The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein

by Peter Ackroyd

  Then I found myself sitting in the workshop, as before, my calculations spread about before me on the table. My equations were of the utmost lucidity-I recognised that from the neat formulations I had managed and from the comments of “precise” and “wonderful!” in the margins. But what was this? I heard the sound of oars pulling against the tide, and the creaking of a boat upon the water. Who would be rowing upon the Thames at this hour? I went to the door of the workshop and opened it by a fraction. The familiar smell of mud and brine assailed me. But there was another odour, too. I peered out and saw a shallow vessel making its way slowly to the jetty. “Who is there?” I called out. There came no answer. “For God’s sake, tell me who you are!”

  The boat had come to a stop beside the wooden platform of the jetty itself. I could hear the water lapping beside it. Then Harriet Westbrook-Harriet Shelley-stepped out. She was not as she had been in life. She was infinitely more bright and splendid. Then I noticed that she was carrying upon her shoulders a coarsely woven sack. “Why are you here, Harriet?” She did not answer, but seemed to turn back to someone else in the boat. There was some murmuring, and I recognised the voice of Martha. Then there was a light note of laughter. Now she turned again to me. “I am not here, Victor. You are here.” So I awoke again at the table, the papers strewed about it.

  Throughout that night, and for the next morning, the dreams or visions emerged and then disappeared. I was in a position of complete enslavement, helplessly in thrall to whatever hallucination passed before me. I was in the estuary, walking among its sad flats and wild marshes with the gulls crying overhead; the strong savour of salt was in the damp air. I was somehow aware of some great, dark shape brooding in the distance-out of sight-and then I knew that the malevolent presence was that of London. Man had created London. Man had not created the estuary. I was seized with a great fear that this land had just emerged from the sea, and that the incoming water was about to overwhelm me. So I ran inland-or what I believed to be inland-and sought shelter in a small and crudely built hut that stood alone upon a mound in a field of pasture. In contrast to the world outside, it was perfectly dry and warm. There was a crackling sound, as of branches and twigs burning in flame, but I could see no fire.

  Then I found myself walking down a street in London. It was a street of black stone, with no doors or windows or openings of any kind. But, as I walked upon it, the stone began to shriek-in agony, in fear, in consternation, I knew not what. I turned the corner and there before me was another street of stone; as soon as I ventured upon it, it gave out a loud cry of pain, which came from the walls as well as the ground. I could not bear the cacophony but as I hurried down the streets, and turned down other alleys, the screaming grew more immense.

  WHEN I AWOKE, it was broad day. I was too troubled by these laudanum dreams to resume the study of my papers, so I left the workshop and walked into Limehouse. There was a carriage stop at the tavern by the church, and I waited there for the next vehicle. I knew the crossing sweeper who stood here and who, for a penny, would hold the horses while the driver refreshed himself in the tavern or relieved himself in the churchyard. He was a black man by the name of Job. “Job,” I said. “When did the last one leave?”

  “He be gone a good half-hour. It be a good half-hour yet.”

  “Was it full?”

  “Pretty tight, sir. There was a seat on the top.”

  So I went into the tavern and brought out two mugs of porter. “There we are, Job. Sluice the dust from your throat.”

  Job had told me in the past that he had been shipped from Barbados as a captain’s boy, or slave, and that he had been abandoned by his master on their arrival in England. The ship had docked at Limehouse, and he had lived in the neighbourhood ever since. He survived now on the few coins he obtained from those using his crossing, and from the drivers of the carriages. “Where do you live?” I asked him as we sat on a wooden bench outside the tavern.

  “Along the street yonder.” He pointed out to me an alley of tenements that led off Limehouse Church Street. “It is a mouse-hole, sir.”

  “Are you married, Job?”

  “I never be married. Who want a poor black man like myself?”

  “Your race does seem to be unfortunate.”

  “We be harried and cursed and beaten. Some of these fine gentlemen will aim a kick at me on the crossing. Some of them swear dreadful.”

  I do not know whether it was the effect of the powder, but I experienced a sudden and overwhelming feeling of pity for the sweeper. “Come inside,” I said. “It is a raw day.”

  “No permission, sir. Mrs. Jessop will not abide black people.”

  “Then I will bring another drink to you, Job. I wish to learn more of you.” When I returned I questioned Job closely about his life in Limehouse. Much to my surprise, he had stories worse than his own to relate: of newborn babies abandoned on the streets, of small children forced to wade into the stinking cesspits in search of the cheapest items of any value, of the dead buried under the floorboards to save the trifling expense of a pauper’s funeral.

  At night Job himself would go down to the foreshore, and search for objects that he might use or sell; on one occasion, he told me, he had found an ancient dagger that he had sold for a shilling to a tobacconist in Church Row. It was now on display in the shop window. “But some nights,” he said, “there is something happening in the river.”

  “Happening?”

  “Something arriving. From downstream.”

  “You mean some kind of boat?”

  “No boat. No. Something moving fast under the water. All the shore is silent when it passes.”

  “A whale?”

  “No. No fish. A thing.”

  “I do not understand you, Job.”

  “Have you been hearing, sir, how the estuary is haunted? Down by Swanscombe Marshes?” I shook my head. “No one goes near. Even the fishermen will not work there.”

  “What is this apparition? Does it have a name?”

  “No name, sir. It is a dead thing living. It is greater than a man.”

  “How do you know this, Job?”

  “It is my supposal. My mother told me the stories she had heard.”

  “These were the stories of the slaves?”

  “Yes, sir. But the stories come from far back. When there were not slaves. My mother told me of the dogon. It is a dead man brought to life by magic. Living in the forests and the mountains. A phantom, sir, with eyes of fire.”

  “Surely you do not believe that such a thing lives on the estuary?”

  “I know nothing, sir. I am a poor black sweeper. But I wonder what this thing is that moves under the water.”

  At this point the carriage arrived, with Holborn as its destination. Job stood up and went over to the horses, which seemed to recognise him. They became still when he spoke to them and stroked them. I called up to the driver. “Do you have a seat?”

  “Inside, sir. One of the parties is leaving.”

  So I mounted the step and, within a short time, the carriage was on its way to the city.

  WHEN I CAME BACK to Jermyn Street, I went at once to my study where I had left some of my calculations. I renewed my work with fresh enthusiasm, knowing that I was close to a precise formula for the reversal of the electrical charge in the process of its formation. If I were able to create and to maintain this negative force, it might subvert and utterly undo the power of the original charge.

  I was interrupted by the sound of voices, and of laughter; then Bysshe and Mary came into the room, with Fred following. “I could not stop them, sir,” he said. “They rushed me from the door.”

  “I cannot be stopped, Fred.” Bysshe was in the highest spirits. “I am Phaethon in his fiery chariot. Have you heard of Phaethon?”

  “There is a fly driver in Haymarket, sir.”

  “Fly? That is a new word, is it not?” Then he turned to me. “May I present to you, Victor, Mary Shelley?”

  I rose from my chair,
and embraced them both warmly. “When did you do this?”

  “This very morning. In St. Mildred’s, Bread Street.”

  “For the sake of any future children,” Mary said, “we observed the form.”

  “It was a lovely ceremony, Victor. Mr. Godwin cried. I cried. The parson cried. God bless us all!”

  “I did not cry.” Mary was smiling as she spoke. “And I do not think that God will bless us.”

  “Old Father Nobody had nothing to do with it,” Bysshe replied. “We are free. We are not exiles on the earth. Will you join us for tea at the Chapter? I can promise you the finest Marsala in London.”

  “Do come,” Mary urged me.

  It was not a place, in truth, I would recommend to the newly married. It was one of those eating houses that have preserved the manners of the last century while manifesting all the inconveniences of the present one. The parlour was dark, even in the early afternoon, since precious little light filtered through the thick and small-paned windows. The beams were large, the roof low, and the space was partitioned into a number of dark wood compartments or “boxes” as the Londoners call them. The word has always reminded me of coffins.

  The three of us were shown to a “box,” and Bysshe immediately ordered a round of ham sandwiches with a bottle of sherry. An elderly waiter, of gloomy demeanour, proceeded to serve us. He was wearing knee-breeches, in the old style, with black silk hose and none too spotless cravat. I gathered from Mary that his name was William. “Will the foreign gentleman,” he asked Bysshe, “be requiring mustard?”

  “I will ask the foreign gentleman.” He said this in the most grave manner. “Will you be requiring mustard?”

  “I think not.”

  “You have your answer, William.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  Mary burst out laughing, after he had walked away with dignified step. “He has never been known to smile,” she said. “People have perished in the attempt.”

  She broke off as William returned with the sandwiches. Bysshe fell upon them as if he were quite famished. “We have good news, Victor,” he said. “Byron has invited us to join him on the shores of Lake Geneva. Your old home.”

  “He has rented a villa there,” Mary told me. “In the event of an imminent marriage, as he put it, he has thrown the doors open to us. You are invited.”

  “Me?”

  “Why ever not?” she replied.

  “Do you know the name of the villa?”

  “Diodati,” Bysshe replied for her.

  “Diodati? I know it well. I have climbed into its garden at night, and tasted the fruit.”

  “An omen, my dear Victor,” he said. “You must taste the fruit again. We will travel to Switzerland together.”

  Bysshe was in a state of great exhilaration, and I could not resist the tide of his enthusiasm. So I consented. I believed, too, that a suspension of my labours and calculations might assist me; the mind needs rest as surely as the body, and I trusted that a period of indolence would restore all my faculties. We agreed to set out within the month.

  “We will speed across the plains of Holland -” Mary said.

  “-And see the castles of the Rhine nestling in their turpitude,” Bysshe added.

  “And you, Victor, you will see your old familiar places.”

  “I am afraid,” I replied to her, “that I will seem a stranger there.”

  Bysshe laughed and signalled for another bottle. “You are a stranger everywhere, Victor. That is your charm.”

  “I wonder that Lord Byron has invited me.”

  “He must enjoy your company,” Bysshe replied. I was not so sure that I would enjoy his, but I said nothing. “Byron is an odd being. He is at once courageous and defensive, deeply proud and deeply uncertain.”

  “I think,” Mary said, “that he feels shame. He feels his deformity.”

  “I take it,” I asked her, “that he has a club foot? That is the phrase, is it not?”

  “Yes. That is the phrase. But the pain goes deeper. He is ashamed of life. He wishes to expend it quickly.”

  “He can be very fierce,” Bysshe said, “with the people around him.”

  “That is because he is fierce with himself,” she replied. “He has no mercy.”

  William, without prompting, had brought over another plate of ham sandwiches. Bysshe attacked them with renewed appetite. “I wonder,” he said, “that he has not been wholly spoiled by his success. I have said that he is proud. But he has no vanity.”

  “You mean,” Mary replied, “that he deigns to speak to mortals such as ourselves.” Bysshe seemed offended by this. She noticed his reaction and added, very quickly, “Of course he respects you as a poet, Bysshe. He is disparaging of his own verse.”

  “It comes too easily to him. He sees no merit in that which flows freely. He relishes a struggle.”

  “I agree with him there,” I said. “Out of adversity comes triumph. All great natures aspire.”

  Bysshe raised his glass. “I commend your spirit, Victor. Death or victory!”

  Mary evidently disliked this turn of the conversation. “That is easy for you to say. Men have an appetite for glory.”

  “And women have not?” he asked her.

  “We wish for a different kind of renown. We do not seek conflict. We seek harmony.”

  “I drink to that,” he said. “But sometimes the world will not allow it. That reminds me, Victor. Byron wrote of dreadful storms.”

  “We are used to storms in the mountains.”

  “No. These are out of all reckoning. The local people prophesy a season of darkness. From some unknown cause.”

  “I look forward to it,” I said. “I like the aberrations of nature.”

  AT THE END OF THE MONTH we assembled at Dover -Bysshe and Mary with their young serving maid, Lizzie, myself and Fred. It was Fred’s first journey out of England, and he was in a state of high excitement. He had never seen the open sea. “I expect,” he said, “that we will see islands and such like.”

  “There are very few of those, Fred,” I replied, “in this stretch of water.”

  “Just a bare flat plain of sea, then?”

  “I am afraid so.”

  “How deep is it, sir?”

  “I have no idea, Fred. You must ask the captain when we board.”

  “Deep enough for whales?”

  “I am not sure.”

  “I would welcome the opportunity of spying one of them,” he said. “I saw a print of one knocking over that boat.” He was referring to an incident eleven months before, when the Finlay Cutter was broken up by an irate whale. “Beg pardon, Mr. Frankenstein. Not meaning to suggest any danger.” He had gathered up our luggage and, whistling to a porter, spoke to him very confidentially and persuaded him to transport it down to the quay where our boat was berthed. The Lothair was undecked, and with much pulling and pushing we were eventually lodged in two small and uncomfortable cabins. “This is snug,” Fred said.

  “We will not be here long.”

  “That must be the smallest window in the world.”

  “I do not think that is the word in English. There is a nautical term for it. Porthole.”

  “It is of glass, sir, and you can barely see through it. So I call it a window.”

  The captain, a surly fellow named Meadows, scarcely bothered to stop as he walked along the corridor between the several cabins. “We set sail now,” he said. “Without delay. The wind is fresh.”

  Within an hour we had begun our journey and were upon the open sea. Fred could scarcely contain his excitement. “It is very boisterous, sir. My stomach hits the floor and then comes up into my mouth.”

  “You should sit, Fred. You will be ill.”

  “Not me, sir. I have ridden in my father’s cart. The streets of London are worse than any sea. Look, sir. Over there. There is the whale I mentioned.” I looked out of the porthole, but I could see nothing through the spray. “Did you not see that creature following us? It popped its
head in and out of the water.” I looked again, and for a moment thought that I glimpsed something. But it had gone beneath the waves.

  “It was a piece of timber, Fred. A plank.”

  Bysshe came into our cabin. “Mary is unwell,” he said. “She wishes to be left with Lizzie. I have given her a powder, but the sea is very high.”

  “High and low at the same time,” Fred said. “It is a regular seesaw.”

  “But we are making progress, I think. Come and sit with me, Bysshe.”

  “Yes. We will discuss old tales of sea adventures. We will relive the journeys to Virginia and the Barbadoes. We will hail the sapphire ocean!” Bysshe had a wonderful ability to rise above circumstances and, as we sat in the tossing cabin, he entertained me and Fred with the tales of sea journeys he had read as a child. He recited with vigour the lines from the Odyssey where Odysseus sails up the narrow strait between the islands of Scylla and Charybdis where the sea “seethed and bubbled in utter turmoil, and high overhead the spray fell on the tops of the cliffs.” It was Bysshe’s own translation, and I am sure that he composed it as he went along.

  There was a sudden knock on the door of the cabin, and Lizzie stood before us. She gave a little curtsy. “Please to tell you, Mr. Shelley, that my mistress is a deal better and craves a little bit of your company.”

  “I shall be there, Lizzie, before you are gone.” He gave me a hasty adieu, and retired.

  Fred and I sat in silence, Fred whistling as he looked out of the porthole. “Do refrain from that noise, Fred. It is giving me a headache.”

  “There goes that whale again.”

  “Are you sure? I am not convinced that whales frequent these waters.”

  “Where there is water, sir, there is a whale. Look.”

  I went over to the porthole. “I can see nothing, Fred. You are dreaming. Will you please seek out the captain, and ask him how much longer we will be at sea?”