“They imitate each other. Or so I believe.”
“You are a keen observer, Mr. Frankenstein. Now, I have brought it with me.” He opened the small case that he carried with him, and took out a glass-stopped phial. “I have already mixed the powder with the laudanum. Five or six drops will be sufficient for you in the beginning.”
“In the beginning was the word.” I do not know why I said it. I simply said it.
“There will be no words, I hope. Only peacefulness.”
“At what time of day is it recommended?”
“I favour the early evening. You will feel its benefits on the following day, after a profound slumber. But if the tremor causes you anxiety-or if there is any other great anxiety-then you should take it at once.”
“What is the cost, Dr. Polidori?”
“It will have no adverse effect upon your constitution.”
“No, I mean the price of this liquid?”
“It is a gift to you, sir. I will accept nothing for it. If in the future you wish to procure more, then we will arrive at some sensible settlement.”
We left the matter there. I was grateful for the cordial, but I could not shake off the disagreeable sensations Polidori aroused in me. He was too watchful. He told me that Bysshe and Byron had spent the entire evening carousing in Jacob’s while he slept with his head upon the table. When eventually they walked out into the Strand, they spent an hour or more looking for a hackney carriage. “I have left his lordship,” he said, “nursing a swollen head. I must return to my charge.” I thanked him again for his ministrations, and he urged me to call upon him and Lord Byron at their house in Piccadilly.
I left the phial on the table where Polidori had placed it. “What is this?” Fred asked me when he came into the room.
“It is a cordial,” I said. “To help me sleep.”
“Like porter?”
“Not exactly. But it has a similar effect.”
“You will be careful then, sir. My poor father-”
“You have told me of Mr. Shoeberry’s early death.”
“His toes was just twitching.” He paused, and picked up the phial. “His face was cold as any stone.”
“Be so good as to leave the bottle where it is, Fred. It is precious fluid.”
“Precious?” He put down the phial very gently.
“As gold.”
In truth, ever since the onset of my accursed ambition, I had been labouring under a weight of nervous excitement and irritability that no human constitution could properly bear; my animal spirits rose and fell disproportionately, so that I was in a continual battle with fear and doubt. There were many occasions when I suffered a peculiar sensation within my stomach of harbouring rats that were attempting to gnaw their way out.
Yet I did not touch the opiate all that day. From my chair I contemplated the glass phial, gleaming in the rays of the weak and fitful sun that penetrated into Jermyn Street. In the early evening a particular form of melancholy, not at all pleasing, customarily fell upon me. It was then that I measured out six drops of the opiate and swallowed them.
The effect was not immediate. But gradually, over a space of approximately half an hour, I became aware of a sensation of mild warmth spreading through my limbs; it was as if I were stretched out in the sun. This was succeeded by feelings of calmness and equipoise, so that I seemed to glide rather than walk across the room. I felt utterly self-possessed, with an elevation of spirits that I had never before experienced. Fred came into the room, with my evening dish of tea, and at first did not seem to recognise my enhanced state.
“Ah, Fred, immortal Fred.”
“Beg pardon, sir?”
“You bring the fragrance of the Indian plains.”
“I have just been in Piccadilly, sir.” Then he noticed the silver spoon with which I had measured out the drops. “It is the liquor, sir, is it? Perhaps you might sit down.”
I had not been aware that I was pacing the room. “No, Fred. I must savour the moments of ease.”
I walked over to the window. The pedestrians and porters and carriages in the street below me seemed to be united in one continuous melody, as if they had become a line of light. Instinctively I realised that this was not a compound that would stupefy my faculties but, on the contrary, one that would awaken them to fresh and vigorous life. I went into my bedroom, and lay down upon the bed in a delicious reverie. Fred hovered by the door, but he had become part of my sensation of bliss. I may not have slept, but I dreamed. I was lying in a warm boat, moving across the calm surface of a lake or sea, while all around me the light dappled the water. Above me were no clouds but the deep blue empyrean reaching into infinity.
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.