Pride and Prometheus

by John Kessel

  “You don’t eat animals,” she said. She tore off the half-raw fragments of fish with her teeth, small, slow bites. Her shadowed eyes gleamed with the wan firelight.

  “I have done so. I don’t prefer to.”

  “Yet you killed these fish readily enough.”

  “Necessity compels such acts, at times. I think that this is what you call a ‘sin.’ ”

  “Killing in order to eat is not a sin,” Miss Bennet said. “The Lord has given all the beasts of the field and the fowl of the air and the fish of the sea to men, to be used as they see fit.”

  “Am I a man?” I asked.

  She hesitated. “There are many sorts of men.”

  “I was not made by your God.”

  She put aside her fish. “You are made in his image,” she said. “Do you know the Bible?”

  “I have read that book.” I fumbled in my pocket and showed her my copy.

  She smiled, and her eyes squinted. “Though Victor may think he created you, I suspect that the Lord guided your making.”

  I leaned on my elbow. My shoulder was well enough now that it no longer hurt. I gave what she said some thought.

  “So I am allowed to sacrifice a fish,” I said. “But murder? ‘Thou shall not kill.’ ”

  Miss Bennet did not reply.

  “I murdered Victor’s brother,” I said.

  “I know,” Miss Bennet said. When she spoke, shadows deepened in the hollows of her cheeks. She was silent for some moments. “Why did you do that?”

  “I could say that I did not mean to kill him, but the more time that passes, the less true that seems.” Each night as I fell asleep, William’s terrified face was never far from my thoughts.

  “I had sought Victor for many months. After much pain and effort I reached the woods outside Geneva’s walls. I had hardly arrived when, purely by chance, a beautiful boy came running into the hollow where I hid. It came to me that a child, unschooled in hatred, might learn to accept me as human. I could teach him to like me. But when I caught him, he called me a monster. He swore that if I stole him away, his father, Monsieur Frankenstein, would punish me.

  “It was not simply that he bore the name of the person who had created and abandoned me. There was petulance in his voice—an unquestioned sense of privilege, an assumption that huge and monstrous as I was, I could not presume to harm him.

  “I wanted to silence his presumption. He kicked and twisted in my arms. He screamed at me. Someone might hear. There was no thought in him now, only complete and utter terror. His revulsion fell like a knife in my breast. I had taken this boy, and as if I were a viper or a wolf, in three minutes turned him into a raving animal.

  “I grasped his throat, and in a moment he lay dead at my feet.”

  I closed my eyes. It helped with the stinging of the smoke, but in my mind I could only see William more clearly. I opened them again, and watched the tiny flames amid the peat.

  “I killed him as easily as I killed those trout,” I said. I wiped my tears away with the back of my hand, and laughed. “I balk at killing fish, yet I murdered a reasoning being. You cannot absolve me of that sin.”

  “I cannot,” Miss Bennet said. “But God can, if you repent.”

  “So? How does God regard what I did to Justine Moritz? I took the locket from around William’s neck and, finding her asleep in the woods, placed it in her apron, knowing that when it was discovered that she possessed it, she would be accused of William’s murder. She went to the gallows for it.”

  “Why did you do that? She had done nothing to harm you. She never even knew you were there.”

  “It was a leap forward in my learning to be human. An animal will respond with hostility when attacked. It takes a man to imagine a slight and then punish someone for something he has not done. Justine was a young woman. She was the sort of being who might have offered me the affections for which I long—but I knew that, were she to wake, she would recoil from me in horror. I punished her for a rejection she had no chance to inflict upon me.

  “I confess also that this served as a test. I had grown cynical. I wished to see how the good citizens of Geneva would treat this girl: Would they be convinced that she had murdered William? My test was even more exacting than I had expected, as Justine turned out to be a ward of Monsieur Frankenstein and had taken care of William from his infancy. Could they actually believe, in the face of her denials, that she had committed such a crime? Not only did they do so, but with the weight of their accusations they convinced Justine herself that she had done it. So you see that I had willing, merciless collaborators in her destruction.”

  As I finished this narrative, I lifted my eyes from the fire to glance at Miss Bennet, four feet away. She watched me impassively.

  Just as she had at the Matlock inn, she challenged me. “These are terrible crimes,” she said. “When you speak of them, your voice is full of scorn, not just for men, and not just for Victor.”

  “I have every reason to scorn men, and feel bitterness toward Victor.”

  “You have harmed yourself in these actions as much as you have harmed him.”

  “Victor collaborated in my crimes. He saw me in the woods outside Geneva. When Justine stood trial, he might have revealed my existence and my reasons for spite against him. Instead he let Justine hang.”

  “You blame everyone for your actions but yourself. I hear your self-pity. Yet I saw your tears as you spoke of William’s death.”

  “This smoke stings my eyes.”

  “You will not be free until you take responsibility before God and ask for his forgiveness.”

  “Your God is convenient,” I said. “Always prepared to forgive one sin so you may move on to the next. He seems to throw occasions for sin into my path with regularity—of all the boys in Geneva I might have met in the woods, I met Victor’s brother. Of all the women who might fall asleep outside Geneva’s gates on that very same night, I find Frankenstein’s ward. Of all the women who might be accosted by highwaymen on a deserted Scottish road, I meet you. Given what happened to those who came before you, you should have a care.”

  “You might have left me to those men; instead you saved me. God gave you another opportunity.”

  “Our story is not ended yet. Who knows what God plans for its conclusion?”

  “We make choices, and are responsible for them.”

  “Yet, if I understand aright, God knows what choice we shall make before we make it. He knew that Eve would eat of the apple before he created her, and that Adam would follow her to perdition even before he created the earth and the stars in the sky. What chance did they have?”

  This talk of God and purposes, of dead fish and dead boys, tasted like bitter gall. Rather than wait for this woman’s answer, I crawled out of the hut, and in the profound darkness went down to listen to the wordless murmur of the stream. Sitting there, forearms across my knees, my eyes still stinging, I addressed the sleeping moorland in a whisper that she could not hear.

  “Better to thank your God for saving you from those highwaymen, Miss Bennet, and hope that he protects you in the future, for I shall not.”

  When we resumed our slow journey the next day, neither of us said anything of this conversation. It was a week or more later, as we moved up the desolate east coast of Scotland, that Miss Bennet said, “It is difficult for me to continue in your company without having a name for you. By what name shall I call you?”

  “I have no name.”

  “So you are free to choose one to your liking.”

  I considered this. “You may call me Adam.”

  She said nothing for another mile. Then she ventured, “What do you expect to happen, Adam, if Victor should succeed in creating your bride?”

  I resented this return to the subject of our Matlock conversation. “Do you seek to warn me again that I should not expect her to associate with me even if she is as horrifying as myself? Very well, then. You have warned me.”

  Traveling with Miss Be
nnet was unsettling. She showed many signs of distrust. She was repulsed by my physical presence. When I came into her field of vision unexpectedly, she would pull back. At times I caught her studying me, as if I were some sport of nature that did not fall into any category in which she might classify me. But what she did now was perhaps the most unnerving thing that she had done in the weeks we had been together. She apologized.

  “I am sorry for what I said to you in Matlock,” she said. “I still hope that Victor may bring my sister back to life. But if that is not possible, then I hope that the being he creates from her body will not reject your affections. Though I have never suffered the violence you have faced, I understand what it is to be alone.”

  I checked my annoyance at this presumptuous comparison. It was in keeping with Miss Bennet’s fits of moralizing, and she did not realize her arrogance. I might have killed a less naive person.

  “I have no experience of the physical affections you seek,” she went on, “but I have observed that human beings will do many otherwise incomprehensible things in pursuit of them. This was the real cause of my sister’s death. The emotions that the sexual instinct brings forth are, for some, overwhelming. Men, I have seen, will readily dishonor themselves for them, and many women, too. That highwayman from whom you saved me would have annihilated me for a moment’s pleasure—though I cannot see how anyone might take pleasure in using another human being so.”

  The longer she spoke, the more difficult it was for me to listen. Miss Bennet grew more nervous as she rambled on. She was miserably awkward at such talk, and I sought to end this painful subject.

  “Every animal seeks its mate,” I said bluntly. “The birds of the air, the creatures of the forest.”

  “Men are not animals.”

  “I have more experience in this area than you,” I said, “and my experience has not borne that out.”

  I lengthened my stride beyond her ability to keep up, and soon was twenty yards ahead of her. The narrow track, hardly worth calling a road, ran near the cliffs on the coast. No one lived here. Far below, gray ocean waves crashed on the rubble at the base of the precipice, and gulls hovered on the wind, scanning the water below them for prey. Nature showed her stark beauty. No matter how bleak the landscape, I felt more at home in these wilds than anywhere that men inhabited. Alone I might forget for moments how outcast I was. I might look up at the skies, watch the changing shapes of clouds, hear the cries of the birds, and enjoy the strength of my body.

  I began to run. I felt the pleasure of my muscles working, felt the raw breeze on my face. My hair was blown back. I soon left Miss Bennet far behind. I thought I heard her voice call to me, but it might have been the sound of the gulls.

  After some time I slowed and stopped. I sat on an outcropping of stone by the side of the track and waited. It took longer than I had imagined it would for Miss Bennet to reach me. I saw her approach for some time before she came abreast of me. Her head was fixed rigidly forward. Not acknowledging my existence she passed by, footsore but determined in her inadequate shoes, and continued down the road.

  I might be well rid of her. But we were bound for the same place, and if I left her, she would not survive in this desolate land.

  I followed and was soon walking at her side. Neither of us spoke, until she said, “The purpose of the sexual congress is of course procreation. Dr. Darwin observes that it is the power of reproduction that distinguishes organic beings from inanimate nature. You are alive, so naturally you will seek to reproduce. This explains your every action.”

  I held my tongue and let her continue her lecture.

  “But Darwin also observes that there are two forms of reproduction: the simpler is the solitary, in which a living thing reproduces itself. More complex is sexual reproduction, and this method produces more robust and varied organisms. By bringing the male and female together, nature produces her finest forms.

  “You, however, were not produced by sexual means. You were brought to life from inanimate matter without the intervention of parents. Or, you may say, like the budding yeast, you have a single parent: Victor Frankenstein. Offspring of an asexual gestation bear the disorders of the single parent without the ameliorating effect of the union of two separate natures that occurs when creatures reproduce sexually. As Darwin says:

  Where no new Sex with glands nutritious feeds,

  Nurs’d in her womb, the solitary breeds;

  No Mother’s care their early steps directs,

  Warms in her bosom, with her wings protects;

  The clime unkind, or noxious food instills

  To embryon nerves hereditary ills;

  The feeble births acquired diseases chase,

  Till Death extinguish the degenerate race.

  “I feel sorry for you, and for that reason I cannot hold you to the standards that I might expect from a complete human being.”

  If she knew in that moment how close she came to strangulation, she would have fainted. I decided that I need never concern myself with her anymore. I lengthened my stride again and left her to live or die by her own devices.

  The feelings she inspired in me were different from those that I had felt the only other time that I had spent in the company of particular human beings for a long time, the year or more that I spent watching the De Laceys. There I had felt longing to be a part of their household, to feel the bonds of love that held them together and made their trials tolerable. When at last I tried to persuade them to befriend me and they attacked me as a fiend, my longing turned instantly to hate.

  With Miss Bennet, my emotions reached neither extreme. I did not admire her beyond some envy for her ability to pass among other humans and be at least provisionally accepted, nor did I despise her. She had mastered her fear enough to pursue whatever advantage she might gain from our association. She cared for Victor, completely undeserving of her respect, far beyond any possible regard she might have for me. And instead of depending on her own observations, she judged me based on ideas that bore little relation to reality. I was done with her, and as much as I had longed for human contact before, happy to be free of her company.

  It was a relatively warm fall day. Along that coast road are found few trees and fewer people. Far between were the villages, no more than a house or two, tiny sheep farms, raw fields producing a few straggling turnips. There was little risk of being seen. I came upon a narrow stream and stopped to drink some water. It was icy cold. As I crouched there in a little declivity, I heard men’s voices. I lifted my head and saw two men crossing the moor carrying long fowling pieces in the crooks of their arms. A couple of dead partridges hung from the belt of one of them.

  I ducked down, but one of them saw me. He pointed. “Who is that?”

  I flattened myself to the earth.

  “Where?” the other voice said.

  “By the stream. Some stranger.”

  I heard the sound of their boots on the turf.

  I saw them crest the top of the bank and turned my face away. “Here, now,” one of them called. “Who are ye, and what do ye here?”

  Head still turned, I said, “Only a poor vagabond, stopping to slake my thirst. Have pity on me, sirs.”

  I heard a rustle behind me, and I imagined the man raising his gun. “Let us see your face, man.”

  I got to my feet. Both of them stood frozen, trying to assess what it was they saw. Before they could act, I ran.

  “Halt!” the man yelled.

  I ran away from the road. A glance over my shoulder told me one of them followed. I was sure that I could outrun him, but if he stopped running, he might shoot.

  “Don’t hurt him!” a voice cried. A woman’s voice. I hazarded another glance. Miss Bennet had come upon the scene and was shouting, waving her arms. The men, nonplussed, turned to deal with her. I loped off across the moors and was soon lost amid the gorse.

  I stayed out on the moors until twilight came on, then worked my way back to the road. Following it, before long I spied
a few houses clustered among old trees. A couple of windows were dimly lit. Beyond lay the tiniest of villages.

  I debated what to do, and at last moved off the road and circled around the village entirely, coming back as it left on the other side. There I found a hollow where I might not be seen but where I had a good vantage of anyone who might pass. I waited, half dozing, through a long, cold night.

  In the first hour of morning, a person came along the road toward me. It was Miss Bennet, trudging wearily north. I unfolded myself from my crouch, stretched my limbs, and walked toward the road. She saw me immediately, and though she watched me as I approached, she did not alter her direction or pace.

  I fell into step beside her. We walked for a while in silence. “What did they do to you?” I asked.

  “They asked me who I was, and what I was doing here. They asked me who you were.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “I told them I was an Englishwoman and that I had lost all my money. I told them you were my half-witted brother, and that we were on our way to Thurso where our aunt Augusta Sinclair lives. I said that you had gotten away from me on the road and I was trying to find you.”

  “And they believed you?”

  “No. They insisted I tell the truth. They threatened me. They called me a Gypsy, a vagabond, a thief, and worse. When I did not change what I said, they said they would have me arrested. I cried. I begged them not to do so. They locked me in a cellar.

  “In the morning they woke me up and gave me some bread. They prayed over me, and warned me never to show my face here again, and sent me on my way.”

  “Did you ask them how far it is to Thurso?”

  “Forty miles.”

  We kept walking.

  SIXTEEN

  They spent the night in an abandoned barn. The land here was vacant to the horizon, but Mary thought that by now they must be close to Thurso. The circumspect thing would be not to risk drawing attention to themselves, yet the stack of dried wood in the corner of the roofless barn was too tempting, and they hazarded a fire. The river ran nearby, so they had clean water, and Adam managed to snag a salmon, so they had some food.