The Magistrate
I awoke, as I had many times prior to that night, in a fit of terror. It was the same
nightmare which had possessed me since that madman, Victor Frankenstein, had come
to visit me. I dreamed of nothing but his hideous creature as of late, the creature yet
faceless and nameless to me. I had only descriptions of a giant, loathsome, immoral
fiend to haunt me. Surely such a being belonged in frivolous parlour novels, and not in
reality! Such was my reasoning, but it became less and less potent as the weeks wore
on. I was almost unable to convince myself that this devil did not exist. His story was
fantastic, but Frankensteinʼs dates had all checked out. He had not spoken with the
mania of a lunatic, but with quiet conviction. I was beginning to view Frankenstein as a
sane man, and this terrified me.
For what if he did speak the truth? This question plagued my waking hours, as
surely as Frankensteinʼs monster plagued my nights. I had promised only half-heartedly
to afford every aid to Frankenstein, and had hid behind proclamations of the inevitability
of the pursuit. Any moral integrity I might have previously claimed had evaporated with
this one shameful act. I was supposed to be a magistrate, the protector of the people,
and I had let this animal run wild? I was without rest, I had been without rest for months,
ever since Frankenstein had come to me about his accursed creation. Every time I
looked on my wife, my children, or my neighbours, I knew that I had failed them. They
were beginning to notice the shadow that would cross my face whenever I would
experience these dark moods, and the black circles beneath my eyes caused by
sleeplessness. Perhaps they would begin to think of me as mad! But I was mad! I
cursed the fiend whose existence caused this dementia in me!
I soon resolved to abandon my family in pursuit of the monster. Frankenstein
mentioned that he had taken refuge in the Alps, and it was here that I first began my
search. The mountains of Switzerland proved barren, so I quit them for Northern
Germany, Scandinavia, and the Russian Frontier. I spent many weeks perusing these
locals, with nothing but my inexplicable mania to drive me forwards. However, I was
soon awarded the most incalculable measure of good fortune. While staying at the
whaling village of Archangel in Russia, I crossed paths with Captain Robert Walton.
Captain Walton had recently encountered both Frankenstein and the beast! I knew that
the monster yet lived, and I would never give up my search until he or I perished.
With Waltonʼs information I was able to continue my pursuit of the creature.
Walton told me that Frankenstein had been possessed by a mania similar to mine which
led to his death, and this shook my convictions for the first time since I departed
Switzerland. Frankenstein was responsible for the creature, and he had many reasons
for wanting it dead. I might have been charged with protecting the people, but had no
need to pursue the animal to the extent of Frankenstein. Several times I considered
turning back, but the night terrors returned to change my mind. Paralyzing fear drove
me forward. This fear led me to it.
I came across the beast at the foot of a massive glacier, huddled over some
semblance of a campfire. It was indeed as horrible as Frankenstein had asserted. The
monster stood nearly eight feet tall, but such impressive height was made hideous by
the wrongness of its proportions. Its hair was long, mangled, and black; its eyes
gleamed with cruel malice. I felt as if a sheet of ice had been shoved down my spine,
such was the effect of this unnatural animal. This corruption of nature could not be
tolerated, I abhorred the sight of it!
“Fiend!” I cried. “Victor Frankenstein told me of you and your history. He told me
of the danger you pose to humankind, and he bade me use every force I possess to
bring you to justice!”
“Victor Frankenstein could not destroy me.” The monsterʼs voice was cracked
and unnatural, like broken glass. “What do you possess that would allow you to succeed
where my creator could not?”
This surprised me. Was it arrogant to think that I could exterminate the beast
when Frankenstein, the man who had made life out of nothing, had died in the attempt?
But it was not my duty to question my powers; my duty was to pursue evil and injustice,
and to bring it to trial for all the crimes it had committed.
“I did not expect you to still be living when I found you. I was told by Robert
Walton that you went forth to rid the Earth of yourself.”
“That was my plan, yes. But you would not understand how difficult it is, having
resolved to kill yourself, to actually go through with the deed. I was originally going to
cast myself into the cold Arctic waters. Every day for a week I stood at the edge of my
iceberg, prepared to jump into the ocean, but the hours would waste away and I would
resolve to try again when next I woke. Eventually, during a violent winter storm, I slipped
into the dark waters, and was relieved to think that my life had finally been taken from
me. But I awoke, unharmed, drifting on another ice flow! Once again Victor
Frankenstein had thwarted me, for it was the incredible physiology which he gave to me
that prevented my death. I considered other methods by which I could destroy myself,
but I had no tools. I tried to starve myself, but after several days of the cruelest hunger I
would find myself eating as I slept. There seemed to be some force which contrived to
keep me alive that I could not surmount!”
“Coward! You who have taken so many innocent lives could not end your guilty
one! Soulless demon!”
“Soulless? How could one who has suffered such as I be soulless?”
“You have not suffered. Frankenstein described to me how you travelled the
country in a murderous rage, jealous of humankind. How has man ever harmed you?”
“Frankenstein has lied to you. Yes, I have murdered, but only after the cruelest
provocation from my creator. He abandoned me at first sight, left me without protection
in this miserable world! And what I have suffered for those crimes is more than enough
penitence for my sins! You have no idea of what I suffered during the original era of my
being...”
I remained silent throughout his tale, and for many minutes afterwards. I had
previously looked on Frankenstein as a genius, the golden scientist whose powers
equivocated him with God. I had never considered his betrayal of his first creation, and
the selfishness which prevented him from protecting his family. To cast an innocent out
into the world undefended is a sin as deadly as lust or avarice! From that moment,
Frankenstein was less human to me than his creation, who did not even have a
Christian name.
“Did Frankenstein ever bestow a name upon you?” I asked.
“The only names he gave me were ʻfiendʼ and ʻcreatureʼ. Frankenstein could not
think of me as something for which to care. I would be surprised if he ever considered
granting me a name, even when I was unborn and he was not repulsed by my visage.”
Again, I was struck by Frankensteinʼs neglect. A name is the basest right any
human possesses. Anyone lacking a name would immediately be singled out as an
outcast, and I realized for the first time the crushing exclusion which had accompanied
the creature for his entire life. He was already estranged from human sympathy by his
physiognomy. Would he be further marked by his lack of name?
He startled me when he began to speak again.
“I never much considered naming myself, for who would ever care enough for me
to even ask my name? But now you have awakened some deep longing in me! Often
during the melancholy hours when I contemplated my death I would wonder what
awaited me afterwards. I was heavily influenced, as I have mentioned, by Milton, and I
long to go to heaven. I fear, however, that my soul is incomplete. Something was always
missing, and I now believe that that was my name.”
“If you are that distraught by your lack of identity, I would be willing to give you a
name.”
The creature gave a small cry of glee, but was too stricken with thankfulness to
speak further. After a few moments I continued.
“What of Adam?”
“I am not so like Adam as you would think,” replied the creature. “He had come
forth from the hands of God a perfect creature, happy and prosperous. I am hideous,
and the sight of me scarred my creator and drove him to madness. No, Adam would not
be the name for me.”
“Well, what of Cain? He was the first murderer, moved to kill his brother out of
jealousy, because God favoured Abel over himself. But Cain understood not what he
had done, and God forgave him, and any man who harmed Cain was to be punished
sevenfold for his sins. Cain was also an outcast, marked by God as surely as you are
marked by your appearance.”
“Cain...” The harsh name paralleled his harsh voice well. “I agree that his story
and mine are well-matched. Yes... that shall be my name.”
Several hours later, after the ceremony, I left him. We had said little, and he gave
me the last provisions he carried with him. I periodically glanced back at his campsite as
I walked across the ice sheet. I was almost sure that I had lost sight of him when I saw
something fall from the top of the glacier. Had the man finally cast himself from its peak,
as he had long planned to do? I wondered what his soul now resembled: his body,
mangled and sewn together by an unsteady hand, or an actual human soul. I will never
be truly sure.
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