Chapter 8
That summer West busied himself with establishing a practice in Arkham. One of the first things he did was to look for a suitable location. After some searching he purchased a large lot on Boundary Street, close to St. Mary’s Hospital and incidentally not far from the potter’s field at Hangman’s Hill. When I asked whether this proximity was intentional, he replied, “Not really. But one never knows when it might be necessary to do a little digging.”
He immediately hired workmen to build a house with suitable premises for a physician, complete with consulting room, surgery and living quarters. “I shall live over the shop, Charles,” he said. “At first, anyway. It suits me perfectly to have everything in one place.
A few months later, West gave me a tour of the completed structure. “You must see the cellar first,” he insisted. The cellar looked unremarkable, even a little small, I thought, until West opened a door concealed by a set of shelves and escorted me into a modern laboratory. It was every bit as well-furnished as the one at the Medical School, where we had revivified Kid O’Brien.
“Father floated me a rather generous loan,” said West, “so I decided to have all this installed immediately. The workmen for this part were from Boston, and were paid extra for discretion. I expect to spend many productive hours here.”
At the end of a short hall was an iron door which proved to belong to an incinerator, of the latest and most efficient model, West reassured me. “The chimney runs underground and pops up in the middle of the shrubbery at the back of the property – just where one might expect rubbish to be burned.”
West’s living quarters on the second floor were also something of a revelation. He had disposed of most of the furniture from his old rooms, and had made several trips to Boston in the course of outfitting his new premises, and at least one to New York City. “The old stuff belonged to my grandfather, and was relegated to the attic when the Pater felt it was no longer worthy of him,” he said. “But I’ve kept some of the better pieces.”
We began with the sitting room. Near the fireplace, two sofas and a number of chairs and small tables formed a convivial group. At the far end of the room was a piano, its dark curving shape contrasting pleasingly with the rectilinear forms of the other pieces. On the near wall an old mirror gave back the scene in a watery, wavery reflection.
With the exception of a fine cabinet of inlaid woods in geometric patterns, the furniture was nearly all dark, plain and functional, both the familiar New England pieces from West’s grandfather and the more recent ones. The somberness was only slightly relieved by the white walls and ceiling, and a few touches of brilliant colour in the carpets, lamps and ornamental glass objects. On the mantel was a clock of ebony and silver, and a pair of silver candlesticks of elaborate and sinuous shape. The windows were uncurtained, but in each one hung a panel of leaded glass, clear and coloured, in graceful geometric patterns through which twined shapes of leaves and flowers, like vines on a trellis.
At first, I found it all rather oppressive, almost gloomy. Only when West moved past me into the centre of the room did I perceive that, consciously or not, he had created a perfect setting for himself. The effect, I thought then, was one of brilliance in darkness. With him as its focus the room was suddenly complete and balanced.
“It’s quite… impressive,” I said finally. “But I didn’t know you play the piano, Herbert.”
“I don’t,” he replied. “It was my mother’s. My father had no use for it, so I relieved him of it some years ago. It’s been in a warehouse since then. Now I can finally give it an appropriate home.”
The dining room was a pleasant surprise. Its walls featured panels painted in an abstract pattern in cream and various shades of yellow and green, reminiscent of reeds or papyrus. Here and there were fanciful golden flowers, and insects like dragonflies. The furniture was of golden oak, light and graceful with slightly curving lines. To my exclamations of admiration, West said only, “I hired someone to design this. An artistic French lady. At least, her name was French, but I have some doubts as to its authenticity. Her accent had a way of slipping over to this side of the Atlantic. But she did quite well with this room, I think.”
“She did indeed,” I said. “It puts me in mind of a sunny afternoon on a river. You will have to have some splendid dinners, Herbert, to do it justice.”
“First I need to hire a housekeeper.”
Once the incomparable Mrs. Fisk (as West called her) was found and installed, he set a date for his housewarming. He invited the few friends he had made at the Medical School, including several students and one or two faculty members who had been sympathetic to some of his ideas. He also invited me, and, surprisingly, Alma. I wondered whether this was merely a diplomatic gesture, a genuine attempt to establish cordial relations, or merely a quirk of fancy on West’s part. In any case, it was not put to the test, since she refused to go.
“I can’t,” she said to me, after writing a terse but polite note of refusal. “If things were different, I’d enjoy exchanging repartee with Mr. West. But right now, I’d either get angry and make a scene, or just feel alienated.” She made no objections to my attending, but I felt guilty nevertheless.
The dinner was quite a success. The meal was excellent and the wines equal to it. West’s gift for maintaining a conversation drew me into the mainly medically-oriented group. Naturally, our private research was never mentioned, but some of the things we had discussed over the years, such as the existence of the soul and the ethical aspects of research on human subjects, were thrashed out with enthusiasm.
West declared unequivocally that it was perfectly legitimate to use human beings as research material, provided that researchers adhered to standards. Individuals who are otherwise a drain on society, such as the insane and incorrigible criminals, would be ideal for the purpose, he said. I suspected that he was exaggerating for effect, and made no comment, although I did think fleetingly of John Hocks. One or two of the others responded, vigorously opposing what they called a barbaric notion.
“I hope for your sake, West, that if by some mischance you end up in the asylum or in jail, this idea of yours isn’t in force. Or would you consider it an instance of justice in action?” This provocative observation was made by John Billington, a young man in his final year of studies at the Medical School, and one of whom I had heard West speak highly several times.
West considered for a moment. “If the mischance, as you call it, was that of insanity or criminal behaviour, I suppose it would be justice. The question is whether it’s better for the state to keep such individuals incarcerated at public expense, in an utterly pointless existence, or to employ them for the greater good. I would rather be experimented upon for a few weeks and mercifully dispatched, than imprisoned for endless years.”
Billington did not appear convinced. “I wonder if you would change your mind if it really came to that point, West,” he said, looking serious. Then he smiled, saying, “But it’s not likely to happen. I’ve never known anyone as hard-headed as you, and as for the law, I think you know how to elude it.” A general laugh followed this comment, and the conversation turned to other things. But I did not laugh. A shadow had fallen over me, and it took nearly the rest of the evening for me to shake it off.
Over the next several months, West’s practice attracted a rather diverse clientele, which included faculty from Miskatonic and some of the burghers of Arkham. Most of his patients were drawn from the immigrant population of neighbouring Bolton. The Arkhamites were attracted primarily by curiosity about the young man who had so discomfited the eminent Dean of Medicine. Those who found West’s doctoring style congenial remained; the rest drifted away. The people from Bolton, I suspected, had heard some rumour of the young doctor who had been present at a prizefight nearly two years before, who had spoken Italian and had come to the aid of Tony Abruzzo. They were mainly farm and factory workers, and their illnesses and ailments were of the crude variety common among such folk.
There were also occasional spectacular injuries such as that which had killed Albert Whidbey. Knife wounds, too, were not uncommon, incurred when passions were fueled by drink. West, as it turned out, preferred dealing with such repairs.
“I’m good at cutting and stitching,” he said to me one evening when I had dropped by for a visit, “so the Bolton patients have confidence in me. The worthies of Arkham, on the other hand…” He laughed. “I suppose I lack the proper ‘bedside manner.’ I admit that I have little tolerance for people of privilege whose principal ailments are boredom and an inability to make up their minds.
“I’m no disciple of Drs. Freud or Jung, Charles. I do best with visible wounds and injuries. If there is nothing I can do, no treatment or drug that I can administer, I say so, and suggest that the individual try someone else. There are plenty of men, self-styled psychoanalysts, ready to listen ad infinitum to self-indulgent maunderings, charging a hefty hourly fee besides.”
It soon appeared that West was destined for a surgical specialty. Several other Arkham doctors had called him in on difficult cases. His reputation was further enhanced by a terrible accident in which a train had struck an automobile at a crossing. One of the motorists had been killed outright, but the other two survived, largely, it appeared, through the efforts of young Dr. West.
Socially, young Dr. West was not much more available than Herbert West the medical student had been, despite the demand for his presence at social functions. He was hardly the heroic type, being rather slight and of no more than medium height, but he held himself and moved in such a way as to suggest that his was the most desirable size for a man, and that larger fellows were labouring under a handicap. He had clear-cut features, blond hair, a smile of extraordinary sweetness and remarkable grey eyes. The gold-rimmed spectacles he usually wore enhanced rather than detracted from his elegant appearance. Finally, he was known to be wealthy, and there clung to him an aura of danger and rakishness, resulting from the dubious reputations of his father and brothers, and, of course, from the Commencement Day Incident.
Whether West’s practice absorbed the greater part of his energies, or whether his enthusiasm for revivification waned in the face of indifferent success, we did fewer experiments in the new premises than we had in the dank little room in the hospital. I was not particularly sorry. My doubts as to the value of our work and its ethical ramifications persisted, but I did not often voice them.
I knew he was engaged in experiments besides the revivifications. There was a room in the cellar laboratory that remained locked. When I asked him about it, West made its status clear.
“Those experiments may prove to be even more important, in the end, than my revivification work. But they are not at a stage where I am prepared to discuss them. Even with you, Charles.”
He gestured toward a stack of notebooks piled on his desk. “I’ve gone over all the data,” he said, “and I think I’ve reached the limit of what I can learn given my current methods. I have some ideas for improving the revivifying fluid, but they need further testing. The primary difficulty is the availability of subjects.
“I’ve concluded that it’s possible successfully to revivify a corpse only within a limited time after death. Twelve hours or less. Less than six, really, if one expects any kind of cognitive ability to remain. As you know, in all our morgue cases, I made note of the time that had elapsed between death and the revivification attempt. This graph,” he waved a sheet of paper at me, “shows a clear correlation between that and the success of the attempt, expressed in time between revivification and final death, qualified by other factors, such as ability to articulate. Our most successful case to date was O’Brien. It’s too bad he was such a violently disposed individual. If you hadn’t had to kill him he might have proved very interesting.”
“But Herbert,” I said, “what about John Hocks?”
“Ah yes, John Hocks.. You know, Charles, I’ve thought a great deal about Hocks. All the evidence now points to the strong possibility that Hocks wasn’t dead when they buried him.”
“What?”
“It’s the only explanation that fits. He revived beautifully. He was articulate, or at least he probably was. We didn’t exactly get a chance to interview him, if you recall. Comparing him to the morgue specimens, I think he had died well within the twelve hour period. Since he was buried before noon on the day we exhumed him, he must have lain in that coffin alive for several hours, at least.”
Like most people, I was horrified at the notion of premature burial. “Perhaps he wasn’t dead at all, ever. Maybe he was alive when we… did the experiment, and that’s why he – ”
“No chance. Not at all. Charles, I know how to check for vital signs. There were none. He was dead. But it hadn’t been thirty-six hours, as I first thought. Eight or ten is more likely. You may even be right – premature burial may have predisposed him to violence in some way. He must have died slowly of asphyxiation, rather than quickly by drowning. Ironic, isn’t it, that our first two experiments should have been our most successful.”
“So you think we need fresher specimens.” By now I used his euphemisms without a second thought.
“Exactly. In revivification, as in cookery, freshness is all. I am sorry to conclude that the opportunity to reverse death is so limited. But at least it gives me a clear direction for future efforts.”
“Well, surely that should be no trouble now. What about your patients – those who are close to death, I mean?”
If I had thought to shock West with this callous suggestion, I was disappointed. “Don’t suppose I haven’t thought of that,” he said. “But on analysis, there are a number of reasons why patients, of the ordinary sort anyway, are no good for my purposes. You must agree that anyone who dies of a lengthy illness is not going to be a good candidate for revivification.”
I did, with a shudder. These had been some of our most repulsive specimens. Only West’s resolve had kept me from mutiny a couple of times.
“Second, patients rarely drop dead in their doctor’s office. If they’re well enough to arrive there on their own feet, they usually leave by the same means. If they need to be carried in, those who do the carrying usually stay to await results. Most often, people die at home or in the hospital. In both situations there are other people about and procedures that must be followed. By the time the body is left where we can get at it, too much time has passed. So despite my improved facilities, I am as handicapped as ever when it comes to suitable subjects. Now if I could grow them myself…” He broke off, with a laugh.
“Have you ever considered soliciting a volunteer? You know – ask someone to sign a statement that if they are ever killed in an accident, their body goes to you for scientific purposes.”
“Now that is a good idea, Charles.” West got up and began to pace, as he always did when excited. “A very good idea. It would have to be done carefully – the right sort of person, the right sort of approach. And there would be all sorts of noise from men like Halsey if word got out – indignation at the vulgarity of it, and so on. It would have to be someone strong-minded, too, not to be dissuaded by interfering busybodies. The trouble is, of course, that even if I were to find several prospective… donors, I couldn’t count on any one of them being available at a given time, if ever. I can’t expect people to kill themselves on my account.” Suddenly, he struck the desk with his hand.
“Damn it, if only there was a sure way of getting the right sorts of subjects! I’m keen to start testing the improved formula, but there’s no use wasting time on morgue denizens. It looks as though the only choices I have are to resign myself to taking much longer than I ever imagined, or – ”
“Or what?”
“Why, engage in more illegal activities, of course.” He smiled. “Don’t panic, Charles. I’m not sure just what form they would take as yet. But I’ll think of something.
“What we really need,” he added, “is a war.”
At the beginning of the new year, I
took Alma to New York City. I had planned and saved for this trip since the previous summer. Since I was not prepared to give up my association with West for Alma’s sake, I sought for ways to compensate for it. In no way did she expect compensation. I hoped that she would not recognize it for what it was, but I thought she was happy to be distracted.
I wanted the trip to be a memorable one. To this end I had been assiduous in my economies, and had amassed enough of a surplus to go first class. We stayed at the Waldorf-Astoria on 34th Street. Alma wanted to pay for her own room, but I overbore her. “This was my idea, and it’s my treat, all the way. If you don’t agree, we might as well turn around and go back to Arkham.”
“All right, Charles,” she laughed with some of her old lightheartedness. “Be the masterful man, if that’s what you want. Just don’t expect me to be putty in your hands.”
The fall and early winter had been difficult for Alma. Despite her modern ideas, it is not easy in a place like Arkham to dissociate oneself from family scandals, especially for women. Several friends had dropped her outright. Others had asked questions under the guise of friendly concern that were clearly attempts to satisfy prurient curiosity. She had not spoken much of these things, but I often saw weariness and sorrow in her face, and she had grown thinner. I hoped these few days away would lift her spirits.
We were fortunate in the weather, which was cold but clear. At Alma’s insistence we walked through the streets of Manhattan, looking into shops, buying food from street vendors, stopping at cafes and watching the crowds pass by. We made up stories about the people we saw. It was as though the city was a huge entertainment put on exclusively for us.
Later, in a hired carriage we toured around Central Park, watching the snow under the trees turn to that exquisite shade of blue that it assumes as a winter day changes into night. “Do you suppose this is why they call it ‘l’heure bleu’ in France?” asked Alma.
“I wouldn’t have thought they get enough snow there,” I replied. “But it certainly fits, doesn’t it?”
As the soft blueness deepened into night, I kissed her, first with tenderness, then with passion. “Let’s go back to the hotel,” she said.
I had arranged for a bottle of champagne to be delivered to Alma’s room. We drank a toast to the New Year, and to each other. Then we went to bed.
This was the first time I had spent an entire night with Alma. In Arkham our need for discretion had caused me always to leave before dawn. Blissfully realizing this time that there was no need to go, I watched Alma sleeping beside me, a look of peace on her face, and felt a rush of tenderness. Enough of this limbo existence, I thought. Tell West to find himself another assistant. He doesn’t really need you anyway. Marry Alma and get on with life. But later, this seemed only a dream I had had.
The following day we toured the Metropolitan Museum of Art, galleries and bookshops, where each of us found things to delight the other. How well I remember Alma coming over to me, eyes shining, leading me by the arm to some painting, saying, “Come here, Charles, you must see this, it’s just the sort of thing you’d love…” And most of the time it was.
That evening we went to the Metropolitan Opera – Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, with Geraldine Farrar and Giovanni Martinelli, Toscanini conducting. I had procured the tickets from my mother’s New York relatives, who were subscribers. My hints became something like pleas as the weeks went by. Finally I received a letter saying that my cousins would be out of the country for part of the winter, and I could attend a performance in their place.
For a couple of provincials, Alma and I were rather well turned out. She wore a dark blue dress which clung to her figure, decorated with an intricate design in small shiny beads, a long velvet coat and matching hat. In addition to formal evening wear, I was decked out in a cape and silk top hat. These items belonged to West. He had pressed them upon me when he heard of this expedition.
“I have just what you need, Charles. Don’t imagine you can get away with that shapeless tweed object you call a coat. That will only confirm what those NYC parvenus think of us parsimonious Yankees.” He went into his bedroom and returned moments later with the cape. “I wore this to the Met. myself, once,” he said, “to a performance of Faust.”
It was, of course, black, but this was the only sober thing about it. The garment was cut so as to swirl about the wearer’s ankles (calves, in my case, since I was nearly half a head taller than West). There were small lead weights sewn into the hem to exaggerate the effect of one’s movements, West explained. The lining was of peacock blue silk. He made me put it on and take a turn around the room.
“No, no, no! You don’t clump in a garment like this. Here, let me show you.” He put the thing on and demonstrated the trick of the quick turn that made for a dramatic swirl and flash of blue. On West it looked entirely natural, but I resolved not to bother.
“You look magnificent, Charles!” Alma exclaimed as I met her in the lobby of our hotel. “Quite the man of the world.”
I admitted that my finery was borrowed, and from whom. “Well, he does have good taste in clothes,” she said. “I’ve never said otherwise.”
Our seats were rather good ones, in the centre of the balcony. “Oh, it’s like being inside a chocolate box!” said Alma, as we entered the maroon and gold splendour of the auditorium. We chatted about our surroundings and the opulently dressed people we saw entering the private boxes, but as the time neared for the performance to begin, we fell silent with anticipation.
From the first notes of the orchestral prelude, something felt wrong between us, rather like the disjoint situation in the first act of the drama, in which Butterfly’s delusion about her marriage is so pathetically obvious. During the great love duet, I took Alma’s hand in mine, and felt a closeness to her such as I had experienced at other concerts. But as the story darkened I felt her withdraw from me, gently yet inexorably.
During the tragic aria ‘Un bel di,’ in which the heroine’s confident words are belied by the agitation of the vocal line, I reached once more for Alma’s hand. She acquiesced briefly, with a little pressure, then drew away. I looked at her face, expecting perhaps to see her moved to tears, and uncomfortable with it, but she sat rapt and dry-eyed. Not until near the end of the opera, when Butterfly sings the arioso passage beginning ‘Sotto il gran parte del cielo?’ in which she agrees to give up her child, did Alma acknowledge my presence. Suddenly she turned toward me and I could see that her eyes were full of tears.
Afterward, we had a late supper at a restaurant near Times Square. Alma remained serious and a little subdued. More than once she said something about the prevalence in the opera of the idea that women must pay a heavy price for love. “It seems almost a choice between life with a man, or life itself,” she mused. “Think of that aria – one fine day when he returns everything will be beautiful. Until that day she is in limbo. Nothing else is as important as him, not even her child. She postpones happiness until his return, and when he doesn’t return to her, she chooses death.”
“But Alma, this is opera, not a prescription for life,” I protested. “You’re supposed to experience the tragedy vicariously, with your emotions excited by the gorgeous music. It’s meant to make you feel, not think.”
“Well, I’m sorry, Charles, but I have this habit of thinking. Actually, I admit I’ve allowed my personal thoughts about life to colour my enjoyment of the evening. You must forgive me, and know that I am grateful to you for taking me.”
After this I could see that she was making an effort to resume her old lively style of conversation, but the very fact of the effort made me unhappy. And I myself kept pushing away the nagging idea that the character I most resembled was the less than admirable B.F. Pinkerton.
Fog swirled through the streets as we made our way back to the hotel. I drew Alma close to me, and was glad that she did not resist. That part, at least, of our relationship was intact. But even in the depths of the night, as we sought one another with the
passion that renews itself always, I realized that the theme of the evening had changed to one of endingness.
In the years that have passed since that time I have often thought about Alma. I think now that in my youthful ignorance I misjudged her, especially at the vulnerable time that followed the downfall of her father. I think that if I had asked her then to marry me she would have agreed, after a token refusal or two. She must have thought that the trip to New York, and my insistence on paying for everything, was preliminary to a proposal. When none materialized she must have resolved to rely only on herself.
Some weeks after this I received an urgent summons from West. Expecting that he had managed to obtain what he would no doubt call ‘suitable experimental material,’ I promptly made my way to his house. To my surprise, I found that I was going to be given a course in laboratory work.
“Two developments, Charles,” said West, as we descended to the cellar. “First, I’ve come up with a way to stabilize the fluid, so it is now possible to make it in quantity for future use. Second, I have no time right now to do that myself, so I must prevail upon you.”
Everything about the situation bothered me, from the peremptory nature of the summons, to West’s terse manner, to his assumption that I was available to do this work, whatever it involved.
“What makes you think I can do it at all? From what you’ve told me, it needs a lot of precise measuring and fiddling. I know next to nothing about chemistry. And anyway, why can’t you do it, since it’s so important?”
“For a good reason, and quite delightfully ironic, in fact. I’ll be back at Miskatonic for a while, not as a student, but as an instructor. How things change, eh?”
West had been recommended by the influential Dr. Bright to the Acting Dean of the Medical School (replacing Allan Halsey, who was still on leave) as a possible clinical instructor, because of his growing reputation as a surgeon. When an unexpected vacancy had come up, he had been offered a temporary appointment.
“And I want to do it, Charles. I have some innovative techniques I want to pass along to the younger fellows. No, not experimental, merely improvements on the standard methods.
“But you can see how this constricts my time,” he continued. “There are my regular patients, my hospital patients, my research and now this. It’s probably just as well good subjects are so scarce these days. But I want to build up a stock of the fluid, so we have plenty on hand when the need arises. Also, I use it in some of my other work.” He said this last in a manner that I knew well enough to interpret as, “Don’t ask, because I’m not going to tell you.”
“All right, Herbert, but how on earth do you expect me to manage? Do you have a recipe, like in a cooking-book? I might remind you I know almost nothing about that either.”
“Oh I know that. I’ve set everything up for you. Here’s your recipe, if you like,” he said, showing me several sheets of paper covered with his spiky handwriting, and some sketches as well.
“And here are the ingredients, on this shelf. You will see that I’ve labelled the various components by letters and numbers, not by what they actually are. That makes it simpler for you, and should anyone come prowling around, it’s just as well that everything is in code.”
He explained the procedure, repeating the parts I did not understand, until I could demonstrate to his satisfaction that I could competently carry out the weighing and measuring, mixing, heating and decanting. The trickiest part of the process was at the end, when one liquid was added drop by drop to another until a reaction took place, and the fluid changed to the characteristic violet colour.
“One drop too many and it’s all over,” said West. “That’s why I do it in this rather fiddly way, with the burette and everything. I haven’t yet found a way to achieve good results by straight measurement. There are too many variables such as temperature and humidity. But I can’t emphasize too much the need to keep your wits about you at that stage.”
“What happens if I put in too much? Does it go a different colour? And what would be the effect – on the experiment, I mean?”
“No, you wouldn’t see a colour difference. And as for the effect, it would overwhelm the mechanism. The subject would revive, all right, but in a short time the heart would start to race, and literally explode. Given the scarcity of good corpses, I wouldn’t want that to happen.
“Now, how about if you make the next batch by yourself? I’ll observe and let you know if you do anything wrong.”
So it was that I became West’s unpaid lab assistant, as well as his accomplice in grave-robbing, illegal transport of corpses and experimentation. For several months, I spent a considerable number of evenings in his laboratory. I don’t know whether the chemicals I worked with had some subtle effect on me, but after cooking up two or three batches of the stuff, I felt strangely restless. Once I went to Alma in this state, but after an hour of my overstimulated company she asked me to leave, disturbed by my inability to stop talking or to stay in one place for more than five minutes. After this I made a point of avoiding her on these nights, and found other means of dealing with the strange urgency, namely long walks followed by writing reams of poetry fit only for burning the next day.
The main room of West’s laboratory was about twenty feet square, containing a dissection table rather like those in the Medical School’s Pathology Laboratory. In addition there were the usual fittings – lab bench, sink, bunsen burners, microscopes. Along one wall were shelves and cupboards containing glassware and other implements, as well as a variety of chemicals. Next to these was a narrow door leading to the annexe, in which West worked on his other experiments. It was always locked. I knew this because I checked.
One night I was preparing to brew up yet another batch of what I privately called Dr. West’s Magic Elixir. It had been brought to my attention that the supply was running low. “How can that be?” I exclaimed, only half-jokingly. “There were three flasks just a few days ago, after you had me do that marathon session on Saturday. What do you do with the stuff, drink it?”
West had a trick of slightly widening those grey eyes of his to express varying emotions, from surprise to disbelief to a certain amusement. But it could also mean exasperation, even anger, as on this occasion. “What do you think?” he asked. “I’ve told you, I use it in some of my other work – important work which I shall tell you about in due time. Now I’m off to the hospital. I should be back in a couple of hours. Two litres ought to do it.”
An hour later I had prepared one litre of the violet coloured fluid. I gazed at the stuff in its flask. It was a very strange colour, somehow shifting in intensity, even appearing slightly iridescent. This was very curious, because the two liquids that were combined to produce it were clear as water, until some exact proportion was attained, when the transformation occurred. “Organic molecules,” West had said. I wondered for the fiftieth time how this substance worked. What did it do inside the dead arteries, the dead heart, to make a corpse breathe and move and speak again, however briefly? Knowing nothing much about physiology, and in absolute ignorance of the constituents of the liquid, I could not begin to guess. For me, the business came down to faith – faith in Herbert West. I sometimes fancied that the fluid itself actually had very little effect, that it was merely a medium for West’s will, which was the force that actually brought about the transformation.
I began the process all over again for the second litre. West had explained that it was not possible simply to ‘double the recipe,’ because of the precision required in some of the steps. I was weighing some powders when I discovered that there was an insufficient quantity of one of them. The stock jar, carefully labelled, was on one of the higher shelves nearby.
I must have been careless in positioning the ladder, for as I reached the next to highest rung and shifted my weight in order to reach the jar I needed, it slipped. So quickly did everything happen then that I had no chance to grab at something to save myself. This was just as well, since the only possible
thing I could have grabbed was the shelves, which would have brought them and the heavy glass jars they supported down on top of me. I fell, striking my head glancingly on the edge of the porcelain-topped table. I must have been unconscious before I reached the floor.
I was insensible for a long time, as such things go – half an hour at least, West thought later. But for all I knew, it might have been millennia, during which humanity died, and the sun burned away, and the earth as we know it was consumed. The universe itself may have ceased to exist and been formed anew from primordial dust. My return to consciousness was like being born, a hard and painful birth. I came to myself through a rushing blackness that was sickening in the extreme. When it was over, I knew I was lying on my back, although I could see nothing and did not know where I was. There was an awareness of I and not-I, but that was all.
Then a terrible knowledge overwhelmed me. I was in West’s laboratory, on the table, and West, not knowing I was still alive, was preparing to revivify me. I could feel his quick cool fingers unfastening my collar, touching my neck. Something cold pressed against my chest and I heard a metallic clink. I struggled to cry out, to move, to open my eyes, but to no avail. In a moment, I knew, I would feel the searing pain of the scalpel opening my neck, and the hollow needle would slide into my vein. What would happen then? Had West ever injected the fluid into a living body? Would it kill me? “It excites the vital processes,” he had said once when I asked him how the stuff worked. I envisioned my heart racing to the point where it burst – hemorrhage, apoplexy, death. My eyes opened suddenly, and I screamed.
Or at least, I thought I screamed, but emitted only a convulsive gasp. West was bending over me, but I saw no scalpel in his hand. He did not speak, but a curious collection of expressions passed over his features. I saw relief, yes, but only after a kind of thwarted excitement and – I was sure of it – disappointment.
“Well, Charles,” he said at length, “it seems you’ll live, but you have a lump the size of an egg on the back of your head. No, don’t try to get up just yet. I have to do some things first.”
He shone a light into my eyes and watched my pupils contract. He pinched my extremities and asked whether I could feel it. He asked me various things about myself, and, when the answers seemed to satisfy him, helped me to my feet. I felt only slightly dizzy, so West suggested we go up to his living quarters, where he settled me on a sofa.
“I came home about nine o’clock and found you on the floor,” he said. “You were in quite a deep state of unconsciousness. You’ve had a concussion, certainly. If you had hit that table just a little differently, I think you would be dead.”
“Surely no, Herbert,” I said, voicing the thing that had been in my mind ever since I regained consciousness. “Surely by now I would have been on the way to my second life.”
“You know me too well, Charles.” He looked directly into my eyes and said, “Yes, if you had died, it would have been an almost ideal situation – a freshly dead body, as the result of an accident. Except that head cases don’t make the best subjects. But already in the lab, too! Entirely the act of friendship I would have expected from you.”
“But how do I know it didn’t happen? Maybe I’ve been dead, and am now the first person to have been successfully revivified.”
“Sadly, no. If that had been the case you would have found yourself on the table, not on the floor. And instead of bringing you up here and giving you tea I would have been busy gathering data and making notes.”
“Coming back to consciousness was dreadful,” I said, shuddering. “It really did feel like what I’ve imagined those corpses must go through – a kind of tearing of the fabric of reality, and utter helplessness. Like birth in reverse. But really, for a while there I was sure you thought I was dead and were getting ready to pump me full of fluid. And I had a batch all ready, too. Before I was finally able to see and speak I was certain you were going to cut my neck open and stick a needle in.”
“Now, Charles, if I know nothing else I can certainly tell whether someone is dead or not. You were breathing, and I had no trouble finding a pulse.”
“But you would have done it, if I had been dead,” I persisted.
“Yes, I would have. It would have been criminal of me not to have made the attempt. Consider, if I had not, if I had merely done the expected thing – reported an accidental death and let the machinery take over, you would be dead now, and would stay that way. But if I had used you as a subject, there’s a chance you would be, well, less than dead now.”
“Less than dead. That’s about how I feel, all right. I don’t think I’m up to making up that second litre. I’d probably mess it up.”
“That’s all right. Go home and sleep. I’ll make up the second batch, and maybe more. I’ll be up late anyway.”
I made my way homeward, still feeling shaky. I was glad to get away from him. His reasoning had been entirely logical, but its coldness repelled me. It disturbed me that I could make the transition from friend to experimental subject in the length of time it took him to do an examination for vital signs. And there was another thing. Between the look of disappointment I had seen on his face when my eyes opened and the look of relief that followed had been an expression of utterly cold calculation.
The Friendship of Mortals Page 9