This Monstrous Thing(24)

An automaton came in with its arms full of kindling, and we fell silent. I didn’t want to talk about Oliver anymore. I didn’t want to talk at all, but Clémence was watching me like she had more to say. I searched around for something to show I was done with her, and my gaze caught on a book on the end table. I recognized the green binding, and knew what it was before I picked it up—Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus. The same book Mary had sent, with that strange title and no author, and I remembered that Morand had told me it was about Geisler.

I flipped through it, scanning the pages without really reading, wondering if I’d see his name somewhere. A block of text stood out, centered and lonely, and I stopped.

Like one, that on a lonesome road

Doth walk in fear and dread,

And having once turned round walks on,

And turns no more his head;

Because he knows, a frightful fiend

Doth close behind him tread.

I had to read it twice before I realized why it sounded familiar. It was the Coleridge poem Oliver had recited last time I’d gone to see him. It felt like such an impossible coincidence that I scanned the rest of the page. The last sentence jumped out.

“Of my creation and creator I was absolutely ignorant, but I knew that I possessed no money, no friends, no kind of property. I was, besides, endued with a figure hideously deformed by the infernal engine that made me; being formed of metal, I was not even of the same nature as man.”

My stomach lurched. The words were familiar—not because I’d read them before, but because they sounded like Oliver. I flipped a few pages further, so fast I sliced my finger on the edge.

“‘Hateful day when I received life!’ I exclaimed in agony. ‘Accursed creator! Why did you form a mechanical monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust?’”

I slammed the book shut hard enough that Clémence glanced up from her tea. “You all right?”

“Fine,” I said, but the words were beating in my brain like blows from a hammer, a hollow echo of every conversation I had had with my brother over the past two years.

This book wasn’t about Geisler. It was about resurrection.

“Oh, you’re awake.”

I jumped and almost dropped the book. Geisler was standing in the sitting room doorway, wrapped in a maroon dressing gown with his spectacles perched on his forehead. I jammed Frankenstein between the cushions and stood up. “Good morning, Doctor.”

“Hardly morning yet.” He brushed past me and sat down in the chair I had just vacated. Clémence had sat up straighter and was watching him warily from across the room. Geisler returned her stare. “You have work elsewhere, mademoiselle,” he said to her. She stood without a word and glided from the room like a ghost. I tried to catch her eye as she left, but she kept her head down. Geisler gestured at her empty place on the chaise. “Please, Alasdair, sit down.”

I perched on the edge of the stiff cushion as one of the automatons came in with a tray. “Would you like some tea?” Geisler asked me as the automaton poured him a cup.

“I’ve already had some.”

“I’ll have it left if you want more.” Geisler frowned and reached between the armchair’s cushions, emerging a moment later with Frankenstein. He smiled at the cover, then held it up for me to see. “Have you read it?”

“No, sir,” I replied, though the words accursed creator were still ringing around my head like church bells.

“Really?” He set the book on the table and took up his teacup. “As a piece of fiction, it’s sloppy and inept at best.” He glanced at me over the rim, then, just before he touched it to his lips, said, “But it has its merits in other areas.”

I nodded, though books—even ones about clockwork and resurrection—were the last thing I wanted to talk about. I was burning to ask why he’d called me here, but I kept my mouth shut. He went on sipping his tea and staring at me with that same keen intensity he’d had when I first arrived. I felt dissected. Finally he set down his cup and steepled his fingers before his lips. His spectacles slipped off his forehead and settled on the tip of his nose. “How very like your brother you look,” he said softly. “In this poor light, I could almost swear you were Oliver sitting across from me two years ago.”

I didn’t say anything. Behind me, the windows rattled as the snow struck them.

“I’m sure the comparisons are endless,” Geisler continued, “but you aren’t like him at all, aside from the physical resemblance. After knowing Oliver so well, I find your stoicism startling. Nothing on your face, whereas with your brother—as soon as he felt something, you knew it. It was written all over him.”

“I know,” I said.

Geisler picked up Frankenstein again and turned it over. “Your father, he was never very clever,” he said after a moment. “A good man, yes, but not particularly clever. When I met him, you were just a boy. Do you remember?”

“I remember,” I said. I had been small, but not too small to recognize when life changed. Near my sixth birthday, Father had started taking apart clocks, skipping supper, carrying spanners and hammers in his bag alongside his surgical instruments. Our Edinburgh town house had been overrun by a new and unfamiliar group of men with limps and twisted arms, and it had all been prefaced by the first visit of the red-bearded man that Father called Geisler. I hadn’t been certain what it all meant then, but I understood well enough that some irrevocable shift had occurred.