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“Whoever is it?” Mrs. Shoeberry’s voice came from behind a sheet.
“Victor Frankenstein.”
“Why, Mr. Frankenstein. Beg your pardon.” She stepped out, clutching a brace of wooden pins and a roller. “What has Fred done now?”
“He has done nothing, Mrs. Shoeberry. I was hoping to find him here.”
“He ain’t been here, Mr. Frankenstein. He only comes on a Sunday, when I need him for the lifting.” I had no idea what she meant. “Has he gone, then?”
“I have not seen him since yesterday evening.”
She considered the matter for a moment. “That is not like Fred.”
“I know.”
She looked at me steadily. “Has he been in any trouble, sir?”
“Not that I am aware of.”
“There will be something on his mind. I know that boy. When the late Mr. Shoeberry passed off, Fred hid himself away for two days. Said he had been sleeping on the boats. He never mentioned it again. He is deep, that boy.” She went behind the sheets, from which came the sound of an enormous sneeze. After a few moments, she recovered. “Never you mind it, Mr. Frankenstein. He will be back by Sunday. He would not leave me to the lifting.”
I departed a few minutes later, having given her a florin for her “trouble,” and walked back to Jermyn Street. I had been to some degree reassured by her confidence that Fred would return by Sunday, and so once more I devoted myself to experiment. I went to the workshop each day, where I refined the galvanic mechanism in the light of my further researches: the problem of reversal was still one that exercised me, and led me to a thousand different variations in the batteries and machines. I was confident of a solution, however, and did not weary in my efforts.
FRED DID NOT RETURN by Sunday. Mrs. Shoeberry came to Jermyn Street in a state of consternation, and asked me whether we should alert the officers of the parish. I did not put much faith in the constables, or in the watch, but I agreed to go with her to the compter in St. James’s Street. There had of course been no reports of a missing boy, but she felt that she had somehow discharged her duty. However, she was not in a comfortable state of mind. She feared something. She asked me if I wanted one of her other sons to take the place of Fred, but I declined the offer.
As the days passed, I was so intent upon my work that I paid very little attention to my outward circumstances. Polidori continued to lodge in my chambers, and often questioned me about the state of my researches. I could not, as a gentleman, ask him to leave. I never referred to his sudden appearance at Sweep Fair, but I took care to reveal nothing to him. We were, as a result, uneasy companions.
Two weeks after Fred’s disappearance I received a letter from Mary Shelley, informing me that the household (in which she included Lord Byron) had left Switzerland and made their way south to Pisa where they had procured lodgings on the Lung’Arno:
It is sufficiently commodious, and we pay only thirteen sequins a month. We have an excellent mezzanino, and three rooms on the fourth floor. From here we have a view of the sunsets, which Shelley deems incomparable. Lord Byron has taken up residence in a much grander house, but he deigns to dine with us each evening. He is at this moment reading to Shelley some passage out of a poem he has recently composed. I ca
When I read this out to Polidori, he grimaced. “The man is demented,” he said. “He would drive a saint to madness. He has a demon inside him that will not let him, or anyone, rest.”
“But wait. You have not heard Mary’s postscript. She must have written it some days later.” I read out to him the forlorn message with which she ended the letter:
We have now moved on to a dwelling built on the shore at Lerici. It is known as Casa Magni and, although it is indeed large, it hardly qualifies as a house. It is more like a fortress buffeted by the sea and the sea-wind. There is a rough path to take us to the little village of San Terenzo, where we can purchase only the most rudimentary provisions. And there is only one chimney for cooking! There is no garden, and the rear of the house faces a thick wood. It is the most gloomy spot imaginable, and only the prospect of the sea lifts my spirits. Oh, how I long to be in London now!”
I put down the letter. “She is tired of travelling.”
“She is tired of Byron, too, I imagine,” Polidori said.
THEN, TWO WEEKS LATER, I received another letter. I recognised the handwriting on the envelope to be Mary’s, but it was so scrawled and strained that I knew that it contained fearful news:
There is something I ca
Her letter broke off at this juncture, but then at some later time she resumed it on a separate sheet.
Yesterday he was recovered. He had been washed onto the shore, near the mouth of the Serchio river, two miles from here. Lord Byron formally recognised the body. I could not do it. Bysshe was wearing the double-breasted jacket and nankeen trousers he purchased in Geneva. Do you remember them? The officials here demanded that he should be buried where he was found, with his grave filled with quicklime, but Byron and I revolted at such a coarse procedure. For once I felt grateful to Byron for assuming the ma
THE DEATH OF MY COMPANION had so thoroughly u
“Mary is returning next week,” he said. “Here is a note from Byron.”
The imminent return of Mary roused me from my stupor. For some reason inexplicable to myself, I wished to destroy the creature before she arrived in England: I did not allow myself to suppose that there was any real threat to her, as there had been to Harriet and Martha, but I wanted to be free of that foul burden before I saw Mary again. I wished to protect her in her grief-and, perhaps, to console her. How could I perform such a task with the creature still alive? I had in any case reached the pitch of my experiments, when success now seemed to me to be assured. By the use of conducting wires, and a series of metal plates placed at variable levels and degrees of inclination, I had at last been able to alter the direction and strength of the electrical fluid. I had tried the experiment on a stray dog, tranquillised by ether, and it had immediately expired under the charge.
For an extravagant sum I now purchased a Barbary ape from a sailor in Wapping: I could not test my theory upon my fellow beings, and I believed that the ape was the closest to our species for the purposes of experiment. I tranquillised it with ether, as before, and after securing it upon the table with leather straps I subjected it to the electrical charge. It was thrown into severe convulsions, with many spasms and contortions, and expired after sixteen seconds. Then I applied the charge again: even as I watched the body began to decay, the skin shrivelling and the flesh dissolving. The stench was terrible, but I was determined to see the experiment to the end. I administered a further shock, and very soon the body was reduced to a skeleton; then the bones themselves began to fragment until they crumbled into dust. I had succeeded.