Peter Ackroyd - The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein

Where was I to find the perfect frame upon which to build? There were some in the street who, when I observed them, showed signs of worth. Yet they were still in life, and thus beyond my reach. Then one evening that winter, when he arrived with his cargo, Boothroyd announced that he had a “prize” for me. “This is a good ’un,” he said. “He will be as fresh as a peach.”

“You have it here?”

“No. He ain’t dead yet.” With that he burst out laughing.

Then, with prompting from Lane and Miller, he told me the story. There was a student of St. Thomas ’s Hospital in very poor circumstances; this unfortunate young man had discovered in himself the signs of pulmonary consumption. He had coughed arterial blood into his handkerchief, and had all the signs of lassitude and debility that accompany the disorder. He knew it to be fatal, since his training with the doctors of Thomas’s and his practice among the poorer people of the area had taught him to recognise the progress of the disease. He had also nursed his brother through the stages of the phthisis. Since this young man had worked as a dresser to the surgeons Encliffe and Cato, he knew by sight the resurrectionist men; it was to him, indeed, that they consigned their load at the back steps of the hospital. He knew where they gathered, too, and two weeks previously he had approached them in the Fortune of War.

“So he comes up to us,” Boothroyd said, “as pale as a cloth. Ah, I says, there’s-”

“I do not wish to know the name,” I said.

“I ask him what he is doing in this corner of the world, and he sits down among us. ‘I have some business for you,’ he says. ‘Not perilous business.’”

He then proposed a scheme to them. The young man knew that he was dying, and that he might only have a short time to live. He appealed to the professional instincts of Boothroyd and the two others: if they paid him twenty guineas, he would allow them to take his body at the very instant of death. He required the money for his young sister, a toy-maker who would soon be alone in the world. As for him, he had no fear of being anatomised; he had witnessed the procedure too often in the surgical theatre at Guy’s Hospital to shrink from such a fate. He believed his carcass to be worth twenty guineas because it was young, sturdy and well-knit despite the ravages of the disease. He had already ventured upon the subject with his sister herself, who had agreed that the resurrectionists might occupy the little parlour beside the room where he would die. At the moment of death she would allow them to enter and take away the body of her brother. Neither of the young people had any illusions about the Christian pieties, having seen their parents and two other siblings carried off by epidemic distemper in the most painful circumstances. We are not aware of God, the young man had said.

“What age is he?”

“Tolerably young. Nineteen.”

“And you say that he is a fine specimen?”

“None finer. He is like a boxer, Mr. Frankenstein. And with a full set of teeth.”

Naturally I was excited by the prospect of obtaining such a prize-to retrieve the body moments after its death would be of incalculable benefit, and would certainly expedite the action of the electrical fluid. They told me that the young man lived with his sister near the hospital in a tenement in Carmelite Street, which was no more than yards from Broken Dock and the river; it would take them twenty minutes, with a favourable tide, to bring him to Limehouse.

“I would like to see him,” I said. “At the time you have arranged to pass him the money, I wish to be in the vicinity. Then, on my agreement, I will give you the guineas.” They consented to this, not without bargaining for a “cut” of ten further guineas for managing the transaction.

I WAITED BY THE FORTUNE OF WAR. It was a night of fierce rain, such as only London can produce. It rose like smoke all around me, and I sheltered underneath the cabmen’s stand just beyond the gate of St. Bartholomew. Boothroyd, Lane and Miller had placed themselves upon a bench by the window overlooking the gate; they had also taken the precaution of placing an oil-lamp on the table in front of them, so that despite the rain I could clearly see their features and gestures. Then I noticed a young man crossing the square, holding his cloak against the driving rain; he walked quickly and purposefully, with no sign of any weakness, but paused for a moment before entering the inn. I saw him for a moment in the flickering light outside the tavern. He had dark curling hair, and in that moment when I saw his bright eyes and full mouth I recognised that this was Jack Keat. He had worked with me in the dissection room of St. Thomas ’s Hospital. Then he entered the Fortune of War. I crept closer to the window, and watched with dismay as he came up to the resurrectionists and joined them. He seemed uneasy in their company-a circumstance that did not in the least surprise me-but he smiled and said something to Lane. At that moment Boothroyd looked at me through the window. I had told him to expect me there. I nodded, and put up my right hand. That was the signal arranged between us. He came outside and, without saying a word, I passed him the purse of guineas. What else could I have done? The imminent death of Jack troubled and saddened me but, as he had told me himself, we must take courage in the pursuit of our researches. The enlightenment and improvement of the world depended upon human valour. That was what he had said. Was I now to abandon his, and my, beliefs for the sake of my conscience? Yet there was still the possibility-the likelihood-that my electrical treatment would restore him to life. Would he live to smile and to laugh, to walk again with the same quick step? This was not known to me, or to any other being in the world.

I went back to Jermyn Street, where Fred prepared for me the mixture of saloop that always had a curiously soothing effect upon me. I asked him about the business of the day, and he informed me that three brides had married three brothers in the church of St. James across the street, and that the old man who sold the birds on the corner had dropped dead. The birds had not escaped, but had stayed quiet within their little wicker cages. “Nothing else,” he said, “has happened in London.” I was pleased to hear it, and prepared myself for bed in equable spirits-fully aware, naturally, of the great experiment that lay ahead of me. I could not calculate how long Jack Keat might live, but his pale features were a token of his gathering sickness.

I TRAVELLED DOWN TO LIMEHOUSE that morning in a carriage. I took care to hire a different cab each day, so far as this was possible, in order to avoid any easy recognition. The people of Limehouse I never saw. I always alighted by an empty brick warehouse, built between the river and a lonely path that went across the marshes of the neighbourhood. From there it was a swift journey to my workshop across the debris of the foreshore, where only the gulls observed me with suspicious eyes. There was a path that led from my workshop into the settlement at Limehouse itself, but over the months I had rendered it intractable and even dangerous. I had placed broken glass, and wooden posts, and various pieces of river wreckage, across the track so that no horse or carriage would wish to venture there. The bargees of Limehouse had their own jetty further downstream, and had no reason to cross this land. I had also placed notices saying Private on its boundaries. The only true means of access to my workshop, therefore, was by water.

Despite the winter chill I stood upon my wooden quay, wrapped in my greatcoat. I had taken to smoking a pipe, in the manner of the Londoners, and I waited expectantly for any sight or sound of the resurrectionists. Of course I had no hope that their work would be so summarily executed-the young man had walked before me only the evening before-but I was so eager to begin my operation that I could think of nothing else. I had prepared the electrical columns with all the diligence that Hayman had demanded, and according to his strict injunctions, but then in my enforced idleness of waiting I conceived the idea of experimenting upon myself.