Frankenstein's Monster (11 page)

“Hart … mann,” she said, dragging out the words.
Hart
and
stag:
two names for the same animal, but only
hart
was common to man.

“Victor Hartmann. He has news for Mother of Uncle Robert.”

“Yes, so you told me. Well, there’s time enough later, I suppose. We have been ill mannered enough to Mr. Hartmann for one evening.”

The name buzzed in my ears as if a wasp had whispered it. Victor Hartmann.
Hart
-mann. Animal man. Could Lily possibly know? Was she mocking me?

We left the darkened study and stepped into the better-lit hall. Winterbourne’s eyes widened, and he tore off his mask, the better to see, revealing his own countenance: black eyes, black hair shot with silver, strong hawkish features. But there was none of the predator in him. Instead he looked like a wise old bird that had gladly abandoned the hunt in favor of serenity. His face was so good-natured that, even as he fought wildly to comprehend what he saw, I knew that his words would not be harsh.

“Sir,” he at last burst out, “I beg your forgiveness for gazing at you so intently.”

“It is I who am sorry,” I said. “If you think I will disturb your guests, I will leave.”

My words shocked me. Why had I apologized? Because I had seen a gentleman struggle to accept me?

“Sir, do not leave,” Winterbourne said. “And, again, I beg your forgiveness.”

“Why?” Lily asked slyly. “Do you think his mask too horrible?”

“His mask?” Winterbourne looked from me to his daughter. “Lily, it is clearly—” He gestured for what he could not say.

“I will leave,” I said. “I see now that my … appearance … is inappropriate.”

Winterbourne took a deep breath.

“You are a guest, sir, and are welcome in my house.”

“Of course, he is,” Lily said. “Now, Victor, accompany me into the ballroom.”

The sudden slackening of Winterbourne’s face revealed he had not meant his welcome to extend to the party.

“Lily …”

“I shall do as I like, Father, as always,” she said, slipping her arm through mine. I looked down at her, at her bare neck and the swell of breasts exposed by the neckline of her gown. I felt the heat of her skin and smelled the faint scent of lavender. Did she toss her head back merely to expose the sweeter part of her throat? I could not read her eyes. I knew only that she stood too close. Despite Winterbourne’s extraordinary effort to put me at ease, if he had tried to separate his daughter from me, I would have struck him.

The ballroom was so vast it must have run the entire length of the house, and was ablaze with so many candles I wanted to shield my eyes. I did not, lest I miss a thing. The room was a mad whirl of color as costumed couples danced and as servants hurried to and fro with trays of food and drink. Then we entered. Everywhere we walked we created silence. Servants stopped and stared. Musicians abandoned the melody
to dissonance. Dancers stopped midtwirl. Only a single serving girl, intent on her duties, continued to pass from guest to guest, until at last she noticed something was amiss and turned. Her silver tray clattered to the floor.

I tried to stare down each pair of eyes fixed upon me.

“Well, we have no need to decide whose costume is the best tonight, have we?” Lily exclaimed shrilly. From a nearby servant, she took two crystal glasses filled with shimmering gold liquid and passed one to me. In my hand, the tiny glass was a thimble. It was an act of will not to shatter it with a simple squeeze of my fingers.

Lily urged me forward, enjoying how the crowds parted before us as if I wore the tinkling bell of a leper. Eventually, a more subdued tune was struck up by the musicians. People gathered behind us in our wake.

Off to one side was a door; Lily steered me through it to a salon. Chairs drawn close together, and cigars left smoking in ashtrays, indicated recent occupants who had gone out to see the commotion. As soon as we were alone, she dropped my arm.

“Why did you invite me?” I asked.

“Why did you come?” she countered.

“To see you again.” The truth in my reply softened the violence beneath my every thought.

“Then if you died tonight, Victor Hartmann, you would die a happy man, wouldn’t you,” she said sharply.

“There you are!”

Gregory Winterbourne entered the salon followed by nervous servants bearing trays of food. Several guests peered round the edges of the door.

“I thought you might prefer to take your refreshment in here. The ballroom is noisy, not a pleasant place.”

“Thank you.” I appreciated his delicacy of phrasing. “Sir, I do not deserve your attention. Why don’t you return to the party?”

“No, my place is with my daughter. It is her celebration. There is the matter, too, of your news from my brother-in-law. My wife has not yet come down to the party and may not even appear at all tonight. I fear that preparing for it has been too much of a nervous strain. Tell me of her brother, and I will tell her.”

Selecting the sturdiest chair, Winterbourne bade me sit, which I did cautiously, testing the chair’s strength as I slowly lowered myself. The guests who had been at the door stepped inside the room. Soon sitting or standing about me—eyes fixed in wary stares, lips pulled tight in revulsion—were men dressed as a baker, an executioner, two knights, and a mouse. Despite the room being a smoking salon, there was a woman, too—an older woman who wore no costume, just a simple gray gown and a silver mask. She had taken the seat farthest from me.

Winterbourne did not tell the guests to leave, perhaps thinking that whatever news I had of Walton was not of an intimate nature.

Before he could mention him, the baker took up a pipe, pointed with its stem, and said, hesitantly, “Your costume—”

Immediately the others began to question me.

“Is your mask rubber? It moves when you speak.”

“Is your face glued on?”

“Why did you dye your hands different colors?”

“Are you wearing stilts?”

Even as the guests edged closer, their features grew more distressed, as they left the real question unasked.

“Who are you meant to be?” asked the baker.

I sat back and steadied my hands against the armrests. This was what I had planned: to check my murderous intent and use this opportunity to hint at my true nature, then to judge the reactions of those who heard. Yes, my face is terrifying; I will never be able to change that. But if people knew, if they could understand, could they move beyond their fear? Or would they condemn me? Drive me out of the house? The world had changed much in recent time. Centuries ago, advances like gaslight, chloroform, and the telegraph, even a friction match, might have brought denunciations of witchcraft. Now they were science. And after all, what was I but a product of science? Should society not take responsibility for what it had produced?

I decided to present my life as mere fiction and let their response to it determine the rest.

“There is a legend in my country,” I began, “so famous that, had I appeared at any party there, I would have been recognized at once. I assumed the tale had traveled this far. I can see by your faces it has not.”

Revulsion transformed into enthrallment as my audience listened. I suddenly realized that so famous a creature would have a name, like France’s La Velue, Denmark’s Erlkönig, or even Yorkshire’s Jack-in-Irons. My eyes searched the room for inspiration, then moved to the ballroom beyond the open door. There! A jester in motley—and suddenly I had my name.

“It is the legend of the Patchwork Man.”

Heads nodded, eyes stared more intently at my face. My first few words, combined with my hideous scars, had hinted at what was to come without diminishing the audience’s expectations. Now I had only to fulfill their horror.

“Many, many years ago,” I said softly, “there was a young man, a student more of philosophy than medicine. Many have questioned his character in an attempt to understand
his actions. No satisfactory explanation exists. I will leave his character to others and merely describe what he did.

“This young man, after innumerable experiments, discovered the secret of life, the secret of creating life from inanimate matter. And having discovered the secret, he of course sought to create the highest form of life there is—a human being.”

The guests sat forward. A half smile played on Winterbourne’s lips as he lit a cigar. Lily stood behind my chair, her presence a shadow over me. I wished to see
her
face as I spoke, yet could not bring myself to turn around.

“The student worked in solitude,” I said, “for to whom could he tell his secret? He must have felt many doubts, many fears, and yet, too, an overwhelming sense of triumph. To create life was to cheat death itself. It was the power of God. Had the student truly discovered that power? Or was he able to steal it only because of an unholy pact?”

“An unholy pact,” laughed the executioner as he relit his cold cigar. He blew a thick cloud of smoke overhead and slapped the mouse on the back. “Now we’re in your territory, Reverend Graham.”

“Hush,” urged the older woman. “Let him continue.”

“The student worked, as always, on the darkest of nights, and, on one such night, his experiment proved a success: he was able to animate a man of his own creation. When the thing rose up out of the oblivion of nonexistence, the student was struck with dread. He ran out of the laboratory and wandered the streets of the city in a near-trance. What had he done? When he returned, the creature was gone.”

“Gone where?” Winterbourne asked.

I did not answer him immediately. I had never spoken of my origin to anyone. To frame it now in such fairy-tale language made it more fantastic. My father, around whom my
thoughts orbited crazily like moons knocked loose from their bearings: Was that all he was, a student playing at science? Had I imparted too much meaning to his role in my life? However purposefully he worked, I was an accident.

“The creature was simply gone,” I said at last to Winterbourne. “Never to be seen again, or so they say. They also say in my country not to walk the streets alone late at night. If you do, you may hear slow, heavy footsteps and, if you dare to turn, you will see the creature itself, the Patchwork Man, wandering the night, looking for his creator.”

A murmur rippled through the crowd, and the guests sat back in satisfaction.

Reverend Graham struggled to remove his papier-mâché mask, yanking up the mouse head so quickly his sweaty hair stuck out like spikes on a mace. He had a weak chin, a timid face, and the frantic look of a real mouse caught in a trap.

“ ‘A man of his own creation’? What do you mean? How does one make a man?”

Lily edged closer, half-leaning on my chair. I still could not see her face. She slipped her finger inside the collar of my shirt and unerringly traced the heavy scar that circled my neck.

“Yes, tell me,” she said, a tremor beneath her challenge. “How does one make a man?”

“The creature was … assembled … from the inanimate.”

Reverend Graham froze. I softened my voice as I explained, or admitted, the nature of my birth: “Parts of dead bodies, both human and animal, were stitched together to form a whole.”

“Abomination!” he cried, jumping up and knocking the papier-mâché head to the floor.

“It’s not an abomination,” argued the baker, thinking the word a comment and not an epithet. “It’s a new Adam. You’ll have to tell that story to the bishop, Reverend.”

“Christ is the new Adam,” the reverend said, with agitation. “You—your Patchwork Man—are the Devil!”

He backed out of the room slowly, as though I might attack him if he turned.

“My, he took that quite seriously,” said the older woman.

“He took it quite
theologically,”
said the executioner.

“And was theologically offended,” said one of the knights. “What we don’t understand offends us.”

“Such a fuss!” the older woman said. “All for a story, something to frighten little children to behave. After all, if one truly believed that such a creature existed …”

“Yes?” I prompted her eagerly. “If such a creature did exist, if one truly believed … ?”

She looked inward; what she beheld there caused her to shudder.

“I could no longer feel safe in this world.”

The executioner nodded vigorously. He withdrew the cigar from his mouth and blew its smoke toward me as he spoke, its odor heavy and rancid. “There is merit in what Mrs. Eliot says. A creature made from the dead could have no respect for life.”

“Or, could appreciate it more keenly,” I suggested.

“No, it would have no understanding of what it means to be human.”

“It would want to know. I think it would want desperately to know.”

My reply put a stop to the discussion. In the silence I turned to Lily behind me. It was her reaction, above all, that I wanted.

“What do you say, Miss Winterbourne? Have I told too gruesome a tale?”

She shook her head, yet without explanation rushed from the room, her hand pressed to her mouth. The crown toppled
from her head and clattered loudly on the hardwood floor. I made to follow. Gregory Winterbourne pressed me back into the chair.

“My daughter has been skittish of late, sir. Do not presume your story to be the cause of her discomfort. I myself found what you said more interesting than you could know. I would speak with you about it,” he said. “Tomorrow at tea?”

“I would enjoy that.” My thoughts spun giddily. “Now, I must excuse myself.”

“Of course.”

Winterbourne gestured and a servant appeared. I followed him to the back of the salon, where I could exit without passing through the ballroom. I meant to leave, but Winterbourne—and, thus, his servant—had misinterpreted my words. The servant led me down a corridor, left and right, and at last to a door, lower and narrower than the others and discreetly designed to look like part of the wall. The servant motioned to it, then stepped back. Dipping my head, I entered and shut the door behind me. It was a water closet, a room dedicated solely to private comforts, such as I had read about in books.

Behind a screen stood a prettily decorated commode, too small and delicate for me to ever use. The rest of the room was a wonder. Greedily, my eyes took in everything in a single moment: The room was painted in pale green and beige, depicting figures from Greek mythology, who reclined in leisure in a meadow. A chaise longue and three chairs were arranged in a corner, each seemingly too fragile to hold a doll. A console was set against one wall, its top covered with an assortment of perfumes, soaps, creams, and oils. The console itself had a dozen drawers, each with a small brass handle. The drawers held medicinals: smelling salts, salves, unguents, and more.