Frankenstein - According to

it went as it
blew the fountains all over me again.
    Morning
dawned before I arrived at the village of Chamonix soaking wet and with
hyperthermia. I took no rest, but returned immediately to Geneva. Even in my
own head I could give no expression to my sensations " they weighed
on me with a mountain’s weight, and the result was I had to walk bent double.
Thus, I returned home, and entering the house presented myself to my family
bent double with mountains. My haggard and wild appearance awoke intense alarm.
They called the fire brigade; I would answer no questions from the fire
brigade. ‘Are you on fire?’ they said. ‘No,’ I said. With pulleys they removed
the mountains off my back; I was able to stand straight for the first time in
three days.

VOLUME THREE

CHAPTER I
     
     
     
    Day
after day, week after week passed away, as did my Granny. On my return to
Geneva I could not collect the courage to re-commence my work. I feared the
vengeance of the disappointed fiend and his grieving for a wife and cigarettes.
I could not compose a female without again devoting several months to profound
study and laborious disquisition. My father saw the improvement in me and
turned his thoughts towards the best method of eradicating the remains of my
melancholy: he recommended an audience with the Pope but he was too busy and
sent a bottle of Holy Water which I drank — it gave me typhoid.
    It
was after this that my father called me aside and thus addressed me: ‘Victor
Frankenstein, 10 Le Grande Rue, Geneva, Switzerland.’ I wonder if I ever got
that. It was marked ‘Return to Sender, Not Known Here.’
    ‘I
am happy to remark, my dear son, that apart from your typhoid you have resumed
your former pleasures and seem to be returning to yourself. Where from I do not
know, but you seem to be returning. My son, you seem still unhappy; like
yesterday, you never finished up your spotted dick. You know how ideal spotted
dick is for people with typhoid.
    I
trembled violently at his exordium, which he played brilliandy, and my father
continued:
    ‘I
confess, my son, I have always looked forward to your marriage with dear
Elizabeth.’
    Oh
fuck, now he was trying to marry me off. There were no ends he wouldn’t go to
get rid of me.
    ‘You
were attached to her from your early infancy by a chain.’
    ‘My
dear father, my future hopes and prospects are entirely bound up in the
expectation of our union, that is The Tradesmen and Miners.’
    I
remember also the necessity imposed upon me of journeying to England and
studying at the Bexhill-on-Sea Body Building Centre. I must absent myself from
all I loved while thus employed in creating a female monster. Putting a pair of
boobs in place would be a good start.
    At
Bexhill-on-Sea there was a morgue where they had the bits I needed. It was the
city of the aged where many of the limbs would fall off in the street. These I
would gather after dark. I was capable of taking pleasure in the idea of such a
journey. My father hoped that the change of scene would restore me entirely to
myself. Finally he talked me down from my position on top of the cupboard.
    I
now made arrangments for my journey to Bexhill-on-Sea. One of them was Chopin’s
E b Nocturne for the spoons. In the time given it was the best
arrangment I could do.
    We
travelled at the time of the vintage and heard the song of the labourers. I lay
at the bottom of the boat in the hold under the luggage where I could be alone
from that chatterbox Clerval. As we drifted down the Rhine we saw groups of
labourers who had been hiding behind the trees from their work. Oh, surely the
inhabitants would retire to the inaccessible peaks of the mountains where they
hurl themselves to death rather than pay income tax.
    Clerval!
Even now it delights me to record your words — unending bloody yakking. He was
a being formed in the very poetry of nature: it would take him two bloody hours
to describe a tree. His soul overflowed with ardent affections and his
friendship was of that devoted and wondrous nature, it is just that he would
never stop bloody yakking. To satisfy his eager mind he took up kung fu.
    And
where does he now exist? [He doesn’t, he snuffed it. Ed.] Is this gentle and
lovely being lost forever? [Yes. Ed.] Has his mind perished? [Yes. Ed.] does it
only exist in our memory? [Yes, if you want it to. Ed.] His favourite poem:
     
    The sounding cataract
    Haunted him like a passion: the
tall rock,
    The mountain, and the deep