Frankenstein's Monster Read Online Free Page B

at the air to try to catch a skirt or pantaloon if someone passed without giving.
    “Alms for the poor and blind,” he said coaxingly. “I am blind, my wife is feeble, and our baby is sick. Alms! God hears the prayers of the poor, especially when they pray for their generous benefactors. Alms!” When the coins did notfall quickly enough, his speech became louder and included threats and curses.
    Never in a week have I collected half of what he earned in hours. As his bowl filled, I could not help but imagine what I might buy if the money were mine. I could purchase books I truly desired, rather than stealing or stumbling on random titles. For a brief moment I considered his feeble wife and sickly babe, then dismissed the thought. Even if the story were true, he was richer than I simply to possess their companionship.
    I crossed to him noiselessly and bent close.
    “I have learned to fear the rich,” the beggar said. “Must I fear the poor as well?” From inside his ragged cloak, he pulled out a chunk of bread, tore it in half, and held a piece toward me. “If Venice has been that tightfisted with you, my friend, I should not be. It’s an unprofitable business all around when beggars must steal from beggars.”
    Though his eyes wandered slackly, each filmed as if with a caul, he addressed his words in my direction and held the bread before my face.
    When I did not reply, he laughed. “You are thinking now, is he really blind? And if he isn’t, can I take the money anyway and outrun him?” He gestured again with the bread. “Go ahead, take it, even if you mean to steal from me besides.”
    Surprise at being openly, even kindly, addressed fixed me to the spot and made me more hungry for the spoken word than the written.
    “How did you know anyone was there?” I asked. I sat down and accepted his bread.
“Are
you sighted?”
    “I’m blind, but for every fifteen coins that clinked in my cup, one would clink a little away from me. How long have you been practicing the noble art of begging?”
    “Not long. I arrived in Venice just a few days ago.”
    “And not from elsewhere in Italy either, judging from youraccent. Well, you’re too silent, my friend. Here, you must fight for every penny. You must speak up. Beg loudly, pray for those in the crowd, curse them, grab them, jeer at them, make them know you are here. They know Lucio’s here. That’s me. They cannot escape Lucio.”
    Lucio talked and talked, as though—robbed of his eyes—he had grown two tongues. When crowds moved our way, without a break in breath he resumed his loud beseeching. I began to leave, and he seized my cloak.
    “Stay. You will starve without me. How could I sleep at night with that on my conscience? Besides, you are an amiable conversationalist: you say ‘yes’ and ‘I understand’ at all the right times.” Laughing at his own remark, Lucio asked me my name. I gave him the first one I thought of; so quickly was it gone from memory that I cannot record it here.
    When the beggar departed for the night, he earnestly sought my assurance that I would return tomorrow to the same place. He also made me promise that, sometime soon, I would accompany him to the lean-to he considers home and share his dinner.
    “It is little more than a hovel,” he said, “and the food may be meager, depending on the day’s luck, but I promise you the conversation will be filled with sparkling wit! You will do me the greatest honor, my friend, for what could any man want more than the sound of his own voice being listened to?”
    Lucio has told me of his wife and their babe of six months: yes, they are real, but neither is sickly. Because of them, his hovel for me would be as grand as a palace. I doubt that I shall go there, however. His wife is not blind.
May
6
    I am almost fearful to commit my thoughts, my experiences, to paper.
Experience
—what a strange word for one such as I who lives too much in the mind. Something has happened. I have had