by Kim Newman
I’m not sorry.
‘You are all under arrest,’ I say.
My automatic is under the gallant’s nose. A gun trumps a sword.
‘Don’t anybody move.’
The organ wheezes to silence.
‘Six,’ I shout. ‘Through here!’
Eyes fix on me with hate. They expected me to side with them, I see. They misread my story. Or came in at the wrong reel.
‘I stick my neck out for no one,’ I explain.
The deformed boy pokes his head out of the shadows. His misaligned eyes look up at me, full of tears. If I had a heart left, his ugly lost face would reach it.
But…
Six and his surviving goons arrive.
‘I believe we have a full house,’ he says.
* * *
‘I thought you’d want to be here, my friend,’ Six says. ‘To see the job through.’
It is an overcast day. Three trucks are parked outside the Théâtre du Grand-Guignol. Soldiers stand around, waiting. Orders are posted everywhere. Passers-by don’t want to know what is going on here.
The prisoners, shackled together, are herded into the trucks. Some are unused to showing their faces by day. The Opéra Ghost, in drab prison pyjamas rather than evening clothes, is less fearsome in thin daylight; not a demon lover, just a hairless, noseless old man. Without his domino mask, the Master Thief is a dull bourgeois in handcuffs.
‘Where will you execute them?’ I ask, empty inside.
‘We would not waste so valuable a resource, Mr Blaine. We shall keep our catch safe. Away from the city, perhaps, but carefully unharmed.’
I wonder if they can live away from the city.
‘Only now do we really have Paris, you understand. With these people in custody, we control this city’s soul. All great cities have a collective soul, an über-mythic collective heart. The Führer understands this. What is London without the Demon Barber and the Consulting Detective and the Mayor’s Cat? Or Prague without the Golem, the Alchemist, the student who sells his soul? These are our real enemies in Europe, Mr Blaine. Not armies and politicians and populations. Those can be overcome, crushed, destroyed, absorbed. It is these individuals, who in some sense are not even real people, these creatures who stand against our Nazi dream. We understand and believe in über-myths too. But there is room for only one vast myth now, a German myth that has no time for the squabbling, petty, monstrous, feeble-hearts we see before us. With these people gone, our myth can truly occupy the city. Who knows, maybe some of them can come back. The reporter understood, was willing to let himself vanish into the larger story.’
‘Like me,’ I say, hollowly.
‘No, Mr Blaine. Not you. You have helped us not out of conviction but out of spite. All very well. We understand spite, too. You may go, because it is not important that you be here. You are a part of another city’s myth-pool. It is important that you have a memory of Paris, but be estranged from the city itself. That is why you were so perfect for our purposes.’
The reporter’s dog is still hanging around, sullen and angry. Its white coat is muddied, almost the colour of a German uniform.
It’s hard for the soldiers to get the weeping hunchback into the truck, which holds up the rest of the coffle. Chains clank. The orangutan is already inside, drugged for travel. Last into the truck is the policeman, grumpy because he is not allowed his pipe.
I can walk away safely now. Join Sam, and get on with my life. My myth, as Six would have it.
One last prisoner is too delicate to be chained with the others. She is brought out on a stretcher, thin shoulders shivering, cold white hands crossed on her breast. She won’t last the journey.
Six shrugs sadly.
‘We Germans love her, too,’ he says. ‘This girl and her type and her city. But we have iron in our soul. New-forged. We have the strength to strip the city of her.’
One of the soldiers loses his grip, and the feet-end of the stretcher hits the pavement. The girl coughs blood, and her huge eyes catch mine.
She looks like Ilsa. Every damn woman in Paris looks like Ilsa, somehow.
I’m neutral. I’ve done a job, in exchange for freedom. These people mean nothing to me. Less than nothing. Paris is overrated anyway. Nothing but whores and pimps and murderers. All these people have blood on their hands.
The girl is close to death, always has been.
My heart starts beating again.
‘Shall we see them off, Mr Blaine?’
I put my hands in my pockets, and bring one of them out again.
‘That is an automatic pistol, Mr Blaine.’
‘And a very fine one, Six.’
The Nazi is disappointed in me. He makes a tiny signal. I am to be shot.
Then that blasted dog darts in and nips the heel of Six’s jack-boot, sinking sharp teeth into the black leather. The SS man is surprised and looks down.
I plug him in the chest. Twice.
‘Doktor Six has been shot,’ I shout, to the soldiers. ‘I’ll guard the prisoners. Search the theatre. I saw a man with a gun, up on the roof. A jackal, running.’
Six is on his knees, dying. He doesn’t understand why. He never will.
The girl smiles, thinly, blood on her lips.
The soldiers stand around, looking dumb. They were distracted by the dog and didn’t see my gun spit death.
‘Up on the roof,’ I insist, waving my gun. ‘Mach schnell!’
It gets through. They clatter into the theatre, shouting.
I take the keys from Six’s pocket, and roll his corpse into the gutter. I wonder if he realised how close he came himself to an archetype, the Sardonic Nazi Officer. Of course, he was different from us. He was a real person. You can look him up in the books.
I toss the keys to the Master Thief, who gets everyone off the chain in double-quick time. I had an idea he would have the fastest fingers in the group.
‘Quick,’ I say, ‘into the sewers.’
The ex-convict groans ‘not again’, but his fellows hurry him along. A manhole cover is wrenched up, and the escapees plunge into the darkness. I watch the last of them – the Jewish singing master with the scraggle of beard and the neon-glowing eyes – disappear, and pick up the girl from the stretcher. She is frozen, but I carry her underground.
* * *
Inside, the submersible device is a riot of leather upholstery and polished brass. Its captain may be gone, but it has been maintained in perfect working order. There is even a pipe organ, and the Opéra Ghost plays a Bach fugue on it as we sink below the waters of the underground lagoon.
At the helm, the captain of the Atalante scratches his head and tries to understand the unfamiliar controls. He is the master of Paris’s waterways, and will soon learn how to manoeuvre this marvellous contraption.
We are all cramped here, but there is a joy in freedom.
I don’t want anyone’s thanks. It’s due to me that Six got as far as he did with his project. There have been casualties. The model girl died in the sewer, and is stowed somewhere. But she’ll always be here, in Paris.
I’ll leave now. Hook up with Sam, head for Marseille, cross the sea. After all this French rain, I’d like to live in a desert for a while, have my own place. Six was right about me. I have a story to finish.
They are arguing, this leaderless crowd. The braggart with the nose and one of the Queen’s Swordsmen butt heads over the charts, each certain of the course they should be plotting but neither with any experience of navigation. The captain smokes his pipe and carries on regardless.
The orangutan is waking up. The apache has stabbed his mistress. The ex-convict is outside, in the filthy waters again. The Opéra Ghost has criticised the Irish girl’s voice, and enraged the Jewish manager. A whore and a dancer are competing for the affections of the white dog. Cigarette and pipe smoke makes a pestilential cloud in the enclosed space.
There is a din of life here.
Despite Ilsa, despite everything, it’s in me. Pa
ris, and all it means. I’ll never escape it entirely.
I’ll leave these people soon. There’s a lazy-eyed thief here who dreams of Algiers and the Casbah; I shall follow his example, and light out for North Africa. They’ll break up, return to their hiding places, play catch ’em with the Gestapo. Their city will be underground for a while, but a secret victory has been gained.
The Germans won’t always have Paris. But I will.
FRANKENSTEIN ON ICE
THIS IS THE first print publication of ‘Frankenstein on Ice’, which was written as a segment of the play The Ghost Train Doesn’t Stop Here Any More. The premiere cast was Claire Louise Amias, Jamie Birkett, Billy Clarke, Grace Ker, Jonathan Rigby, Jenny Runacre and James Swanton, and the director was Sean Hogan.
* * *
Spotlight up on gurney. A human figure – MONSTER – lies on it, covered by a dropcloth. Over-large, thick-soled, height-boosting, clod-hopping Karloff boots poke out.
A beat.
MONSTER’s hand – scarred at the wrist – falls out from the cloth and dangles, lifeless. Red goo drips from his opened fist.
Lights up to show minimal set dressing to establish a laboratory. Woolly scarves and hats draped over kit. We are in a research station above the Arctic Circle.
In her own section of the stage, Skyping in, sits MYRA LARK.
Young scientists ALISON CRAIG and RORY VINER enter, lab coats over woolly jumpers. ALISON has glasses.
ALISON deftly slips MONSTER’s hand back under the dropcloth, looks – disgusted yet fascinated – at the goo on her fingers, then wipes it on her coat.
MYRA
Dr Craig, Dr Viner…?
ALISON
Her again. The Eye Spy in the High Sky.
RORY
Her always… Dr Lark, Ice Station Apple receiving you. What’s the ETA of the Unwin team?
MYRA
You mean when are they going to get there?
RORY
ETA. Yes.
MYRA
Well, just say so. Soon. Bad weather over Anchorage, I’m told. Then again, you’re at the North Pole. Weather’s always bad.
ALISON
Define bad…
RORY
Define weather…
MYRA
Stop being scientists. It’s not clever and it’s not funny.
ALISON (ploughing on)
If by bad you mean cold, that’s open for debate. For the integrity of the Arctic ice, warm’s bad…
RORY
But without the degradation of the million-year-old Arctic ice, we wouldn’t be here on Unwin Pharma’s dime, assessing defrosted prehistoric micro-organisms for medical applications…
ALISON
Not that this find is prehistoric. Its clothes are eighteenth century… they made bloody good boots in the eighteenth century.
RORY
And it’s certainly not a micro-organism. As for medical applications… well, if you want your peasants terrorised, I suppose it’s up to the job.
MYRA
The team will determine the status of the find.
ALISON and RORY circle the gurney, looking at MONSTER, fascinated but repulsed.
RORY
You mean they’ll tell us why it isn’t what we think it – he – is. Why it couldn’t possibly be…?
ALISON
…the Frankenstein Monster.
RORY
Because that’s just a book, right? It’s as if we found the bones of Moby Dick or Sherlock Holmes’s deerstalker or Crusoe’s island…
ALISON
Robinson Crusoe was a real person. Alexander Selkirk.
MYRA
The team will determine…
ALISON
…if he’s the Frankenstein Monster.
RORY
If Frankenstein is real.
MYRA
Professor Court’s researches tend to support that hypothesis. She’s the ranking expert on Mary Shelley and The Modern Prometheus. She’s very excited.
ALISON
So Frankenstein is real. And climate change has freed his monster from its icy grave.
MYRA
Climate change might not be real.
ALISON and RORY laugh, bitterly.
RORY
Your doctorate… it’s not in a science discipline, is it?
MYRA
The view of the Unwin Group of Companies is that the theory of anthropocentric global warming is unproven.
ALISON
Million-year-old ice shelves are shearing away. Draw your own conclusions.
RORY
What’s the Unwin Group of Companies’ position on the Frankenstein Monster?
MYRA
We found him. We own him.
ALISON
We found him.
MYRA
Read your contract, Dr Craig. Any organisms you find in the decoalescing permafrost are the property of the Unwin Group.
ALISON
Micro-organisms.
MYRA
The wording is non-specific.
RORY
Doesn’t he belong to himself? He’s a macro-organism, for a start. Very bloody macro. And, well… a person.
MYRA
You both said he was a monster. And inert. He can assert no rights over himself or any other per… organism.
Pause…
RORY
She’s gone off again.
ALISON
I hate it when she does that.
RORY
I hate it when she’s here.
ALISON
Still… [excited] the Frankenstein Monster!
RORY sticks his hands out and lumbers.
RORY (deep voice)
Grrr… fire bad… Igor hurt Monster, Monster kill Igor! Kill! Kill!
ALISON laughs and evades him. He makes a semi-serious grab for her… and MONSTER’s hand falls loose again.
ALISON and RORY freeze. They look at the dangling hand.
ALISON
It keeps doing that.
RORY
He.
ALISON goes to tuck the hand back, waves it at RORY, then considers…
ALISON
No, it. He’s a he, but his hand’s an it. Like Thing…
RORY
Thing from The Thing or Thing from The Addams Family?
ALISON
Addams Family. They can’t be real, surely?
ALISON puts hand away.
RORY
Thing from The Thing is more likely. It was in the ice. Like Mr Boots here.
ALISON
Duh! The Thing was in the Antarctic, Doctor Geography. We’re poles apart.
RORY
Shows how much you know… The first Thing, the 1950s one, was in the Arctic. So, this could be that Thing. It even wore boots like those…
ALISON
What about the goo? I thought it was crystalline when it was frozen, but it’s viscid and… icky.
RORY
The inert biomatter? As a matter of fact I do have a theory. It’s the Blob. Also the 1950s one… with Steve McQueen. The army freeze the Blob before it can eat the town and it’s flown to the North Pole and dumped. Someone asks McQueen if the world is safe now and he says, ‘Sure, so long as the Arctic stays cold.’
ALISON
Chilly.
RORY
Or not.
ALISON
No. The Thing and the Blob and the Addams Family aren’t real.
RORY
Just Frankenstein.
ALISON
They better get here soon. He’s liable to go off… like that Eocene mould and your Cambrian flukes. I can’t believe they still witter on about climate change being unproven… We’re the first generation of Arctic researchers to lose findings because we don’t have adequate freezers.
Sd FX: helicopter.
RORY and ALISON look at each other. They put on hats and scarves and go out.
A beat. A long beat.
MYRA
>
One for yes. Two for no.
MONSTER clicks heels, loudly. Then goes still, as ALISON and RORY return with VALERIE COURT, CARL CLEAVER and GALA. They are already talking…
Sd FX: helicopter fading.
VALERIE
…why didn’t the helicopter land properly?
RORY
The helipad’s slushy, Professor Court. Wasn’t last year… is this season. The ice can’t take the weight of the chopper. Jury’s out on whether it’s global warming or Santa leaving the electric on in his grotto all year.
CARL
We should have air-lifted the find to a proper facility.
ALISON
Can’t. Protocol. Risk of infection.
CARL
It’s not a germ. Look at it.
ALISON
But it could have germs. This… goo.
RORY
Inert biomatter.
CARL and VALERIE are drawn to MONSTER. VALERIE squeeing, CARL trying to remain detached. Only GALA is unresponsive.
VALERIE
This is a great moment for me. Can I see his face?
ALISON and RORY aren’t sure.
CARL impatiently lifts the cloth. We don’t see the MONSTER’s face but he and VALERIE do. They react.
