The Monster's Corner Read online

  “Thank you, Franck.” She pulled her doll close to her chest. “When you bring it over, my mother and father would like you to join us for dinner. Tomorrow night?”

  “I’d be happy to.” I was genuinely pleased. The people rarely invited me into their homes.

  Outside, in the street, I watched the Jews nailing boards across their shopwindows, which had been shattered the previous day when Schein and his entire Staffeln of ten men had hurled bricks at any business they didn’t like—an accountant, a piano teacher, a baker. I knew the shopkeepers had already placed orders with a glassmaker in the city, wanting to repair the windows as quickly as possible. Within a day, the ghetto street would look just as it always had—until the next time. But inner scars did not go away so easily.

  How could I not be angry?

  As Rachel went to the door to leave my shop, she paused in fear. I heard the rumble of a staff car drive down the street and placed a warning hand on the girl’s shoulder, holding her there to make certain she didn’t run out in full view.

  Staffelführer Schein sat in the back of the staff car as his driver cruised slowly down the street; he glared as the people ducked into doorways or drew the shades of their windows. The staff car rolled by, wafting silence along the shops like a hushed breath.

  “Why have they come back?” Rachel whispered.

  “Because they like you to be afraid, child.”

  We watched as the Nazis drove out of sight, but they caused no damage … today.

  Ingolstadt was still a small city, far from the rest of the war, with an insignificant Jewish quarter, which made Schein and the few men in his Staffeln all the more desperate for attention. But they wouldn’t get it from me. I had learned long ago not to draw attention to myself if I wished to survive.

  When the typical noises began to reappear in the street and people emerged from their shops with a nervous sigh, I let the girl run back to her parents. “Tell your father I’ll bring the jacket tomorrow night.”

  In the past century, much had changed in Ingolstadt.

  Because I hadn’t come alive the way a normal person did, neither did I age or die as a normal man would. Most children have only dim memories of their early childhood, but I can remember the vivid flood of images and sensations from the moment I opened my dull yellow eyes on the table, surrounded by lightning, to see the face of Victor Frankenstein, my creator … my father … the man who was so horrified by me that he had cast me out.

  Victor hated me because I was different, even though he had made me that way. What choice did I have but to hate him in return?

  In a hundred years, the people of Ingolstadt had done their best to forget, or at least to pretend ignorance of, the history of their town. The ancient castle was gone, torn down stone by stone at the turn of the twentieth century. The old mill had burned long ago, then been rebuilt, only to be abandoned again. It was now an ancient wreck on the hill above the town.

  I had traveled the world, gone to the frozen ends of the earth in pursuit of Victor, where I’d strangled him aboard a ship in an icy sea. It should have been my vengeance, my victory, after I’d leapt overboard to drift away on a detached ice floe, but I had learned much since then.

  Now I had come back home to the small German city that was my birthplace. My Jewish neighbors accepted me without asking too many questions, sometimes looking at me with pity, sometimes with a hard swallow and dry throat, as they saw my scars, my lumpish features. But I have done nothing to make them fear me. I was no longer the vengeful clumsy monster, but rather just someone trying to fit in. For a while, I felt I had a chance … but then the polical situation had grown worse, the Nazis came to power on a wave of blame and fear, and I didn’t think they would let anyone live peaceably and unnoticed.

  After the girl was gone, I took the rabbi’s jacket and used gentle strokes of a bristle brush to clean the mud; I blotted with chemicals to soak out the bloodstains. Then, with tiny perfect stitches, I began to repair the damage.

  I toiled all night long by lantern light, and I had the rabbi’s jacket cleaned, repaired, and even pressed well before sunup. But I couldn’t allow myself to do things that were too mysterious. If I did my work too quickly, too perfectly, there might be stories about me dabbling in dark magic, being a secret outcast sorcerer hiding in the ghetto of Ingolstadt. Rumors are easy things to start.

  Since the Nazis openly blame the Jews for every perceived crime, one would think the people here in the ghetto would not be so quick to cast suspicions themselves, but it is part of the way humans are made, scars they don’t even see inside themselves.

  Because I don’t need sleep—one of the gifts that Victor forgot to include when he gave me my life, like a missed stitch—I sat up and read the newspapers until dawn, when I would be able to venture into the streets again without looking like a fearsome, hulking shadow.

  I had one paper from Berlin, one from Salzburg, and even a weekly Yiddish edition (though my grasp of the language was still uncertain). The date was November 9, 1938, and the political situation in Germany was grim. By reading the slanted stories, I could sense a brewing storm on the horizon—a storm that would not bring the spark of life, like the one that had reanimated me, but rather destruction. All of Germany—maybe even all of Europe—seemed to be full of peasants carrying torches, looking for a target … .

  When the ghetto began to bustle in the morning, I helped an old silversmith across the street rehang a splintered door that the Nazis had damaged during their previous escapade, and he was grateful for my help. I had little else to do, a pair of trousers to alter, a few buttons to reattach. I walked the length of the ghetto, without any particular aim. A dark cloud seemed to hang over the people, as if they knew something terrible was about to happen, but they pretended it was just another day.

  That evening I brought the repaired jacket to the rabbi’s house, which was adjacent to the synagogue, and also carried a sack with four apples I had purchased from the cart on the corner. Rachel was delighted to see me, and the rabbi thanked me for my help. He tried on his repaired jacket, pronounced it perfect.

  His face looked as battered and discolored as mine had once appeared, the purple bruises from his recent beating now turning yellow at the edges. When he caught me looking at them, he said, “They will heal. We must give thanks that no greater harm was done. They have had their fun. Staffelführer Schein and his men are like angry unruly children.”

  The rabbi’s wife was furious on his behalf. “And you think because you let them beat you that they’ll be satisfied now?”

  “What would you have me do?” the rabbi said in frustration.

  Rachel quickly held up her doll, smiling at me. “Could you make me another one, Franck? You’re so good at stitching.”

  “Rachel, that’s not a polite request to make,” her father admonished.

  My dark lips formed a smile. “But a perfectly reasonable one, Rabbi. I may have some scraps of old cloth left and a few rags. Would you like me to make a husband for your stitched-together woman?”

  “Yes, please.”

  She had no idea how much that thought hurt me. If Victor had done that one thing for me, we would never have needed to become enemies. But Victor Frankenstein was a terrible man. And the peasants called me inhuman!

  Frau Schulmann had made a fine meal with whatever was available. She even simmered the apples I had brought with a pinch of cinnamon and some sugar.

  After we ate, the rabbi invited me to smoke a pipe with him as we listened to the world news on the radio. After the tubes had warmed up, he tuned to the strongest radio station, which was playing Wagner. The rabbi sat back contentedly, puffing smoke.

  I felt relaxed, remembering another old man, a blind man alone in a cottage who had befriended me and taught me many things, showing me the kind side of the human heart for the first time. I missed that blind old man; I’d seen too few people like him in all of my years.

  When the radio announcer read the ne
ws in a terse voice, the rabbi and I both listened. Tensions in Germany were already strained. Many Jews, feeling displaced and victimized, had already fled the country if they had the means to do so. They lost their homes, their wealth. They tried to find someplace to hide.

  But today the situation grew much worse. In Paris, a German diplomat had been assassinated by a Polish Jew, a young man incensed by how the Nazis were persecuting his people. The assassin had been driven to violence out of despair and helplessness, but as I listened to the angry news announcer, I knew that the young man’s actions would only aggravate the situation for the Jews. In fact, I was certain things would rapidly get worse. The announcer added at the end, as if it were a foregone conclusion: “Investigators are certain this is part of a much larger Jewish plot to overthrow the government.”

  Rabbi Schulmann turned gray and shook his head. “Oh, no.” He uttered a quick prayer. “This is just the excuse the Nazis have wanted for a long time.”

  From the kitchen where she washed the dishes, his wife looked at him with wide eyes, frightened by the news. Rachel played with her doll in the room, and she surprised us again with her perceptiveness. “Are we in danger, Papa? Will the bad men come hurt you again?”

  Rabbi Schulmann heaved a long sigh, pained by what he had to admit to his daughter. “We must pray it won’t happen, my dear.”

  The girl was grim and serious. “We should have a golem to protect us, just like in Prague. Then we can be safe.”

  “That’s just a story, child,” Rabbi Schulmann said.

  But the girl was indignant. “You said it was a true story.”

  The rabbi looked up at me with weary eyes, explaining, “It is a frightening tale, my friend—a good tale, but I can’t guarantee its veracity. In Prague in 1580, Rabbi Loew fashioned a large and powerful being out of clay, a golem, to protect our community from a Jew-hating priest who incited hatred among the Christians. When the mob came to the ghetto, Rabbi Loew’s golem stood strong and protected the Jews, preventing a pogrom. But then the golem ran amok, threatening innocents, causing great damage. Rabbi Loew was forced to remove the spark of life, rendering the golem lifeless again.” He turned to his daughter. “It is meant to be a lesson.”

  “I still think we need our own golem,” said Rachel. “But without the last part of the story.”

  Outside, we heard growling engines, screams, gunfire … then laughter accompanied by the sounds of shattering glass.

  * * *

  Fires began to start. Staffelführer Schein rode imperiously in his staff car with two of his men, flanked by two more Staffeln on motorcycles. His men threw rocks and bricks, smashing every intact window on the street. When some of the shopkeepers and families ran out, begging them to stop, the Nazis threw rocks at them instead.

  The old silversmith whom I had helped flailed his hands and stood in front of the door we had just repaired. One of the Staffeln grinned, hefted a broken brick, and hurled it with deadly aim, smashing the center of the silversmith’s forehead. He collapsed, surely dead.

  The men fired their rifles into the air, but I was sure they would choose other targets soon. When the rotund baker shook his fist and cursed them, the Staffelführer turned in his seat in the staff car, raised his Luger, and shot the baker in the chest.

  “Burn the synagogue,” Schein ordered. “That’s where they plot against us!” His men tossed kerosene lanterns against the synagogue door, smashed more windows.

  Rachel ran into the street, crying, screaming in her little-girl voice for the Nazis to stop. The terrified rabbi grabbed her and pulled her back, but she’d already drawn the Nazis’ attention. They spotted, and recognized, the man they had beaten only days earlier.

  “Please don’t hurt her!” Rabbi Schulmann cried, but the Nazis raised their guns.

  I had seen mob hatred before, had faced it and barely survived. The Nazis were destructive and dangerous, more organized than unruly town peasants and capable of causing far more damage. I would have preferred to stay in my tailor shop and not get involved; that would have been the smart thing to do.

  I may be large, I may look ungainly, my hands and limbs stitched together from mismatched parts, but Victor had done his work well, and I could move with predatory speed and power. I lunged forward to place myself in front of the rabbi and Rachel.

  The Nazis opened fire.

  I felt the impact of three rifle bullets and a much smaller caliber handgun bullet. My chest caught the deadly projectiles, preventing them from harming anyone else. The hot bullets damaged skin and muscles, but my body had already been dead once and would not so easily be brought back to death.

  The Nazis had fired first. Now it was my turn.

  Paying no heed to the spreading fires, the astonished crowd, or the arrogant sneer on the Nazi faces, I was upon the nearest SS man. I grabbed his rifle and yanked it free with such force that three of his fingers snapped; I heard a sickening pop as his shoulder dislocated.

  I brought the butt of the rifle down so hard in the center of his face that it caved in his skull, just like the old silversmith’s. Then I swung the rifle sideways and shattered the spine of a second man.

  I charged over to the two Staffeln who were now scrambling off their motorcycles. With one hand on each, I grabbed them by the lip of their helmets, yanked them up—I think one neck broke instantly. The other soldier flailed and thrashed, but I slammed them down to the street. Then I picked up one of the motorcycles, raised it high over my head, and brought it down onto them, crushing both. In moments, I had dispatched all the Staffeln, none of whom had a chance to fire another shot.

  Last was Staffelführer Schein. He stared at me with round eyes and gaping mouth. I think he had shot his Luger at me several times, but I hadn’t even felt the bullets. I grabbed the pistol and the hand that held it, and turned the weapon. I meant to bend Schein’s arm at the elbow, but bent the middle of his wrist instead. It didn’t matter. I jammed the Luger’s hot barrel up under his chin and crushed my fingers around the trigger, firing off another shot that went through the top of his head.

  Only fifteen seconds had passed.

  Though the fires continued to burn in the synagogue and chunks of broken glass fell out of the smashed windows, the silence around me seemed deafening. I turned. There were several bullet holes in my own garments, but they could be easily repaired with a few neat stitches.

  What I could not fix, though, was the fear and horror with which Rabbi Schulmann and his people now regarded me.

  “What have you done?” the rabbi asked softly.

  “Saved you.” How else could I respond?

  “Maybe … maybe not.” The rabbi shook his head, as if paralyzed by a nightmare. “What are you?”

  Now my own hiding of the truth, my own erasure of my unnatural past, was laid bare before them. They saw my ugliness, saw the scars, and quickly classified me as “not one of us.” Even though I had helped them, stood against their enemies, saved them from the attack of these monsters, they regarded me with fear. Even Rachel.

  “He’s the golem,” she said.

  “You killed the Nazis,” said the rabbi. “Now they’ll come back for us and take their vengeance tenfold. They will retaliate, kill us all.”

  I knew, though, that Ingolstadt had only a small Nazi garrison, a minimal presence, and I had killed all of them. It would take days, perhaps as much as a week, before the district leader began to wonder what had happened to Schein and his men. We would have time … if the people let me.

  I glanced up at the murky dark sky. There was no moon tonight. I had to hope that the other citizens of Ingolstadt wouldn’t take it upon themselves to attack the Jewish quarter in retaliation for the news of the recent assassination.

  “I have an idea,” I said. “We will need blankets to cover them.” As if they were no more significant than the doll I had repaired for Rachel, I picked up the dead Nazis and tossed them into the staff car, piling them like cordwood. “We can dispose of the bo
dies, get rid of the car and motorcycles. No one ever has to know.”

  “We all know,” the rabbi said.

  “And you’ll be alive to know it.” I looked down at Staffelführer Schein, who lay atop the pile of bodies. He reminded me too much of how Victor had looked after I’d strangled him up in the frozen sea. I felt no satisfaction, no relief, barely even a sense of justice.

  Frau Schulmann was sobbing, as were several others in the street. Finally, some went to fight the spreading fires and save the synagogue. Others went to tend to the bodies of those the Nazis had killed.

  “This will get much worse for us,” the rabbi said, his voice hollow. “If you were a real golem, I could remove the bit of scripture that reanimated you, the spark of life.” He shook his head. “But I don’t have that power. I don’t know where you come from. I can only ask you to go away and leave us alone. We don’t want you here—you’re too dangerous.”

  The Jews were afraid of me, but at least they didn’t have pitchforks and torches. I would do them one last favor, then I would be gone to find someplace up in the rugged mountains.

  I looked once more at Rachel, but the little girl did not look back at me. Her rag doll had fallen onto the street.

  I gathered every remnant of Staffelführer Schein and his men, then drove away in the staff car, out of Ingolstadt and up the rutted dirt road that led to the abandoned, creaking mill, where winds whistled through broken windows. I piled the bodies inside the old mill, then set fire to the old structure. I do not like dangerous, unpredictable fire, but this brought more satisfaction than terror. As the windmill blazed into the dark sky, it seemed very appropriate to me—a different sort of ending. This time, I had torched the place, winning my own victory against superstition, prejudice, and fear. Even though it would never end there …

  I set off in the staff car, driving away into the rugged mountains, far from Ingolstadt. I intended never to return—although I had said the same thing a century before.

  Hours later, when the car was nearly out of gas, I found a pull-off by a steep cliffside, tossed the motorcycles off the cliff, and pushed the empty vehicle over, where it tumbled off into the darkness. Even if the wreckage was eventually found, no one would ever know the answers.