The Frankenstein Papers
Fred Saberhagen
Tor's edition of this classic horror story accompanies the Francis Ford Coppola film Mary Shelley's Frankenstein--a major motion picture released for Christmas 1994, starring Robert DeNiro. At last, the world's most famous monster tells his own story of his creation.
FRANKENSTEIN PAPERS
By
Fred Saberhagen
THE BIRTH OF A MONSTER
"It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishments of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs…"
That is Mary Shelley's version of what happened on that dark and stormy night. Now learn the awful truth …
Of Medical Electricity
The first application of electricity to the cure of diseases was made by M. Jallabert, professor of philosophy at Geneva, on a locksmith whose right arm had been paralytic fifteen years … He was brought to M. Jallabert on the 26th of December 1747, and was compleatly cured by the 28th of February 1748. In this interval he was frequently electrified, sparks being taken from the arm, and sometimes the electrical shock sent through it.
Dr. Franklin and others mention some paralytic cases, in which electricity seemed rather to make the patient worse than better.
Mr. Wilson cured a woman of a deafness of seventeen years standing—and Mr. Lovet considers electricity as a specific in all cases of violent pains, obstinate headacnes, the sciatica, and the cramp. The toothache, he says, is generally cured by it in an inftant. He relates a case, from Mr. Sloyer surgeon at Dorchester, of a compleat cure of a gutta ferena; and another of obstinate obstructions in two young women.
Hitherto electricity has been generally applied to the human body either in the method of drawing sparks, as it is called, or of giving shocks. But these operations are both violent, and though the strong concussion may suit some cases, it may be of disservice in others, where a moderate simple electrification might have been of use.
The great objection to this method is the tediousness and expence of the application. But an electrical machine might be contrived to go by wind or water, and a convenient room might be annexed to it, in which a floor might be raised upon electrics, a person might fit down, read, sleep, or even walk about during the electrification.
It were to be willed, that some physician of understanding and spirit would provide himself with such a machine and room. No harm could possibly be apprehended from electricity, applied in this gentle and intensible manner, and good effects are at least possible, if not highly probable.
Chapter 1
May? 1782?
I bite the bear.
I bit the bear.
I have bitten the white bear, and the taste of its blood has given me strength. Not physical strength_that I have never lacked—but the confidence to manage my own destiny as best I can.
With this confidence, my life begins anew. That I may think anew, and act anew, from this time on I will write in English, here on this English ship. My command of that language is more than adequate, though how that ever came to be God alone can know.
How I have come to be, God perhaps does not know. It may be that that knowledge is, or was, reserved to one other, who has—or had—more right than God to be called my Creator.
My first object in beginning this journal is to cling to the fierce sense of purpose that has been reborn in me. My second is to try to keep myself sane. Or to restore myself to sanity, if, as sometimes seems to me likely, madness is indeed the true explanation of the situation, or condition, in which I find myself—in which I believe myself to be.
But I verge on babbling. If I am to write at all_and I must—let me do so coherently.
I have bitten the white bear, and the blood of the bear has given me life. True enough. But if anyone who reads is to understand then I must write of other matters first.
Yes, if I am to assume this task—or therapy—of journal-keeping, then let me at least be methodical about it. A good way to make a beginning, I must believe, would be to give an objective, calm description of myself, my condition, and my surroundings. All else, I believe—I must hope—can be built from that.
My surroundings: I am writing this aboard a ship, using the captain's notebook and his pencils. He was wise not to trust that ink would remain unfrozen.
I am quite alone, and on such a voyage as I am sure was never contemplated by the captain, or the owners, or the builders of this stout vessel, Mary Goode. (The bows are crusted a foot thick with ice, an accumulation perhaps of decades; but the name is plain on many of the papers in this cabin.)
A fire burns in the captain's little stove, warms my lingers as I write, but I see by a small sullen glow of sunlight emanating from the south—a direction that here encompasses most of the horizon.
Little enough of that sunlight finds its way in through the cabin windows, though one of the windows is now free of glass, sealed only with a thin panel of clear ice.
In every direction lie fields of ice, a world of white unmarked by any work of man except this frozen hulk. What fate may have befallen the particular man on the floor of whose cabin I now sleep—the berth is hopelessly small—or the rest of the crew of the Mary Goode, I can only guess. There is no clue, or if a clue exists I am too concerned with my own condition and my own fate to look for it or recognize it. I can imagine them all bound in by ice aboard this ship, until they chose, over the certainty of starvation, the desperate alternative of committing themselves to the ice.
Patience. Write calmly.
I have lost count of how many timeless days I have been aboard this otherwise forsaken hulk. There is, of course, almost no night here at present. And there are times when my memory is confused. I have written above that it is May, because the daylight is still waxing steadily—and perhaps because I am afraid it is already June, with the beginning of the months of darkness soon to come.
I have triumphed over the white bear. What, then, do I need to fear?
The truth, perhaps?
I said that I should begin with a description of myself, but now I see that so far I have avoided that unpleasant task. Forward, then. There is a small mirror in this cabin, frost-glued to the wall, but I have not crouched before it. No matter. I know quite well what I should see. A shape manlike but gigantic, an integument unlike that of any other being, animal or human, that I can remember seeing. Neither Asiatic, African, nor European, mine is a yellow skin that, though thick and tough, seems to lack its proper base, revealing in outline the networked veins and nerves and muscles underneath. White teeth, that in another face would be thought beautiful, in mine, surrounded by thin blackish lips, are hideous. Hair, straight, black, and luxuriant; a scanty beard.
My physical proportions are in general those of the race of men. My size, alas, is not. Victor Frankenstein, half proud and half horrified at the work of his own hands, has more than once told me that I am eight feet tall. Not that I have ever measured. Certainly this cabin's overhead is much too low for me to stand erect. Nor, I think, has my weight ever been accurately determined—not since I rose from my creator's work table—but it must approximate that of two ordinary men. No human's clothing that I have ever tried has been big enough, nor has any human's chair or bed. Fortunately I still have my own boots, handmade for me at my creator's—I had almost said my master's_order, and I have su
ch furs and wraps, gathered here and there across Europe, as can be wrapped and tied around my body to protect me from the cold.
Sometimes, naked here in the heated cabin, washing myself and my wrappings as best I can in melted snow, I take a closer inventory. What I see forces me to respect my maker's handiwork; his skill, however hideous its product, left no scars, no visible joinings anywhere. Such skill as he was unable or unwilling to exert again, when the time came_but I anticipate.
My navel might once indeed have been the terminal of the cord of birth—but I know that it was not. My two arms, both huge and muscular, seem, like my two legs, a matched pair—did each limb once live and grow upon a different body? And what of my brain? Could it conceivably be compound too, with all the languages that it contains? And the strange, fleeting memories, that sometimes come and go, and puzzle me. He would never tell me whence it came.
And, surely, no single human individual was ever cursed with this face I bear. Oh my creator, whose handiwork in other details approaches wizardry, if not Deity, why did you curse me so?
And why did you not give me a name?
Was hatred for me growing in you even then?
The earliest memories of my present life are not yet three years old. But in trying to sound even such shallow depths, I must part clouds more thick than any polar darkness. It seems to me that the first language that I ever spoke was German. But I cannot be sure. It may have been French, for I have spoken and can speak that too, and quite well. In whatever body my brain first grew, it learned much there; and some of what it learned, for good or ill, has come to me.
The first remembrance I can call up is of a tiny room. It is high up under someone's roof, because it has a slanted ceiling. Though the window is par-tially open, within closed shutters, the atmosphere is tainted with the smell of rotten meat, and acrid with chemicals and electricity. Logic—and perhaps other things as well—assure me that this is the room at the top of the house where the student Victor Frankenstein then lodged, in an old and quiet quarter of the Bavarian university town of Ingolstadt,—where he lodged, and where he did his secret work.
I am standing beside an empty table—there is just height enough for me to stand upright under the pitched roof—and feeling overwhelmed with the narrow meanness of this cramped and noisome room, that forms the only world that I as yet have known. Fitful flashes from a thunderstorm provide the only real illumination. The shelves that occupy most of the walls of the room, and the two other tables besides the empty one, are filled with jars, bottles, electrical apparatus, whose meaning I but dimly comprehend.
I am alone, and it is night, rain beating on the single window and dripping on the sill, thunder grumbling not far away. A sleepy human voice or two, in other, distant rooms of the big house, are murmuring about the dormer. A bolt has just struck somewhere in the near vicinity.
Though as far as I can tell this is the very beginning of my consciousness, I am not an infant mentally. I can walk. I do not foul myself with my own wastes. My hands are fumbling with something around my collar—somehow I have already acquired clothing, real clothing, much better than the rude wrappings that I am wearing now.
I know what a door is, and how to open one. And this door, anyway, is already standing very slightly ajar.
Moments later I am in another room, this one on the next level of the house down from the top. This is a small bedchamber; I draw back the curtain of the bed, and by the light of a guttering bedside candle I behold a young man lying there, fully dressed in good but neglected clothing, fitfully asleep. It was, of course, none other than Victor Frankenstein who lay before me, though I did not yet know his name. In some senses I recognized him. I think I understood even then, somehow, that he was someone of great importance to me.
The young man stirred as I gazed at him, and opened bloodshot eyes. He stared back at me with the horrified gaze of one who awakens to find that what he had thought a nightmare is indeed reality. His movement in the bed, edging away, wafted toward me a wave of fumes, strange to me then, but now, in memory, identifiable as those of brandy.
I stretched out a hand toward him, and uttered an inarticulate sound. What purpose was behind my gesture I do not know, but I intended no harm. He uttered a choked cry and rolled out of the bed on the side away from me. A moment later he had sprung past me and was out the door, and I heard the quick sounds of his booted feet descending stairs.
Exactly what I did immediately after that, what I thought, what I felt, I am not sure. I know only that I must have fled the house.
I find I must pause now in this effort. Those early memories are too strong for me.
Later_I must keep on with this journal for the sake of my sanity. And soon I must search the ship again, and more thoroughly, for provisions. Though if, as I suppose, her crew abandoned her when threatened by starvation, there seems little chance that any substantial stores remain.
For now, back to the fierce chore of remembering.
The next scene to come clearly out of the mist is set out of doors, in a gloomy November forest that must have been near Ingolstadt. It is early morning, shortly after dawn, some days after my first clear memory.
I have been sleeping, and today is my turn to be awakened. Someone, using a hound, has tracked me down. I emerge from chaotic dreams and stick my head out of my shelter, a half-fallen tree, to see two human beings and one hound staring down at me.
The young men are much too well dressed to be peasants. I need a moment to realize that one of them, dark-haired and slender, is the same man I saw lying in bed amid brandy fumes a few days earlier, terrified of me. Now, in daylight, the expression on his face is different, more complex, harder to describe or to understand. Fear has not vanished from his countenance, but it has been joined there by elation, shame, disgust, and pride, all struggling to dominate. His breathing is heavy, I think more because of this emotional turmoil than with the exertions of his trot through the woods behind his hound. The animal, not liking me—dogs seldom do—backs a little way into a thicket, grumbling.
"There you are," the young man said to me, confronting me, fists on hips. I have not the words, in English or any other tongue, to describe the mixture of feelings evident in his tone.
The other young man has hair of a lighter brown, and a frame not really much bigger. But somehow he seems hardier and sturdier than slender Frankenstein. He is so far exhibiting little except sheer astonishment. From the way his jaw works he would like to say something pertinent as he gapes at me, but thus far he is speechless. I will come to know him later as Henry Clerval.
Frightened, I too am wordless as I crawl forth and stand erect. As I leave the tree my movement pulls out with me the nest of leaves and grass that had kept me warm enough to sleep. I was on the point of running away, even as last time he, now my discoverer, had fled from me.
"Stay!" he said to me sharply. "I am Victor Frankenstein. I am your creator."
"Creator." Dazed by the idea, I mouthed the word back at him numbly. Standing, towering above him, I took an uncertain step toward him, once more reaching out a hand.
Frankenstein took a quick step back, and his hand went near the curve of a short wooden handle at his belt. I took no more steps forward. I understood the meaning of a pistol even then. Beside him, Clerval stood as if paralyzed.
"The power of speech is yours, then, "the youth who had already spoken-muttered in a strange, almost feverish tone. "Repeat my name!" he commanded briskly.
"Victor Frankenstein."
"Ah. Good. And some degree of understanding."
He turned to his companion. "The cerebrum is not decayed after all, Henry, or at least… residual memory in the fibers. As I had hoped." He spoke confidently but gestured vaguely; his companion gaped at him, hoping intently for enlightenment, not getting much.
Regaining his assurance, Frankenstein stepped forward. For the moment pride and wonder were uppermost in him, his fear and loathing put aside.
"I made you," he
murmured to me, and in his voice were tones I have since heard in the prayers of the devout. "I really did."
And was it French that the three of us were speaking together on that day? But no, I think that it was German.
Whatever the language, I could not at first believe that statement when he made it, that simple claim to be the author of my being. And yet I think that, on some deep contradictory level of my being, I already was convinced.
The hound, after circling me uneasily a time or two, had lain down, while Victor paced back and forth under the dripping trees, hands clasped behind his back. Clerval had gradually overcome his paralysis; I could see that he was thinking now, staring at me as he stroked his chin. I stared back, trying to comprehend the marvel that I had just been told.
Frankenstein stopped his pacing suddenly and said: "I am going to write about him to Priestley in London, and to Franklin in Philadelphia. To others as well. Cavendish, I suppose, though he'll never answer. Let me see. Mesmer. Lavoisier. And to Edinburgh, the medical school there…"
"I think that Franklin is not in Philadelphia," said Clerval softly. He was preparing some kind of additional objection, I thought, when I interrupted him.
"What is my name?" I asked. My voice is strong and deep, but I have been told that it is not unpleasant.
Frankenstein appeared surprised at the question, almost as if it had come from one of his laboratory animals.
"I do not know," he replied at length. "I never gave you a name. I suppose that now you are at liberty to choose one for yourself, should you feel the need." Awe grew in his voice as he was speaking, and as he uttered the last words he was staring at me again in simple wonder.
I did feel the need for a name, or I should not have asked the question. For that moment at least it had seemed of immense importance. Yet I had no idea of what name I ought to have.
As I stood dumbly by, my creator was starting to make plans with Clerval. "He cannot stay here. Obviously. There's no telling what trouble he might get into. And I cannot bring him back to the house…"
The Frankenstein Papers Page 1
