Frankenstein's Monster by Susan Heyboer O'Keefe Page A

needing to make ink so frequently.
    Despite my good fortune in replacing all these, my old journal has been lost. I have no past except what I create by writing it down. What I created before is now gone. A new journal, a new past. A new man?
    I shall think only of murder.
October
8
    I carry with me a map of England. I feel kinship with the picture. The divisions of rivers, roads, and boundaries are likethe scars on my face: each tells a story of something once separate and divided, now brought together and made one. But where is Tarkenville?
    Before I could ask directions, I had to find suitable clothing. I stopped first at a farm and from its stable stole a horse blanket to use as a cloak. Later on my journey I shall fashion a hood for it; now I draw the blanket down to shadow my features.
    Nearly shredded by the waves, my shirt proved more difficult to replace. Cloaked but bare chested, I traveled from village to village till at last I saw a man so stout as to serve my needs. I waited by his window till the candle was long put out, crept inside, and found his bedroom. Snoring loudly, he lay oblivious as I searched his chest of drawers and found two spare nightshirts. The fine white cloth—so full and wide to accommodate his girth—fit perfectly across my broad shoulders and chest. Its length, below his knees, was just to my hips. I looked into his armoire greedily and saw a black jacket and blue trousers, both of soft wool. His jacket on me would be a waistcoat, his trousers on me would be breeches. I rolled my treasures under my arm and left.
    Now at least, when I ask directions, though my face might be hidden, I can show a clean shirt.
October
9
    “Go north till you’re in the middle of nowhere,” said a man in Dover. “If you hit Scotland, you’ve gone too far.”
    Those were my first directions to Tarkenville, which seems to be no closer than Hell and no more desirable. It is not on the map. If a man has even heard of Tarkenville, his advice begins, “Go north,” but then provides no other help.
    Finally, one man said he thought that Tarkenville is up near Berwick-upon-Tweed, which is indeed north, nearly at theScottish border. He did not know to what side of Berwick Tarkenville lay, but it could not be east as then it would be in the sea.
    So, for now, until I am closer, I travel north, led by the Pole Star to Margaret Winterbourne and through her to Walton.
Newton Mulgrave
October
10
    From my crossing of the strait through today, my experiences provide, not the memoirs of a murderer stalking prey, but the sedate observations of a vacationer. I walked up the North Downs of Kent, remarkable for the tent cities that spring up overnight, temporary housing for crowds from London come to harvest the hops. I crossed the Thames just east of London and made my way into Essex. There, the neatly thatched cottages and fertile farmland made me yearn for quiet domesticity. Then rain turned the red-clay fields to blood, and my thoughts to darker images.
    In Cambridge, the colleges reminded me of the heady intellectual swirl I once sought outside the Vatican. There, as in Rome, I found myself so “clumsy” as to bump into one of the students and knock his armful of books to the ground. He would later discover himself missing Spinoza’s
Ethics
.
    Tired of slipping from shadow to shadow along city streets, I found the steaming bogs in Lincolnshire more suited to my mood: they are said to be haunted. Because of their devils and ghosts and malarial air, I was alone when I witnessed thousands of wildfowl breaking cover from the marshes and rising up as one, their wings beating thunderously. Like a fool pointing out the most obvious event, I wanted to turn to a companion and say in wonder, “Did you see that?”
    No one was there.
    Farther north the fens have been newly drained to create drier, passable land. I keep to those portions not yet tamed. And still farther, stone manor houses sit high upon the wolds; these I eyed