‘Hi, dearest,’ said Martha. ‘Just brought this young Englishman along for a visit with you. He’s given me something you ought to see. Here. Ain’t she just the prettiest?’
She had ridden right up to the glass screen and spoke, leaning forward to it, her lips almost touching it, as if she were addressing a cashier in a bank or a prisoner on visiting day. Her voice still twanged, but had a softer note to it. He realized she was actually expecting the phantom beyond the glass to respond to her. She began a prattling voice-over commentary to the locket held open towards the glass:
‘Here’s a mighty pretty little face for you to see. And this young Englishman here has his proof. Just look at that pretty face. Well, you know how much I regretted not having any pretty child myself. Now ain’t this just what we were talking about? I know, I know. I promised. I said if there’s a direct blood line, well, I’ll find it. And this young man, this Joseph Richter, he is the one we need!’
Would the figure on the other side of the glass turn its head? Joe strained his eyes to see. Maybe the head was turning. He could not be certain. Martha started her twanging prattle again.
‘Yeah, Mr Kamen’s been such a help. And Washington. Sure, I’ll fix things. I’ll fix all that. Just you take a close peek! Ain’t that just…’
With a sudden jerk from the wheelchair she purred her way back from the glass. Although she gave the impression of having taken exception to something, whether heard or not Joe could not tell, he was so distracted by the jerk of the wheelchair that he took his eyes off the figure on the other side of the glass and concentrated instead on her. She was again clutching her chest. Even so, she went on talking, her voice husky now and interrupted by short rasping coughs.
‘Just you don’t worry now. I’ll make sure there’s no chance…’ a cough ‘…of blackmail. This Englishman here, he’s seen the material. Didn’t you say that, Englishman?’
Joe cleared his throat. ‘The letters are burnt.’
‘What’s that?’
‘The letters are burnt. I saw it happen.’
Another cough. ‘You saw what?’
‘They’re all ashes.’
‘Ashes! Why that’s…’ She looked up at him, the lower lipstick-thin line of her thin mouth beginning to quiver before she coughed, spluttered and swept herself back again right up to the glass, only for Joe to notice with horror that the figure’s head had turned and was now peering out at her. ‘Did you hear that?’ she shrieked. ‘The old stuff’s burnt! It’s ashes! So they’ll never know!’ She held up the locket again. ‘Ain’t she just the prettiest? Take a good look!’
The good look meant that the face was now fully turned, its expression stony, the eyes scarcely more than little glints in the otherwise chalky features, but the fact that this phantom or ghostly presence had responded to her cries elated Martha as much as it horrified and disgusted Joe. To go prattling to such a contrivance was for him morbidly self-deluding. He supposed that for her it was a pitiful substitute for religious solace, for prayer and the hope of divine intercession. In her elation, she turned back to him.
‘Can’t you see?’ She spoke with defiant harshness, followed by a little cough. ‘He’s watching you, young man! He’s sizing you up!’ Another cough. ‘When he’s good and ready he’ll make you some sign. It’s always the way he is at first.’
‘He’s dead! He’s a ghost!’
Why he shouted this puzzled him. It was completely spontaneous. Although he felt repelled by this hideous necromancy, he had no wish to be rude. The words had burst out of him in a fit of justifiable anger at becoming involved in this charade. He had also wanted to show that he at least still retained some grip on sanity.
She ignored him. She directed all her attention at the figure. It was at this point that a pricking sensation began at the back of Joe’s neck. His shouts had brought a charged atmosphere to the relatively confined space of the marble chamber. Apart from his shouting out what he supposed was the truth, he felt himself now deliberately excluded and mistrusted by Martha. With her attention now so concentrated, he naturally found his gaze also drawn to the figure beyond the glass.
Had the angle of the head altered? Had a fiercer, more animate glitter entered the wells of the eyes? He felt these could be tricks of lighting. What he was not prepared for was a sense of the figure’s gaze turning towards him in response to his own. For an instant he fought back any idea that he could actually be witnessing some movement. Logic, reason itself protested at such playing upon his senses. Then not only did the pricking sensation become more pronounced, a wave of chill horror crept over the skin of his skull. He was no longer mistaken. As if a loaded gun were being pointed at him, the figure was now upright in front of him, its right hand slowly lifting itself and the fingers crisping into a fist. A gesture of some kind was being directed at him through the glass. The eyes were glittering. He was certain for a moment he was witnessing Lenin on the point of addressing crowds, hurling revolutionary slogans to the workers of the world. Then he found himself confronted by his own disbelief. He was the disbeliever, he was the cheat, his own arm raised against the truth staring him in the face! The impossible was real, death was defied! He drew breath into his lungs in sharp gulps, aware that the glass partition separating them was too fragile a thing to stop whatever power it was that existed on the other side from breaking out of its confinement.
Then Martha spoke. ‘Oh, he’s no ghost! My Robert used to take him places! Show him how the world had changed. He took him to Washington once, Robert did. Showed ’em at the White House. Here, young man. Put it round your neck.’ She was holding the locket towards him. ‘You gotta…’
He saw what she wanted him to do. She pointed to a seat he had not seen earlier. It was placed to one side of the glass partition. He was instructed to sit in it and place the locket against the glass while at the same time pressing his chest against it.
‘Go on! Do it!’
Still mesmerised as he was by the glittering eyes, he did as she demanded. He was feeling more than ever certain that he had lost all willpower. So he seated himself, looped the cord round his neck and pressed the locket against the glass. As soon as he did this, he realized he was trapped. The chair’s back pushed hard into his spine. It pushed him powerfully and awkwardly forward so that he was forced to turn his head to one side and flatten his cheek against the glass. There then began a process he was never able to describe with any certainty later. He could feel his own vitality being sucked from him by the glass itself. It seemed to slowly overpower all the natural resistance he could offer. Air was literally being drawn out of his lungs, making the effort of breathing an intense struggle. He felt glued to where he was by the combination of the chair’s growing pressure to his back and the suction from the icy wall against which he was being held. Worse, though, was the sharply drilling pain accompanying each heartbeat. He was being turned, he realized, into the equivalent of a human life-support machine. The figure beyond the glass was now seemingly revived. It was addressing him, the mouth moving in apparent orotund eloquence though quite silently while the head turned from side to side to the accompaniment of strong, emphatic gestures. It was too much. Joe knew he was going to lose consciousness. A sickening weakness in the stomach brought a coldness to every limb. He went totally limp.
Whether or not it was Martha’s doing or his own instantaneous revival from such limpness, he could not be sure, but suddenly he found the pressure against his back had lessened. He pulled the locket away from the glass, thrust the chair back, staggered to his feet, took in as many deep breaths as he could and dashed from the chamber in an initial staggering rush that forced him pinball-like against a couple of out-jutting marble walls. Then he was out in the corridor and running.
His quick footfalls echoed like explosions pursuing him down what was at first sight the long narrow confining barrel of a gun. He had to run and run and run. He ran from one pool of light to another. Nothing would drag him back to that madness.<
br />
He had seen with his own eyes what no one should ever see!
He was fleeing from that knowledge. He could never again doubt that there was resurrection, there was immortality, there was a continuously evolving cycle to all life, just as the earth revolved and the stars in their systems and the galaxies in their millennial movements. He had caught a mad, horrific, instantaneous, paradoxical glimpse of life’s secret meaning.
As he approached the end of the corridor, puffing hard, his head back, pushing himself against an invisible wall of water, he saw the doors to the elevator were closed and there appeared to be no way of escape. To his astonishment they drew apart when he came within arms’ length of them. He did what Martha had done once he stepped into the cabin and placed the locket in the small mailbox-shaped fixture. Turning round for a second or so, he saw the length of the empty corridor down which he had just run. It was like looking down a huge mineshaft driven into the centre of the earth. There was no distant figure in a wheelchair. The corridor was empty, an enormously elongated tomb. Then the doors swept together like the palms of hands offering some soundless applause. The same quivering accompanied the elevator’s silent ascent. He gasped, his chest bursting, barely able to lean against the cabin sides. Sweat was pouring down his face. He pulled the locket out.
Before he could properly catch his breath, the doors were again opening and he was gaping at the expanse of red carpet in the vast throne room. He knew he would have to cross that if he were to escape by the way he had come. There would be guards of course and he doubted very much whether Martha would permit him to leave even if he could satisfy his own conscience that he had done what she asked him. He stepped out of the elevator. At that moment a solicitous, Jeeves-like voice intoned softly behind him:
‘May I be permitted to enquire, sir, where the mistress is?’
It was the middle-aged man. The voice made Joe jump. He saw he was standing half-hidden beside the large consol.
‘She’s with her… her… her late father-in-law.’
‘Yes, of course, sir. I take it, sir, you…’
‘I’m looking for a way out.’
Joe collected his senses at once and made a determined effort to appear in charge, but exhaustion proved too much and he fell limply into the chair he had been sitting in earlier. He told himself he had to make the effort to start across the red carpet if he were to escape. Equally certainly he knew he would have to give himself time to rest. He sat gasping for a few seconds. Then he recognised who it was.
‘My God, you’re Harlow!’
The exclamation was breathy and faint. He had a handkerchief out and was wiping his face.
‘Yes, sir, you are correct.’
‘Why the hell are you here?’
‘I am employed by Mr Goncharov.’
‘Goncharov!’
‘Yes, sir, Mr Goncharov is now the major shareholder in HazelltronE Electronics Inc., sir. He owns this place and is preparing to live here.’
This took a moment to absorb. ‘But Martha,’ Joe objected, ‘she’s the owner!’
‘Yes, sir, the lady you refer to is mistress pro tem. Did she say she would be long?’
‘She was, er, with her late father-in-law, as I said. But surely, I mean, she’s…’
‘I think you mean, sir, she was, in a manner of speaking, engaged in communing with the deceased gentleman down below? Could one put it like that?’
Joe paused. ‘I suppose, yes…Look, Harlow, what the hell are we talking about? You were there in Courtier Street, weren’t you!’ He sprang to his feet and confronted the doll-like glassy eyes of this gentleman’s gentleman, raising his voice in a sudden spurt of anger. ‘Did you hit Ronald Salisbury and steal my laptop? You were telling me that your employer wanted to see me, but when I went back to Ronald Salisbury’s flat you or someone had been in there and…’
‘Forgive me, sir, no,’ Harlow interrupted. ‘You are incorrect.’ He had raised a hand. ‘No, sir, I was merely conveying a request from Mr Goncharov. He was in London for ten days after business negotiations here and wished to see you before returning to Los Angeles. I have no knowledge of a Mr Salisbury or what may have happened to him. You are mistaken, sir!’ He had adopted a self-righteously offended air of denial that returned Joe’s angry stare with a look of slightly ironic, if injured, fortitude. ‘Most definitely not, sir. But may I be permitted to enquire whether there was any sign today?’
‘Sign?’
‘Any movement, sir? A movement of one of the limbs, sir?’
Joe sat down, frowning with resentment. He was being given a run-around. Old Believers, he thought. Reluctantly he admitted there had been movement.
‘An arm, sir?’
‘Yes.’
‘Very gratifying that, sir.’
‘I see.’
‘Yes, sir, very gratifying because it was her late husband’s greatest achievement, you know.’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘He merely built on what they had already, of course. I mean, sir, the groundwork for their wealth was the legacy inherited by his grandmother. She came out here to California in the very early 1900s. I believe the legacy was modest but it allowed for the purchase of real estate, you see, and prospecting rights and all sorts of valuable assets. A very shrewd lady. And then her grandson, well, he became a very, very rich man! Very, very rich indeed!’
Joe could not be sure how to react to this elegantly spoken and rather reverend account. In the manner of all devoted servants Harlow no doubt, even though only a recent employee, took an almost covetous interest in the wealth of his employers and basked a little in their grandeur. It seemed wrong to the point of tastelessness to criticize or even cast doubt on the fact that here was true distinction in the annals of capitalist empire building. As for his own horror at what he had just seen, Joe bit his lip at having perhaps been too hasty in his judgement.
‘Are you saying that the gentleman down below, as you put it, is just an experiment, a sort of invention?’
‘Oh, no, sir.’ The suggestion was riposted with a show of mild Jeeves-like dignity. ‘No, sir, I am not saying that. He, the gentleman down below, er, passed on at a very young age, you see, but is now – how can I put it? – rather older, sir. His son, sir, was the man of real genius. He was the one who created all this.’
‘But if he was related to Lenin, the Bolshevik leader who wanted to abolish capitalism, he would have become the exact opposite - a capitalist, a very rich capitalist?’
‘Oh, yes, sir, that is very true. We do not talk about it, of course, sir. That would not be polite.’ Harlow held his head very erect, his chin forward-leaning in courteous disdain. ‘No, sir. In any case, you see, the gentleman down below, is…’ the voice dropped to a very confidential whisper ‘… he is – how can I put it? – always in need of a certain regular, er, revival… Ah, the mistress.’
The elevator doors swept open and there was Martha in her wheelchair. She purred straight at Joe, came to a stop beside him, raised one bony hand and, bangles clicking, stretched forward to touch him on the knee.
‘Englishman, you did it! He sure is better now! But there’s just one other thing.’
She purred her way over to the large consol and punched out several keys. ‘doc028888 SECXX’ flashed up on a screen in bold green letters. She studied this message for several moments as if she expected it to undergo some sea-change and then, with an elderly impatient flick of the hand and several dry coughs, pressed another key that repeated ‘SECXX’ in a series of regularly flashed imperatives, as if it were trying to say ‘SEX’ but could not quite get its tongue round the word.
‘Oh, the pesky thing! It just won’t, will it? It won’t!’ She pressed more keys. ‘Oh, you here,’ she cried to Harlow, ‘help me! You know how this works.’ The flashing stopped and the screen went dead.
‘Ma-am.’
With his usual deftness Harlow did what was expected of him. Apparently the large consol was designed not simply
to process words or graphic images or sounds but also to produce documents. With a series of clicks it produced a transparent plastic sheath containing what at first looked like a mere scrap of paper. Martha seized it excitedly and was about to show it to Joe when she once more pressed a hand to her chest. A fit of coughing ensued. It forced her forward in her wheelchair so violently that the plastic sheath fell on the floor. As ever attentive, Harlow already had a box of tissues ready. She tore out a wad of three or four as if annoyed at herself and thrust them against her mouth. In their whiteness the tissues matched almost indistinguishably the pallor of her cheeks.
‘She needs a doctor!’ Joe insisted.
Harlow instantly raised an upright index finger to firmly closed lips.
‘Yes, she does,’ Joe repeated, ‘whatever she says. Can’t you…’
‘No, sir.’
A reproving shake of the head ended the matter. The coughing stopped at the same time and Martha pointed down at the fallen plastic sheath. Joe picked it up. The scrap of paper within the sheath was yellow with age.
‘Read it,’ she croaked.
He looked at it as closely as possible. The handwriting was exceedingly faint. One corner of the paper had apparently become so brittle that the legibility of a couple of lines at the bottom was in serious doubt. As for what was legible in the body of the text, it was evidently a letter written in a stiff, upright hand that bore a remarkable resemblance to the handwriting he had seen in the material Gloria Billington had shown him before consigning it to the flames. It was as if a pupil had faithfully copied a teacher’s handwriting. The English was mostly as correct and as stilted as the stiff, ruled, pencilled lines on which the words were placed.
‘My dear friend,
I give back your esteemed diary notebook and letters. I wish to express sincere gratitude for your generous donation. The cause of my life will be greatly assisted by so valuable help for my work.
Mr Frankenstein Page 24