“My God,” the Marquis whispered. “To think that you made this. How?”
“A complicated process,” Frankenstein said with an air of smugness. “The limbs and trunk and head were all fashioned from materials that I had collected, but these would have been of little use without the secret books of alchemy and dark arts that I was most fortunate to have uncovered. Without these volumes, none of this would be possible.”
Fear slowly abated from the Marquis’s pale eyes. He leaned in closer to me, his breath warm upon me.
“Do not dare to tell me there is not intelligence in those eyes!” the Marquis claimed. “I swear he understands every word we speak!”
Frankenstein laughed at that. “My dear Marquis,” he said, “I do not wish to contradict you, but no, that is not the case. His intelligence would be little more than what you could expect from a four-month-old infant. For now, that is all there is. There exists no knowledge within him, and certainly no understanding of language.”
“But I can see the brightness in those horrible watery eyes!”
“Animal cunning, that is all. The brain was obtained from an educated man. The capability of intelligence exists, and with enough schooling this creature could perhaps develop the art of language, but that would require years, if it were indeed possible.”
The Marquis disappeared from view. In my mind’s eye I could imagine him stroking his chin that was so deeply buried in flesh, his brow worried as if he were profoundly deep in thought. The image of this ridiculous little man in such a state struck me as comical and I must have smiled without realizing it for the Marquis exclaimed with excitement, “Victor, look at how a grin wrinkles its face!”
“Do not newborn infants also grin mysteriously?” Frankenstein asked.
The Marquis made a soft humming noise as he considered this. In the end he accepted Frankenstein’s explanation and asked him to remove the blanket from my body. I felt the fabric pulled from me. At the same moment a gasping sound emanated from the Marquis.
“This abomination of yours,” the Marquis sputtered, his voice strangled. “It is magnificently horrific, far surpassing what I had imagined. Look at the sex organ that you constructed for it! It would be the envy of many a stallion! Perhaps there is even enough there to satisfy that empress of Russia! Does it function? Please do tell me that it does!”
“An interesting question, my dear Marquis, and one that I am also curious about. For now, no, there is not yet enough strength in the creature for such activity. But in the future? I do not know. Time will tell.”
“If it does … if it does …” the Marquis’s voice broke off. A brief moment later he continued, his voice having grown exceedingly heated. “Oh, if it does function we would be able to bring more than my masterpiece to life. This creature … this is how I have been envisioning a grotesque giant that I will be naming Minski for a novel that I am currently involved in writing and which will carry the simple title,
Frankenstein and the Marquis continued their heated conversation but it mostly turned into a droning noise in my ears. I would catch pieces of what they would say; the Marquis bitterly complaining about a number of issues: his financial situation, his mother-in-law and her attempts to ruin his life, and how he wept tears of blood when his masterpiece was lost in the Bastille, while Frankenstein eagerly entreated the Marquis to describe his latest novel. It was difficult for me to pay much attention to them. Mostly my thoughts kept returning back to Frankenstein’s earlier words:
During the many days that I had been housed in Frankenstein’s laboratory, I heard frequent comments uttered from him about how I had been created from materials. I had also seen evidence to support his claims, making it impossible to have believed otherwise. I had begun to suspect that the memories I held so dear were merely illusions. But if Frankenstein had acquired the brain of an educated man to create me, could that man have been Friedrich Hoffmann? Could that be why I believed so dearly that I was this same man? If these memories were real, and if that was the reason I was convinced that I was Friedrich Hoffmann, did that not make me Friedrich Hoffmann, even if other materials were used to construct my body? And what of my soul? How could I possibly have one if I were simply a collection of materials joined together? Charlotte claimed that she could see my soul in my eyes and that it was a gentle one. How could that be? Was it possible that my soul, or should I say, Friedrich Hoffmann’s soul, entered this manufactured body? Or was I in fact soulless, a creature brought into this world through satanic magic? How could such a creature possess a soul?
These thoughts and other metaphysical questions that they raised troubled me greatly, as did the idea that Frankenstein executed the murder of the woman I believed to be my beloved Johanna for the sole purpose of arranging to have Friedrich Hoffmann blamed for her murder. And for what reason? Simply to gain access to an educated brain? The evil necessary to perpetrate such acts was more than I could fathom.
At some point Frankenstein had covered me again with the same fabric and he and his guest departed, but I wasn’t aware of it until I noticed that the chill brought from his presence was gone and that the laboratory had become deathly quiet.
In the end I decided that my memories and sentiments, if they were indeed real, would make me Friedrich Hoffmann regardless of the body that I now resided in. I would trust Charlotte that she did indeed see a gentle soul within me. Even if the darkest satanic magic was used to bring me to life, that did not have to mean that I was an instrument of the Devil, even if I was now consumed with evil desires, mainly the thoughts of murdering Frankenstein and his equally detestable Marquis.
CHAPTER
6
That same day the Marquis arrived, Frankenstein took Charlotte from the laboratory once night had fallen, and didn’t return her to her shelf for several days. My heart sank in knowing the Marquis’s sickening intentions, but I never asked Charlotte what had happened. I knew without asking her that she had suffered inhumanely, for whatever dim light had previously shone in her eyes had been extinguished upon her return. As it turned out we only had a few remaining respites to spend together. Even with the cruelty that she had been forced to endure, during our brief final minutes, Charlotte still tried with all her soul to raise my own beleaguered spirits.
The day after his arrival the Marquis performed a closer inspection of me, his breath heavy with cognac. A malignance shone in those awful, pale eyes of his as he ran his hands slowly across my body, touching me in unnatural ways. At first all I could do was imagine wrapping my hands around his throat and squeezing that insipid smile from his bloated face, but as I strained to do this my hands failed to lift more than several inches from the table. Finally I calmed myself by knowing that our situation would someday be reversed, and that he would be the one trembling under my touch.
Several days later the Marquis departed. From what I could tell from conversations that he held with Frankenstein within my presence, there were others involved in their enterprise, including a group of wealthy men who were chiefly providing financing. They talked in a mostly cryptic manner, however, and I was unable to learn more of their plans other than they envisioned me playing an important role.
Daily I was growing in strength. These improvements were slow but steady, and I dreamed that I would be able to surprise Frankenstein soon by taking hold of him and breaking his neck. Two weeks after the Marquis had left, Frankenstein thwarted my plans by tying leather straps around my body and securing me tightly to the table. Silently I cursed him for this, for I felt I was only days away from being able to rise from my imprisonment. While I had diligently tried to keep my growing strength from him, he somehow had surmised my improvement and the closeness of my revenge, and he took the proper precautions. The look he gave me as he tightened the straps around my body chilled me, as if he could read my very thoughts.
The very next day after he had strapped me to the table, he packed up his laboratory, emptying it of all of its contents, including Charlotte, so that only I remained. That night for the first time he failed to make his nocturnal visit.
I don’t think I ever felt more alone than I did that next day when sunlight first crept into the room. I had a gnawing suspicion that Victor Frankenstein had left the premises for good, and that I would lie strapped upon that
