Chapter 48: From Dream to Dream |
Oxford was a tree.
Since taking root at the confluence of two rivers, the city had weathered a thousand years yet still thrived with vibrant life. Fresh sap continuously flowed through its ancient veins, giving the city a vigor that belied its age.
Young men barely twenty years old roamed the streets, spreading their youthful energy across the green lawns as they walked. Yet they never lost their reverence for the city, which stood as a monument to harmonious wonder.
Tradition and innovation. Two seemingly irreconcilable entities that somehow breathed together in this place.
Between the famous St. Michael’s Cathedral at the North Gate and the magnificently constructed St. Barnabas Cathedral lay a gap of 832 years and 600 meters. In such a city, the constraints of time so easily faded into insignificance.
Oxford was a city that grew very slowly.
Just as branches sprout from a tree, grass grows, and annual rings form, the city too grew slowly and naturally. Paradoxically, in this city, the longer something bore human touch, the more natural it seemed. Each stone wall and brick wall of unknown age was a work of art embodying natural beauty.
Considering London’s tumor-like, grotesque development, Oxford’s existence was clearly one of England’s great prides. Above all, the most wondrous fact was that this beautiful city was wholly dedicated to serving a single university.
Indeed, Oxford deserved to be called Britain’s foremost academic city. I could confidently say its reputation was second only to Cambridge.
What convinced me of this were the inns. Every alley had at least one lodging facility, and even London, the transportation hub, didn’t have this many accommodations.
I felt foolish for worrying about finding a place to stay when I had come without any plan.
Oxford was a famous university where students gathered from all over England, which meant frequent visits from wealthy and overprotective family members.
Though the streets were quiet now in winter when students returned to their hometowns, they would surely be filled with wealthy and fastidious parents once summer arrived. And they would never be satisfied with shabby carriage inns, which lacked space to accommodate many people anyway.
In that sense, Oxford’s merchants were thoroughly prepared.
Traditional pubs competed to convert their second floors into guest rooms, and some even installed separate staircases allowing access to the rooms without passing through the indoor pub.
I don’t know how much money these parents spent, but the dedication these merchants showed would make even London’s finest businessmen gape in astonishment.
Among the many inns, we entered one called ‘The Queen’s Head.’
Ah, of course I have eyes, and I know how ridiculous that name is.
I would have preferred to stay closer to downtown, near the university. But as time passed, my physical condition worsened, making it difficult to walk.
Since disembarking from the train, my body had been deteriorating by the minute.
It was because of the Shantak.
Ever since being devoured alive by that creature, my flesh had been rotting and crumbling from within. Throughout my walk, I endured excruciating phantom pain, though naturally there wasn’t a single wound visible when I checked beneath my clothes.
Above all, what tormented me most was my left leg.
That nonexistent part itched more fiercely than anywhere else.
Despite its provocative name, the disloyal ‘Queen’s Head’ had absolutely nothing special about it.
There was a pub on the first floor, and after pushing through the drunks and climbing the stairs, guest rooms on the second floor—just another traditional establishment. What surprised me was something beyond the interior.
“Two guests staying for one night?”
The proprietors asked with practiced certainty the moment they saw us.
They seemed completely accustomed to receiving such guests, and were even more naturally prepared to welcome lodgers than the staff at London’s finest hotels.
I nodded before I could think better of it.
“One room or two?”
“Two.”
The owner quoted the price with just his fingers.
I didn’t know if it was fair, but I only wanted to rest. If anyone were planning to swindle me, now would be the perfect time. I would have gladly handed over my wallet without a second thought.
After paying, we received our keys and walked inside.
As we crossed through the pub, several gazes turned our way, but most came from eyes too clouded with drink to be worth acknowledging. I silently cursed their rude curiosity.
From my brief observation, the patrons fell into two distinct groups.
One was a rowdy bunch of university students.
They continued their festivities without caring who entered. The usual barbaric, violent, foul-smelling, and impolite behavior typical of college students. It had been about 17 or 18 years since I graduated university, and in that time, the quality of university students had plummeted.
They poured alcohol down their throats as if they’d come to university merely to boast about their drinking capacity, yet they couldn’t even hold their liquor well, ultimately ruining everything. Wherever they departed, fragments of intellect lay scattered amidst the sweet and sour stench of spilled ale. What despicable louts!
The other group was local regulars.
At first, I didn’t even notice they were there, they’d become such fixtures of the place. It would be more accurate to describe them as part of the furnishings rather than people. They might have been sitting in those same spots for a decade.
The wooden chairs beneath them had already worn down to the shape of their backsides years ago. Even the mold on the walls resembled their gloomy expressions.
With disgruntled faces, they glared at all the commotion, grumbling about what cultured patrons they themselves were.
The clash between established and emerging—the same tiresome narrative seen everywhere in England.
Passing through this formless, one-sided conflict, four worn doors finally appeared at the top of the stairs.
Of these, the two on the right were our rooms.
“You take the innermost room.”
Marie nodded. I handed her the key and silently headed to my room.
The interior was an unremarkably common country room.
A wooden chair with legs of uneven heights.
A mattress reeking of mold.
A mirror that hadn’t seen a cloth in at least a year.
A wooden floor softened by absorbed moisture.
A sour smell permeating the entire room.
Suspicious stains spread across the entire ceiling.
I spread out the yellowish bedcover to minimize contact between the mattress and my body. Such beds were breeding grounds for skin diseases.
Meanwhile, I worried about Marie.
As you know, Marie was considerably heavier than most. I wondered if this softened floor and old furniture could bear her weight. Fortunately, no matter how intently I listened, I heard nothing breaking in her room.
I took off my coat and draped it over the hanger. Then I collapsed onto the bed. I spent the entire day in fitful sleep, wracked with illness.
My first day in Oxford ended just like that.
That night, I had two dreams.
Hypnos is a very fair god, immediately warning me they were nightmares.
The first nightmare was about a man.
He was someone I’d never seen before, yet somehow I recognized him. Ah, yes, that man! The thin man standing on the wasteland. He existed in some terrible two-dimensional realm not of this world.
I quietly followed him. He wandered around this place, sometimes appearing joyful, sometimes weary. I sensed he had been here for a very long time.
The man never stopped walking. He paused just once, sitting down for no reason and weeping for hours. He cried so much that his eyes bulged halfway out, turning red like a rabbit’s.
Everything was surreal.
It was as silent and unsettling as watching a silent film left behind by someone on the brink of suicide.
Suddenly, at some point, he froze. Then he began looking around frantically like a madman. Those paranoid movements could only be replicated by someone completely unhinged.
As I watched him, I realized with horror what he was searching for.
I struggled desperately to wake up, or at least to turn my head away. But in the dream, I had no freedom to do anything.
The man’s head stopped turning. He stared fixedly at one point.
Our eyes met.
The dream ended like a light being switched off.
“Huh… huh… huh….”
I awoke, then immediately fell back asleep. I was a wanderer traveling between dreams, using reality merely as a bridgehead.
Unlike the first silent-film nightmare, the second nightmare was about vivid sounds.
The sound began in southern Oxford. At first, it bubbled like the death throes of a drowning person. Then it splashed as if a wet body had crawled onto land, followed by the sound of water dripping onto the floor.
Only two sounds remained in the world.
The beating of my heart and the ominous sound of water drops slowly approaching.
I wanted to flee immediately, but I couldn’t move, as if pinned to the bed. That was natural for a dream. Eventually, it reached the second-floor window.
Drip. Drip.
The sound of water drops struck the windowsill. It did nothing else.
It just stood there, watching my sleeping form for hours.
After a while, the clouds parted and moonlight shone down upon the earth.
“Aaagh! Aaaagh!”
I awoke thanks to the light. I peered beyond the window with eyes wild with terror and madness, but there was nothing there.
What a horrific nightmare!
Though I had awakened from sleep, I still lingered between reality and nightmare. I noticed my body felt damp and looking around, I found the bed soaked with fluids from my body.
Sweat that the mattress and bedcover couldn’t absorb had flowed down to form pools on the wooden floor. They resembled puddles after rainfall.
I rose, staggering like someone possessed.
In the mirror illuminated by moonlight stood a gaunt monster. A mummy. I had once seen an illustration of a mummy in a newspaper, and this desiccated figure closely resembled it.
And it was me!
I searched desperately for water and found a kettle placed there by someone unknown. I gulped down all the lukewarm water it contained.
Clatter.
After throwing the empty kettle to the floor, I collapsed and fell asleep again.
The next morning, I awoke on the floor.
Since the weather was still cold, and this was a remote room beyond the reach of the fireplace’s warmth, my body trembled like an aspen leaf. From morning onward I wrapped myself in my coat to warm up.
After warmth returned to my body, I realized something surprising.
Contrary to my concerns, I was quite healthy. No, in fact, I was better than that. The phantom pain and delirium that had tormented me all day had disappeared without a trace.
────Knock knock.
“Who is it?”
“Master, are you awake?”
“Yes, come in. Do come in.”
I welcomed Marie into the room with a refreshed feeling.
“You’re already dressed to go out?”
Her intention was obvious. She was surprised to see me more diligent than expected. Of course, I wasn’t particularly industrious normally, but she was severely underestimating my military background.
“You must have been tired yesterday.”
“I suppose the travel fatigue caught up with me. Ah, yes, what did you do last night? I’m afraid I left you on your own.”
“Since you were sleeping, I stayed in my room.”
That was obvious without asking. I shook my head and asked another question.
“By the way, did you come into my room yesterday?”
“Once, to check what you were doing, and then I left some water when I saw you were sleeping.”
“Well done, very well done.”
I nodded repeatedly, praising her.
“It’s unusual for you to acknowledge my efforts so readily, Master.”
“I always give praise when it’s due. You know that.”
Marie didn’t answer and instead held out a plate.
“I’ve brought your meal.”
The plate contained a modest arrangement of baked kidney beans and bread with blackened edges. It was clearly the same meal the proprietors were having.
Normally, I might have complained about such a meager meal, but as I felt unusually healthy even in my stomach for once, I prepared to eat without comment.
Then I noticed Marie taking her own plate to a corner, which puzzled me.
“You eat as well?”
“Yes.”
This was something I learned after two months of living with her.
Come to think of it, it made perfect sense. Frankenstein had merely sought to construct a physical body, and it was natural that it would use nutrients for energy, just as humans do.
“Did you not know?”
“To be honest, I never even wondered about it.”
The fact that I didn’t know was entirely due to my indifference.
After Marie’s return, I entrusted all household matters to her again. And I mean all household matters. Though I was criticized when I discreetly mentioned this to some of my social acquaintances, I didn’t even manage the household accounts myself.
So my involvement in meal preparation was limited to two things: providing money for ingredients and running errands for her since she couldn’t go outside.
In fact, though I kept it secret from Marie, I didn’t even run errands myself. Instead, I hired some trustworthy street urchins, giving them money to handle the tasks.
Under these circumstances, it was natural that I didn’t know about her eating habits. While acknowledging that I had been too indifferent toward her, I couldn’t help but comment.
“Then why didn’t you mention the food expenses beforehand?”
“From the first day I arrived, you told me I could buy whatever I needed.”
“Still, you should have said something, shouldn’t you?”
“You never wanted to talk with me, Master. And I recorded everything in the account book, so I naturally assumed you knew. I never imagined someone of your standing wouldn’t look at the account book even once in two months.”
Silently, I scooped up some baked beans with my fork and pushed them into my mouth.
Like everyone else, I had absolutely no interest in the process behind the food that entered my mouth. I even took pride in my ignorance.
It’s simply astounding how much patience those who can focus on such mundane daily tasks must possess.
“Still, you should have told me beforehand….”
I muttered quietly while tearing the bread with my hands.
───Clink, clink.
The meal proceeded in solemn silence.
We didn’t exchange a single word, with only the occasional sound of utensils clinking against plates.
It wasn’t that I held any particular Puritan beliefs. I simply found it bothersome to converse while concentrating on eating. And since I kept my mouth shut, Marie naturally didn’t speak first.
There was another reason for this silence. I ate with my back turned to Marie.
I knew it was impolite, but if we were to speak of propriety, it wasn’t exactly proper for her and me to share a meal in the first place. In any case, trivial as it might seem, I simply couldn’t bear to watch her eat.
The sight of her mechanically shoveling food into her mouth was so profane and alien that I could hardly bear to witness it. Regardless of whether I acknowledged her as human or not, I simply couldn’t stand to look.
Clink, clink.
I finished about half my meal and set down the plate. Perhaps my earlier robust appetite had been an illusion, as my stomach quickly began to protest again.
In my youth, my stomach had been ruined by subsisting on all manner of inedible things, and even now, a decade later, it remained troublesome. One might call it a battle scar, but I couldn’t feel even a shred of pride about this particular affliction.
“Have you finished?”
“Yes, if I eat any more, I fear I’ll spend another day bedridden. Clear it away.”
She transferred the bread from my plate onto hers.
“I didn’t realize you had such a large appetite.”
“What? No. You know I wasn’t originally like this. It’s because of my body.”
I thought for a moment, then shook my head.
“No, no. You’ve always had quite a voracious appetite. I remember now.”
In any case, even considering that, she ate an extraordinary amount.
I didn’t know what part of a Frankenstein-created body demanded so much energy, but she seemed to consume at least twice as much as an adult man.
I suspected that the cause of our household financial instability might lie in her food expenses. It was quite a plausible theory. Thinking of it that way, her usual criticisms of my spending habits were truly galling.
“When you’ve finished eating, prepare to go out.”
“Do you need me for your meeting with Lord Liddell?”
“No, I thought we might just tour the town today. Didn’t I tell you before that we came here to rest? I’ve been making you work too much.”
I expected Marie to be pleased by this, but for some reason, her response was entirely lukewarm. Shouldn’t an employee at least feign delight when their employer shows such consideration?
I was disappointed by her indifference. For a long while, only the sounds of eating continued.