Young Frankenstein (2 page)

"Yes, my dear, he is."

"And has he achieved"-her voice was trembling- ". . . any special degree of eminence?"

"He is the fifth leading authority in his field," Cornelius Waldman informed her.

This time, it was Helene who spoke for the others. "Oh, shit!" she said viciously
.

The attorney made a face of condolence, then turned to his clerk once more. "Herr Falkstein, you must go at once and present Dr. Frankenstein with all the details of his inheritance. The estate will provide for your journey."

"Yes, sir."

"I object!" Helene said. "If the beloved great-grandson cared at all for the House of Frankenstein, he would have shown it by being here tonight
.
I think we should disregard the afterthoughts of a very old man
.
"

Cornelius Waldman drew himself up
.
"Madam," he said sternly, "the foundation of civilization rests upon adherence to the law. And the law is the law.
Das Gesetz ist das Gesetz!"

From outside came a thunderous
crash!
A shaft of lightning shattered a window. A curl of smoke rose from the Victrola. And when the thundering and lightning had passed, the record that carried Beaufort Frankenstein's voice lay in fragments on the turntable.

When, several days later, Herr Falkstein arrived at Baltimore General Hospital, where Dr. Frederick Frankenstein was a member of the staff, he was carrying the flat metal box that had been wrestled from the Baron's grasp. At the entrance he was grabbed by two burly guards, who accused him of being a mad bomber. They released him, however, when he showed them that the box contained nothing but a sheet of parchment. And, to make amends, they told him where he would find Dr. Frankenstein.

Falkstein marched on in his doddering way and in time arrived at the hospital's teaching section
.
At an information desk, he was directed to an unmarked doorway
.
The doorway led him to a stairs
.
At the top of the stairs, he found another unmarked doorway
.
Passing through it, he found himself in the balcony of an arena
.
Young men and women dressed in white-students, he assumed-were occupying most of the seats
.
Below, a slightly older man, also in white, was speaking, addressing his remarks to the balcony.

Falkstein half-listened, while looking for another door, the door that he hoped would take him to Dr. Frankenstein. Alas, however, no other opening was in sight. Finally, he bent down and whispered to a young man, asking him if he knew where he might find Dr. Frankenstein. The young man looked sideways at Falkstein, then pointed to the lecturer. Falkstein straightened and peered down into the pit.

Dr. Frederick Frankenstein was acceptable enough in appearance
.
He was of medium height and trimly built
.
His hair was a touch too long for Falkstein's taste
.
And it had a certain frizziness about it. Frankly, Falkstein didn't care much for the doctor's mustache, either. There was no doubt in his mind, however, that the man was a Frankenstein. The glint of madness was there in his eyes, as discernable as the sudden flame of a match in a pitch-dark room.

Excusing himself as he proceeded, Falkstein began making his way along a row in search of a seat. Meanwhile, he listened to the lecture.

"If we look at the base of a brain that has just been removed from a skull," Dr. Frankenstein was saying, "there's very little of the midbrain that we can actually see."

Falkstein felt a lump under his foot. Looking down, he discovered that he was standing on the foot of one of the students
.
So absorbed was the young man in the lecture, however, that he was not aware that he was being trod on. Falkstein left an "excuse me" with him, anyway, before moving on.

"Yet," Dr. Frankenstein continued, "as I demonstrated in my lecture last week, if the under aspects of the temporal lobes are gently pulled apart, the upper portion of the stem of the brain can be seen."

Falkstein found a vacant seat and settled in it, resting the metal box on his lap.

Dr. Frankenstein was now at a blackboard
.
"This so-called 'brain stem,' " he said, drawing a diagram, "consists of the midbrain, a rounded protrusion called the pons, and a stalk, which tapers downward in this manner and which is called the medulla oblongata
.
Now
.
.. the medulla oblongata passes out of the skull through the foramen magnum and becomes, of course, the spinal cord."

Yes, mad, Falkstein thought to himself
.

Dr
.
Frankenstein looked up toward the balcony
.
"Are there any questions before we proceed?"

A student rose. "I have a question, Dr. Frankenstein-"

The doctor winced. "That's Fronkonsteen," he told the student.

"I beg your pardon, sir?"

"My name-it's pronounced Fron-kon-steen."

"Oh. I thought it was Dr. Frankenstein," the student said, mildly puzzled.

"No. It's Dr. Fronkonsteen."

"But, sir, aren't you the grandson of the famous Dr. Frankenstein who ingeniously dug up freshly buried corpses and transferred dead components of the bodies into-"

"1 know what he did!"
Dr
.
Frankenstein shouted, breaking in
.
He took a moment to regain his composure, then addressed the young man again
.
"I
know
what he did," he said, with forced calm
.
"But I'd rather be remembered for my own small contributions to science, and not because of my accidental relationship to a famous-" He swallowed hard. "-a famous cuckoo." The other students laughed politely
.
"Now, if you don't mind," Dr. Frankenstein said to the young man, "can we get on with your question?"

"Well, sir . . . I'm not sure I understand the distinction between 'reflexive' and 'voluntary' nerve impulses
.
"

Dr
.
Frankenstein brightened
.
"Very good! As it happens, our lab work today is a demonstration of just that distinction
.
So-why don't we proceed . . ."

As the student sat down, Dr. Frankenstein picked up what appeared to be a magician's wand from the ledge of the blackboard and tapped a small bell that he had taken from the large pocket of his white coat. At the tinkle, as if by magic, a pair of double doors opened and an assistant wheeled a patient into the arena on a table. The patient was an emaciated old man who was wearing an oversize hospital gown.

The doctor indicated the old man with the wand.

"Mr. Hilltop here," he said, "with whom I have never

worked or given any prior instructions, has graciously

offered his services for this afternoon's demonstration."

There was a murmur of skepticism from the balcony.

"Mr. Hilltop ..." the doctor said.

"Yes, sir?"

"Have we ever seen each other before?" "No, sir."

Dr. Frankenstein gestured toward the balcony
.
"Tell
them,"
he said testily.

"No, sir, we haven't," the patient said, looking up at the students
.

"Do I lie?" the doctor asked his audience. Then he spoke to Mr. Hilltop again. "Would you be kind enough to hop down from the table and stand here beside it, please?"

The old man obeyed
.

"And now, Mr
.
Hilltop, if you please, will you raise your left knee?"

With effort, the patient brought up the left leg,

"You have just witnessed a 'voluntary' nerve impulse," Dr. Frankenstein told the students. "It begins as a stimulus from the cerebral cortex, passes through the brain stem and then to the particular muscles involved. Mr. Hilltop," he said, "you may lower your knee."

Down came the leg.

" 'Reflex' movements, on the other hand," the doctor said to the students, "are those which are made independently of the will, but which are carried out along pathways that pass between the peripheral nervous system and the central nervous system
.
"

Then suddenly he turned on the patient, shouted, "You filthy, rotten, yellow son-of-a-bitch!" and savagely jabbed his own knee in the direction of Hilltop's groin.

The old man screamed in panic and doubled forward to protect himself
.

Dr
.
Frankenstein pulled back his knee, short of the target, then, smiling, pleased with the patient's reaction, addressed the students once more. "We are not aware of these impulses, nor do we
intend
that they will contract our muscles," he said. "Yet, as you just saw, they work by themselves. What, though, if we
block
the nerve impulses by applying local pressure?"

The assistant, having received a cue, placed an ordinary bicycle clamp into the doctor's outstretched hand.

Frankenstein then attached the clamp to the patient's head, just behind his ears. Mr. Hilltop relaxed noticeably.

"You will note the position of the clamp-just at the swelling of the posterior nerve root," the doctor said to the students. He raised an arm and pushed back the sleeve so that he could see his watch. "Now, five or six seconds, to allow the pressure to take effect. . ."

Falkstein discovered that, like the students, he had moved forward to the edge of his seat.

"Ready, I believe," Dr. Frankenstein said. Again, he jabbed bis knee in the direction of the patient's groin. "You mother-grabbing bastard!" he shouted viciously
.
This time, however, he did not hold back
.
The knee sank deep into the old man's crotch
.

Mr. Hilltop did not move a muscle
.
His eyes, however, revealed his agony. They crossed for a second, then seemed to sink deep into his head in exquisite pain.

The doctor, though, was concerned only with muscles. "Because of the clamp," he told the students, pleased with the result of the experiment, "all communication is shut off. In spite of our mechanical magnificence, if there is not this continuous stream of motor impulses, we will collapse like a bunch of broccoli." Delicately, he removed the clamp from the patient's head.

Mr. Hilltop collapsed like a bunch of broccoli
.

From the balcony came a burst of appreciative applause
.

As the assistant lifted the inert Mr
.
Hilltop from the floor and rolled him back onto the table, Dr
.
Frankenstein spoke to him in a whisper that could be heard overhead. "Give the old boy an extra dollar," he said.

The patient, richer as a consequence of Dr. Frankenstein's compassion, was then wheeled away.

"In conclusion," the doctor told the students, "it should be noted that anything more than a common injury to the nerve roots is always serious
.
Because once a nerve fiber is severed,
there is no way, in Heaven or on earth, to regenerate life back into it."
He looked at his watch again. "Are there any last questions before we leave?"

The student who had risen before got up again. "Dr. Fronkon-steen?"

"Yes?"

"Isn't it true that Darwin preserved a piece of vermicelli in a glass case until, by some extraordinary means, it actually began to move with voluntary motion?"

"A piece of what?"

"Vermicelli."

"Are you speaking of the worm or the spaghetti?"

"Why ... the worm, sir."

"Ah!" the doctor said admonishingly. "In science you must always be precise
.
Precision can spell the difference between life and death." Once more, he whispered loudly to his assistant, who had returned
.
"I don't want that fellow in class next semester," he said. "He has a big mouth."

The assistant nodded, making a mental note.

"Yes," the doctor said, facing the balcony again, "it seems to me that I did read something about that Darwin incident when I was a student. But you have to remember that a worm-with very few exceptions-is not a human being."

The students applauded.

"But, sir," the young man persisted, "wasn't that the whole basis of your grandfather's work? The reanima-tion of dead tissue?"

"My grandfather was a sick man."

"But as a Franken-That is, as a
Fr
o
n
-kon-steen-aren't you the least bit curious? Doesn't bringing back to life what was once dead hold any intrigue for you?"

"You are talking about the nonsensical ravings of a lunatic mind," Dr
.
Frankenstein said
.
"Dead is dead
.
"

"Look at what's been done with hearts and kidneys, though."

"Hearts and kidneys are Tinker Toys!" the doctor shouted. "I'm talking about the
central nervous system!"

"But, sir-"

"I am a scientist, not a philosopher!" Dr. Frankenstein told him. He snatched up a scalpel from an instrument tray. "You have more chance of reanimating this scalpel," he said, waving the instrument angrily, "than you have of mending a broken nervous system!"