Frankenstein

The next day was hot and the air was heavy. A storm was on the way. Dark clouds gathered in the sky, and by late afternoon it had started to rain in big drops.
All that day Frankenstein had been excited. He seemed to want the storm to come. It was as if he had a place for it in his plans; and as the rain fell faster and faster and the thunder grew louder and louder, he became more and more excited, walking restlessly up and down in front of the open window.
About seven o'clock he suddenly seemed to decide about something. He shut the window and marched into the work-room. I had by this time caught his excitement myself. It was clear that the experiment was about to begin. But when he reappeared a few minutes later my surprise was so great that I started to laugh. He was carrying a child's kite.
"Are we going to play games, then, Victor?" I asked at last.
But my friend remained quite serious and said nothing. Instead of the excitement of a few minutes ago his face now wore the fixed look of someone who knew exactly what he had to do.
I followed him along the passage to the front door, and up the stairs that led to the roof - or rather, to a flat but narrow part of it that lay between two high, pointed parts. On the right I could see a lighted window set in the roof just below its highest point. That must be the window of Frankenstein's work-room.
It was dark and wet, and the wind was very strong. I held the kite while Frankenstein climbed up to the window, which, I noticed, was a little open. I saw him pass his hand through the opening, and in less than a minute he was standing by my side again with the end of a piece of wire in his hand. I then noticed that there was also a roll of thin wire tied to the kite. He joined the kite wire to the wire which came through the window, and then took the kite from me.
I was glad of this, because the wind was pulling at it all the time, and I was afraid that it would carry me off the roof and into the street, five floors below.
But Frankenstein was too deeply interested in what he was doing to feel fear. Holding the end of the kite in his teeth he climbed up to the window again, and from there to the top of the roof. He sat there with one leg on each side of the roof.
"Up you come, then, Henri," he called. "I need you."
I followed him up, and he put the kite back into my hands.
"Move along to the other end of the roof and sit facing the wind. I will hold the wire," he said.
When we were boys we had loved flying kites; and as I sat there in the wind and the rain an unexpected feeling of pleasure ran through me. I lost all my fear of falling. I could see in the lightning flashes that Frankenstein was smiling. He felt the same as I did. It was a game now, and playing it made him feel as if he was a child again. I think it was the last time I ever saw him as happy as he was then.
I held the kite up and let the wind take it. Little by little Frankenstein pulled it up into the stormy night. Higher and higher it went, and still the wire ran out through the work-room window. When he thought it had gone far enough, he tied the wire to something just inside the window. Then we climbed down from the roof and returned to the house.
Frankenstein had never forgotten the power of lightning. The picture of that blackened tree below the Salève had stuck in both our minds from the time that we were boys. But while I remembered the lightning as a destroyer, Frankenstein had seen further. For him it was a power for creation. Now he was going to try out that power.
At any moment the kite would sail into the very heart of the thundercloud, and a huge electric force would flow down the wire into the work-room. To give life? I still could not believe it.
As we sat silent in the living room listening to the thunder coming nearer and nearer I thought of the perfect man lying in his bath in the next room. Sleeping? Dead? Unborn? I did not know how to think of him. But I saw the lightning flashes and I forgot him then. I was too afraid of the lightning. Did Frankenstein know what he was doing in drawing down lightning on the house in this way? He could not know the force with which the lightning would strike. He had an arrangement for leading the electricity to earth, but would it work? It was like sitting next to a bomb of uncertain size, waiting for it to explode.
When it came, of course, I was unprepared. There was a huge noise, a flash, and everything went dark.
It seemed like an age, but it can only have been a minute later when I woke up. I could not hear because of the explosion; nor could I see. I thought at first I had been blinded by the flash, but I soon understood that our lamps had been blown out. I could also smell burning. Frankenstein's earth arrangement had not worked too well, and a great part of the force of the lightning had hit the work--room.
Frankenstein was already on his feet and making his way to the room. The door had been blown open by the explosion and was only just hanging from the door post. Inside was darkness and an even stronger smell of burning. As we entered we felt broken glass under our feet, and other things that were unpleasantly soft.
The surprise of the lightning had made me forget everything, and it was only when my hands touched the table in the centre of the room that I remembered the experiment. But Frankenstein had not forgotten. He was already bending over the bath, feeling inside with his hands. A distant flash of lightning lit up the room just long enough for me to see a blackened table, a broken bath and the body lying face downwards in a few centimetres of liquid. It was quite still.
"The experiment has failed," said Frankenstein, and led the way out of the room.
It was the end of all his hopes, and I felt deeply sorry for him. Yet, though I could not say so then, it seemed that things had happened in the best possible way. I had never really wanted it to succeed.
By then, very tired, we threw ourselves down on our beds without even taking the trouble to undress. Before the storm had passed we were deeply asleep.

Source: Longman Classics