by John Burke
But I had work to do. It was work which had to be carried out in complete secrecy. I had learned my lesson. I would put my trust in no one. Friends were unreliable; a wife in my household would be a danger and an encumbrance.
This, again, was something which could not be explained to the ladies. The shameless ardor of some of them had to be avoided by various stratagems or by a sternly professional concentration on their supposed symptoms. A widowed Countess who had clearly decided upon my eventual conquest proved especially persistent: when she could no longer find excuses for visiting me on her own account—perhaps fearing that too long a list of imaginary ailments would detract from her charm in my view—she brought her attractive but somewhat pallid daughter to my consulting rooms day after day. Vera was subject to fainting fits. Vera could hardly walk across a room. Vera needed constant medical attention. And in the end, when the Countess realized that I was not going to fall into her arms, she amazed me by trying to turn my affections upon Vera. Better, she seemed to feel, that I should be in the family as her son-in-law rather than not at all.
The mysteries of creation were my constant study, but even I marvelled at the subtleties and crudities of women. I might create a man in my laboratory; but would I ever dare to create a woman?
“Everything I have goes to Vera when she comes of age,” said the Countess Barscynska one day while I waited for the girl to prepare herself for yet another futile examination. “It was her father’s last wish.” She gave this time to sink in, then went on briskly: “I am having a musical evening soon, Doctor Stein. If you were free . . .”
“Much as I like music, I have very little time.”
“You poor man. A life dedicated to the needs of others. No time for a life of your own. But you must make time, Doctor.”
I refrained from saying that I made time for really important things when I chose to do so. She might have felt that her musical evenings came into this category.
At that moment Vera emerged demurely from behind the screen. She had not merely undressed for the examination: she had come provided with an alluring négligée. Her mother smiled proudly at her and invitingly at me, as though wanting me to inspect the property which I was being offered.
I used my stethoscope and made the girl jump.
“It’s so cold.”
I said: “Breathe deeply.”
“Last time,” she sighed, “you used your ear.”
I made a perfunctory examination. There was nothing wrong with the girl. She was in excellent health. Indeed, I cannot deny that she was a most attractive young woman with a complexion which was the envy of her friends and a taut, slim figure which no man other than myself had so far had the privilege of studying at leisure.
I advised a judicious mixture of rest, food, and long walks. The Countess asked meaningly if I ever went riding. I said that I did not. She asked if I would be free on certain occasions to accompany Vera on one of these prescribed walks so that I could observe the effect which this physical exertion had on her. I regretted that other duties compelled me to refuse.
“That dreadful place!” said the Countess as her daughter dressed. “Such demands on your valuable time!”
That dreadful place . . .
My office at the Workhouse Hospital was certainly a contrast. Sparsely furnished with the bare necessities of a consulting room, it was only cursorily cleaned by one or other of the shabby inmates, and I knew that if any of my wealthier patients were to see it I would lose them at once. The flotsam and jetsam of human life drifted through here or piled up and stayed here to rot. I did what I could for them; and did what I could for my own purposes. Some of the inmates swore by me; others swore at me. My name was sometimes reviled, sometimes worshipped.
On the very day that I had touched Vera’s smooth, silken flesh I sat in my office and looked at another kind of young woman. She was dressed in rags and had dried blood matted in her hair. Yet she, too, could have been beautiful. I had hoped, after the last time I saw her, that she would in fact have a chance of cleaning herself up and acquiring some human dignity. Now I shook my head.
“Inga, not again!”
“I’m sorry, Doctor.” But beneath the apology and beneath the blood and dirt there was an irrepressible pertness that both exasperated and amused me. “I tried to do what you told me.”
“I thought your husband was still in prison?”
“They let him out for good behavior.”
I examined the scalp wound. It was not deep, but it went quite a way down behind her ear. She had a tough constitution.
I said: “Why didn’t you tell him what I told you?”
“I did, Doctor. I told him I was finished with him. I didn’t want to have anything more to do with him. Just like you said.”
“And . . . ?”
“As soon as I got up in the morning,” she said indignantly, “he hit me with a bottle again.”
She was a lost cause. She would keep coming back here until one day he dealt her a more serious injury and she either lay permanently in one of the noisome rooms here or was taken off to a pauper’s grave. I poured a pitcher of water into a basin and began to clean her up.
“He can’t really help it, sir,” she said, flinching as I tried to disentangle the matted hairs. “He loves me.”
As I worked away at that scabrous head, a grubby little man in an ill-fitting grey uniform which made him look more like a warder than a patient, hobbled in and stood at my left elbow. He was a sufferer from a recurring leg infection which sometimes kept him in bed for weeks and sometimes allowed him to get about, earning a few coins as a ward assistant and general messenger. Now he said:
“There’s three men to see you, Doctor Stein. From the Medical Council.”
I had known that sooner or later there would be official representations from that group. It surprised me, however, that they should have chosen to visit me here. My fashionable surgery would have seemed a more appropriate place for such an interview; but possibly they did not wish to have their envy too painfully provoked.
“I can’t see them now,” I said. “They’ll have to wait until I’ve finished my rounds.”
“They seemed impatient.”
I was delighted to hear it. “I’ll see them when I’ve finished.” As the messenger went away, I called after him: “Have them wait in the ward.”
That would give them something to think about. The Medical Council of Carlsbruck was not noted for its devotion to the welfare of the poor. Let them learn a little humility while they waited for me!
I allowed them a full fifteen minutes before going along to the ward.
It was not a large room. All the quarters in this grim old building were cramped and inadequate, but they were all that charity could offer. Beds were packed head to tail with only a few inches between them. It was hard to distinguish between the moans of the genuinely sick and the ribald, desperate merriment of those who ought by rights to have been in prison cells. The Workhouse attracted all kinds. The only thing they had in common was a putrefying stench. I could see as I entered the ward that my visitors from the Council had never encountered quite such a smell before.
“Murdering butcher,” one man was wailing. He tried to seize the arm of one well-dressed doctor, who edged away with a most unprofessional distaste. “You should come in and watch, you should. There’s nothing he won’t do to us—nothing.”
“Expects me to do me dance without any legs,” came another lament.
Voices rose from all sides, dinning into the ears of the visitors. I let them savor it for a few more seconds before stepping forward down the narrow centre aisle.
The patients saw me. Silence fell. The two men who had been most vociferous with their complaints shrank down between their filthy blankets. One of them wet his lips and tried an ingratiating smile.
The delegation turned to face me. I ignored them until I had bared the arm of a man in the bed nearest the door. Then I exposed the florid tattoo marks on the f
orearm and glanced at the three doctors.
“Quite a work of art—don’t you think so, gentlemen?”
“Doctor Stein—”
“A great deal of craftsmanship has been expended on this.”
The youngest of the three was staring at me in a way which I found disturbing. He appeared to be trying to remember something, to place me. When he spoke it was slowly and thoughtfully.
“Very picturesque,” he said. He did not take his eyes off me.
“A great pity,” I went on, “that so much effort should have been wasted.” I turned back to the patient. “This has poisoned your arm. You must have it off.”
He wrenched his arm away and pushed himself up higher in the bed.
“You’re not going to have my arm off—that’s for sure!”
“If you’d rather die,” I said, “it’s up to you.”
“Die? After what I spent on it—just back from the Indies, and what money I had—”
“The arm is no use to you,” I said. “And in a few days’ time you will find that the rest of your body is going to be of no use. I’ll remove the arm this afternoon.”
“No,” he whimpered. “Doctor, I won’t be able to work. Won’t be able to go to sea.”
“Find a trade on land.”
There was a throaty chuckle from the next bed. “He’s already got one.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“Pickpocket.”
“Then he’ll have to find another trade—or use his other hand.”
I moved to the next patient. A cloud of foul tobacco smoke blew across my face. One of my visitors coughed in protest. The most pompous of them began:
“Doctor Stein, we didn’t come here to—”
“Amazing how dirty these people are, isn’t it?” I said. “I imagine you’re not accustomed to it. They tell me it keeps them warm. Do any of you have patients with similar views?”
There was an offended silence, in so far as there could ever be complete silence in this atmosphere of wheezing, coughing, moaning, and spitting.
I decided to be kind to them. I stood up.
“Well, gentlemen? What can I do for you?”
The oldest of them cleared his throat and began what was evidently a prepared speech.
“I am the President of the Medical Council.”
“Congratulations.”
“At our last meeting it was unanimously decided that you should become a member.”
He forced a smile.
I said: “I’m greatly honored, gentlemen.”
There was an almost imperceptible sigh of relief from two of them. The third, the watchful young man, continued to study me.
“Then you accept?” said the President.
“No,” I said.
The sound this time was a gasp rather than a sigh.
“I don’t understand,” said the President stiffly.
His starchier colleague burst out: “Every doctor in the faculty regards your attitude as an insult.”
I said: “When I arrived in Carlsbruck every attempt was made by your organization to prevent my practising medicine. You did not offer to accept me as a member then, gentlemen. Now I have built up a successful practice alone and unaided and have grown accustomed to working alone. I prefer it that way. Do I make myself clear?”
“Quite clear,” said the younger man. There was no criticism in his tone. He was still assessing me, and I sensed even that he tended to approve of me. I was not sure that I wanted his approval. What I most wanted was for the three of them to leave.
I said: “Good day, then.”
They went. At the door of the ward the President turned. He tried to sound and appear stately, but his voice trembled with ill-concealed rage.
“You have not heard the last of this!”
There was faint laughter from the patients—a sycophantic laughter, designed to placate me.
Rid of the delegation, I turned back to my duties. When I had finished and was on my way out of the ward, I was accosted by the man with the tattooed arm. He waved feebly at me, and his voice rose in a whine.
“Doctor, you don’t have to take it off—not really, do you?”
“Yes,” I said.
“It doesn’t hurt me. I don’t feel a thing.”
“That in itself is a dangerous sign,” I said as I went out.
His protests rang despairingly after me along the corridor. They were in vain.
I needed that arm.
3
At the end of an exhausting day I had a small roasted chicken sent into my office at the Workhouse Hospital and sat down thankfully at my desk, pausing only to take off my stained overall. A guttering light stood on the desk beside me. The rest of the room was in shadow.
I removed a leg of the chicken with two clean cuts, and was lifting it to my mouth when a voice spoke from the darkened corner.
“A masterly dissection, Doctor Stein.”
The chicken leg almost slipped through my fingers. I peered into the flickering pattern of light and shade. A man sat in the corner—a man who must have come in and settled down to wait for me.
He said: “You must forgive this intrusion.”
As I grew accustomed to the darkness I saw that it was the youngest of my three visitors earlier in the day.
“I don’t recall inviting you to supper,” I said.
To make it clear that I was indifferent to his presence I went on chewing. The chicken was not a very tender one, but after my arduous spell in the crudely equipped operating theatre I was prepared to regard it as a savory morsel.
“I wished to renew our acquaintance. After a few moments with you this afternoon, I was sure I had seen you before.”
“That’s hardly surprising,” I observed. “I have been practising in Carlsbruck for three years.”
“Before that. A little more than three years ago, in fact.”
My fingers tightened on the chicken bone. I was about to tell him that he must be mistaken, when he went on:
“At the village of Ingstadt, I attended the funeral of one Professor Bernstein. You’ve heard of him, no doubt?”
“Everyone has heard of Professor Bernstein,” I said noncommittally.
“I was in my final year as a student at the university where the professor was lecturing when he . . . died.”
I removed the other chicken leg and indicated it with the point of my sharp knife. “May I offer you some chicken, Doctor . . . er . . . ?”
“Kleve. Hans Kleve. No, thank you.”
He was far too self-possessed for my liking. There could be little doubt that he had recognized me. It was unfortunate. I tried to stave off the moment of accusation.
“Perhaps a little cheese?” I said. “I can recommend it.”
He paid no attention. “The professor,” he continued remorselessly, “was buried in the family vault of Baron Frankenstein.” He paused. “Need I continue?”
As he had every intention of doing so, I waved affably at him. “Certainly.”
“I am the first, I suppose, to recognize you?”
“For what I am?” I said. “Or what you would have me be—this Baron Frankenstein?”
“The resemblance is too striking. That and your present activities lead to only one conclusion.”
I ruminated for a minute or so. The chicken had lost its savor. My past, which I had hoped to dismiss until it suited me to recall it, was coming back like a sour taste in my mouth.
“So?” I said after due reflection. “What if I am Baron Frankenstein?”
“Are you?”
“Just now you were telling me,” I pointed out equably. “Now you are asking. Doctor Kleve, what makes you so interested in this gentleman?”
“I am in need of knowledge.”
He spoke so earnestly and with such transparent sincerity that I felt disposed to go some way to meet him. “Not money?” I said. “Need of knowledge. So that’s it. In that case I admit that my name is Frankenstein.”
&
nbsp; He nodded with satisfaction.
“But it’s a large family, don’t forget,” I hastened to add. “Remarkable since the Middle Ages for productivity. There are offshoots everywhere—even in the Americas, I’m told. There is a town called Frankenstein in Germany—”
“Are you the Baron Frankenstein?” he demanded bluntly.
“Then there are the Frankensteins emanating from the town of that name in Silesia.”
He thrust himself suddenly forward and came full into the light. He was a handsome but rather intense young man, with a tight, impatient mouth and restless hands. I thought he was about to lean over the desk and seize me. I smiled reprovingly and tilted the knife towards him, more as a joke than a threat.
“Are you Baron Frankenstein?” he insisted.
I foresaw that I would be able to turn his fanaticism to good use. I said: “Yes, Doctor Kleve.”
“I told you I am in need of knowledge.” Now that the admission was out, he rushed on even faster than before. “I want to learn more than any university can teach me.”
“Highly commendable.” I remembered my own early days and the private tuition for which I had paid—the gruelling work, the unflagging research, until I knew more than my tutor. I felt a growing warmth towards this young man, seeing myself in him.
“I want to be the pupil of the greatest doctor in the world,” he said. “I want to be associated with the finest medical brain. To be your pupil, Baron Frankenstein.”
“And if I refuse?”
“You won’t.”
Again I looked warningly at the knife. I did not intend to use it on the young man, but I hoped he would put a symbolic interpretation on it. I was not a man who took kindly to threats. I said:
“Either I employ you in my researches or . . . surely this is blackmail? An ugly failing in a doctor.”
“I see it as an agreement of, shall we say, reciprocal pooling of ideas. Or an exchange of your knowledge for my assistance. My assistance and—”
“And your silence?” I took him up. We faced each other in a mutual appraisal. “I am not an easy man to work for.”
