Work Text:
Victor’s eyes look at me restlessly, like a pair of fiery stars, as we walk through the city.
I want to link our arms, just as I used to do in Geneva, when habits that were still the fruit of boyish freedom prevailed in our lives. Despite his quiet nature, he, too, never made a effort to refrain from a simple, friendly touch, which had been a sweet touch in our relationship. What could possibly be shameful in embraces, in hands suddenly clasped with a joyful cry, or what could be improper in kisses on the forehead, the cheek, or even a light, fleeting peck that strayed somewhere into the corner of half-smiling lips? Victor accepted this logic calmly, as I presented it to him not so much through words as through my easy manner. Somewhat awkward in his dealings with our peers – who were not me, Elizabeth, or Louis Manoir – Victor seemed to place quiet yet no less touching trust in my judgement on this matter.
And yet now Victor seems distant, pale and – ah, yes, I am not mistaken! – he trembles. He does not outright refuse my touch, but the slightest, yet undeniably swift evasion leaves me with an unpleasant twinge in my chest. It ought not to trouble me quite so much, but our separation has made me sensitive and longing for his close company...
"What unmanly sentimentality has been stirred up in me as a result of our parting!" I reflect, building a shield of irony around myself to prevent me from sinking to the very depths of naive, romantic longing. But this self-deprecating humour isn’t working, not now; after all, I remember that it was precisely with Victor that I wasn’t afraid to give in to feelings whose depth only he knew, and which he never criticised.
Now there is something new in the air between us. A poet ought not to fear novelty; after all, I came here to experience things hitherto unknown to me, I tell myself, yet deep down I know that this is only part of the truth. It is Victor’s presence – so familiar to me, after all – that is the crème de la crème of Ingolstadt. He, who does not mock me, who opens within me the door to an even deeper, even more intense feeling…
Nor is he acting disdainfully now; when I finally pluck up the courage to shyly stroke his shoulder, he does not dismiss my gesture as childish or dictated by sentiment – no, something worse, in its own way, is happening. I see weariness in his eyes, as if he were struggling under an enormous burden on his thin shoulders; I see him swaying slightly on his feet. His long, narrow and ever-expressive lips tremble, like those of a small child on the verge of tears.
"For God’s sake, my dear Frankenstein, how ill you appear!", I whisper, pausing the movement of my hand on his shoulder and squeezing it gently.
Victor’s voice, when he speaks, is truly peculiar; a little too loud, too strained, with hints of something like nervous laughter:
"It’s just work, my friend. I may have neglected my rest a little, but now, I believe, I’m finished with it and free."
“What sort of task is this to which you’ve devoted yourself with such enthusiastic zeal that all other needs have been pushed aside?” I ask lightly, but immediately realise I’ve said something wrong when Victor’s expression changes completely.
“That’s irrelevant now,” he brushes me off, with a careless words and a sudden tremor. “As I’ve already said, I’m done; I’m free. Besides, the results were unsatisfactory anyway.”
I study this dear face closely. He doesn’t return my gaze; he looks off to the side, his eyes restless like those of a cornered animal.
“Let’s go to my place,” Victor finally says, breaking the silence – and this time it is he who firmly offers me his arm. Deep down, involuntarily, I wonder whether he actually wants my touch, or whether he is doing it to calm me down.
But really, what does it matter? We’re here together; and so I take his arm.
***
His request that I stay downstairs worries me even more than anything else I’d found strange about his behaviour earlier. Perhaps it is because I recall the Victor of old, surrounded by papers and test tubes of various shapes and sizes, oblivious to the chaos around him, so deeply immersed in yet another scientific, discovery-driven process. Such sensitivity to the details of his surroundings had never concerned him before.
“You know perfectly well, my dearest Frankenstein, that I don’t mind a bit of disorder…” I laugh; but his strange unease has rubbed off on me, at least in part, and my words sound rather feeble in the gloomy shadow of the old, slightly dilapidated gate.
“Let me go first!” he replies in a manner that can be nothing but a plea. I give in to him, and he almost runs upstairs, slamming the door behind him with a loud bang.
I gaze for a moment at the fanciful ornamentation on the gate. It is already succumbing to the merciless power of time, but the greenish patterns undoubtedly form floral designs; it is a thicket of branches so tangled that I quickly lose track of where one ends and another begins.
When I turn round, leaning my back against the gate with a deep sigh, I notice the menacingly contorted, grotesque faces of two gargoyles, also covered in a green patina – which is, however, almost invisible on this dark grey November day – unmoved by the heavy streaks of rain.
The longer I look at these two creatures, the more alive they seem to me. Any moment now, they’ll leap out at me from the wall with their sharp teeth and claws...
I hear a patter of feet on the stairs, and Victor appears almost immediately. He stumbles on the last step; he nearly falls, but I rush over to him and support him.
Whatever good-natured jokes I might have had on the tip of my tongue fade away when I see the look on his face. He resembles a man who has just escaped death.
“A funny thing, my dear,” I hear my own voice say, strangely hurriedly, as if I were trying to fill the heavy silence with something. “Those gargoyles of yours… they look almost alive; for a moment I thought they were actually about to wake from their stone slumber and pounce on me.”
Victor turns pale, and for a moment I fear he is about to faint; there is something of a half-dead man about the greyness of his face.
That last thought fills me with panic, and I am almost impossibly relieved when my friend speaks up:
“Come on… you’re soaked to the skin… we’ll warm you up…”
We head upstairs; Victor isn’t leaning on me, but he presses himself against my side in such a way, so closely, as if he wanted to become one with me. I could easily put my arm round his waist, but suddenly, as that desire takes shape in my mind, I lose the courage. The longer I think about it, the more awkward the idea seems.
Where has the freedom and spontaneous nature of our interactions in Geneva gone?
But here we are upstairs, in front of the half-open door to his room. He leads the way and turns towards me with a broad smile.
"Welcome to my humble abode, dear Clerval!"
He leads me by the hand to a chair, as if I were a small child; I make no protest and let him hover around me. But with every passing second, I come to the conclusion that he really ought not to be darting around the room like a drunk bee. He ought to sit down, or, for heaven’s sake, lie down in bed and not get up until I tell him to!
I want to open my mouth to tell him this firmly, but he’s holding me in some strange spell. He’s talking more and more, all over the place, and every now and then he bursts into violent, uncontrollable laughter. There’s a wild gleam in his eyes and an unhealthy flush on his cheeks.
“Victor!” I whisper urgently, finally managing to find my voice. “What’s the matter with you? Sit down, sit down, I implore you!”
But he doesn’t sit down.
Instead, he collapses; the world seems to slow down, and I’m frozen in place, as if in a bad dream whose course I cannot alter.
Only when he is already on the floor, an abandoned puppet with severed strings, does a barrier inside me break, and I spring to my feet.
“Victor!” I repeat, that short, choked cry suddenly ringing deafeningly in the eerie silence of the room.
Leaning over his frail figure, I remain for a moment in a state somehow akin to paralysis, as I tremble, thinking suddenly of my long and tiresome journey. The sight of him was supposed to purify me; his happiness was meant to bring colour to my faded life, in which I had recently sought fulfilment in vain. How many poems did I write about him in the sanctuary of my room, desperately wishing that his image might remain within me!
It is a touch – a blessed, longed-for touch – that brings me back to my senses. Victor’s skin is hot and damp. Instinctively, I pull a handkerchief from my pocket and wipe his temple. He grimaces slightly as I do this, trying to turn his head away from me, but he is as weak as a kitten. With a few soothing words, I stroke his flushed cheek thoughtlessly for a moment longer before lifting him into my arms, for my own comfort rather than his.
I’m surprised by how light Victor is. His head droops limply; dark, tangled locks slip out of his carelessly plaited queue. Every breath he takes sounds disturbingly rattling.
"Victor," his name comes to my lips with each passing moment with both greater ease and greater difficulty; what a bizarre paradox.
This time, however, I receive a reply, though I hadn’t really expected one.
“Henry? Is that you?”
“Yes, my dearest.”
His eyes are open, but they’re looking not so much at me as through me, as if I were made of glass. He moves his hand – the slightest of gestures – as if he wanted to lift it and reach out towards me, so I beat him to it and eagerly lift that half-limp hand to my lips. I hesitate for a moment, but my courage fails me and in the end I do not kiss his knuckles, as I so suddenly long to do.
“Henry, don’t leave me,” he murmurs with difficulty. I quickly reach for a piece of cloth, dip the edge in cold water and wipe his parched lips.
“Of course. I just need to send for a doctor, so let me go for just a moment, will you?”
But my attempt to get up meets with surprisingly fierce resistance from Victor. He tries to prop himself up on the pillows – a sincere but futile effort – and reaches out desperately, like a man in complete darkness.
“Henry, Henry, be careful! It’s here! Be careful!”
Then his cries turn into sobs so desperate that for a moment I am seized by a well-founded fear that he might actually suffocate.
“Calm down, there’s no one here. Just you and me, mon ami, mon coeur.”
I revert to our mother tongue, in the hope that it will calm him down – and, indeed, it seems to work. Victor gazes somewhere over my shoulder with his misty eyes, and at last speaks softly; yet the defenceless tone of his words makes a stronger impression on me than if he had shouted them:
“I just don’t want to lose you”
For a moment, I find myself breathless and can only stare at his hunched figure. What a strange thing to say for someone who was the first to leave, who abandoned me, who set off towards the stars, knowing that he belonged to them and not to the peaceful, sleepy world of the Geneva mountains and fields. And yet I sense in his sad remark a sincerity which, despite the belated regret, cannot fail to move my heart.
As if in a dream, I go to call the servant and instruct him to summon a doctor (he reacts by raising one eyebrow and casting a quick glance inside the room, but I have neither the strength nor the inclination to take any notice of this), after which I return to Victor’s bedside.
During my brief absence, he has fallen into a deep sleep, or perhaps has simply fainted. I pull up a chair, sensing that I shall spend a long time by his side and that kneeling would not be practical. For a moment, as I look at him like this, I’m reminded of a much younger Victor – and therefore one closer to me – and I can no longer feel any bitterness, not even a little. We were separated, yes, and the physical distance between us has contributed to an emotional distance as well. But that’s how it happened, and there’s no changing it now.
Suddenly, another thought occurs to me, one that makes me hide my face in my hands. Perhaps it wasn’t his departure at all that redefined what bound us together. Perhaps it was always meant to be, as a bitter part of growing up; something that comes naturally to boys, can be distasteful among adults.
Adulthood, adulthood, with Victor’s mother’s plans! How good it is that I’ve left, I suddenly think, partly because, however unintentionally, I might have come to harbour a dislike for that dear woman who is destined to be Victor’s closest companion in his future life.
***
"Henry, have you eaten anything at all today?"
I smile to myself at his scolding tone and the look Victor is trying to make stern – to no avail, as he’s still too weak.
"Yes, I have, but you haven’t. Oh, please, stop being a stubborn ass!"
He just mumbles something in reply.
“You’re a bit grumpy today,” I chuckle.
“And you’re far too cheerful. All right, you win, hand over that damned stew of yours!”
And I have to laugh again. Today, to my own amazement, I find it hard to contain the joy. An almost euphoric sense of relief, like divine ichor, courses through my veins; Victor is lucid and coherent, and his voice, though clouded by fatigue, carries warm, golden notes of affection, even quiet tenderness. Only now does it dawn on me just how much I’ve missed him.
He isn’t eating much, but even that cannot dampen my contentment. I set the bowl aside and settle back comfortably in my chair.
Perhaps it is the silence that suddenly surrounds us – in some elusive way unique, as if lined with velvet – that makes me look towards the window. My intuition has not failed me.
"Oh, Victor! The first snow! This of the wintry season is the prime; pure are the days, and lustrous are the nights..." I say quietly, glancing at Victor.
"...Brighten'd with starry worlds, till then unseen¹,” he finishes with a smile. “You’ve always liked those verses.”
“Yes; despite how bombastic they sometimes seemed to me, and the fact that Thomson kept forgetting that winter isn’t all that dreadful and can actually be beautiful.”
“As long as you’re in pleasant company by the fireside,” replies Victor, and I look away so he doesn’t notice my ridiculous blush. “But just think, just think of all those poor people who, for the sake of humanity, voluntarily set off into the icy wastelands. Bering and Chirikov, Captain Cook and all the others.”
“I assure you, I think of them very fondly and very seriously” I say. Victor merely rolls his eyes at my playful tone. “And I just thank the Almighty that I don’t have to be one of those poor fellows. I prefer, as you said, the fireside and pleasant company.”
Now it’s his turn to blush.
“Part of me would like to be one of them, though,” he says at last. “Those people who… pave the way for future generations. But…”
He stops suddenly. He looks at me – a quick glance, as if to check whether I’m looking at him – then at the window, and back at me.
“My dearest Frankenstein, right now you wouldn’t even be able to get out of bed, let alone set off on an Arctic expedition,” I say, trying to dispel with a joke the dark cloud which – I can see it in his eyes – has, for some reason, clouded his thoughts.
“Yes, I suppose you’re right,” replies Victor with a slightly nervous chuckle, instead of, as I’d expected, trying to prove me wrong, at least on that first point. He smiles, faintly, but, I can sense it, sincerely this time. “In any case, I’m very glad you’re here with me.”
It’s a dangerous, steep and slippery path – one on which it’s easy to tumble right to the bottom of this overly romantic sentiment – but I allow myself to stand on it with both feet, pretending, before him and before myself, that I’m braver than I actually feel.
“It’s nothing special”
“Don’t say that.” Victor tries to slip his hand out from under the many blankets that are trapping him; to no avail, so I help him. Once again, I don't place a kiss on his knuckles. “Don’t say that, Henry, because we both know it’s not true. This isn’t what you were expecting when you came to Ingolstadt.”
“No, that’s not it,” I whisper, meaning something more than he does. Seeing the involuntary sadness that flashes across his face for a brief but noticeable moment, I add, "But, Victor, that’s not what our situation is about – expecting something. Making some kind of assumptions.
"Our situation?" he asks, his voice trembling slightly, and I ponder, summoning the language I use with the greatest confidence - the language of the written word.
“One loveth another now for virtue, not for gain...”
Victor isn’t looking in my direction. He’s staring intently out of the window at the white, swirling snowflakes.
“…In wealth a double joy, in woe a present stay². Victor, you are dear to me; neither time nor distance has changed that. When you fainted and I waited in fear and helplessness, how I regretted not having told you this often and clearly! So I say it now: no matter what life brings us, whatever hardships and pains – I want to share them with you.”
I wait for Victor’s reply, holding my breath and with trembling hands. During my little monologue, I have slipped from my chair and am now kneeling by the bed, like a child saying their nightly prayers.
“You don’t know what you’re asking for,” Victor finally says, so quietly that I can barely hear him. “Your boldness terrifies me…”
“Don’t reject me!” the child inside me is now crying out. “Not after I’ve directed all my prayers towards you!”
“… But I also know that you, too, are so dear to my heart that tearing you from it would cause a wound that could never heal.”
I let the tears flow freely – and when he wipes them away with his pale hand, I take it and, finally, kiss.