Young Frankenstein (8 page)

Supine on the operating table was the hulk that resembled a man. Thick limbs, thick torso, thick neck, thick arms, stubby fingers. And the face! It was the face of a mindless monster, expressionless, the eyes deep and dormant in the sockets, the plasticlike flesh, the shaggy fringe of coarse black hair, the cruel mouth.

"Hideous!" Inga said, trembling
.

Dr. Frankenstein shook his head, smiling beautifically. "He's beautiful," he said. "And he's mine."

"I like the way he dresses," Igor said, feeling the hulk's rough tweed trousers
.
"Class
.
You don't get this kind of stuff off the rack."

"Well, are we ready?" the doctor asked enthusiastically
.
"Igor-up to the roof
.
Let's get a move on!"

Igor departed
.

When he had gone, the doctor began fussing over the patient, making sure that the steel straps that bound him to the table were tightly in place, straightening his tweed jacket, brushing down his hair, getting him as presentable-looking as possible
.

Before long, Igor appeared at the skylight, which had been opened to the night. "What now?" he called down.

"The kites!" Dr. Frankenstein answered. "Get the kites in the air."

"Check!"

"Will it really work, Doctor?" Inga asked dubiously.

"Why shouldn't it?" he replied
.
"Those are the best kites money could by."

A few minutes later, Igor called down again. "Kites aloft!"

"Perfect!"

Igor shouted down once more. "Doctor, are you sure this is how it's done?"

"Yes, yes," the doctor answered impatiently. "It's all in the notes. Now, tie off the kites and release the chains and get back down here as fast as you can!"

"What's the hurry?" .

"There's the possibility of electrocution!" Dr. Frankenstein told him. Then Igor suddenly disappeared from sight. "Igor!" he shouted
.
"Do you understand? There's the possibility-"

"I understand," Igor said. He was standing beside the doctor. "Why are you shouting?"

"I thought-Oh-Did you tie off the kites?"

"Of course."

"Good. Check the generator."

Igor went to a machine, studied its gauges for a moment, nodded to himself, then began following an electrical cable that connected the machine to the body.

"Can you imagine?" Dr. Frankenstein said to Inga. "That magnificent brain in this monster body."

Igor winced
.

"Oh, Frederick," Inga said admiringly, "you're not only a great doctor, you're a great-You're almost a-"

"A god?" he suggested.

"Yes."

"I know."

There was a rumble of thunder.

"This is the moment!" the doctor said excitedly. He got onto the table with the body. "All right," he said, "elevate me!"

"Now?" Inga asked. "Right here?"

"Yes! Raise the platform!"

"Oh, the platform!" Inga said.

Inga and Igor went to a giant wheel. With Igor pushing and Inga pulling, they began turning it. As it revolved, the table, with the doctor and the body aboard, started rising toward the skylight on a platform.

Lightning crashed!

Dr. Frankenstein, carried away, began to chant. "From that fateful day when stinking bits of slime first crawled from the sea and shouted to the cold stars-I am man!-our great dread has been the knowledge of our own mortality! But tonight we will hurl the gauntlet Science into the frightful face of Death! Tonight we shall ascend into the heavens; we shall mock the earthquake; we shall command the thunders and penetrate into the very womb of impervious nature herself!"

"You're sure we can get all that done in one night?" Igor asked
.

"Yes, yes!" the doctor replied, as the platform rose higher and higher
.
"When I give the word, throw the switch!"

"You got it, master
.
"

The platform carrying the doctor and the body penetrated the opening. At that moment, there was a clap of thunder and a crash of lightning and the rain came pouring down.

"Go!" Dr. Frankenstein shouted.

Igor threw the first switch!

The laboratory came alive with arcing currents! They flashed, sizzled, exploded
.

The doctor, drenched, shouted down again from the platform
.
"Throw the second switch!"

"This guy means business," Igor said to Inga
.
He threw the switch.

Thunder!

Lightning!

Flashes of electrical current danced wildly about the laboratory!

"The third switch!" the doctor bellowed from above.

"Not the third switch!" Igor begged.

"Throw it, I say! Throw it!"

Igor engaged the third switch
.

From the platform, Dr. Frankenstein addressed the heavens. "Life! Life! Do you hear me! Give my creature
life!"

The answer came in a succession of lightning crashes!

Boom!

Boom!

Boom!

Boom! Boom!

Dr. Frankenstein shouted down to Igor. "Everything off! Bring me down!"

Swiftly, Igor disengaged the switches
.
Immediately, the thundering and lightning ceased and the rain stopped
.
The flashes of electrical current fizzled out
.

Igor and Inga hurried to the wheel and began turning it in the opposite direction, and down, down, down came the platform and the operating table and Dr
.
Frankenstein and the body. When the platform reached bottom, the doctor leaped off and snatched up a stethoscope and placed the receiver to the creature's chest. He listened intently. Then he sighed deeply and straightened.

"Nothing," he said dismally.

"Oh, Doctor!" Inga said, sharing his disappointment. "Well, at least we had the fireworks," Igor pointed out.

Tears formed in the doctor's eyes. But they did not fall. He forced them back, regaining control. "We must be of good cheer," he said bravely. "If science teaches us anything, it teaches us to accept our failures as well as our successes . . . with quiet dignity and grace . . ." He looked sorrowfully at the lifeless body. The tears brimmed in his eyes again. He tried to hold them back. But this time he broke. Screeching, he grabbed the creature by the throat. "Son of a bitch bastard!" he raged. "What did you do to me!"

"Doctor! No!" Inga pleaded
.
"Stop! You'll kill him!" Igor broke the doctor's hold on the creature's throat and dragged him away.

Dr. Frankenstein continued to shriek. "I've failed! I don't want to live! Do you hear me! I do not want to live!"

"Quiet dignity and grace . . ." Igor said to Inga, still struggling to get the doctor under control.

As Dr. Frankenstein continued to rave in his quiet and dignified way, little did he know that not far away, a meeting was taking place that held considerable import for him. At the Village Hall, which served as a children's playroom during the day, the village elders had gathered. Being elders, they were dressed in an elderly manner, wearing elders' broad-brimmed black hats and elders' shiny black gabardine suits. The chairs they were seated on spoiled the effect somewhat, however. They were children's chairs
.

At the moment that Dr
.
Frankenstein was screaming his rage at the creature, the leading elder was screaming his denunciation at a lesser elder.

"Bull
scheisse
!"

"But it's true, sir," the lesser elder insisted
.
"They're doing it again."

"Vicious rumors and superstition!" the leading elder snapped. "I will not have the townspeople getting all their old fears aroused because one or two of you 'thought' you heard something or 'thought' you saw something. Damn it, man, we'll have a riot on our hands."

A second villager raised a hand.

"Yes, Karl?"

"Well, sir," Karl said, "I'm not superstitious and I'm not given
to
vague fears. But on my way home last night I saw what used to be the old laboratory all lit up."

"Poppycock!" another villager said.

"It weren't poppycock," Karl said. "It were real," He pointed to the man seated next to him. "William here was walking right beside me and he saw it, too."

"Is that true?" the leading elder asked William
.

"Yes, sir," William replied. "It's just as Karl here says. It was real enough. As real as you and me."

"Oh, tosh!" the cranky elder said. "This Frankenstein is different, I tell you. You can see that just by talking with him for five minutes."

"I wouldn't say that," Karl said. "He's a Frankenstein, and they're all the same. It's in the blood. They can't help it. All these scientists is alike. They say they're working for us, but what they really want is to
rule the world!"

"That's enough!" the leading elder exploded. "I will not allow this meeting to become a free-for-all
.
These are very serious charges. All the more painful to us because we still have nightmares from five times before." He glared and muttered under his breath, then, raising his eyes and looking toward the back of the room, spoke out again. "We haven't heard from the one man here most qualified to judge this situation fairly," he said. "He, more than any of us, has learned, through personal misfortune, to remain calm and objective in his quiet but constant pursuit of justice." He nodded in the direction he was looking
.
"Inspector Kemp, would you address us, please?"

The inspector was seated in a captain's chair beside the pot-bellied stove. He was a large, confident-looking man. His arms were crossed. A cigarette holder, holding an unlit cigarette, dangled from his mouth. He was the very image of the dedicated lawman. His eyes were brighit with integrity
.
His expression was firm yet kind-

"A riot is an ugly thing," Inspector Kemp said
.
There was a murmur of agreement from the elders.

The inspector uncrossed his arms. The right arm was wooden. Turning slightly, he opened the door of the stove with a wooden finger, then reached the finger into the fire. When the finger began to blaze, he pulled it out, closed the stove door, and touched the flame at his fingertip to the cigarette. The tobacco began to burn. The inspector blew out the flame at the tip of his wooden finger
.

"Once you get a riot going," he continued, "there's little chance of stopping it-short of bloodshed
.
"

The murmurs of agreement rose again.

"Before we go running and killing people," Inspector Kemp went on, "we better make damn sure of our facts."

There were some comments of disagreement on that. One villager said that he thought the inspector had his priorities bass-ackwards; it should be running and killing first and facts afterward. .

The leading elder, adhering strictly to Robert's Rules of Order, told the man to shut up.

"I think what's to be done," the inspector said, "is for me to pay a visit to our good doctor and have a nice quiet chat."

William spoke up. "But, sir," he said timidly, "meaning no disrespect, but what if, during the course of your little chat, you find out what we was right about this new Dr. Frankenstein? What do we then?"

"Kill him," the inspector replied calmly.

The elders burst into smiles
.
It had turned out to be a good meeting after all.

Dr. Frankenstein and Igor sat at opposite ends of the huge dining-room table. The doctor, subdued but still dismal, was slumped in his chair. Igor, in much better spirits, was trying to flip a spoon into an empty glass. A sumptuous meal had just been concluded. Inga was clearing the table.

"Reputation. Reputation," Dr. Frankenstein murmured sorrowfully
.

"Doctor, you mustn't do this," Inga said. "You've got to stop thinking about it. You hardly touched your food."

The doctor plunged a finger into the butter. "There, I've touched it," he said bitterly. "Happy?"

Inga took the butter away. "Frederick, what more could you have done?"

"I could have jumped into the peas barefoot
.
"

"I mean about the body."

He groaned. "I don't know ... I don't know . . ."

"Poor doctor," Inga said. Then she left the room, taking away the dishes and leftovers
.

"I'll never forget my old dad when things like this used to happen," Igor said to the doctor. He smiled fondly, recalling
.
"Ah, the things he'd say to me
.
"

"What did he say?" the doctor asked hopefully.

" 'What the hell are you doing in that bathroom night and day? Get outta there! Give somebody else a chance!'"

Dr. Frankenstein moaned again. "Oh, well, maybe it's better this way," he said. "That poor grotesque hulk ... maybe it is better off dead."

Inga returned, bringing dessert. She served the doctor, then Igor, then resumed her place at the table.

"What is this?" Igor asked, tasting the dessert.