Peter Ackroyd - The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein

It was one continuous dream, and I rose from my bed on the following morning utterly relaxed and refreshed. I believed, too, that my intellectual powers had been awakened, and with great ardour I took from my shelf a copy of Tourneur’s Tables of Electrical Fluxions. I found that I was able to calculate with ease, and from the very shape and fitness of the numbers I gathered an enormous intellectual pleasure. I could even visualise the stream of the electrical charge. With the phial of laudanum in my pocket I travelled down to Limehouse where once more I began to experiment with my electrical machines. I believe that the sensation of equipoise lasted for a further eight hours, by which time I had grown weary enough to settle into a chair.

I had taken no more of the opiate, but I had the sensation of being conveyed across a broad sheet of water with the light playing all around me. The sky had become a deeper blue than before, and I realised that the nature of the water had changed. I was moving upon a river. I knew it to be the river Thames. I could see the reflections of overhanging trees on its surface, and I was at once aware of another world within our own where the trees grew downward and the sky was below me; there I wandered, amazed, and through the veiled atmosphere I saw an image of myself looking down upon me. And in my face I saw wonder.

The craft was travelling faster than in my first dream, and the notion of a destination provoked in me some discontent. Yet I settled back into a reverie, where the banks and fields beside me were bathed in light and where the grass seemed gilded. And I murmured to myself, “I have found the word golden.” The boat now had lost its momentum, and was drifting slowly with the current of the Thames. I felt a gentle wind upon me, and the rustling of leaves was like the whispering of many voices. For some reason I felt the first vague symptoms of unease. I came within reach of the bank, and felt the softness of the earth and grass: the colours of the blossom were so bright and fiery that for a moment I closed my eyes. The boat of its own will then turned and found the current once again. Never had the sky seemed so clear to me, and there below me was its reflection even more bright. I was surrounded by skies. I let my fingers trail in the warm and slowly moving water, sensing the freshness of its flow. Then something grasped my hand. It grabbed hold upon me firmly, and tried to pull me down. I awoke with a start, my opiate dream dissolved in a moment of terror.

It was night. I had slept for several hours, and quickly I lit the oil-lamps so that I would not be utterly cast into darkness. I sat trembling upon the chair, fearful that I was still in a dream.

Then with an enormous effort of will I resumed my calculations. I realised, too, that to leave Limehouse at this hour would invite the notice of footpads and vagabonds. Yes, my fears had returned. In my opiate condition I fancied that I was no longer part of the tumult of life-that the fever and the strife had been suspended-and that I was capable of repose and rest. The burden had been put down; the anxiety had been lifted. But now all those sorrows had been revived. The enemy, fear, had returned. The battle was renewed. I was no longer master of myself.

I examined the phial for several minutes-how could such a small measure provoke such extraordinary changes in the human frame? There were mysteries here as obscure as galvanism and reanimation. I decided to experiment with two drops only of the tincture. After a short while I found myself walking, as I believed, down an avenue brilliantly lit by naphtha lamps; I was back in Geneva, and I was hurrying to meet my father and sister with news of my success at university. I was filled with such youthful enthusiasm that I leapt high into the air and soared effortlessly over the city and the lake.

Then I found myself sitting in the workshop, as before, my calculations spread about before me on the table. My equations were of the utmost lucidity-I recognised that from the neat formulations I had managed and from the comments of “precise” and “wonderful!” in the margins. But what was this? I heard the sound of oars pulling against the tide, and the creaking of a boat upon the water. Who would be rowing upon the Thames at this hour? I went to the door of the workshop and opened it by a fraction. The familiar smell of mud and brine assailed me. But there was another odour, too. I peered out and saw a shallow vessel making its way slowly to the jetty. “Who is there?” I called out. There came no answer. “For God’s sake, tell me who you are!”

The boat had come to a stop beside the wooden platform of the jetty itself. I could hear the water lapping beside it. Then Harriet Westbrook-Harriet Shelley-stepped out. She was not as she had been in life. She was infinitely more bright and splendid. Then I noticed that she was carrying upon her shoulders a coarsely woven sack. “Why are you here, Harriet?” She did not answer, but seemed to turn back to someone else in the boat. There was some murmuring, and I recognised the voice of Martha. Then there was a light note of laughter. Now she turned again to me. “I am not here, Victor. You are here.” So I awoke again at the table, the papers strewed about it.

Throughout that night, and for the next morning, the dreams or visions emerged and then disappeared. I was in a position of complete enslavement, helplessly in thrall to whatever hallucination passed before me. I was in the estuary, walking among its sad flats and wild marshes with the gulls crying overhead; the strong savour of salt was in the damp air. I was somehow aware of some great, dark shape brooding in the distance-out of sight-and then I knew that the malevolent presence was that of London. Man had created London. Man had not created the estuary. I was seized with a great fear that this land had just emerged from the sea, and that the incoming water was about to overwhelm me. So I ran inland-or what I believed to be inland-and sought shelter in a small and crudely built hut that stood alone upon a mound in a field of pasture. In contrast to the world outside, it was perfectly dry and warm. There was a crackling sound, as of branches and twigs burning in flame, but I could see no fire.

Then I found myself walking down a street in London. It was a street of black stone, with no doors or windows or openings of any kind. But, as I walked upon it, the stone began to shriek-in agony, in fear, in consternation, I knew not what. I turned the corner and there before me was another street of stone; as soon as I ventured upon it, it gave out a loud cry of pain, which came from the walls as well as the ground. I could not bear the cacophony but as I hurried down the streets, and turned down other alleys, the screaming grew more immense.

WHEN I AWOKE, it was broad day. I was too troubled by these laudanum dreams to resume the study of my papers, so I left the workshop and walked into Limehouse. There was a carriage stop at the tavern by the church, and I waited there for the next vehicle. I knew the crossing sweeper who stood here and who, for a penny, would hold the horses while the driver refreshed himself in the tavern or relieved himself in the churchyard. He was a black man by the name of Job. “Job,” I said. “When did the last one leave?”

“He be gone a good half-hour. It be a good half-hour yet.”

“Was it full?”

“Pretty tight, sir. There was a seat on the top.”

So I went into the tavern and brought out two mugs of porter. “There we are, Job. Sluice the dust from your throat.”

Job had told me in the past that he had been shipped from Barbados as a captain’s boy, or slave, and that he had been abandoned by his master on their arrival in England. The ship had docked at Limehouse, and he had lived in the neighbourhood ever since. He survived now on the few coins he obtained from those using his crossing, and from the drivers of the carriages. “Where do you live?” I asked him as we sat on a wooden bench outside the tavern.