again. With a single movement, I shook off my cloak, stood straight, and grabbed one of them off the ground by his collar.

  “What will you do with her?” I repeated.

  “It is nothing,” he gasped, his eyes wider with shock at my face than with choking. “It is merely a prank. We have bought her and are going to make a gift of her to a friend.”

  “Bought her?” This I understood, for I had often wondered if I might buy an hour of acceptance. “If you bought her, why does she weep?”

  The other man, the drunker of the two and who had not seen me as clearly, chuckled. “She did not want to be bought. It was her man that sold her.”

  During this discourse the woman, still blindfolded, turned her face from one voice to the other. She made a pleading moan.

  Holding her tightly, the drunkard reached into his pocket, withdrew his purse, and threw it several yards away. “Take it and go,” he said to me.

  I tossed aside the one man to grab the other. He let go of his captive and ran at me, head down like a butting goat. I caught him by the shoulders and shoved hard. He landed on his back. Quickly I stepped on his arm; the plaza resounded with the sharp crack of a branch being snapped. The man’s howl became whimpering gasps for breath. He dragged himself to his feet, arm dangling, face oiled with tears of agony.

  “Leave her, Camillo,” he said, teeth gritted. “I need help.”

  He staggered into the shadows.

  The one called Camillo came up behind me and caught hold of the woman.

  “Do you know her?” he asked harshly. “If not, what is it to you what I do with her?” He drew a knife and held it to her throat. At the bite of metal, she choked back her weeping and stood still. “It should mean nothing even if I kill her,” he said. “What’s one life less on the streets
of Venice? A beggar should know that best of all.”

  “You’re right,” I said softly. “What is one life less to me? Nothing. Kill her. I don’t care. It will give me a better reason to kill you.”

  Slowly he backed toward the dock, holding the woman as a shield. I followed, certain he would try to escape in the gondola. My only question was whether he would attempt to take the woman with him. Instead, he pushed her into the water, then ran, daring to stop to retrieve his friend’s purse.

  As he must have hoped, I jumped in after the woman rather than pursue him. Bound so tightly, she would never have been able to save herself, even if she could swim.

  I grabbed a fistful of her hair, pulled her struggling body to the surface, and lifted her out of the water. Curled on her side, she coughed in violent spasms as I removed the gag, blindfold, and ropes. Eyes pressed shut, she wrapped her arms around herself and lay shuddering. She did not respond to my soft entreaties. At last I enfolded her in my cloak, picked her up, and carried her here to the campanile.

  May 7

  Mirabella.

  Beautiful sight.

  That is what I call her. I mean no irony in the name. Surely, after she saw me, she must have understood why I called her beautiful sight.

  Mirabella.

  She is sitting in the corner this very minute watching me attentively.

  Who is she? Where does she come from? What were those men going to do with her?

  She is plain of face, with quick movements and alert black eyes. She cannot speak: her neck is marked by the jagged red scar of a recent wound. It is no wonder she grew still when the knife was held to her throat. She watches my writing with fascination. When I offered her my pen, she shook her head.

  I was amazed at how little she reacted when she saw me that first night.

  “I am ugly,” I warned her, her face shielded from mine with the hood of the cloak I had wrapped around her. “Uglier than you could ever imagine. But isn’t ugliness better than fairness that deceives, like those men who would take you with them?”

  She nodded, then slowly pulled back the hood. On seeing me, her features registered not the slightest change. Perhaps simple calculation made her accept me: I had rescued her; therefore, there was at least the possibility that I might be good. If she expressed her revulsion, she might have had to return to whoever sold her to the nobles.

  Or, if she expressed her revulsion … I might kill her.

  To fill the silence I have named her and constructed my own elaborate story, given her a history of neglect, ending with the kidnapping. In my fancies, I have continued the horror as if I had not interfered, knowing that, without my presence, her misadventure would have ended in abasement. I have embroidered the story with so many dark deeds, I shake that the subject of my wretched dreams actually sits next to me.

  What would have become of her? What am I doing with her now?

  I spent that first night talking to her, still believing she was capable of telling me, showing me what had happened. I have spent the day with her as well. I do not dare to leave her alone in order to join Lucio, lest she vanish in my absence, but also do not dare to bring her, lest someone recognize her and try to take her from me. It is my own sort of kidnapping, I suppose. I want her for my own, with a desire as base as that of the nobles.

  May 8

  We have just finished the last of the food and water.

  May 9

  “Have I harmed you?” I asked Mirabella this morning. “Have I made a move against you in any way?” She shook her head no.

  Seized with restlessness, I paced back and forth in the confines of the campanile, still uncertain what to do, what to say. I am more accustomed to writing words than speaking them, am more manlike in my thoughts than in my deeds. Violence and desire make my fingers tremble until action sets them free. I wanted her, but more than the moment’s gratification, I wanted her to remain with me.

  “And you,” I said, spinning round and pointing. “You have made no move against me by trying to leave.”

  Again she shook her head. Although she leaned easily against the stone wall, her eyes were wary. If I did not calm myself, I would frighten her into escaping.

  “I will ask you plainly,” I said. “Will you stay with me? We have nothing left to eat. I must go to the Piazzetta to join Lucio”—for I had told her of the blind beggar—“and there I will earn enough to bring back food and water, wine if you wish. I want you to be here when I return, but I do not want to keep you tied up while I’m gone. Will you stay?”

  She nodded. And so I left, saying I would see her in few hours. Instead, I slipped to the rear of the campanile and watched her unawares through a window.

  She crept to the door and peered out. Apparently satisfied I had left, she began to pick through my few belongings, lingering over random objects I had picked up on the street: bits of colored pottery, a glass bead, a tin candlestick, a length of rope. The glass bead she balanced between two fingers and held out her hand appraisingly as if she wore a ring. Next, she sorted through the rags I had piled up as a pillow, holding each against herself for something wearable. A few of these she kept separate.

  At last she stood up and looked around the stone-walled room. She saw it differently than I did because she began to rearrange its contents, moving the pile of rags from one side to the other, sticking the candle stub by which I wrote into the candlestick, setting my book next to it, and propping the largest piece of colored pottery up against the wall as decoration.

  She meant to stay.

  I hurried off, the sooner to hurry back.

  Lucio expressed concern at my absence of the past few days. He accepted my story of being too feverish to come out, for I was reluctant to tell him so soon of Mirabella. Then he described with great detail all I had missed yesterday. A near riot had provided some rare excitement. Austrian soldiers had combed the city looking for a deserter, as Venetians stood by and jeered. Accusing the more boisterous ones of hiding the fugitive, the soldiers threatened them with imprisonment. Lucio heard swords being unsheathed and shots fired into the air. To his disappointment, the crowd broke up, and nothing came of the posturing.

  “It could have been a day of riches for some,” he said longingly. “With a little eyesight and a little talent for pick-pocketing, a man could have worked his way through the commotion and come out a prince. Ah, but that’s my wife’s talent, not mine.”

  In the past, Lucio’s words would have nourished me. Now impatient, I tried to hasten the day with wishing. Before this, all of time had always been the same. Day passed into day, week into week. There was little to anticipate, nothing to hope for. Today, both eagerness and dread gnawed at my soul. Would Mirabella still be there?

  As soon as I had enough coins, I pled ill health, bought food, found water, and returned to the campanile.

  She was waiting.

  May 10

  Lucio has moved our post to the palace courtyard. Now we sit on the steps of the Giants’ Staircase, which the doges used for their public coronations. Above us loom the statues of Mars and Neptune. How surprised Lucio would be if I told him my stature matched theirs more closely than it matched his.

  The begging is the same here, but Lucio insists that the gossip is better. It is gossip of a shared misery. Sadness and regret are in the very air of Venice. He explains that many of the patricians have disappeared since Napoleon’s first occupation, as if their families took a suicide pact not to have children. Of the nobles who remain, Lucio speaks with fond familiarity. He cannot see that these men despise him. Those who toss a coin his way, deliberately missing his bowl so that he has to scrabble in the dirt, look on him with hatred. Blindness is not contagious, nor poverty; these men act as if both were.

  Even as my anger rises, the sweetness of Lucio’s face bids me hold my tongue. What good would I do if I revealed the truth about his “benefactors”? Would his own anger, however righteous, put more coins in his cup? It would steal the bread from his m
outh. Nobles prefer their beggars to be fawning and obsequious.

  May 11

  “I’m looking for a deserter,” the Austrian captain said in broken Italian.

  The soldiers despised us as much as any Venetian nobleman, jostling us as they marched down the steps in the courtyard where we begged. Their captain sauntered behind them and peered at us closely. He made a move toward the hood that shadowed my face. I half-stood, prepared to strike him down and flee if I had to. My size even at a crouch warned him off, and he pulled back his hand.

  “Speak up! It’s a crime to harbor a fugitive.”

  “Yes, a very serious crime,” Lucio agreed. “Such a great crime that there might be a reward if this fugitive is returned?”

  “It is patriotism to turn in a deserter.”

  “For an Austrian, sir.” Lucio shrugged. “For a blind Venetian beggar it is business.”

  “And do you have business to transact?”

  “A blind beggar is easy to ignore. People often reveal too much in my presence.”

  During this exchange my limbs tugged at me to run. The captain wore a brace of pistols. I too easily imagined him ripping away my hood to see if I was the deserter, imagined him shooting me once he had looked upon my pieced-together face. If I were not killed instantly and managed to slip away, he would follow the trail of blood. He would find Mirabella.

  I could not bear the thought of losing her. It has been just a few days since she agreed to stay, yet her ease with me grows by the hour. Only this morning she excitedly led me to one of the windows, a place I avoid for fear of being seen. There she showed me, in the early dawn, a lone flower growing out of the stone wall, its single bud unfurling in the sun. She is like that flower, blooming in impossible circumstances, her caution and reserve slowly dissolving. If I only had light to offer her and not the darkness of hiding …