Pride and Prometheus

by John Kessel

  “I don’t think it likely, but it was a fear she expressed to me just before she died.”

  “Do not trouble your heart, Mary. No, I did not find her to be carrying a child. A good thing, else it be born to these devils.”

  “Must you call them devils? Why should they pursue evil once they are free and have each other for solace and mutual support?”

  Victor shook his head.

  “He has committed acts of monstrous evil, and felt himself justified in doing them. His is a bitter and vengeful spirit. Whether it comes by nature or usage, that’s what he is. How may we be certain that the female won’t inherit his temperament? Once their character is established, beings do not change. We are left, then, with the necessity of dealing with the world’s dangerous inhabitants by any means available.”

  Victor spoke in a voice of reason, as calmly as he had at the Cavendish Square ballroom in London. He seemed not so much melancholy as exhausted, physically and mentally, sad and not angry. Mary had hoped that, once the burden of Eve’s creation was lifted from his shoulders, he might turn to her with an open heart. She did not see it.

  “It is a despairing picture you paint,” Mary said. “I hope that you are wrong.”

  But what if Victor was right? Maybe the world was as he said. Mary remembered the highwayman, his grip on her arm, his breath sour with whiskey.

  “Trust me,” said Victor. “This will not end well.”

  NINETEEN

  On the evening that Victor chose for his attempt to bring my Eve to life, I felt such anxiety as I had not experienced in my short time on earth.

  More than anything I wanted him to succeed. I knew that he hated me, felt revulsion for the process of creating my bride, and had the gravest misgivings regarding the consequences. He wanted us to leave, and I wanted just as much never to see him again. My hatred of him seemed woven into my flesh. But as the days passed, the uncomfortable realization was born in upon me that the moment my bride came to life, everything between Victor and me would change. I would owe him a debt of gratitude. I would be free to respect and honor him. Moreover, at that same moment, the guilt I already felt for the deaths of Justine and William would become a deadly burden. It would be up to me, with the help of Eve, to repay my debt. I could not expect Victor ever to forgive my strangling his brother, but I could vow to be kind toward the human race for the rest of my existence.

  Every time I passed by the bath in which she grew, I could not keep myself from staring into her blind, blank face. She was my sleeping princess. Studying her, I would slide into a reverie. I felt that the being growing to completion in that murky bath was already my wife. To her I would devote the rest of my life. In no way would I allow her to suffer any of the painful experiences that had been most of my contact with the human race.

  More than once I came out of these spells to find Victor observing me with curiosity more than distaste. It was as if he saw in me not a horror but a mystery set for him to solve. Yet there was less intercourse between us now than when we argued in the ice cave on the Swiss glacier more than a year ago. He never spoke other than to order me out of the room.

  What communications I had were with Miss Bennet. She would ask after my state of mind. When she realized that I would never speak to her of such things while Victor was there, she sought me out when I took my walks by the ocean.

  On those days that the boat came from Thurso with his food and whatever letters might have arrived for him in the previous week, Victor would banish both Miss Bennet and me from the cottage. At the isle’s north end, far enough away from the other islanders so that I might safely walk unseen to the verge of the cliffs, lay the ruins of an ancient stone circle. There I would retreat to contemplate my future.

  I would watch the waves dash themselves upon the rocks below, draw back, and come again. The ocean was never still. Farther out swells and rollers surged; seabirds swooped over them in search of fish, or floated in flocks on the surface. The sun gave no warmth, and the cold wind, as perpetual as the waves, buffeted my face. I felt the life in my body, the strength of it, its desire to taste and enjoy. I thought of how in a few days my Eve would experience this for the first time.

  It made me uneasy.

  Ten days after our arrival Victor gathered the instruments of life about the copper tub that was Eve’s womb. Miss Bennet had prepared a basin with warm water with which she intended to bathe Eve after she had been brought to life. I brought the long hose that Victor used to siphon off the chemicals in which her body lay. It took a long time.

  When Victor staggered trying to lift her body from the tank, I took her from him until they could clear the table. I laid her back down. Victor examined her body, and Mary bathed her, while all I could do was study her.

  A large purple mark swept from her hairline to her neck and onto her breast. Miss Bennet said that Eve looked like Kitty, but she did not. It was clear to me even before Victor brought her to life that she bore no connection to Kitty Bennet. I knew Eve. I had been her. Three years earlier I had lain on just such a table as this, and awakened with a mind as unblemished as a drift of snow. Perhaps when she came to life she might retain some vague sense of floating in Victor’s metal womb, but like me, she had experienced nothing of the world. She would begin as pure as the first Eve when morning awakened her in paradise. What would be written on her heart would be inscribed according to how she was treated from that moment when, on the third try, her heart began to beat and blood to circulate in her veins. She coughed explosively and her eyes flew open. Miss Bennet and I rushed to relieve her.

  I held her shoulders. She moved and breathed. She was alive. I drank up every particle of her presence.

  That first night Miss Bennet, rather than let me sit with my bride, chased me from the room. I could not abide pacing the tiny laboratory, and went outside. Victor had already fled—he had no taste for the outcome of his work, any more than when he had brought me to life—and so I was alone in the dark October night. The wind buffeted the small house beneath the light of the autumn moon. In the distance I heard the waves breaking on the seashore.

  I circled the cottage several times, my mind so wrought up that what went through it could hardly be dignified with the term “thought.” Elation surged through my chest like Victor’s electrical charges, and disbelief through my mind.

  This was the thing that elated me the most: the earth now contained a second person like me. I felt a bond to her that was no less real for the fact that it was based on our unwritten future. How much I could teach her! How much easier might I make the way for her! I had, thanks to Victor, a purpose for my life.

  Miss Bennet’s warning that she might reject me might still come to pass, but at the moment such a prospect did not seem possible. My eagerness simply to sit and observe her was almost more than I could stand. I felt like singing to the stars and the clouds and the sparse grass that covered the soil of this barren isle.

  Instead I danced outside the rude cottage, her birthplace, just to express the joy overwhelming my heart. I leapt, I capered. I ran to the cliffs and shouted at the waves, my voice drowned in their crashing. I lost my breath, and, calming myself, walked back.

  Candlelight still gleamed from the window of the room where I had left Miss Bennet with my bride. My Eve. I crept up to the window and, grinning with the effusions of my heart, peered inside. Eve lay on the narrow bed, her dark hair across the pillow; Miss Bennet sat beside her. I watched the firelight play across the features of my beloved. A thousand hopes contended in my fevered mind.

  Miss Bennet looked up and saw me. She started. Her face twisted in dismay and she waved at me to go away. Abashed, still grinning, I stepped back from the window, only to stumble into Victor, returning from his own wanderings.

  “What are you doing?” he asked. “Why do you spy on Miss Bennet?”

  “I was not spying.” I said. I towered over him; he fell back a step or two. The collar of his greatcoat fluttered in the wind. The air was
raw on my cheek—how much more cold must it be to him, unused to such exposure?

  I was so moved that rather than take offense I attempted to speak with him as I might to a friend. “It’s cold out here,” I said. “We should go inside and sit by the fire. I must explain to you how grateful I am for what you have done.”

  He stared at me. “I did not do this to earn your gratitude. I did it to prevent you from killing anyone else.”

  Nothing he had ever before said had caused me shame. Now I saw the face of his brother William, frightened into insanity a minute before I crushed his throat in my hands. I saw Justine as she lay asleep in the moonlight, so desirable, so impossible for me to imagine being with, that I drove her to despair and death. I truly was the demon he had called me. It did not matter how I had come to be a demon, or whom I might blame for it. I, not Victor or anyone else, was responsible for my actions.

  Even in the dark I saw Victor’s resentment.

  “You are right to be angry,” I said. “I forced you to this thing by the most dire threats, after having committed against you the most terrible crimes. I cannot ask your forgiveness. I only wish you to understand that I know what you have done for me.”

  “Oh, I doubt that either of us knows what I’ve done,” Victor said. “I have only your word that the killing has stopped.” He turned toward the laboratory door. “I do not think that we shall sit by the fire and talk.”

  He disappeared inside. I stood troubled for some moments, but then the thought of Eve and our future together came back, and the bad feelings Victor had evoked faded. I entered the shed and lay on my pallet, the wind whistling through gaps in the plank walls, thinking of Eve lying not ten feet away. Imagining a chain that linked her heart to mine, I fell asleep.

  The next morning my only glimpse of her came when Miss Bennet fed her some of the same porridge she gave me to eat. Victor and Miss Bennet spoke for some time behind her closed door. Given my conversation with Victor the previous night, I did not wish to force myself upon him.

  In the afternoon Miss Bennet asked me to help to teach my bride to speak. I sat on the floor and Eve sat opposite me on the wooden chair by the hearth. She had already learned to sit upright with her hands on her lap. In the light of day the rough surface of her birthmark stood out against the fineness of her other skin. Apparently the birthmark irritated her, as she kept raising her hand to her cheek to rub it. Miss Bennet noticed this as well, and asked Victor what might be done for her.

  “Because of this Creature’s impatience, I may have brought this female to life prematurely. Her body has not completely knit itself together. I will do what I can for her.”

  He prepared an ointment that Miss Bennet applied to Eve’s skin every morning. It did little to lessen her irritation. To this he added a potion that he had her drink every night before going to sleep. After some initial hesitance, she took these ministrations without protest.

  She was astonishingly acute, and learned many words rapidly. We soon exhausted all the objects in the small room and all the parts of the body. We stepped outside and taught her the words for house, sky, grass, stone, cloud, sea, bird, and a dozen more. Then came simple actions: walk, eat, touch, look, hear.

  After that our language lessons took place every afternoon. Although the days were short and the weather inhospitable, Miss Bennet, Eve, and I took to walking outside for a time each day. Victor would take no part in these sessions, although he spoke with Miss Bennet in private. I did not attempt again to thank him for fulfilling his promise, though I still hoped to say something more to him before Eve and I departed.

  Once while Miss Bennet and Victor were talking, I decided to take Eve to the cliff and the stone circle. She was fascinated by the seabirds. We sat on one of the stones and I attempted to explain to her that the gulls swooping over the waters sought fish below the surface to snatch up and eat. I explained that this war between bird and fish had been going on since the beginning of time.

  “Bird,” she said. “Eat.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Bird eat fish.”

  “Yes.”

  “Fish is alive.”

  “Yes. Birds kill and eat the fish.”

  “We eat fish,” she said. “We kill fish.”

  “Yes.”

  She pondered that for a moment in silence, her brow furrowed. She was so much smaller than I. I wished to put my arms around her, envelop her and keep troubling thoughts away, to feel her head against my breast and to smell her hair. I could not tell whether this would be a welcome event to her; I held myself back. Eventually it would happen. We would have years together to discover these things. Despite my impatience, I would not impose my will on a creature no more than a child. I had seen the child whores of East London and Piccadilly.

  To draw her thoughts to more pleasant discoveries, I attempted to reproduce Miss Bennet’s lesson in harmony. I could in no way match Miss Bennet’s voice, but Eve quickly grasped the idea of singing. Her voice was sweet, more beautiful than Miss Bennet’s. Her pale eyes opened wide and she watched my mouth, forming a circle of her own open lips. She could hold a note much longer than I could, and when I ended one of my efforts with a cough and a descent into laughter, she laughed with me.

  Then I spied Miss Bennet lurking behind the standing stone.

  “What do you want?” I asked.

  “I was worried.”

  “There’s nothing to worry about.”

  Eve’s eyes clouded at the tone of my voice. Though she might not know the meaning of the words we spoke, she was extraordinarily sensitive to the emotions of others. “There’s nothing to worry about,” I repeated to her, more softly.

  “Let me show you how it is with a third voice,” Miss Bennet said.

  It was dark by the time we returned to the cottage. Victor had, ironically, prepared a supper from the herring that the grocer’s man had brought the day before. I took my portion and turned to leave, as I had done every night since we had arrived. To my surprise, Eve spoke.

  “Adam, stay,” she said.

  I turned back. Victor and Miss Bennet, their plates in their hands, looked at her, Miss Bennet in curiosity, Victor in what I can only call chagrin.

  “Eat fish here,” Eve said.

  Miss Bennet nodded to me. The four of us sat uneasily in the crowded room, Miss Bennet and Eve on the two chairs, Victor on the edge of the bed, and I on the hearthstone. Few words were exchanged. Eve watched all of us, comparing our appearances, demeanors. I thought of myself peeking through the chink in the wall of the De Laceys’ cottage, studying every detail of the family in hope of learning how one might live with other beings on terms of friendship and mutual respect. I suppose at that moment we were the queerest family on the face of the earth. I would not hazard to guess what Eve was learning behind her watery eyes.

  So followed the days of another week. Every day Eve learned more of what it was to be alive. She had complete control of her body now, and moved with a swiftness and balance that would mature, I was sure, into true grace. She treated Miss Bennet as a mother or older sister. I could see, at times, how Miss Bennet was startled by Eve, and at others looked upon her with inexpressible sadness. I imagined her thinking of her lost sister, and felt a great wave of sympathy. It was borne upon me how my present hope and future joy were built on the death of Kitty Bennet and my murder of William Frankenstein.

  Finally, one evening after finishing one of these quiet suppers, a meal in which most of the talk was Miss Bennet or me answering Eve’s childlike questions, I put to them the conclusion I had reached.

  “It is time for us to go,” I said.

  “But Eve is not ready,” Miss Bennet said. “She knows so little.”

  “She knows far more than I knew when I was cast into the world. She will have me as her companion, teacher, and protector. I will not let anyone harm her. I will keep her safe until we are able to leave Europe for some warmer clime, some place far from civilization where we may make our ho
me and never cross paths with any human being. Perhaps in the New World.”

  Victor listened. He did not look happy, but he raised no objection.

  Miss Bennet, however, was not satisfied. “Does Eve know enough to make a choice in this matter? I would not have her taken against her will.”

  “You may ask her,” I said.

  “Eve, do you wish to go away with Adam?”

  “With Adam,” she said.

  “You may stay with Victor and me.”

  “Go away with Adam.”

  Miss Bennet looked troubled. “I do not think she knows enough to make such a decision.”

  “When will she know enough to satisfy you?” I asked her. “How long must we live here?”

  “Some time longer. She knows so little of what it is to be a woman.”

  “She can never be a woman as you are. You have a place in the world. Eve can know nothing of human society—the very sight of her would cause any human being to flee or to attack her. That is what human beings do when confronted with the ugly or the strange. What will you teach her that will be of use to us?”

  “She is too young to know what is best for herself.”

  “There is no way here for her to gain the experience you say she needs,” I said.

  At this point Victor intervened. “The Creature has reason on his side, Miss Bennet. He and she were not made for the human world, and would find no place in it. The only outcome of their contact with humanity would be deadly conflict. Their chance for happiness lies outside the sphere of human intercourse.”

  “He is right,” I said. “To my regret.”

  “I feel that Eve should have a choice,” Miss Bennet said.

  “I go . . . with Adam,” Eve said.

  Miss Bennet was unpersuaded. “But how will you cross oceans, whole continents?”

  “We shall survive,” I said.

  “I believe you shall,” Victor said. “But I have one fear.”

  “Fear?”

  “Your bride—your Eve—did not grow in precisely the manner that I anticipated. You see, for instance, the variegation and sensitivity of her skin. I have said that she was brought to life before her development was complete. I worry that further debilities may develop as time goes on, things that may seriously compromise her health.”