Chronicles of Ara: Perdition

by Joel Eisenberg

  “Objections are not necessary . . . pleasant dreams.”

  Mary frowns and turns to go to sleep.

  MADAME ODIER’S, LAKE GENEVA, SWITZERLAND

  The next afternoon, at a local inn. Percy, Mary, Byron, and Polidori, over lunch.

  “This is Percy’s issue,” Mary says. “He does not love Harriet. I am assured he is very much in love with me, but he is so looking forward to knowing his other children. That’s what worries me. Sometimes I am ignored. I cannot abide our William being so ignored.”

  “Mary, please,” Percy responds. “I have not ignored dear William, nor you.”

  “My eyes are open,” she says, as she glares at Percy. “My perspective is my reality.”

  Awkward moments pass, and Byron steers the conversation. “We all agree that we can love anyone we choose.” Mary is riveted. “If we choose to love more than one . . . at more than one time, so be it.” He swigs his drink. “Mary, if you choose to love Percy’s friends, Mr. Hogg, for instance, it is the reward of a free mind that we control our own destiny.”

  “Mary, are you anything more than platonically interested in Hogg?” Percy asks, suddenly jealous.

  Byron winks at Mary, and continues. “I have been deep in thought about a new poem based upon the legend of Don Juan, of which I will not yet begin, but when I do I will publish the work in several cantos, about this very idea. Inspired, of course, by my own life. Polidori, would you not agree that my words to Percy and Mary here are valid?”

  “Of course.” He eats. Clearly, for the doctor, this is not a favored topic.

  Mary shyly looks up to Percy, who glares in return.

  “Freedom of love, freedom of life . . .” Byron says, raising a glass as the others follow. “To freedom.”

  “To freedom,” the others follow, some reluctantly.

  They look to the door outside, in response to a burst of lightning.

  “Tambora reminding us of its presence,” Percy says. He is drunk, as is Byron, and the prior words exchanged with Mary no longer hold any sway.

  “Indonesia is so far from here,” Mary says. “That volcano erupted a year ago.”

  “Don’t fool yourself Mary,” Byron responds. “That volcano is responsible for this madness.”

  “I confess, this madness as you say, the rain, the storms . . . I find it all so very chilling,” Mary says. “So apropos for a writer of an unrested mind.”

  “Speaking of—” Polidori begins.

  “Speaking of,” Mary continues, “how is your ankle, dear Polidori?”

  “A minor sprain. I blame him.” He cocks his head to Byron, smiling.

  “I only wanted you to show the lady some respect, to help her up a slippery hill is all,” Byron answers.

  “Well, I appreciate it,” flirts Mary, who takes Polidori’s hand in gratitude.

  Byron, noticing, again takes control.

  “My dear Polidori, before I was so rudely interrupted, what is it you were going to say?”

  Polidori is enamored of Mary; he looks to Percy, who shakes his head in the negative. Polidori refocuses. “Have I told you of the book I found?” he asks. “At the antique store, down the way?”

  NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY, NEW YORK CITY

  The inclement weather begins, again, without warning. An infuriated Thomas storms out of the library to a burst of thunder and, once again, the ensuing downpour.

  How goddamn symbolic, he thinks. He shakes off the thought when he hears the splashing of water gradually increasing in volume as if someone is walking his way.

  And, again, he sees her.

  Freak. As before, wearing rags and, it appears, no shoes.

  Thomas is torn between following her and running away as fast as he is able. He watches and walks toward her, as he had earlier.

  She sees him, and this time she does not flinch. She seems comforted, strangely so, as he closes the distance.

  “Do you remember?” he asks, lifting his head.

  Their eyes meet. She recognizes him straight away. “Yes,” she says.

  Thomas realizes he’s standing in the pouring rain in the midst of an awkward moment . . . and neither one of them is making an effort to find cover. He looks back to the library—the last place he wants to be, and besides, they may not allow her inside—and in front to the trees. An overpass beckons the equivalent of a block away. He extends his hand—

  “Come with me?” he yells so she can hear.

  “No.” She looks at his hand but does not take it.

  “You can’t stay here.”

  “I’m sorry,” she says. She too looks back and in her stead. “I’m sorry,” she repeats. She turns to go.

  Thomas yells after her, “I want to help.” She keeps walking, to no apparent destination, and he watches, hopelessly. And now I want to save the world, he thinks. Sometimes, McFee, you’re nothing but a damn clown.

  He looks below, to the water overtaking his shoes. Near his foot is an object he finds curious. He bends, retrieves it, and stands.

  A black silk glove . . .

  VILLA DIODATI, LAKE GENEVA, SWITZERLAND, SEPTEMBER 1817

  The writer wears the single black silk glove previously gifted to David by Claire Clairmont; the hand so-covered holds a quill pen.

  The pen is dipped into an inkwell.

  The words that ensue will be immortalized in a fresh notebook. By the end, there will be several notebooks that cumulatively will tell this tale. Once printed, portions of what immediately follows will read thusly, and anonymously:

  PREFACE.

  THE event on which this fiction is founded has been supposed, by Dr. Darwin, and some of the physiological writers of Germany, as being of not impossible occurrence. I shall not be supposed as according the remotest degree of serious faith to such an imagination; yet, in assuming it as the basis of a work of fancy, I have not considered myself as merely weaving a series of supernatural terrors. The event on which the interest of the story depends is exempt from the disadvantages of a mere tale of spectres or enchantment. It was recommended by the novelty of the situations which it developes; and, however impossible as a physical fact, affords a point of view to the imagination for the delineating of human passions more comprehensive and commanding than any which the ordinary relations of existing events can yield.

  I have thus endeavoured to preserve the truth of the elementary principles of human nature, while I have not scrupled to innovate upon their combinations. The Iliad, the tragic poetry of Greece, Shakespeare, in The Tempest and Midsummer Night’s Dream and most especially Milton, in Paradise Lost, conform to this rule; and the most humble novelist, who seeks to confer or receive amusement from his labours, may, without presumption, apply to prose fiction a license, or rather a rule, from the adoption of which so many exquisite combinations of human feeling have resulted in the highest specimens of poetry.

  Brikke carefully removes a piece of paper and writes separately with his quill:

  Notes and Connections: They surround a fireplace and read from Fantasmagoriana. Byron insists he has witnessed a tree spun into life by lightning. Discussions then turn to galvanism, and the experiments of Dr. Erasmus Darwin who, according to Mary, preserved a piece of vermicelli in a glass. “And then by some extraordinary means it began to move,” she says. “Perhaps a corpse could thusly be reanimated.” Claire is ignored. Byron reads from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Christabel:

  “Then drawing in her breath aloud

  Like one that shuddered, she unbound

  The cincture from beneath her breast:

  Her silken robe and inner vest

  Dropt to her feet, and full in view

  Behold! Her bosom and half her side,

  Hideous, deformed and pale of hue,

  A sight to dream of, not to tell!

  And she is to sleep by Christabel.”

  Percy is administered ether. He recovers and tells Mary he thought of a woman he had once heard of with eyes instead of nipples. The thought horrifie
s him all the more.

  Brikke reviews his notes, then folds and places the paper in a shirt pocket and resumes his work on the Preface:

  The season was cold and rainy, and in the evenings we crowded around a blazing wood fire, and occasionally amused ourselves with some German stories of ghosts, which happened to fall into our hands. These tales excited in us a playful desire of imitation. Two other friends . . . and myself agreed to write a story, founded on some supernatural occurrence.

  The weather, however, suddenly became serene; and my two friends left me on a journey among the Alps, and lost, in the magnificent scenes which they present, all memory of their ghostly visions. The following tale is the only one which has been completed.

  There will be more, but that will wait for another day. For now, Brikke turns to the preceding page—the title page:

  FRANKENSTEIN, OR THE MODERN PROMETHEUS

  In Three Volumes

  The pen is placed down; the glove is removed. His is, predictably, a strong, veined hand.

  Mary will hereinafter assume that the older Percy favored her with the words as she has never before been published. And Percy? He will not ever deny his wife’s suspicions, neither to her nor her critics. His curiosity, however, will not remain tempered.

  Brikke, the culprit, on present appearance alone could have been the model for Frankenstein’s monster. One day, the world will know his purpose, and the extent of his influence on this seminal work. Nearly two hundred years from now, he will look, in all aspects, much younger.

  He peeks out the window. The noon hour is pleasant enough; the sun is blazing.

  The others have gone elsewhere to enjoy the afternoon.

  He returns to the desk to swipe a leather medicine bag, contents unknown, and close the notebook. The desk is straightened.

  Brikke leaves, quietly, closing the door on his way out.

  ~~~

  When he arrives back at the Diodati, Percy reads, silently—

  “The circumstance on which my story rests was suggested in casual conversation. It was commenced partly as a source of amusement, and partly as an expedient for exercising any untried resources of mind. Other motives were mingled with these as the work proceeded. I am by no means indifferent to the manner in which whatever moral tendencies exist in the sentiments or characters it contains shall affect the reader; yet my chief concern in this respect has been limited to avoiding the enervating effects of the novels of the present day and to the exhibition of the amiableness of domestic affection, and the excellence of universal virtue. The opinions which naturally spring from the and situation of the hero are by no means to be conceived as existing always in my own conviction; nor is any inference justly to be drawn from the following pages as prejudicing any philosophical doctrine of whatever kind.”

  There was more, at the beginning, but he casually flipped to the second page as is his wont. He believes that the start of something, anything, matters little if the rest does not fulfill its own promise.

  Thus far, he’s impressed.

  Mary will be back any minute, he figures. The writing is a close approximation of my own style . . . she’ll credit me for certain.

  He reads on—

  “It is a subject also of additional interest to the author that this story was begun in the majestic region where the scene is principally laid, and in society which cannot cease to be regretted. I passed the summer of 1816 in the environs of Geneva. The season was cold and rainy, and in the evenings we crowded around a blazing wood fire, and occasionally amused ourselves with some German stories of ghosts, which happened to fall into our hands. These tales excited in us a playful desire of imitation. Two other friends (a tale from the pen of one of whom would be far more acceptable to the public than anything I can ever hope to produce) and myself agreed to write each a story founded on some supernatural occurrence.”

  The page is turned.

  “The weather, however, suddenly became serene; and my two friends left me on a journey among the Alps, and lost, in the magnificent scenes which they present, all memory of their ghostly visions. The following tale is the only one which has been completed.

  ~~~

  Percy peeks at the attribution of the papers first—Marlow, September 1817—shrugs in faint amusement then straightens the pile of papers as they were minutes ago.

  “Per—”

  “Coming, dear!” He stands and rushes to the door. “What’s with the fuss?” He opens the door and helps her with bottles of ink and two armfuls of notebooks. “It doesn’t become you.”

  “There’s more.” She cocks her head to the left of the doorway.

  Percy looks; some of the ink has spilled, the pages of three blank notebooks blow in the breeze. He places the first armful of materials on the desk—taking care not to interfere or spill anything on the written notebooks—then returns outside for the rest.

  She removes his arms. “Percy Bysshe Shelley, how you dare insult your . . .” She pauses upon an unexpected find.

  “Mary?” She walks to the desk. “What is it?” Percy asks, hiding his nerves.

  “Percy, is this yours?” She holds a large black glove.

  “I’m sorry, dear?”

  “This is odd.”

  “Mary?” Percy approaches. “What are you cruxing over?”

  He either didn’t see or hear her. Mary tosses the glove to the side. She’ll deal with that possible intrusion later.

  REASON

  An Open Letter to the Media

  “Man will supersede the gods,” someone once said. “And alchemy will enable the perfection of man.”

  With that . . .

  Apologies for the brief interruption. I’m back, and Daniel Baxter is no more.

  Resuming business as usual . . .

  Final words on the Shelleys and their circle, those troubled Romantics . . .

  A return to reality, if you will, this time less the dramatics (my intent of incorporating the drama to begin with being similar in intent to that of the most successful historical fiction writers, in this instance not only the conscious effort for further resonance, but also to expose The Truth to you and yours by capturing essence, typically lost in straightforward reportage).

  I haven’t yet read it, but I understand that Thomas McFee’s latest book, his Tolkien fiction, straddles this tightrope more effectively than perhaps any other in recent memory. Some who have read it are saying they know more about the real Tolkien now than they did before. And that book is said to be fairly loaded with artifice.

  I should only have his career, but . . . back to Percy and Mary. The couple eloped in France on July 28, 1814. Harriet, with whom he eloped on August 28, 1811, in Scotland when she was sixteen, was still pregnant and would soon birth a son.

  Perhaps Percy’s most renowned work is Prometheus Unbound, his drama of the Greek Prometheus, who gives fire to man despite the will of the gods and is sentenced to eternal suffering at the hands of Zeus. Percy’s work was itself based on the fifth century’s Promethia by Aeschylus, though in Shelley’s version the play focused on Prometheus’ release from captivity due to the downfall of Zeus, as opposed to the reconciliation as plotted in the earlier work.

  Seems like Ara may have been experimenting with her own choices there . . .

  Percy was stridently anti-war; his considerable oeuvre, the sum total of his progressive social and political writings that included thought-pieces on nonviolent resistance, influenced not only generations of writers, such as Oscar Wilde, Leo Tolstoy, and George Bernard Shaw, but also the lives and works of other world-altering influencers, such as Karl Marx and Mahatma Gandhi.

  Who says writers can’t change the world? Snicker.

  I mentioned “trainwreck” earlier, which was both insensi-tive and distant of me. And deliberate. No one’s suffering should be trivialized, and I won’t spend a page here defending my choice of word, when I can just as easily go back and lose it. But meaning (and Truth) is sourced when words flow spontaneou
sly, which I’ve credited as a primary cause of resonance for the enduring works of our most notable authors. And so, “trainwreck” came to mind when I was writing, and I am sticking with it. As you have read here before, “It’s just a word, after all.” However, allow me to add to that: “Words are the most impactful things there are.” Considering Percy and Mary’s output, then, and their importance, a brief review of their lives to support my honest, uncensored thought on the matter.

  Percy and Mary had four children together, including their eldest, a girl, born two months premature on February 22, 1815. The baby died shortly thereafter, and on March 6 she wrote the following to Percy’s old Oxford friend, Thomas Jefferson Hogg, with whom Mary had developed a strong platonic bond:

  “My dearest Hogg my baby is dead—will you come to see me as soon as you can. I wish to see you—it was perfectly well when I went to bed—I awoke in the night to give it suck it appeared to be sleeping so quietly that I would not awake it. It was dead then, but we did not find that out till morning—from its appearance it evidently died of convulsions—Will you come—you are so calm a creature & Shelley is afraid of the fever from the milk—for I am no longer a mother now.”

  William Shelley, Percy and Mary’s first son born less than a year after the death of their daughter, passed tragically on June 2, 1819, at three years of age from an apparent cholera infection. Note that the character of William, from the novel Frankenstein, was Victor Frankenstein’s (the Creator’s) youngest brother and was strangled by the good doctor’s creation.

  A metaphor there? Though the work was revised at least twice by Mary over the years, the Shelleys’ son, William, was very much alive when the original version was written. Mary’s great wish, that her first-born would live to be a difference-maker, may well have come true, all things considered.

  Clara Everina Shelley was born on September 2, 1817, and died one year later of dysentery.