The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein

by Peter Ackroyd

  “Have you been to Prague, Mr. Frankenstein?”

  “Alas not.”

  “In the public records kept in the library, there are many reports of the creature. Reports over the centuries.” He leaned forward, and I could smell wine on his breath. “There is supposed to be one in existence even now.”

  “Truly?”

  “It is said that a local rabbi created him, and keeps him in confinement.”

  I must say that Polidori had engaged my attention with his story. “Of what dimensions is this creature?”

  “A little larger than human height, but proportionately much stronger and swifter.”

  “And why is this prodigy not known to the world? Surely it would overturn all existing concepts of life and creation?”

  “The Jews keep it hidden. I am myself of that faith, so I speak of what I know. They do not wish to be derided as sorcerers or diabolists.”

  “And how is this being, this golem, concealed?”

  “He lives in awe of the rabbi, his master. The rabbi could destroy him as easily as he created him.”

  “That is interesting, Dr. Polidori. Can you explain it to me?”

  “He has kept back a residue of the materials that created the golem.” He looked at me intently, as if to ascertain my motive in asking such a question. “He would merely have to return them to the creature, by overt or by hidden means, and then pronounce some ritual words. When they are uttered the golem collapses into dust.”

  “Do you know the words?”

  “Alas not.”

  “Can you discover them for me?”

  “You have become agitated, sir. Are you unwell?”

  “Not at all. I am excited at the advent of new knowledge. I seek it for its own sake.”

  “A true philosopher.”

  “I venerate wisdom in any form it is offered, sir. Will you be able-will you be permitted-to ascertain these words?”

  “It is possible. I maintain a correspondence with scholars in Prague.”

  “That would be a great boon to me.”

  “Why so?”

  “As I said, I seek for knowledge.”

  At this moment Byron proposed a toast-not to atheism, as he had suggested in the theatre, but to the Luddite frame-breakers who had “made their protest against the society of the machine.” Bysshe joined the toast enthusiastically, and hailed the spirit of revolution that had manifested itself in the North.

  “It is a damn tiresome exercise to quote a man’s words back to him,” Byron said. “But as soon as Tom Hogg read them to me, Shelley, I wanted to embrace you.” He remained standing, and in a loud clear voice recited:

  “From the dust of creeds outworn,

  From the tyrant’s banner torn,

  Gathering round me, onward borne,

  There was mingled many a cry-

  Freedom! Hope! Death! Victory!”

  Bysshe joined in the last line, and raised his glass again with an “hoorah!” that brought one of the waiters back into the room.

  “Is everything satisfactory?” he asked Polidori.

  “They are saluting the future, Edmund.”

  “Then they have better sight than I have, sir.”

  “They are poets.”

  “I wish them luck then, sir.” The waiter retreated with a bow, having decided that his services were not at that moment required.

  “And now, gentlemen,” Byron announced, “let us drink to cunt.”

  Bysshe seemed startled by the proposal; he was of a more delicate temperament than Lord Byron, and had always shrunk from any coarseness of expression. But he raised his glass, and drank the wine with evident relish.

  “You are employed by Lord Byron?” I asked Polidori.

  “His lordship feeds me. In return I prepare compounds for his general health. At the moment I am urging him to lose some of his fatness.”

  “He seems fleshy. But no more.”

  “Have you seen his mother? He has inherited a tendency. It is better to thwart it now.”

  “What methods do you employ?”

  “Purgatives. I hasten the passage of food through the body. And purgatives burn off the fatty tissue.”

  It seemed a novel form of medicine to me, but I was more intrigued than ever by Polidori himself. “How do you find the English people?” I asked him.

  “My Lord Byron being the exception?”

  “If you say so.”

  “I like them well enough to live among them. And you?”

  “They are great experimenters. They take nothing for granted.”

  I was about to expand upon this theme, when he put his hand upon my arm. “I have noticed, Mr. Frankenstein, that you have a slight nervous tremor below your left cheekbone. What is troubling you?”

  “Nothing in particular troubles me.”

  “You are not being frank with me. You have become an Englishman.” He laughed. “No matter. I will question you no further. Perhaps it is an affair of the heart. Perhaps it is tremor cordis.”

  “My heart is intact, sir.”

  “Yet I can help the uneasiness in that nerve. I suppose you have tried tincture of opium?”

  “I have been given it. When I was in a fever.”

  “I have something better. I have my own especial preparation of powder, to be mixed with the opiate.”

  “Do you dispense it to him?” I looked at Byron, who was deep in talk with Bysshe. I heard him utter the phrase, “a modern Prometheus.”

  “Of course. He calls it his Muse.”

  “And this tremor, as you call it, will cease?”

  “Without a doubt. On the instant.”

  “I will be indebted to you, Dr. Polidori.”

  “I will be helping the cause of experimental philosophy. You will return to your work with renewed vigour and fresh perception.”

  “It is as powerful as that?”

  “It works marvels.”

  It seemed likely that Bysshe and Byron would talk into the night, but I was already weary and needed rest. I took my leave of them after a few minutes but, before departing, I noted down my address for Polidori who thereupon promised to visit me on the following day.

  Stepping into the Strand I recalled Byron’s words concerning the true dramas of urban life-how many of these huddled men and women, shrouded now in a fog, would be affected by the events I had unleashed into the world? Since the creature had the power to hurt, and to kill, how many would be directly or indirectly touched by his evil? In a great city many are at risk.

  “It is diabolical,” someone said to a companion. “I can’t see a yard ahead of me.”

  I took some comfort from Polidori’s description of the golem. I did not put much trust in the existence of this being, but I was nevertheless gratified by the story of its possible destruction. If he obtained a copy of the ritual words, then I would be tempted to employ them upon the creature. I was meditating this when, inadvertently, I knocked against a tall man who had loomed suddenly out of the fog.

  “I beg your pardon, sir,” he said. “Good lord, it is Mr. Frankenstein.”

  I recognised Selwyn Armitage, the oculist. “I apologise, Mr. Armitage. I was not looking where I was going.”

  “No one can look very far in this, Mr. Frankenstein. Even my eyes cannot pierce the gloom. May I walk this way with you?”

  “I would be grateful. How is your father? I have the most pleasant memories of his conversation.”

  “Pa has passed away, alas.”

  “I am very sorry to hear it.”

  “It was sudden. An imposthume in his throat. In his dying moments he called for Dr. Hunter to cut it out. He was in a delirium.”

  “Your mother bears up?”

  “Yes. She is strong. She insists that we continue the business. Now I am behind the counter. But you know, Mr. Frankenstein, you have inspired me.”

  “How so?”

  “Your discourse to me on the electrical fluid led me to thinking. And thinking led me to tinkering.
And tinkering led me to a galvanic machine.”

  “You constructed it?”

  “I went back to first principles. It is a very simple contrivance of wires and batteries.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “Did you know that Pa had a collection of eyes?”

  “No, sir. I did not.”

  “Many of them are perfectly preserved in spirits. The eyes of dogs. The eyes of lizards. The eyes of human beings.”

  “You need not tell me the rest, Mr. Armitage.”

  “I have caused the pupils to contract. And the irises to tremble.”

  “I am obliged to you, Mr. Armitage, but I must be on my way. Good evening to you, sir.” Before he could return my farewell, I had walked across the road and lost myself in fog. I could not endure the recital of his experiments. I was now so thoroughly ashamed of my own labours and ambitions that I could not bear to see them shared by anybody else. What if this electrical mania were widespread? What would be the end of it? Slowly I made my way home through the fog.

  18

  “THERE IS A STRANGER AT THE DOOR,” Fred said.

  “What stranger?”

  “He is small. He looks like a bruised pippin.”

  “That will be the doctor. Bring him in.”

  “Doctor? Whatever is wrong with you?”

  “He is going to take off my leg.” He looked at me in horror. “There is nothing the matter with me, Fred. The doctor is a friend.”

  “If you say so, sir. I have never heard of a doctor being a friend before.” So, with a certain amount of suspicion, he brought Polidori into the room.

  “Ah, Frankenstein, I trust you are well.”

  “He is very well, sir,” Fred said. “Tip-top.”

  “That will be all, Fred.”

  “Call me if you need me, sir.” Fred reluctantly left the room, watched intently by Polidori.

  “I notice that these London boys,” he said, “have a tendency to rickets. It makes them somewhat bow-legged.”

  “I have not seen it in him. I think in the city that the walk is known as a swagger.”

  “Really? It is social, then, not physical?”

  “They imitate each other. Or so I believe.”

  “You are a keen observer, Mr. Frankenstein. Now, I have brought it with me.” He opened the small case that he carried with him, and took out a glass-stopped phial. “I have already mixed the powder with the laudanum. Five or six drops will be sufficient for you in the beginning.”

  “In the beginning was the word.” I do not know why I said it. I simply said it.

  “There will be no words, I hope. Only peacefulness.”

  “At what time of day is it recommended?”

  “I favour the early evening. You will feel its benefits on the following day, after a profound slumber. But if the tremor causes you anxiety-or if there is any other great anxiety-then you should take it at once.”

  “What is the cost, Dr. Polidori?”

  “It will have no adverse effect upon your constitution.”

  “No, I mean the price of this liquid?”

  “It is a gift to you, sir. I will accept nothing for it. If in the future you wish to procure more, then we will arrive at some sensible settlement.”

  We left the matter there. I was grateful for the cordial, but I could not shake off the disagreeable sensations Polidori aroused in me. He was too watchful. He told me that Bysshe and Byron had spent the entire evening carousing in Jacob’s while he slept with his head upon the table. When eventually they walked out into the Strand, they spent an hour or more looking for a hackney carriage. “I have left his lordship,” he said, “nursing a swollen head. I must return to my charge.” I thanked him again for his ministrations, and he urged me to call upon him and Lord Byron at their house in Piccadilly.

  I left the phial on the table where Polidori had placed it. “What is this?” Fred asked me when he came into the room.

  “It is a cordial,” I said. “To help me sleep.”

  “Like porter?”

  “Not exactly. But it has a similar effect.”

  “You will be careful then, sir. My poor father-”

  “You have told me of Mr. Shoeberry’s early death.”

  “His toes was just twitching.” He paused, and picked up the phial. “His face was cold as any stone.”

  “Be so good as to leave the bottle where it is, Fred. It is precious fluid.”

  “Precious?” He put down the phial very gently.

  “As gold.”

  In truth, ever since the onset of my accursed ambition, I had been labouring under a weight of nervous excitement and irritability that no human constitution could properly bear; my animal spirits rose and fell disproportionately, so that I was in a continual battle with fear and doubt. There were many occasions when I suffered a peculiar sensation within my stomach of harbouring rats that were attempting to gnaw their way out.

  Yet I did not touch the opiate all that day. From my chair I contemplated the glass phial, gleaming in the rays of the weak and fitful sun that penetrated into Jermyn Street. In the early evening a particular form of melancholy, not at all pleasing, customarily fell upon me. It was then that I measured out six drops of the opiate and swallowed them.

  The effect was not immediate. But gradually, over a space of approximately half an hour, I became aware of a sensation of mild warmth spreading through my limbs; it was as if I were stretched out in the sun. This was succeeded by feelings of calmness and equipoise, so that I seemed to glide rather than walk across the room. I felt utterly self-possessed, with an elevation of spirits that I had never before experienced. Fred came into the room, with my evening dish of tea, and at first did not seem to recognise my enhanced state.

  “Ah, Fred, immortal Fred.”

  “Beg pardon, sir?”

  “You bring the fragrance of the Indian plains.”

  “I have just been in Piccadilly, sir.” Then he noticed the silver spoon with which I had measured out the drops. “It is the liquor, sir, is it? Perhaps you might sit down.”

  I had not been aware that I was pacing the room. “No, Fred. I must savour the moments of ease.”

  I walked over to the window. The pedestrians and porters and carriages in the street below me seemed to be united in one continuous melody, as if they had become a line of light. Instinctively I realised that this was not a compound that would stupefy my faculties but, on the contrary, one that would awaken them to fresh and vigorous life. I went into my bedroom, and lay down upon the bed in a delicious reverie. Fred hovered by the door, but he had become part of my sensation of bliss. I may not have slept, but I dreamed. I was lying in a warm boat, moving across the calm surface of a lake or sea, while all around me the light dappled the water. Above me were no clouds but the deep blue empyrean reaching into infinity.

  It was one continuous dream, and I rose from my bed on the following morning utterly relaxed and refreshed. I believed, too, that my intellectual powers had been awakened, and with great ardour I took from my shelf a copy of Tourneur’s Tables of Electrical Fluxions. I found that I was able to calculate with ease, and from the very shape and fitness of the numbers I gathered an enormous intellectual pleasure. I could even visualise the stream of the electrical charge. With the phial of laudanum in my pocket I travelled down to Limehouse where once more I began to experiment with my electrical machines. I believe that the sensation of equipoise lasted for a further eight hours, by which time I had grown weary enough to settle into a chair.

  I had taken no more of the opiate, but I had the sensation of being conveyed across a broad sheet of water with the light playing all around me. The sky had become a deeper blue than before, and I realised that the nature of the water had changed. I was moving upon a river. I knew it to be the river Thames. I could see the reflections of overhanging trees on its surface, and I was at once aware of another world within our own where the trees grew downward and the sky was below me; there I wandered, amazed, and t
hrough the veiled atmosphere I saw an image of myself looking down upon me. And in my face I saw wonder.

  The craft was travelling faster than in my first dream, and the notion of a destination provoked in me some discontent. Yet I settled back into a reverie, where the banks and fields beside me were bathed in light and where the grass seemed gilded. And I murmured to myself, “I have found the word golden.” The boat now had lost its momentum, and was drifting slowly with the current of the Thames. I felt a gentle wind upon me, and the rustling of leaves was like the whispering of many voices. For some reason I felt the first vague symptoms of unease. I came within reach of the bank, and felt the softness of the earth and grass: the colours of the blossom were so bright and fiery that for a moment I closed my eyes. The boat of its own will then turned and found the current once again. Never had the sky seemed so clear to me, and there below me was its reflection even more bright. I was surrounded by skies. I let my fingers trail in the warm and slowly moving water, sensing the freshness of its flow. Then something grasped my hand. It grabbed hold upon me firmly, and tried to pull me down. I awoke with a start, my opiate dream dissolved in a moment of terror.

  It was night. I had slept for several hours, and quickly I lit the oil-lamps so that I would not be utterly cast into darkness. I sat trembling upon the chair, fearful that I was still in a dream.

  Then with an enormous effort of will I resumed my calculations. I realised, too, that to leave Limehouse at this hour would invite the notice of footpads and vagabonds. Yes, my fears had returned. In my opiate condition I fancied that I was no longer part of the tumult of life-that the fever and the strife had been suspended-and that I was capable of repose and rest. The burden had been put down; the anxiety had been lifted. But now all those sorrows had been revived. The enemy, fear, had returned. The battle was renewed. I was no longer master of myself.

  I examined the phial for several minutes-how could such a small measure provoke such extraordinary changes in the human frame? There were mysteries here as obscure as galvanism and reanimation. I decided to experiment with two drops only of the tincture. After a short while I found myself walking, as I believed, down an avenue brilliantly lit by naphtha lamps; I was back in Geneva, and I was hurrying to meet my father and sister with news of my success at university. I was filled with such youthful enthusiasm that I leapt high into the air and soared effortlessly over the city and the lake.