A Secret History (Monster/Frankenstein, Chapter 6)

From the diary of Victor Frankenstein:

 

December 31, 1798

My brother died, today.  I’m told it would be better to pretend as if he never existed.

 

July 31, 1802

After several years at this game I’ve decided that was terrible advice, and so filled this diary with all my precious memories of him.  Then I scratched it all out.  Then I wrote it again.  Then I scratched it out again.  I made another copy.  Started over.  Threw it out.  I am somewhat conflicted over this matter.

 

April 2, 1810

In the midst of my studies I came upon curious information, which started me thinking.  I can bring him back. 

 

January 18, 1818

I did as I planned and it turned out to be a terrible idea.  It wasn’t him.  It wasn’t him at all.  I’ve spent the past several years in recompense, and it wasn’t nearly enough.  In the end I had to fake my death, and I’m not sure he knows or cares.  I wrote the whole thing down again.  I may have shared my story with some poets.  There may be multiple versions of this horror.  I have started my diary anew.  I have started it and scratched through it and started it again many times.  How many versions exist?  Am I still the same man I was when he died, or did I change as well?

 

June 8, 1824

The years continue their descent, as do I.  I’ve started my life over so many times I keep new diaries to track each new life, and they’re all lies.  Finally I can admit that.  I confess I’m no longer quite certain I know who I am, what my name is today.  I wonder where this all ends.

 

November 26, 1843

I attempted to collect all the diaries from where I discarded them, even amongst the very trash heaps, and I can find none of them.  There can be only one explanation, that he’s taken them all into his possession.  I don’t think he cares what effect this has on me.  He means to control my legacy.

 

May 1, 1864

If you must know, my name these days is Grenoville, and that is only because I have learned, recently, that I had a son, at some point, a new member of this strange family, of which I was unaware for the duration of his formative upbringing, and yet he knows of me, as if he knows my true face, and I assume this is because my brother took the liberty of informing him, that and the dogged pursuit of Oliver Row, who wants some form of justice, the nature of which eludes me in my advancing age, that and a great many other things. 

 

September 12, 1871

I met him, again, had a whole conversation with him.  We discussed many things.  I mean my brother, not my son.  I never had the courage.  My brother has pursued a similar course to mine, over the years, including the adoption of aliases.  As I sat talking to him I wondered if he remembered his name, if the point of this occasion was to provoke me into stating it.  In truth I’m not sure I do, either.  I am an old man, and there’s no use denying it.  I sometimes wonder, now, if the things I record in here are anymore the truth than what I cross out and attempt to set straight a second and third, fourth, fifth, however many times it takes.  I wonder if my brother reconstructs them, rewrites them with all the words left in, and what a confusing affair it would be to read, whomever tackled such a task ending up as confused as I myself have become.  I suppose it would be amusing.  There are authors who believe that’s the way their readers want to be entertained, I suppose.  Never quite a straight line.  Cleverness for its own sake, perhaps.  It’s not my affair.

 

February 23, 1875

I don’t know why I continue to write in this thing.  I had a thought the other day, and didn’t jot it down, and so I forgot it, and that’s what my life is, now, very far from what it once was, what I imagined to be a clever mind with no boundaries, capable of anything, and then of course I did just that and have regretted it ever since.  I don’t know how many people are honest enough to admit such things.  Perhaps, if they’re lucky, when they’re as old as I am.  If they remember what they regret.  If they remember to regret. 

 

January 12, 1876

I saw him again.  I had to remind myself, this time.  Didn’t remember his face.  Because of his unusual nature he doesn’t age, and I do.  The body died a great many years ago, after all, and he has been living on borrowed time ever since.  Tried to shoot him, this time, but couldn’t lift the pistol.  Don’t know why I have the thing.  A small comfort.  I don’t know whose time he borrows.  Perhaps mine.  The skin is obviously a problem, but he seems to have worked around it.  Walks stiffly, but he gets around.  We’re the same, at the very least, again, for the first time in a very long time.  All told he does it better.  I find myself somehow jealous.  He dresses better.  I was never able to determine how he ended so much smarter.  I remember, now, if I remember my brother at all, to have been a dullard.  Maybe that’s just what I have to tell myself.  Maybe it’s what I always told myself, why I felt so guilty when he died.  But there are so many things I don’t remember, now, that I perhaps recorded in prior versions of this diary, that he stole, along with so much else.  What I gave him.  Let’s be honest for one brief moment, shall we?

 

January 18, 1878

Thought I’d go for a walk.  Ran into him.  My son, I mean.  At least I think it was.  I imagine it was.  Very different fellow.  Or maybe exactly the same.  I don’t suppose I’d know the difference, at this point.  I don’t suppose I care.  Perhaps that’s the true curse of this life.