The Frankenstein Papers

by Fred Saberhagen

  Later, the same day_Much has happened, and quickly. Another small group of men came into my sight, and at the same time, beyond them to the east, a large body of water, too broad for the farther shore to be visible at any point.

  These men were not embarking upon a hunting expedition, but were busy with something on the shore. This time I did approach my fellow beings, in hopes of establishing some contact with civilization. I experienced a familiar sight as I drew near them—how, as my exceptional stature became apparent, their attitudes were changed; and how, when my face was near enough for them to see it clearly, a still greater change came over theirs. These men were much warier than the Inoot had been, confirming my idea that civilization in some form might not be far distant now.

  I smiled gently and spoke softly, as I have learned to do. One of those before me had a few words of English, and from him I learned that I have now reached the shore of Hudson Bay, though I cannot yet determine at what point on that immense length of coastline I have arrived. Dealing with this man and his fellows through gestures, I have now bargained away all of my remaining trade goods for a well-used kayak, with which I now mean to continue my journey southward along the shore. Today the sea in front of me is calm, free, or almost free, of floating ice, and the wind mild and favorable.

  A day later_I write this by the light of a small fire, as I attempt to dry my clothing. The kayak, though as I thought purchased cheaply, proved to be no bargain. After an hour's use it began to leak so badly that, though I was no more than a hundred yards from shore at any time, I had all I could do to get back within wading distance of the shoreline before the craft sank. I endured a partial wetting, but retained everything I had of value, and was able to light a fire of twigs and driftwood.

  Thoughts of revenge afflict me. But to pursue the man who sold me the cursed boat would be pointless, and achieve nothing but to take me farther from my true goal. Think of it no more. Or, if I am to dream of vengeance, let my wrath be directed against those who have done me far greater harm.

  Onto the south, once more on foot. In some curious way I am glad that the boat is gone, glad to be traveling on my legs again.

  Chapter 5

  August 14,1782_At last, a date to be written down almost with certainty. And a pair of eyes, other than my own, to read these words

  After the incident of the sunken boat, I traveled south along the shore on foot, seeing now and then traces of human passage or occupation, but no living man or woman. The third morning brought me to a small cove, and, on the low cliff at its head, a permanent human habitation. The largest of the two or three buildings—ambitiously larger than necessary, as I soon realized—was obviously a church or chapel. I had reached the home of Father Jacques-Marie Alibard.

  As I slowly approached the door of the small central cabin, wondering how to present myself with a minimum of shock to whoever might be within, the door opened and the priest came out, a slender figure in a fur jacket, the wind off the Bay ruffling his iron-gray hair. If what he saw in my countenance engendered horror, or if my size had terrified him when he beheld me through his window, he had mastered those emotions before allowing me to see him. He spoke in kind tones, using what must have been one of the languages of the inhabitants of this land, and was surprised when I answered him in quite passable French. I was made to feel welcome at once; it is plain that the poor man has been suffering intensely from isolation. He has been here—in this territory at least—for more than ten years as a missionary.

  I write this evening's entry in this journal seated on a wooden floor—there are chairs available, but I distrust them—within a furnished room, by lamplight. My host's cabin is high enough inside for me to stand erect, if I take care to keep under the ridgepole log. The good father is, I am sure, bursting to hear my story, but he will not allow the least bit of curiosity to show regarding what I might be writing in my book—and I am not anxious to tell more than I must.

  He said, a little while ago: "You are European, then."

  "I am."

  "French by birth?"

  "No."

  "I did not think so, though you speak the language well. You did not tell me your name."

  "Alas, Father, I have none."

  He considered that for a moment before replying: "You mean that it has been—lost?" I do not know precisely what he had in mind—perhaps that I had been somehow disgraced, and my family had disowned me.

  "No. To my knowledge, I have never had one."

  "Ah." If he was very much surprised at this claim he did not show it. "If you do not mind my asking, how old are you?"

  "Not yet three years, to the best of my knowledge."

  He said "Ah" again, and looked at me carefully, and fell silent. He has yet to resume his questioning. In a way I wish he would.

  It has become plain to me in the hours I have been here with him that the priest is not a well man. He is quite alone here at present; had he been healthy he would not have been at home when I arrived, but on the trail somewhere among the tiny, far-flung settlements whose inhabitants he is pleased to think of as his parishioners. I have not seen any of them as yet, and do not know what they think of him.

  His color is bad and he coughs a great deal. He is about fifty years of age, I estimate, and spare of frame. He was a Jesuit, I have learned, until the suppression of that Order some eight years ago. What exactly his ecclesiastical (if that is the right word) status may be now is not yet clear to me, but apparently he remains a missionary of some kind, in good—or at least tolerable—standing with his superiors, who are far to the south of here, in Montreal.

  It is obvious that tonight we are going to talk. I will let him read of this book if he should ask directly—but I think he is not likely to do that.

  August 15_The Father and I have come to know each other a little better now. He has declined to respond to my hints that I thought he must be curious about my journal. Instead he is curious about me. Naturally enough. But he is not impatient. As I look back on my arrival now, it is almost as if I had been expected here.

  We have had another little session of questions and answers. Dutifully the good priest has made his first inquiries upon the state of my immortal soul.

  "You may well possess such an appendage, Father," I told him. "Just as you have a name. But there is no reason to believe that I do."

  I suppose he was shocked, but if so it was evident from his continued calm that he had heard many things more shocking still. Shocked or not, he was certainly intrigued. Perhaps no penitent had ever presented him with exactly this theory before.

  "Are you not a man, my son? Even if you are nameless as you say, are you not one of Adam's children?"

  I laughed; I cannot remember having done such a thing before. "I have—more or less—a man's form, as you see. But have you ever known a man who was eight feet tall?" I had switched to English, and used the English form of measurement_even as my creator had sometimes switched, for some reason when he lectured me. Perhaps it was because the English-speaking Franklin had suddenly popped into Victor's thoughts; he thought and spoke of Franklin frequently.

  The priest looked me up and down. "I see that God has given you enormous strength. But surely you are not eight feet tall."

  "It is perhaps hard to believe."

  "Yes, it is very difficult indeed. Oh, yes. It was an Englishman who helped me build this cabin, years ago, and the measurements were done in feet and inches. The central log sustaining the roof beams is itself not so much as eight feet from the floor—I remember well, all of the measurements and calculation. I was so methodical then. No more than seven feet and a half. And your head does not touch it."

  "I tell you I—" I sighed. "But what does it matter? Yes, I have great strength. And great, more than human, ugliness as well. Surely you cannot fail to see that. One of Adam's children? No. I think not."

  He looked at me carefully. Violent madmen are not unknown here in the far north, I am sure, where a man may be imprisoned b
y the elements for months or years at a time, and my priest has learned to be careful. But my demeanor and speech remained calm, and eventually he was reassured. Then nothing would do but that he must rummage around until he had found a ruler, and conduct a measurement of his ridgepole's height. While measuring up the wall he said: "Beauty in the eyes of God is not measured in the configuration of the face." And when I did not answer, he went on: "You will pardon me, but about your not being one of Adam's children—that I do not, I cannot, understand. I fear you are laboring under some tremendous error."

  "It is a long story, Father. Best told, I think, a little at a time."

  "Ah. There—you see?" Standing on a chair, he had reached the top of the wall, triumphantly.

  "No more than seven and a half feet, as I said. As for your story, I am ready to listen when you are ready to speak."

  But I was distracted—he was perfectly right, I had watched his progress with the ruler. Seven and a half feet up to the ridgepole from the floor_unless there was something wrong about his ruler_but that was foolish. Seven feet and a half to the ridgepole, and I fit under it, standing erect, with perhaps an inch or two to spare. It was unlike Frankenstein to be so imprecise in matters of measurement, and I was sure that he had told me several times that he had formed me with a height of eight feet exactly.

  This trifle worried me unduly. There even occurred to me the absurd idea that I might be slowly shrinking. With the bulk of my clothing mere wrappings, a change in size might not be easy to determine. But no, my boots had been made to fit me, and they fitted as well as ever; my feet at least were unchanging. And surely I would have noticed any change in my own bodily proportions.

  For some time after the measuring of the walls we spoke merely of housekeeping matters. Then suddenly the priest said: "I must continue to believe, my friend, that we are both sons of the same God."

  "Ah. But you see, Father, my creator was not God. If I owe prayer, it is to someone else."

  He avoided asking the obvious question—perhaps he feared what answer I might give. He only said: "What you say sounds like blasphemy, yet I do not believe that you intend it so."

  Later_I have learned one more important fact about my host. Some months ago the good Father received orders from Montreal—they had heard that his health was failing—to abandon his post here, and return to that city as soon as practicable.

  He explained to me: "Until you arrived, I had convinced myself that I should stay until spring, and not attempt the journey to Montreal alone. But now you are here, and you say you are determined at all costs to go south before the winter. To me it seems that God has sent you to accompany me. If you are willing, we can leave tomorrow. I have a large canoe, in good condition, and little enough to do to get ready. And if we are going south ahead of winter, we must press on quickly."

  "You are ready, then," I asked in some surprise, "to leave all your parishioners?"

  "I am ordered to go." He hesitated. "Besides…" He could not find a way to say it.

  I thought I knew what he wanted to say. "There are not that many of them who come here, and you cannot go to help them when you are ill."

  He nodded gratefully. In the morning, then, we are departing.

  September 18_Aided by a fortunate spell of fair weather, we have set a good pace now for many days. Because I have devoted all my energy to the needs of the voyage, I have failed to make entries in this journal. Father Jacques says that he remembers the route to Montreal well, and I believe him, though years have passed since he has traveled it. He is a fearless canoeist, though no longer a strong one, and we are able, now and then, to save time by cutting across a broad inlet in the shore of the Bay to a dim point of land that I might otherwise have supposed to be an island.

  My companion is impressed with my strength, which is the universal reaction, and also by my endurance as a paddler. Canoes were strange to me when I began—how could they be otherwise?_but the art is simple, my sense of balance sure, and I learn quickly. His own strength, I fear, is fading rapidly.

  I feel an impulse to suggest, more strongly this time, that he should read my journal. But though he has said nothing, I feel that he is somehow reluctant to do so, as though he feared to find out that, after all, I am only mad. Mad I may well be, I suppose, but hardly only mad. Events more terrible than madness have made me what I am.

  As our acquaintance lengthens, the good priest will, I think, become more likely to believe a greater portion of the truth, however much of it I eventually tell him. Great God! I think that no one could believe it all.

  I want to write of Scotland. But I cannot. I am not yet ready.

  September 19_Last night the subject of my origins came up again, rather suddenly. We were lying in our robes under the stars and the false dawn of the aurora borealis, with our small fire between us. I had thought my companion was asleep, when suddenly he rolled to face me and said: "You told me on the first day that we met, my friend, that God was not your creator. Forgive me if I press you for an answer, but how is it possible that that honor belongs to someone else?"

  "Honor indeed." I sat up, still wrapped in fur, to stir the fire. We were out of the wind, camped against a low mount of land that broke the monotony of the even lower shore.

  Still waiting for a real answer, he prompted: "The 'someone else' you mentioned is no doubt a parent?"

  "As much of a parent as I have. But I am sorry that I said anything at all to you about it. You are a good man and need no nightmares. I trouble you to no purpose. Good night. Go back to sleep."

  "I am a priest, my friend. It is my business to hear the nightmares of the troubled. I am only sorry that I cannot be of help, in return for all the help that you are giving me."

  Father Jacques is now indeed weakening rapidly, under the stresses of the journey. I write more boldly now, in the growing belief that he will never read these words.

  Today I raised aloud the possibility that we might turn back, and winter in his cabin, for I have begun to doubt that he will ever reach Montreal alive if we press on. But he refused at once, and to tell the truth I do not much like the idea myself, and did not press him on it. That he would survive the winter in the cabin, and be stronger in the spring, is to my mind doubtful also. Nor am I anxious to delay my own quest for almost a year.

  Or am I? If I knew exactly what my quest is, I would doubtless refuse to delay it for even an hour. Is it vengeance that I seek, or only truth?

  Or not even truth, perhaps, but only consolation.

  September 26—Today Father is no longer able to rise and walk. I carry him to the canoe, and paddle quickly south. Thick snow is already falling, and I want to get him as far as possible beyond the worst of the advancing winter. We rest tonight in a tiny shelter of pine boughs and logs, and I write in part because he has urged me to do so.

  But I must keep writing. And set down what happened in London. And in the north of Scotland, when we attempted to revive the dead. But I cannot write of that tonight.

  Chapter 6

  September 28_My heart is heavy. My companion is dead.

  It was a long and difficult dying, of more than four-and-twenty hours. When the breathing of Father Jacques became harsh and uneven, and he looked at me without recognition, I began to feel certain that the end was near. Yet life clung to him tenaciously. He sank by slow degrees into a stupor, then into total unconsciousness.

  Only toward the end did the good priest rally briefly. Turning his eyes on me, he recognized me once more, and in a feeble voice gave me his blessing; he would have raised his hand, to sign me with the cross, but he could not. A minute later he had breathed his last.

  To mark his passing, snow squalls churned their way across the Bay, while to the south, above both land and water, lightning and thunder wept and raged. There are times when I feel a kinship with these forces greater than with any man or woman. Is it perhaps because I know that these powers of the atmosphere assisted at my birth?

  My friend's death ha
s affected me, more than I had anticipated. I have tried to pray—but no. That is not strictly true. It would be more accurate to say that I wanted to make an attempt at prayer, but could not. In the end I heard myself muttering some foolish vow, based on no more than the sanctity of my own nature. A vow to do what? I do not even know that. I am not sure now where those words came from, or even what they meant. As I now remember and write down the fact, it appears incomprehensible; and yet at the moment it seemed to me that there was meaning in the words I muttered.

  There is rock nearby, a rare sight along this low shore, and an outcrop shattered by weathering has afforded material for the mound under which my friend now lies buried—it is impossible, particularly without more tools than I possess, to dig in this frozen ground, and there are wolves. They are howling not very far outside the shelter as I write this, and I feel very much alone.

  The lonely isles at the north of Scotland are not perpetually frozen, as most of this ground must be, but their soil is cold and very rocky. Still, in that soil we dug graves. It was the second grave for most who were put into the ground there, and the rude burial service—if it can be called a burial service; I do remember seeing Clerval's lips moving with muttered prayers—must have been the second for those poor dismembered beings also.

  Not that there had been, between their burials, anything that could have been called a second life—but I am anticipating the order of my tale.

  I must take great pains to make sure that it is all set down, as coherently as I can do so. Then if I do not survive, there will still be some hope that someone may read it one day and be warned.