Frankenstein Unbound (13 page)

Some of the grand sidereal events of the universe are more accessible at night. With humanity forced into the undignified retreat of its collective beds, the processes of Earth come into their own. Or so I have found.

Exactly why it should be so, I do not know. Certainly night is a more solemn period than day, when the withdrawal of the sun’s influence enforces a hush on activity. But I never had any terror of the dark, and was not like Shakespeare’s man, “in the night, imagining some fear, How easy is a bush supposed a bear...” So my theory is that while we are in Earth’s shadow and intended to be dreaming, our minds may be wider open than by day. In other words, some of that subconscious world which has access to us in dreams may seep through under cloak of night, giving us a better apprehension of the dawn of the world, when we were children—or when mankind was in its childhood.

However that may be, I woke before dawn next day, and just by lying alert on my miserable bunk, was able to let my intelligence spread like mist beyond the narrow confines of the prison. My senses took me through the bars that confined me. I was aware of the cold stone outside, the little huddling rooms of the citizens of Geneva, and of the natural features beyond, the great lake and the mountains, whose peaks would already be saluting a day still unperceived in the city. A barnyard cock crowed distantly—that most medieval of sounds.

I knew something was wrong.

Something had woken me. But what?

My senses strained again.

Again the cockerel, its cry a reminder to me—like the little cake that Proust dipped in his tea—that time is a complex thing, stronger than any tide, yet so fragile it can be traversed instantaneously on a familiar sound or smell. Had another timeslip occurred?

There was something wrong! I sat up, huddling my blanket against my chest.

Not so much a sound as a sensation that a whole spectrum of sound was missing. And then I knew! It was snowing!

It was snowing in July!

That was why I held my blanket about me. It was cold, whereas the cell had been stiflingly hot when I fell asleep. It was cold that accounted for my sluggishness in detecting what was wrong.

Snow was falling steadily over the prison, over Geneva, in midsummer... I hauled myself up and peered out of the bars.

My view was limited to the sight of a wall, a tower over it, and a small patch of sky. But I saw torches moving, less powerful than lighted matches against the first crack of tarnished gold in the eastern sky. And there was the snow, gray against gray.

Then the sound, very distant, of a bugle.

A faint smell of woodsmoke.

And another sound, more alarming. The sound of water. Perhaps always an alarming noise for a man trapped in a small space.

How long I stood there, trembling with cold and a nameless apprehension, I have no idea. I listened to attendant noises coming on gradually—the scuffles and grunts and curses of men near at hand, a more distant din of shod feet moving at the double, shouted commands. And always that sound of water, growing fast. People were running now, in the corridor outside my cell.

Panic communicates itself without words. I threw myself against the cell door and hammered and shouted, crying to be let out. Then the water hit the prison.

It arrived in a great flood, a shock-wave of water that could be felt and heard. A second’s lull, then such a din! Shouts, screams, and the thunder of inundation.

In a moment, a wave must have swept across the prison yard outside. It struck the wall, and a great cascade burst upwards, some of it to come flying through the cell window. The shock started me hammering at my door again. The whole prison was in a confusion of sound, with the echo of slamming doors added to all the rest of the din.

And worse was to come. The water that spurted through my window was a mere splash. More came welling and flooding under the door, so that I suddenly found it all about my ankles. It was icy.

I jumped onto my bunk, still yelling for release. The light filtering in was enough to reveal a darkly gleaming surface of water, turbulent, continually rising. Already it was almost on a level with my straw paillase.

My cell was on the ground floor—slightly below the level of the ground, in fact, so that the window had afforded me, on occasion, a view of a warder’s waist, belt, keys, and truncheon, as he marched by. Now another wave splashed in. As I looked up, I saw that water was beginning to slop in and trickle down the wall. The yard outside must be flooded to a depth of about three feet. In no time, all prisoners on my level would be drowning— the water outside was already almost above our heads.

Now the din from my fellow prisoners multiplied. I was not the only one who had made this uncomfortable observation.

Splashing through the dark flood, I was again throwing myself at the door when a key turned in its great lock and it opened.

Who set me free—warder or prisoner—I have no idea. But there was someone at least in that dreadful place who had a thought for others besides himself.

The passage was a ghastly limbo between death and life, a place were men fought and screamed in semidarkness to get out, splashing up to their crotches in fast-moving water. And it was a matter of fighting! To lose your foothold was to be trodden down. A man from a cell ahead of mine, a slight figure, was knocked aside by two more powerful men working together. He went down. The crowd poured on and over him, and he fell beneath the flood.

When I got to the spot, I groped beneath the water to try and find him and drag him up, but could find nothing. Strong though my anxiety was to save him, nothing could force me to duck my head voluntarily beneath that stinking flood. Then I found what had happened to him, for there were two unseen steps down. I also missed my footing and went plunging forward, only by luck managing to keep myself upright.

Now the water was chest-high—more than that as we struggled round a corner, to meet a great frothing wave. But a wider corridor joined here, leading to another wing, and then there was a broader flight of steps up, and a rail to grip. It was like climbing a waterfall, but there was a warder at the top, clinging to a railing and yelling to us to hurry—as if we needed such encouragement.

What a scene in the yard! What filth and terror and tumult! The water was littered with obstacles, and there were painful things below the water to strike oneself on. But the level was lower and the rush of the flood less severe than in more restricted surroundings, so that that insurmountable dread of drowning gradually subsided.

The gates of the prison had been flung open, after which it was up to everyone to save himself. It was still snowing. At last I was under the shadow of the prison arch, splashing and gasping with other ill-glimpsed men. Then we were out of the prison. I caught a horrifying sight of a great sea stretching among the buildings, of people and animals weltering in it, before turning with the rest of the mob in a rush for higher ground.

Hours later, resting myself and my battered legs in a shallow cave on a hillside, I returned to something like my senses.

Although it would be mad to claim that I felt happy, my first feeling was one of cheer that I had escaped from prison. Presumably, the time would come, after the crisis was over, when the prison authorities would institute a hunt to recover their prisoners. But that time must remain a few days ahead yet, while everything lay in the throes of a natural disaster—the nature of which had yet to be determined—and while the snow still fell as thickly as it did. I would prepare myself for flight later, for I was determined not to be caught again; meanwhile, I needed warmth and food.

In my pockets was a disposable butane lighter. There was no trouble in that respect. All I needed was fuel, and I would have a fire going.

I hobbled out onto the hillside. My left knee throbbed from a wound it had received in my escape, but for the moment I ignored it. Visibility was down to a few yards. I stood in a white wilderness, and perceived that to gather wood for burning in such conditions was not easy.

However, I applied myself. Enduring the snow that slid onto my back and shoulders, I rooted about the bases of small trees. So I gradually amassed armfuls of small twigs, which I carried back to my cave. My search took me further from base with each load. After four loads, I came across footprints in the snow.

Like Robinson Crusoe on his island, I trembled at the sight. The prints were large and made by strongly fortified boots. So thickly was the snow falling that I knew they could only just have been made, probably within the past five minutes. Somebody was close by me on the hillside.

Looking about, I could see nothing. The snow was like glaucoma. An image of a great figure with obscured face and mighty vigor returned unpleasantly to my mind. But I went on grubbing for wood.

I worked my way—somewhat fearfully, I admit—into a gloomy stand of pines, and there found several fallen branches which I was able to drag back to the cave. They would suffice for a respectable blaze.

The fire started without much trouble. The warmth was welcome, although now I was nervous anew, thinking my fire would attract anything lurking near at hand. I was too nervous to go looking for birds or small animals which, I fancied, might be caught half-frozen in the undergrowth. Instead, I crouched near my hissing flames, nursing my leg and keeping one hand close to a sturdy length of branch.

When the marauder came, I glimpsed him through drifting snow and smoke. No sound—the universal white blanket saw to that. Only silence, as I rose in fear, weapon in hand, to confront him. He seemed to me huge and shaggy, with his breath hanging about his face in the chilly air.

Then I was struck from behind. The blow landed on my shoulder. It had been aimed at my head, but I moved at the last second, prompted by some intuition of survival. I caught a glimpse of my assailant, of his ragged and ferocious face, as he paused before hurling himself at me. In that instant, I brought up my branch, so that he caught it right in the face.

He fell back, but the other man, the one I had seen first, came running forward. I whirled my branch. He was armed with a stout length of post, which came up and broke my blow. Before I could deliver another, he had grasped my wrist and we were fighting face to face, nearly falling into the fire as we did so.

I glimpsed the other man getting up and tried to break and run. But they had me! I was trapped. I curled up and kicked out wildly at their shins, but I was at their mercy now. They hacked me in the ribs and then proceeded to batter me about the head.

The fight—the very life!—went out of me. Sprawled in the snow and dirt, I lost command of my senses. It was not complete unconsciousness; instead, I drifted in a helpless state, unable to move. In some broken and unhappy way, I was aware that the two villains stopped kicking and beating me. I was aware of their voices but not of what they said. Their words came to me only as a series of hoarse gasping noises. And I was aware that they were doing something with my fire. I was even aware that they were leaving, but the
interpretation
of all their actions only filtered through some while later. It was as if, owing to the punishment I had received, all the close and companionable cells of my brain had been spaced round the frozen world, so that it took half an hour for intelligence to march from one department to the next. My personal space time was as dislocated as the impersonal one.

At length, I did manage to roll over and sit up. Then, after a further interval, I was able to drag myself into my little cave. I had a flimsy recollection of being afraid of getting drowned; now I had a flimsy suspicion that I might be buried under snow and never rise again to the surface.

It was the cold that forced me to move. I saw then, through the one eye that would open, that my fire was scattered, that only a few wisps of smoke rose here and there. Later, the knowledge filtered through to me that the two ruffians—escaped prisoners like myself, without a doubt—had attacked me solely on account of my fire. To them, it represented infinite riches, well worth committing murder for.

And was it not infinite riches? Unless blindness was setting in, darkness was. I would freeze to death this night unless I had some warmth.

And there was something else. A noise I recognized among the eternal wastes of silence. Recognized? What ancestral thing in me prompted me to know the cry of wolves?

Somehow or other, working on hands and knees, I drew more branches before my little retreat. Somehow or other, I got a flame going again.

There I lay, half-roasted on one side, freezing on the other, in a sort of trance, more abjectly miserable than I can tell. If I died on this hillside, I would not even know where or when the hillside was.

At some point in that dreadful night, the wolves came very close. I feebly pushed more wood on my fire to make a brighter blaze. And at some point I was
visited
.

I was in no fit state to move a muscle. However, I managed to pry my one good eye open. The fire had died down, though several branches still glowed red. Someone stood carelessly among the embers, as if having his flesh charred was the least of his worries. All I could see were feet and legs, and they looked enormous. The legs were clumsily encased in gaiters.

In a feeble effort at self-preservation, I put up one arm to ward off a blow, but the arm fell down as if it would have nothing to do with such an idea. I could see my hand, lying palm upwards and seemingly a great distance from me. Huge scarred hands thrust something into my hand, a voice spoke to me.

Much later, searching my memory, I thought I had heard it say in deep and melancholy tones, “Here, fellow outcast from society, if thou canst survive this night, draw strength from one who did not!” Or something to that effect—all I recalled incontrovertibly was that old-fashioned construction, “if thou canst”...

Then the great figure was gone, swallowed as soon as it turned, into the drifting dark. So too my senses went, into their own night.