by John Burke
“Doctor Stein, I must insist . . .”
We gave him no chance to insist on anything. We took Karl’s body to the laboratory and shut ourselves in.
Hans was very disturbed. When I began at once to open up the head so that I could examine the brain, he tried to stop me.
“Doctor Stein, I beg you to listen to me. Get away from here! We must cross the border . . . start again, somewhere else.”
“There’s no hurry.”
“But everyone heard Karl call you Frankenstein. Molke was there.”
“I’m aware of that, but—”
“He’ll report to the Medical Council. They are bound to take action! You know how they feel about you—this is the chance they have been waiting for.”
I was not to be persuaded into taking panic measures. There was nothing that anyone could prove against me. My patients would surely stand by me. My record since I had been in Carlsbruck was impeccable. I had only to stand firm and go on as before. I would deny any ill-founded accusations brought against me. It was unthinkable that my career should be wrecked by the last ravings of a demented patient.
I said: “I shall be at the surgery in the morning at my usual time.”
But when Hans looked dubiously at Karl’s body I had to admit with regret that it would be better not to expose it to examination by Medical Council busybodies. It hurt me to destroy it, but I had had setbacks before and could stand up to yet another.
We thrust Karl Werner into the furnace, and the new body of which he had hoped so much went the same way as his old, warped body.
In the morning I was in my surgery as I had promised.
I was alone. Nobody came. The fashionable ladies, I thought dourly, must be so ill after last night’s events that they could not even drag themselves along to my consulting room.
When I heard the click of the outer door I went out to see which faithful patient had come to talk over her latest ailment. But it was not a patient. It was Hans.
He said: “Your waiting room is deserted.”
“I had already observed that.”
“The whole town knows who you are! Everybody’s talking. I have been summoned before the Medical Council. What am I to say?”
The poor boy was out of his depth. I saw that without my guidance he would be utterly unable to cope with what was happening. I said:
“I’ll come with you.”
“That would be madness. Let me do what I can. Just give me some idea of what to say.”
“It would be madness for me to hide,” I said, taking up my hat and cloak. “What can they prove? Let the world see that I am not cowering in the shadows.”
He was almost more frightened by my presence than he would have been if left to face the questioning alone.
The Medical Council conducted the proceedings with all the archaic pomposity I would have expected. We were treated like young upstarts presenting ourselves for a preliminary oral examination—seated in stiff-backed chairs facing a long table at which elderly, bald and grey-bearded pedants nodded in what they believed to be a sagacious manner. Their opinions were beneath contempt; their accusations ill-founded and too hastily prepared.
Thinking that he was showing a forthright courage, the President himself solemnly asked me if I was indeed Baron Frankenstein.
I denied it.
The old fool must have believed that I would crumple at his feet, sobbing with tears of repentance. My bland denial left him with his mouth open, bewildered.
He asked why the name had been hurled at me by the man who blundered into the Countess’s salon. I said that I could not imagine. The patient was subject to delusions: there appeared to be no other explanation. So far as I was concerned the whole thing was absurd.
The President tried to resume his lofty manner. “You deny your name is Frankenstein?”
“Have you ever consulted the street directory, sir?”
“Street directory?” he mumbled.
“If Carlsbruck is still so backward as to have no official publication of this kind,” I said, “there are doubtless civic records to which you could have access. And other towns in Central Europe—all have some record of their citizens.”
“I do not see what bearing—”
“There are dozens of Frankensteins,” I said. “I am a Frankenstein. That I do not deny. Of course I have heard about the Baron whose name has acquired so many legends. Disturbing legends—not the kind of thing a medical practitioner would wish to have associated with him. Naturally, I didn’t wish to set up in practice here handicapped by such a name, so I changed it.”
“But the uncanny resemblance . . .”
“Who claims to have detected such a resemblance?” I asked.
“Two of the ladies who were present last night had a fleeting acquaintance with the Frankenstein family in the old days.”
“A fleeting acquaintance!” I echoed scornfully. “And in the old days. And there was no word of this until last night, was there? Strange how so much supposed evidence can be fomented in such a short time.”
Emboldened by the way things were going, Hans came to my aid. “It’s a monstrous accusation,” he cried, “inspired by jealousy.”
A Council member at the far end of the table stood up as though to take over from the bumbling President.
“Baron Frankenstein—”
“Doctor Stein,” I corrected him.
He hesitated, then said grudgingly: “Doctor Stein . . . how do you explain that wretched fellow calling you Frankenstein?”
“I cannot even be sure that he was doing so,” I said. “They were his dying words. It was a last outcry—very probably it was not addressed to me at all but to some dying vision. The man had heard the legends, just as you gentlemen seem to have done, and in the confusion of his mind he may have felt that this Frankenstein would in some miraculous way come to his assistance. A very common phenomenon, as I’m sure my colleagues will agree.”
I looked along the line of disapproving faces. One or two of them had the grace to lower their eyes.
It was time to conclude this farce. I said: “I think a little proof, Mr. President, would be more compelling than a lot of gossip. And as there can be no such proof, we are simply wasting time. My own time happens to be valuable.” I turned to Hans. “I shall see you later, at the Hospital, Doctor Kleve?”
Hans gulped and nodded.
“One moment.” The President tried to get round the table to detain me, but as it was so long he had to make a wide circuit, puffing as he did so. By that time I was at the door.
I said: “Forgive me. I am a busy man.”
“We have not finished.”
“No? But what more is there to say? We all know that Baron Frankenstein was executed. I think that might be regarded as a truly conclusive finish. Good day, gentlemen.”
I left them to their petty squabbles and debates.
The Medical Council would undoubtedly do all they could to make life even more difficult for me from now on. They would not scruple to spread rumors about me even though they had been unable, in my presence, to substantiate any of those rumors. Professional bodies have behaved thus from time immemorial when confronted by a man of independent mind, and there is little likelihood that they will ever change. But gradually the persecution would abate. My patients would come back to me. I had nothing to fear.
I went straight from the Medical Council assembly to the Workhouse Hospital. My work lay in ruins, but I would rebuild.
There was an unusual hush in the Hospital that day. I was conscious of it the second I entered the building. It was as though it were waiting, hardly daring to breathe.
Margaret Conrad had not put in an appearance. This amused me. Apparently the gallant young lady was, after all, a little too squeamish when faced with some of the more stern realities.
The little messenger was halfway along the corridor towards my office when I showed myself. He stopped and backed away. He gave a nervous little snigger.
“What are you prattling about?”
“Three patients upped and left in the night,” he said. “Weren’t going to wait here to be cut up in little pieces—that’s what they told me.”
I went on towards the ward. He scuttled ahead of me, keeping a good distance between us. As a rule he would hold the door open for me, bowing and scraping absurdly, but today he let it swing shut.
When I opened the door for myself and strode in, there was utter silence.
I knew most of the faces in here—though in most cases my concern was with other parts of the anatomy rather than faces. The sullen expressions, the fear, the dejection . . . all were familiar to me. But today there was a change. It did not strike me until I was standing over the first bed, about to make a routine examination. Then I looked round.
They were all watching me. And not one of them was making a sound. There were no bawdy jokes and no groans of terrified anticipation.
Not a sound . . .
In every face there seemed to be a uniform viciousness which I had not seen before.
I tried to dismiss this impression as I turned back to the first patient. The threatening attitude of the Medical Council must have upset me more than I cared to admit. When I had had a good rest and got over the disappointment of Karl Werner’s regression, I would see things in proper perspective.
“How’s the head today, Klein?”
I reached out to start undoing the bandages round the man’s head, but he jerked away.
“Don’t lay your filthy hands on me.”
I could hardly believe my ears. None of them ever dared to speak to me like this. Some of them might grumble, some might plead with me not to operate or not to carry on a certain line of treatment; but defiance of this kind was unheard-of.
“Don’t be a fool, man,” I said crisply. “I’ve got to look at it.”
This time he struck out and knocked my arm aside.
“You heard me. Keep your murdering hands off me . . . Frankenstein.”
There was still no sound from the rest of the ward, but I sensed a quivering tension. Something was about to snap. I must stay very calm, making it clear that I was still in control of the situation. They would regret this.
“Yes, that’s what I said.” Klein was hysterical with his own braveness. “Frankenstein . . . fugitive from the gallows . . . murderer.”
“Murderer,” said a whisper round the ward.
“Murderer,” he yelled at me. “Mutilator . . . !”
I turned away. I did not propose to waste time on this wretch until he was in a more sober frame of mind.
At this moment a bottle flew past my ear and shattered against the wall behind me. As I swung in the direction from which it had come, another one struck my right shoulder a glancing blow and fell on to one of the beds.
I raised my arms to protect myself, and stumbled out into the aisle between the beds, where there was room to move.
Two of the patients nearest the door scrambled out of bed and blocked my way.
Behind me somebody laughed madly.
The wave of vindictiveness that swept through the ward was a physical, pulsating thing. There had been silence: suddenly there was uproar. Screams like those of the damned beat upon me from all sides, and every patient capable of movement was lurching, hobbling, crawling towards me.
One noisome creature, unable to rise from his hands and knees, clawed at my ankles. I kicked out. There was a howl of pain which was taken up by a dozen throats and transformed into a howl of rage.
Then they were upon me. Their claws tore at me. I tried to shield my head, but they tore my hands away and gouged fiendishly at my eyes, ripped flesh from my cheeks with their broken, filthy talons, and spat on me. Pain robbed me of breath. I tried to flinch away as they hammered me down to the floor and kicked me, but there was nowhere to go, nowhere to roll: their feet drove in from every side, into my ribs and my bowels and the side of my head. I tried to cry out, but a noisome fist was thrust into my mouth.
And all the time they howled. Like ravening beasts they shrieked and bellowed triumphantly. Blood ran into my eyes. I could struggle no longer. But even when I had given up all attempt to shield myself from the rain of blows, they kept coming until there was no pain in the impact of each kick or scratch—only one great red, obscene pain raging through my mangled body and screaming in my brain.
I was dead. I was sure that it was over, for the voices began to fade and a numbness crept through the pulpy rawness of my flesh.
From a great, great distance I heard a squeaky voice saying, “They’re killing him in there,” and then Margaret Conrad’s voice mixed up inextricably with that of Hans Kleve.
Pain came back when someone tried to lift me. All that prevented me from crying out in agony was lack of strength: I could not make a sound. It was all over. Beneath the pain, through the bloodshot horror that made thought impossible, there was somehow one little part of me that remained detached and clinical. I was a doctor, I knew what the pain meant and what the growing numbness meant. The brutal messages through my nerves and then their final surrender, their inability to transmit any more pain and any more feeling of any kind . . . all this spoke of death.
I must have been unconscious for some time. When I became aware of voices again and of faint sensation again, I knew that I was lying on a bench. I tried to move, but nothing would function.
“. . . the end,” someone was saying. It was an accusation, reaching me through a buzzing sound that would not stop. I strained to hear, but my concentration was defective. There was no meaning in anything. “The end of a fantastic scheme. The death of the man he talked of benefiting . . . and now this.”
A woman. Yes, the young woman. Margaret Conrad. Still meddling. I didn’t want her here. I wanted her to go away before she caused further damage. But I could not speak. I tried to produce some sound that would tell her I was here, still alive, and that I wanted her to leave at once. But I could not produce even the guttural noises that my re-created Karl Werner had struggled with in his early hours.
“Don’t you see?”—she was urging something on someone, demanding agreement—“Don’t you see . . . ?” And through the haze, through the barrier of distortion in my ears, I heard her say: “Wicked . . .”
“To transform a dwarf into a normal man—is that so wicked, Miss Conrad?”
I thought it was myself speaking and knew it couldn’t be. And then I knew that it was Hans. He spoke clearly and firmly. I wanted to take his hand. He, at least, was still undaunted. He was not to be turned against me.
There was an unexpected sensation of coolness seeping down from my forehead. I tried to open my eyes; but they were not closed. A blurred shape moved over me. I could not bring it into focus.
Then the coolness touched my eyes. For a moment it was excruciating. Then the cool water wiped away the sticky mess from my eyes and from around my nostrils. Hans stood over me, gently dabbing with a moistened towel. When he saw that my eyes were open and that I was trying to keep him steadily in view, he smiled. It was meant to be a professional, reassuring smile; but the poor lad was not very accomplished in such things.
I had to speak. My body and mind cried out for release, pleading that I should let go, slip away . . . but I had to talk to Hans.
“Try to relax,” he said.
“Hans . . .”
“Don’t talk.”
“It’s no good, Hans,” I said. The effort was more extreme than I could ever have conceived. Each word was a huge stone to be hauled up a precipice.
Hans bent over me. A good pupil, he was feeling my pulse, listening to my breathing. And it was no good.
I said: “Send her away.”
He hesitated, then turned towards where the young woman must be standing. I did not hear a door close, did not hear footsteps; but with some new intuition, some raw exposure of my nerves, I sensed that Margaret Conrad had gone.
I s
aid: “Hans . . . you know what to do.”
He stared. His face swam back into the haze that was already creeping in again from all sides. I had very little time left. Desperately I tried to make him understand.
“You know,” I forced it out again. “You know what to do.”
His face was lost now, but I could still hear his voice.
“You mean . . . ?”
“Everything . . . is there. The laboratory . . . it’s yours . . . Work . . . Tell me, Hans . . . you can . . .”
It was too much now. I surrendered. I let go and felt a great peace as I slid gently down into the darkness. A last, lingering thought ran round my head like the drowsy piping of a bird at nightfall. Had he understood? And if he had understood, would he have the courage and the technical ability to carry out the long, arduous process?
My fate was in his hands. There was nothing more I could do—nothing but die . . . and wait.
8
When they came to confront me with the proof which I had tauntingly demanded from the President of the Medical Council, they were too late. Molke, determined to wipe out the insult which he considered I had offered him, had persuaded the authorities to investigate the grave of Baron Frankenstein. The coffin was brought up in great secrecy behind screens—with, on top of it, the crumpled remains of what had been the greedy Fritz. This must have been a shock to the gravediggers and the watching officials; but it was only the first shock. Beneath Fritz were the priest’s hat and his rosary, and all that was left of the priest who had so obligingly taken my place.
The President was jubilant. He and his retinue hurried back to Carlsbruck, and the police at once set out to arrest me.
All they found was a corpse beneath a sheet. Hans Kleve sadly lifted the sheet so that they could see what a terrible state the body was in. He explained that the patients at the Hospital had gone mad and practically torn Doctor Stein to pieces. Stein . . . or Frankenstein: it was all one now.
The body was taken away and buried in unhallowed ground. It did not occur to these zealous gentlemen to examine my bruised and battered frame too closely. The terrible beating I had had about the head made a far from pretty sight even in the eyes of experienced medical men, and they were prepared to accept that I was dead. Nobody could have survived with his head so smashed in. There was no reason why they should want to operate on that head and examine the brain.