Young Frankenstein

A bolt of lightning split the sky, showing Frankenstein Castle in all its ancient and decaying grandeur. The sudden light glistened on the rain-drenched battlements and towers and illuminated the green-gray moss that was spreading like a pestilence along the cracks in its stone walls. Then the flash was gone and in the grainy darkness the castle appeared to be nothing more than an extension of the hill on which it sat, a towering, jagged peak.

Inside, a single room, a study, was occupied. Nine people sat in straight-backed chairs around a coffin that was resting on a massive, thick-legged table. They were young, middle-aged and old, male and female. In the soft, yellowish glow from an oil lamp, expectancy showed in their faces. Their eyes, however, were not on the casket, but on the man who stood beside it: Cornelius Waldman, the attorney.

Waldman's attention, in turn, was on a wall clock; the hands were both pointing to twelve midnight. As the clock at last began to chime, he placed his own hands on the lid of the coffin. As one, the nine drew in their breaths and silently counted the strokes of the clock's bell. . . .
five . . . six . . . seven
. . . The attorney lowered his eyes to the engraved letters on the casket's curved lid:

He cleared his throat. . . .
nine . . . ten . . .
Waldman s
fingers
tightened under theedge of thelid. .
.
.
eleven
.
. . twelve.
The breaths, all nine, were released at once. The attorney gave a heave and up went the coffin lid.

Waldman, a middle-aged man with an acute case of astigmatism, adjusted his spectacles, which had slipped down almost to the tip of his nose, and peered in at the remains of Beaufort Frankenstein. Even though he had been carefully embalmed, Beaufort had not fared at all well over the years. His head, despite the fact that it had not been especially handsome when he was alive, was now his best feature. It was nothing to look at, consisting primarily of skull, with fragments of waxen flesh still clinging to the bone here and there. It at least had more "body," however, than the rest of him, which was all skeleton.

Resting on what once had been Beaufort Frankenstein's tummy and clutched by his bony fingers was a flat metal box. The attorney reached in, grasped it, and tugged. Beaufort's grip held. Waldman tugged again, harder. But with the strength of rigor mortis, Beaufort held fast. Perspiring now, the attorney raised a foot and braced it against the coffin and yanked. The box came free. Beaufort had lost in his last willful effort to take at least a representative sample of his worldly goods with him.

Muttering gruffly, Cornelius Waldman slammed down the lid. He placed the metal box on it, then fished in his vest pocket and came up with a key. Bending and squinting, he inserted the key into the box's lock and turned it. The key kept turning, but the lock did not click. Waldman raised his head and looked apologetically at the nine men and women who were waiting for the box to be opened. Their expressions were hard and unforgiving. Sighing, he fixed his attention again on the key and the lock.

Heinrich, a man of ninety, who had little more meat on his bones than Beaufort Frankenstein, addressed his wife, Agatha. "My life is in that box," he complained sourly, "and
he
can't open it!"

"Shhh!" Agatha responded.

Heinrich raised himself up an inch or two off the straight-backed chair and spoke to the attorney across the casket. "Hurry, itiot! Hurry!"

Agatha pulled her husband back. "Quiet, Heinrich. We've waited seventy years. Another three or four seconds won't hurt."

"Another three or four seconds! I could be dead by then!"

"Shhhh!"

A young man in another chair closed his hand over the hand of the young woman seated next to him and squeezed it reassuringly. "What if your beloved great-uncle left you out of his will?" he asked, whispering.

The young woman, t
e
nse, answ
e
r
e
d, sharply. "Shut your belov
e
d mouth!"

Anoth
e
r relative, Anastasia, middle-aged but plump and pink-cheeked, spoke hopefully to her mother, Marlene
.
"Oh, Mutti
.
.. I hardly remember . . . Did the Baron really like me when I was a child?"

A look that suggested a remembrance of trysts past came into th
e
mother's ey
e
s. "Lik
e
a fath
e
r," Marlene told her daughter soulfully.

An
e
ld
e
rly man muttered to himself
. "Wenn dieser bidder Kerl sich nicht beeilt werde ich verruckt. Was zum Teujel machte?"

Marlene reacted testily
.
"Shh!"

"Was?"
the elderly man insisted.

"Shaa!" Marlene told him.

He smiled.
"Ach! ... Ja!"

There was a click that, in the expectant silence of the room, sounded like a rifle shot. The nine straightened and leaned forward.

From the box, Cornelius Waldman extracted a parchment. He adjusted his spectacles once more, cleared his throat importantly, then read:

I
,
Beaufort Frankenstein, in this my eighty-third year of life, do hereby declare the following statements as my last will and testament, to be read on the occasion of my one hundredth birthday. And I direct my executor, Cornelius Waldman, to assemble those persons previously divulged to him, that they may hear
-
in my own voice
-
the final disposition of my property.

Waldman raised his eyes from the parchment.

The others exchanged glances, looking puzzled
.

The attorney then turned to his clerk, who was standing nearby, and nodded
.
The old man, Herr Falkstein, took a phonograph record from an attache case and carefully-very carefully-placed it on the turntable of an aged Victrola.

The nine drew in their breaths once more.

Herr Falkstein set the turntable spinning. Gingerly, he lowered the needle toward the record, then set it into a groove
.
A squawk of scratching came from the speaker
.
A second later, it was followed by the deep, resonant, majestic voice of Beaufort Frankenstein:

The once proud name of Frankenstein has been dragged by my only son, Victor, into an abyss of shame. There
was a time
when the name Frankenstein conjured dreams of virtue. Now, no misery can be found to equal mine. And the catalogue of sins of my once-devoted son will not cease to rankle in my wounds until death shall close them forever
-
so supremely frightful is the effect of any human endeavor to mock the Creator of the world.

The monologue was interrupted by a resumption of the scratching
.
After a moment, however, Beaufort's voice came through again
.
He was evidently speaking to a servant or an assistant.

Did you get all that? Are you sure you got "rankle in my wounds?" I'll kill you if you screw this up. All right, all right
-
get the hell out of the way. You're sure I'm close enough to this thing? All right, shut up!

Beaufort's voice, which had become shrill through the tirade, regained its majestic quality as he resumed the last will and testament:

To my cousins, Heinrich and Agatha . . . and to my cousin Walter and his wife, Ilse . . . and to my niece Helene . . . and my dear nephew, Wolfgang . . . and lastly to my cherished old bosom . . . My cherished old bosom friend, Marlene, and to her charming daughter
-

He addressed the servant or assistant again:

What did she finally name it after all that fuss?

The smallish voice of the assistant came in:

Anastasia.

And Beaufort continued once more:

-
daughter, Anastasia . . . to all of you, in equal shares, I hereby give absolutely and without any restrictions whatsoever, all property of every sort and description, whether real, personal or mixed, to which my estate shall be entitled.

Heinrich and Agatha threw their arms around each other in as vigorous a hug as they could manage at their advanced ages
.
Helene and her young man gripped each other's
h
ands tightly. Anastasia and her mother, Marlene, exchanged sly winks. Wolfgang, the nephew, about whom it was whispered that he was latent, hugged himself.

Then, the voice of Beaufort Frankenstein continued:

Unless
-

The hugging, the squeezing, the winking abruptly ceased
.
The heirs faced the Victrola again.

-unless . . . my only male heir, my great-grandson, Frederick, whom I have never seen but who is, at the time of this recording, ten years of age and residing in America with my granddaughter Kath-erine, has, by his own free will, embraced Medicine as his career, and has acquitted himself with some measure of esteem. Then, to him, I leave .
. .
EVERYTHING!

The heirs stared at the machine, stunned.

Heinrich spoke for all of them.
"Ach, mein Gott!"

"Sha! What's the matter with you?" his wife said. "He's probably not even a doctor
.
"

From the Victrola came the voice of Beaufort Frankenstein again:

My castle, together with its laboratory, its public and private library, plus all income and principal thereof
...
in the fond hope that yet another Frankenstein shall raise our family name to an eminence of dignity that it once enjoyed. As for my dear friends and relations, should this latter improbability come to be, I know that I have your complete understanding. For the path to salvation must be climbed up the barren mountain of my own soul, and not up yours.

The needle became stuck in the groove, and Beaufort began repeating and repeating his final words:

. . . up yours . . . up yours . . . up yours
. . .
up yours
...

Taking pity, Herr Falkstein lifted the needle from the record.

"Did you inform Frederick Frankenstein of this assembly and all the particulars of time and place?" the attorney asked his clerk.

"I did, sir," Herr Falkstein replied
.
He pulled a cablegram from his pocket. "But I received a reply only this morning, saying that he could not come."

"Was he aware of the importance of this occasion?" Waldman inquired
.

"Yes, sir, he was. But he said he was obligated to give a lecture."

Waldman peered at his clerk over the rims of his glasses. "What lecture could possibly be more important than the will of Baron Beaufort Frankenstein?"

Herr Falkstein consulted the cable. " 'Functional Areas of the Cerebrum in Relation to the Skull,'" he read.

The aged Heinrich collapsed, felled by the implications of Falkstein's statement.

"Excuse me, Mr. Waldman .. ." Helene said sweetly. "But, is Frederick, then ... a medical doc: