"Dinner?" asked the big mother.
The young woman smiled. "Come with me. We have turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie. All supplied by Linhart's united charities, under the direction of the sheriff's annual Feed the Homeless program." She began leading him down a long hill that curved to the left. The pavement was cracked and broken, and the windows in all the tenements had been boarded over with plywood, just like the one where he kept his Maytag carton.
"My name is Shanna," said the young woman. "We'll just go in here." She led the grotesque man into a large metal-sided building, which most of the year served as a parking area for the sheriff's various crime-fighting vehicles. These had all been moved elsewhere, and the dusty, chilly space inside the metal warehouse had been filled with collapsible metal tables and chairs.
There were hundreds of people just like the ugly bastard—well, like him in that they had nowhere else to go on Thanksgiving. And they were all sitting at the paper-covered tables, ravenously downing the miraculous holiday meal, served to them on plastic trays by sheriff's deputies and by older women active in charity functions.
Shanna took a seat at one of the tables and indicated that the innocent sucker sit beside her. "May I get your name, sir?" she asked, pencil and clipboard all ready for data entry.
"Victor," said the damn ugly man. He remembered that from his short stay in Mercy Lutheran hospital. "Victor, they told me. I remember.
Victor something. Somethingstein. Rosenstein. No, that's not right. I used to know. I used to remember." It hadn't yet dawned on the big mother that he was going to get a tray of food to eat, too.
"Victor Rosenstein," said Shanna happily. "That'll do just fine. And do you live in this neighborhood?"
Just then, one of the deputies arrived with a pink tray that had seen its years of service. The deputy put the tray of food in front of the innocent son of a bitch, whose eyes opened wide, as if all the glorious bounties of the earth had been spread before him. "Happy Thanksgiving," said the deputy, and then he left to serve another person.
"For me?" asked the innocent guy.
"Enjoy it, Mr. Rosenstein," said Shanna. "You didn't answer my question. Do you live in this neighborhood?"
The easiest thing to grab first was a dinner roll, and the poor sucker had it completely crammed in his mouth, making talking difficult. "Yes," he said. "In a Maytag carton in one of these buildings."
Shanna nodded knowingly and wrote something on the clipboard. "Do you use intravenous drugs, Mr. Rosenstein?" she said casually.
He'd gotten rid of most of the dinner roll, but refilled his mouth with hot mashed potatoes. He chewed a little while. "Are those the good kind or the bad kind?" he asked.
"Well—"
"No drugs," he said definitely. "No food, no home, no drugs, no number." He cut up his turkey clumsily and shook his head. "My number. My life could be my own if they just gave me my number."
"But you wouldn't use intravenous drugs, would you, Mr. Rosenstein?" Shanna said with a forced laugh.
"No, of course not," said the ugly man. "Just say no. Many people just say no. To me."
Shanna stood beside him and covered one of his scarred hands with hers. "Yet here you sit, on Thanksgiving. You see, people do care. You should give thanks, Mr. Rosenstein, thanks to God for what you do have. Now, please excuse me, I have to go find someone else who hasn't had Thanksgiving dinner."
"Thank you, Shanna," said the big mother. "You have given me the courage to go on. Shanna friend. Friend good." Shanna gave his huge hand a squeeze with her little one, and walked away.
The food was good and hot, and the innocent sucker enjoyed every bit of it. When he was finished, he just sat at the paper-covered table until another sheriff's deputy led him gently by the arm out of the corrugated steel garage and back into the evening. It was getting dark, and it was getting colder, too. The big man shivered. He looked up and saw ragged tears among the clouds, where bright stars glittered like the cheap jewels on Santa's float. The poor schmuck had learned that there was nothing to do after dark, and the neighborhood got more dangerous the later it got, so he made his way slowly from the garage back up the hill to the particular building where he kept his Maytag carton. There were many vacant places on the rubble-strewn floors of the rows of tenements, and many unclaimed appliance cartons. But the big mother had come to think of his carton and his ruin of a building as "home." He never noticed the astonished and frightened looks the passers-by gave him as they met along the way.
There was enough light left when he arrived at his Maytag carton to do some housecleaning. He used his huge, booted foot to shove the fragments of brick and the sharp, many-colored shards of glass into a pile a few feet from the carton. He thought about a broom. With his number, with a job, with money, he could buy a broom and sweep the area around his carton perfectly clean. For now, though, that was only a dream, and he did the best he could.
He slept lightly in the cold, waking many times and covering himself with sheets of newspaper. He could see his breath in the chill, faintly- lighted air. In the morning he got up, remembering that he had appointments. First, though, he walked down the hill to the magic place where they had given him so much good food. He would ask them for more. It was morning now, and he was hungry.
The sheriff's deputies had taken down all the collapsible tables and chairs, and cleaned the place of garbage, which the city's refuse removal system had already taken far away somewhere. The big gates to the garage stood wide-open, but there was no sign anymore of young women with clipboards, or trays of food, or charity of any kind. Instead, the trucks and bulldozers and other heavy machinery of the parish had been driven back into place.
The big man stood at the gates, confused. "I want food!" he shouted.
A sheriff's deputy walked over slowly. "We ain't doin' that," he said calmly. "We did that yesterday, but we ain't doin' that today. You understand?"
The innocent sucker stood a moment in deep thought. "Food here yesterday," he said, "and Santa, and the Cowboys making the Redskins upset. Today—"
The deputy took a toothpick out of his mouth and examined it, but it looked just fine to him. "Now, as I was sayin'," he said—he had a reputation for getting along real well with junkies and winos and fruitcakes and whatever else wandered by—"we did food yesterday, but we ain't doin' food today? You got that?"
The grotesque son of a bitch nodded.
The deputy took a deep breath and let it out. "Now, Santa is something completely different. You want Santa, you got to go to the Suderin-Cooke Department Store. You can even get your picture taken and all. You know where that store is?"
"No, sir, I don't," said the poor bastard.
The deputy looked down at the ground and drew a line with the edge of his shoe. "You just follow this street along until you run into a big courthouse square. Then you ask somebody else. Got it?"
"I'm grateful for your help, officer," said the ugly schmuck.
"Never mind. You just say hello to Santa for me."
The damn big guy followed the street down into a shopping district, and found the department store after terrifying two frail ladies with blue- tinted hair and gloves. The giant with the sewn-on head went into the carefully decorated store and accomplished the next part of his chore merely by looming over men, women, or children and growling "Santa!" From then on, he just went in the direction of the points.
Suderin-Cooke's was Linhart's last local independent department store, and it tried to maintain a certain old-fashioned charm about itself. It worked very hard at not looking like the well-known national stores that had come to take over the shopping malls in recent years. It was quickly decided this Friday morning that essential to maintaining the store's hun- dred-and-ten-year image was the immediate removal of the seven-foot reconstructed man who was apparently disturbing customers already. From all outward appearances, the grotesque bastard didn't appear likely to open a new Suderin-Cooke charge ac
count or use an old one. The department store's security personnel called the Linhart sheriff's office.
As luck would have it, it wasn't Officer Kasparian and Officer Block who picked up the big man from the department store. It was Officer Gautreaux and Officer Williams' call. Officer Gautreaux never said very much. Officer Williams' attitude toward life could be captured quickly enough. This is what he said to the innocent giant as he was bending him into the back of their patrolcar. "You think you big? You think you big, you son of a bitch? I got little girl cousins, they wearin' little pink K-Mart socks and jumpin' rope, they make you look like the old man, he be talkin' to himself sellin' tamales next to the drugstore. You think you big. And your head sewn-on. Listen, son of a bitch, where you be goin', they staple everything they can't just Velcro." The conversation in the patrolcar continued in exactly that tone of voice, from Officer Williams in solo, until they got to the sheriff's department.
The sergeant wanted to know what the problem was.
"Suderin-Cooke's say he cause a complaint," said Officer Williams.
The sergeant nodded.
"He was lookin' for Santa," said Officer Gautreaux.
The sergeant nodded. "He ain't done nothin'. Find out who he is, put him in the pit, and have somebody come get him. Them stitches got to be givin' him some grief. Goddamn department store calls us, this guy probably wasn't doin' nothin' but bein' tall."
Officer Williams laughed without humor. "Son of a bitch think he tall, huh?"
"My wife and I don't even go in that store no more," said Officer Gautreaux. "They treat you like you're trackin' germs across their china."
"Name?" asked the sergeant.
"Victor," said the ugly bastard. "Victor Rosen, um, stick."
"Victor Rosenstick, is that correct?"
"Yes, sir."
"Address?"
There was a long silence. "I don't know."
Officer Williams looked at Officer Gautreaux and rolled his eyes. "Here we go," he said.
They kept the innocent son of a bitch all day and overnight in the pit— what they called their holding cell—and then tried to get rid of him in the morning. The big mother didn't want to leave. The cot and mattress and hot food was the best treatment he'd had since Mercy Lutheran Hospital, although the sheriff's deputies couldn't give him any Thorazine. That was okay. He demanded in a loud voice to be put back in jail, but it got him nowhere. By unspoken agreement, they let Officer Williams be in charge of returning the poor sucker to society. "Hey, hey, hey," said Officer Williams, adjusting his sunglasses, "wait you see where I let you out the car. Say, boy, what color are you?"
It is not the world's way to let things go easier. The big man knew things would only get worse. He tried other meetings, other agencies, other sympathetic people who had never learned that their jobs didn't let them really kick a brick.
Finally, when he hadn't eaten in days, in absolute desperation, he saw a young girl with a falaffel sandwich in her hands. He didn't stop to reason.
He grabbed the falaffel sandwich and ran with it. The girl's mother ran after him, and others followed in a maddened fury as the story spread, as the newcomers made it seem that he had done other, more horrible things to the young girl than just steal her sandwich. He ran toward his den, his Maytag carton high in its reeking, vagrant tenement building.
The afternoon began to grow darker as he ran, and slowly as the clock moved toward five the people of the city felt a change. They realized that something new, something unforgiveably innocent had entered their bewildering domain. With the scent of fresh blood in the air, it would take the groups and loners only a short time to track and hunt the poor mother back to his ruined and crumbling tenement, back to the sad shelter of his Maytag box.
Below, on the sidewalk, weapons and blazing torches in hand, they'd all at last give him his identity of sorts, and then—as ritual demanded—his final, fiery apotheosis.
FRANKENSTEIN
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A SELECTED FILMOGRAPHY
While Mary Shelley's tale of Frankenstein has not been so widely interpreted in the movies as Bram Stoker's Dracula, her creation story has achieved equally mythic proportions.
The fortunes of the story in the movies have varied, as the following filmography indicates, but whatever the incidental changes, two thematic elements in the story are always the same: (1) mankind has every reason to mistrust science and {2) a monster is someone who is both ugly and mateless. Everything else is annotation.
Now, the filmography, which is not meant to be either complete or a list of the best films on the Frankenstein theme. Rather, what follows is meant to display the range of treatments Mary Shelley's story has received in the movies.
FILMOGRAPHY
Frankenstein
1931 (B & W) U.S.A. 71 minutes
Universal Pictures
Director: James Whale
Producer: Carl Laemmle, Jr.
Screenplay: Garrett Fort, Francis Edward Faragoh, Robert Florey
Photography: Arthur Edeson
Cast: Colin Clive, Boris Karloff, Mae Clark, John Boles, Edward Van Sloan
This triumphant film, whose sixtieth birthday this book celebrates, gives us the creature (called the "Monster" in the film credits) as we have ever after seen him: tall, ill-clad, lumbering, with a square head and pegs sticking out from his neck. His face gaunt, his eyes baffled, he stands unsteadily with his arms upthrust toward the light which, with the innocence of the newborn, he tries to seize.
Despite Colin Clive's tortured and flaccid performance as Henry Frankenstein (Victor, in the novel) and a singularly helpless rendering of Elizabeth by Mae Clark, Whale's film achieves the stature of a masterpiece because Whale understood the innocence, the sexual frustration and the consequent baffled rage that are at the heart of Mary Shelley's story. Whale's direction is superbly sensitive and transforms what might have been simply another popular genre film into one with darkly tragic implications.
Whale had help. He found an actor, Boris Karloff, who did justice to his complex understanding of the role of the creature. Whale, too, was splendidly served by the makeup Jack Pierce created for Karloff and by Harry Strickfadden's stupendous special effects in the creation scene.
The Bride of Frankenstein
1935 (B & W) U.S.A. 75 minutes Production Company: Universal Pictures Director: James Whale Producer: Carl Laemmle
Screenplay: William Hurlbut and John L. Balderston Photography: John Mescall Special Effects: Jack Pierce and John P. Fulton Cast: Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, Valerie Hobson, Elsa Lanchester, Ernest Thesiger, Dwight Frye
The Bride of Frankenstein is a phenomenon: a sequel film that surpasses in excellence the film that it follows. Called by many (and I concur) one of the greatest horror films of all times, it deserves all the praise ever heaped upon it. It has James Whale's continuingly sensitive direction and an eloquent screenplay in which the sexual implications of Frankenstein are fully developed. It has also superlative performances by everyone except the romantic leads, Colin Clive and Valerie Hobson, who are in any event expected only to register pain or fear at appropriate moments.
When those two are not turning the screen turgid we have Elsa Lanchester playing, deliciously, both Mary Shelley and the Bride; and Boris Karloff playing a more humanized (because vocal) creature who has been promised a laboratory-made bride, and Ernest Thesiger, in a jewellike rendering of Dr. Pretorius, Henry's collaborator, one of the greatest comic-malevolent characters ever to appear on film. We have finally, a marriage-cum-cataclysm scene that is so physically destructive and erotic that it leaves filmgoers gasping.
The Son of Frankenstein
1939 (B & W) U.S.A. 95 minutes Production Company: Universal Pictures Director: Rowland V. Lee Producer: Rowland V. Lee Screenplay: Willis Cooper Photography: George Robinson
Cast: Basil Rathbone, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Lionel Atwill, Josephine Hutchinson
Son of Frankenstein, the third of the three impress
ive "Frankensteins" Universal Films made in the thirties is the one with the least symbolic depth, but its sprightly plot goes a long way to compensate for what it lacks in complexity.
Basil Rathbone is cast as Wolf von Frankenstein. Wolf, son of the Henry Frankenstein we have seen in the two previous films, is a research scientist in the United States when news is brought to him that he has inherited his father's estate. With his wife Elsa and his son Dieter in tow, he returns to the family's home in Germany where Ygor, a broken-necked criminal shepherd who has survived hanging, persuades him to revive the "sick" monster.
Wolf undertakes the task as a way to vindicate his maligned father. Ygor wants the resurrection so that he can use the creature to avenge himself on the jurors who sent him, Ygor, to the gallows.
The Son of Frankenstein is notable for several reasons: first, there are its sets, chiefly oversized, brooding stairways, vast halls with towering ceilings providing a natural habitat for dark and dreadful acts; then it has Bela Lugosi who with a hoarse voice and aura of sly intelligence is uncannily persuasive as Ygor; then it has Lionel Atwill playing the marvelously conceived Inspector Krogh who, we are told, lost an arm in a previous encounter with the creature and who, in this film, loses his artificial arm to him at a climactic moment. Atwill plays the German martinet police inspector with great style and with high good humor.
Sadly enough, though Karloff is still here, the zest with which he played the creature in the earlier two films is gone. The fault may lie with the screen play in which the creature is no longer presented as "more sinned against than sinning." As the critic, Phil Hardy (The Encyclopedia of Horror Movies) puts it, "The unmistakeable shift is from monster as victim to monster as demon." The result is that he rarely stirs compassion in us, and the film, for all its stylishness, feels flatter than its predecessors.
The Ultimate Frankenstein Page 29