Brian Aldiss - Frankenstein Unbound

How good that wine tasted, if only because I secretly thought, what a rare old vintage I must be quaffing, laid down no doubt before the Battle of Trafalgar!

I said, ‘I am older than you, sir (how easily that polite “sir” crept in as a mode of address!) – old enough to discover that finding out often leads to less pleasurable states of mind than mere ignorance!’

At that he laughed curtly. ‘That I find an ignorant point of view. I perceive nevertheless that you are a man of culture, and a foreigner. Why do you stay in Sècheron and deny yourself the pleasures of Geneva?’

‘I like the simple life.’

‘I should be in Geneva now … I arrived there too late, after sunset, and found the gates of the city shut, confound it. Otherwise I’d be at my father’s house …’

Again an abrupt halt to his speech. He frowned and stared down at the grain of the table. I longed to ask questions but was wary of revealing my complete lack of local knowledge.

The girl brought me soup and then my trout, the best and freshest I had ever tasted, though the potatoes that accompanied it were not so good. No refrigeration , I thought; not a can to be found throughout the land! A shock went through me. Cultural shock. Temporal shock.

My companion took this opportunity to hide himself in his papers. So I listened to the talk of the travellers about me, hoping for a bit of instant history. But were they talking about the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars? Were they talking about the increasing industrialization of the times? Were they talking about the first steamship crossing the Atlantic? Were they talking about Walter Scott or Lord Byron or Goethe or Metternich? Were they talking about the slave trade or the Congress of Vienna? (All matters which I judged to be vital and contemporary!) Did they spare one word for that valiant new American nation across the Atlantic?

They did not.

They talked about the latest sensation – some wretched murder – and about a woman, a maidservant, who was to be tried for the murder in Geneva the next day! I would have sighed for human nature, had it not been for the excellence of my trout and the wine which accompanied it.

At last, as I set my knife and fork down, I caught the gloomy eye of my table-companion and ventured to say, ‘You will be in Geneva tomorrow in time to see this wretched woman brought to justice, I presume?’

His face took on severe lines, anger glowed in his eyes. Setting his papers down, he said in a low voice, ‘Justice, you say? What do you know of the case that you prejudge this lady’s guilt beforehand? Why should you be so anxious that she should hang? What injury did she ever do you – or any living soul, for that matter?’

‘I must apologize – I see you know the lady personally.’

But he had dropped his eyes and lost interest in me. Shrinking back in his chair, he seemed to become prey to some inner conflict. ‘About her head hangs purest innocence. Deepest guilt lies heavy on the shoulders …’ I did not catch his last words; perhaps he said, ‘… of others’.

I rose, bid him good evening, and went outside to stand in the road and enjoy the scents of darkness and the sight of the moon. Yes, I stood in the middle of the road, and gloried that there was no danger of being knocked down by traffic.

The sound of a running stream invited me over to a bridge. Standing there in shade, I observed the man and woman who had also been eating in the hotel emerge with their child.

He said, ‘I wonder if Justine Moritz will sleep peacefully tonight!’ They both chuckled and passed on down the road.

Justine Moritz! I divined that they spoke of the woman who was on trial for her life in Geneva on the morrow. More! I had heard that name before, and searched my memory to discover its associations. I recalled de Sade’s heroine, Justine, and reflected that he too would be alive now, if now was when I believed it to be. But my new superior self told me that Justine Moritz was somebody else.

As I stood with my hands resting on the stone of the bridge, the door of the hotel was again thrown open. A figure emerged, pulling a cloak about him. It was my melancholy friend. An accordion sounded within the hotel, and I guessed that the distractions of music might have driven him outside.

His movements suggested as much. He paced about with arms folded. Once, he threw them wide in a gesture of protest. He looked in every way a man distraught. Although I felt sorry for him, that prickliness in his manner made me reluctant to reveal myself.

Of a sudden, he made up his mind. He said something aloud – something about a devil, I thought – and then he began striding away as if his life depended on it.

My superior self came to an immediate decision. Normally, I would have returned indoors and gone meekly to bed. Instead, I began to follow my distraught friend at a suitable distance.

The way he went led downhill. The road curved, and I emerged from a copse to confront a splendid panorama. There was the lake – Lake Geneva, Lac Léman, as the Swiss call it – and there, not far distant, lay the spires and roofs of Geneva!

It was a city I had loved in my time. Now, how it was shrunken! The moonlight lent it enchantment, of course, but what a pokey place it looked, lying by the lakeside in the clear night. Romantic behind its walls, yes, but nothing to the great city I had known. In my day – why, Sècheron would have been swallowed up by inner suburbs clustering round the old U.N. building.

But my superior self made nothing of that. We moved down the hill, my quarry and I. There was a village clinging to the lakeside. Somewhere lay the sound of singing – I say lay for the voice seemed to float on the waters as gently as a slight mist.

My friend went on down the winding road for about two miles, finishing at the quayside, where he rapped smartly on a door. I hung about further down the street, hoping not to be seen by the few people who were strolling there. I watched as he engaged a man who led him down to a boat; they climbed in, and the man began to haul away on his oars. The boat slipped through shadow and then could be seen heading across the lake, already slightly obscured by the tenuous mist. Without thinking, I went to the edge of the quay.

At once a man came up to me bearing a dim lantern and said, ‘Are you requiring a ferry to the other side of the lake, good sir?’

Why not? The chase was on. In no time, we had arranged terms. We climbed down to his fishing boat and were pushing off against the stonework. I told him to dowse his lantern and follow the other boat.

‘I expect you are acquainted with the gentleman in the other vessel, sir,’ my oarsman said.

These villagers – of course they would make it their business to know anyone who was rich and whose father lived so near! Here was the chance to have my suspicions confirmed.

‘I know his name,’ I said boldly. ‘But I’m surprised you should!’

‘The family is well-known in these parts, good sir. He is young Victor Frankenstein, his famous father’s son.’

Frankenstein’s boat moored at the Plainpalais Quay, on the other side of sleeping Geneva. In my day, the area formed part of the centre of that city. It was but a village, and four small sailing boats, sails drooping and oars plying, moved out from a tiny wooden jetty as we moved in.

Telling him to wait, I followed Frankenstein at a distance. Can you imagine what my excitement was? I assume you cannot, for already the feelings I had at the time are inscrutable to me, so imbued was I with an electric sense of occasion. My superior self had taken over – call it the result of time-shock, if you will, but I felt myself in the presence of myth and, by association, accepted myself as mythical! It is a sensation of some power, let me tell you! The mind becomes simple and the will strong.