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“You have never told me this before,” Mary said.
“I have never told anyone. I do not know why I am telling you all now. It was the surprise of it, I suppose.”
“Well now, you see,” Byron said, “how our own stories are more interesting than the German tales.” He went over to Bysshe. “That is the most interesting case of the doppelganger I have ever heard. Do you recall if, at the moment it was most alert, you felt weak?”
“I was close to fainting. And then I fell.”
“Precisely. The double image always saps the strength of its source. No doubt it will appear to you again, Shelley. It may offer you advice or counsel. Do not listen to it. It is sure to deceive you.”
“It has no shadow,” Mary added. “At least that is what I have read.”
“Be sure not to confuse it with your husband.” Byron was laughing. “There would be the devil of a row.”
“Who is to say what is true and what is false?” she replied.
“Mary was about to describe her story to us,” I said. “It was concerned with the unhallowed arts. Am I correct, Mary?”
“No. I will say no more about it. I will brood upon it, Victor. I will nourish it secretly, until it is ready to enter the world.” She got up from the table, and walked over to the window. “These storms will never cease.”
“You can sit beneath the awning on the balcony,” Bysshe replied to her. “Then the rain will be delightful. You will see it nourishing the earth. The garden here will be replenished.”
At that moment Polidori leaned over to me and said, in a low voice, “I meant to tell you yesterday. But there was no proper occasion. I have discovered the words for you.”
I knew at once his meaning, but I did not know his intent. “The words for the golem?”
“I have been in correspondence with my old master in Prague. He did not wish to write them down but I persuaded him that, in the interest of science, it would be a noble gesture. It is here.” From his waistcoat he took out a slip of paper. I placed it in the inside pocket of my jacket. I did not wish to look at it. Not yet.
20
A FEW MORNINGS LATER, Mary confessed to an alarming sensation in her stomach; she complained of a great ache accompanied by a tingling pain. Bysshe and Byron had not yet appeared, so Polidori and I sat alone with her in the dining room. She could not eat, and sat on a small sofa by the window. “There is a blockage somewhere,” Polidori told her. “The fluids are hindered. Will you allow me to help you?”
“By all means,” she replied. “Lord Byron has told me of your magnetising.”
“May I sit opposite to you? Here.” He moved a chair from the breakfast table, and brought it over to her. “Now, will you allow yourself to become quite inert? Let your arms hang by your sides. Let your head fall. Good. You are now relaxed?”
“Am I allowed to speak?”
“Of course.”
“Yes. I am relaxed.”
Polidori drew his chair close to Mary, so that their knees touched. Then he leaned over and took her arm. “I am applying a gentle friction,” he said. “Do you feel anything as yet?”
“No. Not yet. Yes. Now I do. I sense a warmth in the shape of a circle. A small coin.”
“Now, Mary, I am not being indelicate. I wish you to put your knees between mine so that we are in a ma
“As long as my husband does not see us.”
“Shelley approves of my work already. Fear nothing. Where exactly is the pain?”
“Here. Just above the abdomen.”
“That is the site of the hypochondriac organ. I do not need to put my hands there. I will place them on your temples. They are well named. If you will be so kind as to lower your head. Just so.” He put his fingers to the sides of her head, and began a series of stroking movements. “What do you feel now?”
“There is a warmth in my big toe. On my right foot.”
“Well now. Visualise that warmth moving upwards through your body. See it as a fire. It will burn away the impurities as it progresses.” I was about to speak, but with a look Polidori urged me to keep my silence. “The body,” he said to her, “is made up of little magnetic centres comprising the great magnet of the human frame.” He looked at me for confirmation.
“So the electrical fluid is begi
“Precisely so. Do you not feel, Mary, the warmth of the current?”
“Oh, yes.” She sighed. “The pain is dissolving.”
“It will soon pass altogether.”
“I must sleep,” she said. “I want to sleep.” She rose from the chair and, without looking at us, left the room.
Polidori looked at me, almost slyly. “She is drawn to magnetic slumber,” he said. “All of them feel the need to sleep.”
“I believe, Polidori, that you are on the wrong path. Magnetic slumber is not the cause. It is the effect. The consequence of far larger powers.”
“I do not understand you.”
“There are forces of which you know nothing.”
“Then I will be obliged if you inform me of them.”
“It is premature, Polidori.”
I believe that, from this time forward, he decided to pursue me with all the subtlety and cu
“At any rate, Frankenstein, will you allow me to indicate the pulses in your own body?”
“If you wish it,” I said.
“Oh, yes. Most certainly.”
When Byron came down to breakfast he found Polidori leaning over me with his hands upon my thighs. “We used to do that at Harrow,” he said, apparently not in the least surprised.
“I am instructing Frankenstein in the mysteries of magnetism.”
“Is that so? I thought you were about to bugger him. Where are the kidneys?” Byron surveyed some dishes laid out on a side-table. “And answer came there none.” He piled some smoked bacon upon a plate, and carried it over to the table. “Where shall we travel today? Where in this region will we beat a path? Tell us, Frankenstein.”
“Well, my lord, we might climb. We have mountains.” In the presence of Byron it was impossible for Polidori to continue his instruction, so I moved over to the window.
“I think not.” I had forgotten, for a moment, his deformed foot. He had never alluded to it, but I believe that it was a source of embarrassment to him. I knew, too, that deformed persons are often born with strong passions. “Now that we are beside the lake, we must use the lake. Water is my element. Did you know that I once swam across the Hellespont?”
“There is a small castle further along the shore,” I told him. “You might care to visit it. It was once a fortress and a prison.”
“Like the famous Chateau de Chillon?”
“Not so striking,” I said. “But it is picturesque. It is rumoured to be haunted.”
“Do you believe in ghosts?” Polidori asked Byron.
“I deny nothing. But I doubt everything. We must encounter these ghosts, gentlemen. Shelley will faint.”
“Mary will support him,” Polidori said.
“Yes,” Byron replied. “She is the stronger of the two, I think. It is a question of the hen fucking the cock.” I was shocked by his language, but took care not to show it. “Depend upon it, that girl has steel within her.”
“She has the electric force within her,” Polidori said. “I have just calmed her with it.”
“Did you stroke her thighs?”
“I applied some friction to her skin.”
Byron was about to say something else, but broke off as Bysshe entered the room dishevelled and dazed from sleep. “Well, Shelley,” Byron said to him, “good morning to you. We are going on an expedition to a prison. What is this place called, Frankenstein?”
“The Chateau de Marmion. It belonged to a family of that name. I do not know who owns it now.”
“We will leave our cards, at any rate. Eat up, Shelley, I long to be gone.”
I retired to a small alcove, where I was hidden from them by a screen that divided the breakfast table from some scattered chairs and tables on which newspapers and journals were piled. Shelley soon left the table, confessing that he needed a chamber pot, so that Byron and Polidori were alone together. I began to read an essay on the merits of the Clapham sect, and disregarded the murmur of their voices. But then I began to listen to them. “She has two faults unpardonable in a woman,” Byron was saying. “She can read and she can write.”