Frankenstein Unbound (17 page)

My reaction to all this was not one of horror. For Frankenstein’s researches I felt horror, yes. But confronted with this unbreathing creature surmounted by that frozen but guiltless female face, I felt only pity. It was pity mainly for the weakness of human flesh, for the sad imperfection of us as a species, for our nakedness, our frail hold on life. To be, to remain human, was always a struggle, and the struggle always ultimately rewarded by death. True, the religious believed that death was only physical; but I had never allowed my instinctive religious feelings to come to the surface. Until now.

Victor’s plan for this creature’s coming resurrection would be a blasphemy. What had been done, in this inspired cobbling together of corpses, was a blasphemy. And to say as much—to think as much—was to admit religion, to admit that life held more than the grave at the end of it, to admit that there was a spirit that transcended the poor imperfect flesh. Flesh without spirit was obscene. Why else should the notion of Frankenstein’s monster have affronted the imagination of generations, if it was not their intuition of God that was affronted?

To report my inner thoughts at such a moment of crisis must be to vex anyone who listens to this tape. Yet I am impelled to go on.

For the conflict of emotions in me caused me to burst into tears. I fell on my knees and wept, and called aloud to God. I buried my face in my hands and cried with helplessness.

Perhaps one detail I have not mentioned led to this unexpected response in me. On the stool by the side of the female stood a jar with flowers in it, crimson and yellow.

There was another turn to the screw of my misery. For at that moment I thought I saw that all my previous beliefs in progress were built on shifting sand. How often, in my past life, I had claimed that one of the great benefits the nineteenth century had conferred on the West had been science’s liberation of thought and feeling from organized religion. Organized religion, indeed! What had we in its place? Organized science! Whereas organized religion was never well organized, and often ran contrary to commercial interests, it had been forced to pay lip service, if not more than that, to the idea that there was a place in the scheme of things for the least among us. But organized science had allied itself with Big Business and Government; it had no interest in the individual—its meat was statistics! It was death to the spirit.

As science had gradually eroded the freedom of time, so it had eroded the freedom of belief. Anything which could not be proven in a laboratory by scientific method—anything, that is to say, which was bigger than science—was ruled out of court. God had long been banished in favor of any number of grotty little sects, clinging to tattered bits of faith; they could be tolerated, since they formed no collective alternative to the consumer society on which organized science depended so heavily.

The Frankenstein mentality had triumphed by my day. Two centuries was all it needed. The head had triumphed over the heart.

Not that I had ever believed in the heart marching ahead alone. That had been as grievous a thing as seeing the head triumph; that had caused the centuries of religious persecutions and wars. But there had been a time, early in the nineteenth century, in Shelley’s day, where the head and the heart had stood a chance of marching forward together. Now it had disappeared, even as Mary’s diseased creation myth had prophesied.

Inevitably, I am elaborating after the event in intellectual terms. What I experienced as I fell on my knees was a metaphor—I saw the technological society into which I had been born as a Frankenstein body from which the spirit was missing.

I wept for the mess of the world.

“Oh, God!” I cried.

There was a sound above me, and I looked upwards.

A great beautiful face stared down at me. For a moment—then the skylight in the beamed roof was flung up, and Frankenstein’s Adam came leaping down to stand before me in his wrath!

Until this wretched point in my narrative, I believe I have given a fairly good account of myself. I had acted with some courage and endurance—and even intelligence, I hope—in a situation many men would have found hopeless. Yet here I was, sniveling on my hands and knees. And all I could do at this terrible invasion was to rise and stand mutely, with my hands by my sides, staring up at this tremendous being, whom I now saw clearly for the first time.

In his anger, he was beautiful. I use the word “beautiful” knowing it to be inaccurate, yet not knowing how else to counteract the myth which has circulated for two centuries that Frankenstein’s monster’s face was a hideous conglomeration of second-hand features.

It was not so. Perhaps the lie drew its life from a human longing for those chills of horror which are depraved forms of religious awe. And I must admit that Mary Shelley began the rumor; but she had to make her impression on an untutored audience. I can only declare that the face before me had a terrible beauty.

Of course, terror predominated. It was very far from being a human face. It resembled much more one of the helmet faces painted on the skulls in the rack behind me. Evidently, Frankenstein had been unable to create a face that pleased him. But he had given patient thought to the matter, just as he had to the rest of the alien anatomy, and he had ventured on what I can only call an abstraction of the human face.

The eyes were there, glaring down at me from behind defensive cheekbones, as if through the slits of a visor. The other features, the mouth, the ears, and especially the nose, had been blurred in some fashion by the surgeon’s knife. The creature that now stared down at me looked like a machine, lathe-turned.

His skull almost knocked against the beams of the ceiling. He bent, seized my wrist, and dragged me towards him as if I were no more than a doll.

“You are forbidden by my Creator to be in here!”

Those were the first words the nameless monster spoke to me. They were delivered quietly, in a deep voice—“a voice from the grave” was the association the tone aroused. Quiet though the words were, they carried no reassurance. This powerful being need make no special effort to quell me.

The great hand that held me was a mottled blue, crusted and filthy. From its throat, where a carelessly tied scarf failed to conceal deep scars, to its feet, encased in boots that I imagined I recognized, the monster was a monument to grime. It was encrusted in mud and blood and excrement, so that its greatcoat was plastered against its trousers. Snow fell to the floor from it and melted. It still steamed slightly, so damp was it. This indifference to its wretched state was a further cause for alarm.

Shaking me slightly, so that my teeth rattled, it said, “This is no place for you, whoever you may be.”

“You saved my life when I was dying on the hillside.” The words happened to be the first I could enunciate.

“My role is not to spare life but to protect my own. Who am I to be merciful? All men are my enemies, and every living hand is turned against me.”

“You saved my life. You brought me a hare to eat when I was starving to death.”

He—I must cease to refer to him as an
it
—he let go of me, and I managed to remain standing in his dreadful presence.

“You—are—grateful—to—me?”

“You spared my life. I am grateful for that gift, as perhaps you may be.”

He rumbled. “I have no life while everyone’s hand is turned against me. As I am without sanctuary, so I am without gratitude. My Creator gave me life, and the profit of it is I know how to curse; he gave me feeling, and the profit of it is I know how to suffer! I am fallen! Without his love, his aid, I am fallen.

“‘Why is life given

To be thus wrested from us? Rather why

Obtruded on us thus? Who, if we knew

What we receive, would either not accept

Life offered, or soon beg to lay it down,

Glad to be so dismissed in peace...’

“Are not those the words in the great Miltonic book? But, under threat, my Creator has agreed to make me this Eve with whom you interfere, uncovering her nakedness. She will make my misery more tolerable, my slavery only half-slavery, my exile less a banishment. What are you doing in such a place? Why has He allowed you here? What mischief have you done Him?”

“None, none!”—fearing he might go downstairs and find Frankenstein in a state he would possibly mistake for lifelessness.

He seized my arm again.

“Nobody is allowed to do Him mischief but me! I am His protector as long as He works on this project! Now, tell me what you have done with Him? Are you the Serpent, to come here like this, filthy and venomous?”

For a moment he turned towards the creature that wore the face of Justine. He stretched out an arm and placed a gnarled hand tenderly on her scarred brow; then he turned back to me.

“We’ll see what you have done! Nothing can be hidden from me!”

Dragging me, he strode to the door in two strides and flung it open. I struggled, but he did not even notice. Without a pause, he moved down the stairs. His movements were rapid and inhuman. I had to run with him, dreading what would come next.

Victor Frankenstein still lay senseless on the carpet below. His servant Yet was bending over him, and had Victor’s head against his knee. He looked up angrily, then yelled with terror, and jumped to his feet. The monster, coming forward, knocked him out of the way with one sweep of an arm as he marched towards the prone figure of his creator. The force of the casual blow was such that Yet was flung back against a bookcase. Books showered about him.

As for me, I was dragged forward at that awful pace, like a toy dog on a lead. The monster bent clumsily over his master, calling to him in that hollow and ghastly voice, like a hound baying.

I saw Yet drag himself up, eyes charged with fear, and make for the door to the lower regions. When he got there, he pulled an enormous bell-mouthed gun—I imagine it was a blunderbuss—from his belt and leveled it at the monster.

Instinctively, I threw myself down. The monster turned. He threw up one arm and gave a great cry as the gun went off.

Noise and smoke filled the room.

Yet went blundering down the stairs.

“You killed my master! Now you have wounded me!” cried the monster. With a bound, he was up and giving chase, hurling himself down the stairs. Cries from Yet as he fled.

The noise had its effect on Frankenstein. He groaned and stirred. I saw that he would be coming to in a minute. I dashed the remainder of the wine in his face to revive him, and ran up to the laboratory again.

There was going to be murder before the night was through, and I had to get clear.

I slammed the door shut behind me, but there was no bolt on the inner side. Not that I imagined that any bolt could keep out that terrible avenging creature!

The female still lay there, watery eyes staring at some remote distance from which she waited to be recalled. I crossed behind her, and seized a pair of steps, used to reach the higher shelves. I dragged the steps to the middle of the room, climbed them, swung myself up through the skylight by which the monster had entered.

Supernaturally strong though the monster was, I could not visualize its being able to scale the sheer outside wall of the tower. Therefore it had made itself a ladder. Had not Victor mentioned some such possibility?

It was freezing cold and entirely dark on the roof, despite the snow everywhere.

Nervously, I moved forward, fumbling round the battlements until I came to a protruding wooden pole. Here was the ladder. Only the terror of being caught by the creature—I could all too clearly imagine myself being hurled from the roof—drove me to climb over into space and feel for the first rung of the ladder. But—there it was, and I began to go down as quickly as possible but with difficulty, for there was almost a meter between rungs.

At length I stood on the ground, up to my ankles in fresh-fallen snow.

First I pulled the great ladder away from the tower, sending it crashing back into the trees. Then I went round to the gate, to listen there in an agony of apprehension.

Banging noises sounded from within. There was the clang of metal as a bar was withdrawn. A small door in the big gates was flung open. Yet emerged, staggering drunkenly and clutching his shoulder.

By now, my sight had adjusted to the dark. I was hidden behind a tree, but could see his dark barrel-shaped silhouette clearly enough. Behind him, something was fighting to get out of the door. It was the monster. Instinctively, I ducked back a tree or two. Yet stood in the clearing as if undecided. He ambled over to the nearest tree—happily some meters from where I stood hidden, and turned towards the tower.

Then I realized that he was wounded, and could not run, and that he carried a sword in his hand.

The monster still struggled to climb through a door too small for his immense frame. He wrenched at the stout paneling, roaring with fury. With a splintering noise, it fell beneath his pressure. He broke through, and in a twinkling was across the clearing that separated him from Yet.

Yet had time for one blow. Maybe it was a saber he held. I saw a broad blade flash dimly, heard it strike the sleeve of the monster’s greatcoat. A ferocious growl came from the monster. He gave Yet no time to strike again.

First he flung the man headfirst into the snow. Then he sprang savagely on top of him, and grappled him by the throat—as once he must have grappled with little William. And Yet could put up no more resistance than William.

In a moment, the monster rose, lurching slightly, and started to head back for the dark tower. Behind him, Yet lay lifeless in the snow.

“You have killed again!” cried Victor Frankenstein.

He stood in the shattered doorway, confronting his monster, a shadow among shadows. From where I stood, I could see only that sharp-cut face of his, blurred by darkness and passion.

The monster stopped before him. “Master, why do you misrepresent my every action? I attacked your servant only because I believed he had killed you. Your possessions and your servants are sacred to me, as well you know! Be propitious while I speak—hast thou not made me here thy substitute!”