I knew it could not last. He told me as much. Elizabeth, to whom he was betrothed, was waiting for him, and he would need to get back to his university studies in Ingolstadt. But I was young, in mind if not in body, and I did not think much about those things. My world was the windswept stone cottage at the top of the cliffs, and our meager vegetable garden, and the restless, eternal sea.
JUSTINE: That’s good, restless and eternal. Thank you, Catherine. You make me sound so much more eloquent than I am.
CATHERINE: You wrote that, actually. You’re a better writer than you think.
JUSTINE: Oh, surely not! After all, English is not my native language. If I could have written it in French . . .
CATHERINE: You’re just as annoying on this subject as Beatrice. Your English is perfectly fine, if a bit Miltonic for a modern audience.
And then, one day, he appeared. The monster, Adam.
We were sitting in the sunshine, at the top of the cliff on which our cottage was situated. I was sketching—my father had taught me how, to help with my fine motor coordination. He had brought pencils and a notebook to make anatomical sketches, but I used them to draw butterflies, or the flowers that grew in the nooks and crannies. Sketching became my favorite occupation, a way to record the wonders of the natural world around me. And I found that I had an exact eye, a skilled hand. Again, I do not know if that is Justine Moritz, or the Frankenstein in me.
My father was sitting on the grass, reading from Plutarch’s Lives. Then suddenly, I heard a roar, as though of a wild animal.
“So here you are, my tormentor! Traitor! How dare you sit in the sunshine, while I live in darkness and despair!” It was Adam. Although I think now that my father should have named him Lucifer. In his pride and fury, he reminded me of the fiend himself.
My father rose and stumbled back. I screamed, thinking he might fall. We were sitting close to the edge of the cliff, with a view of another island across the firth and the waves crashing below. But he found his footing. I remember him standing there, against the blue sky, towering above me although really he was a foot shorter than I am.
“You cannot have her,” were the first words out of his mouth.
“Cannot?” said Adam. “She is mine. You created her for me, at my command. And now you dare tell me what I cannot have? Remember, Frankenstein—the lives of your family are in my hands. I have killed William—shall I also kill Ernest, and your beloved Elizabeth?”
“No, no,” said my father, putting his hands to his head. “Let me think, give me time to think . . .”
“You’ve had all the time you deserve,” said Adam. “You,” he said to me. “Come with me. You were created for me, to be my companion and mate. We shall go off to some desolate corner of the Earth, where we shall live out our miserable existence together.”
“I am not a you,” I said. “I am Justine, and I am a rational creature, capable of determining my own actions. I have no desire to go to some desolate place, nor yet to be miserable. I can guess who you are—my father told me that before me, he created a creature, deformed and malicious. You are that creature, are you not? And now you say I was created at your command. That may be true, but no promise my father made to you before my birth can bind me. I am capable of reasoned thought, and therefore free, so says Monsieur Rousseau. By your threats, you have already proven yourself unworthy of such as I am. I do not choose to accompany you.”
Adam stared at me in astonishment. “You have been educating her, reading and discussing with her. As you never did with me! Now I see the full extent of your cruelty, Frankenstein! You created her to mock me, to taunt me with the love I should have had, which you intend to keep from me forever! You rejected me as your son, and she has rejected me as her mate. At your command, no doubt!” He lunged at my father. I stepped between them, attempting to thwart his attack, but he was stronger than I was. He thrust me aside as though I were made of straw. And then I saw his hands around my father’s throat. I screamed again, and beat his back and arms with my fists, but to no purpose. I saw my father’s face go red, and then his body go slack, and there was nothing I could do to save him. I think there is no man on Earth stronger than I am, but Adam was not a man, not as ordinary men. He had the strength of Lucifer himself. In a moment, my father lay dead, strangled by the foul creature he had created. Adam lifted him up, then threw him, as though he had been a stone, into the churning waters below. And that was the last I saw of my father, Victor Frankenstein.
Adam turned to me. “Take me to your house,” he said. I led him to our cottage, farther down the cliff, where a hillock gave some protection from the wind.
And so began a period of my life that—I do not wish to dwell upon. For months, we lived as man and wife. I did what he bade me—the housework, preparing our food. Soon, we ran out, and although we had money, neither of us could take the boat to Mainland. He told me with what fear and cruelty he had been treated, how even children had pelted him with rocks. He was certain we would meet with a similar reception. Instead, he foraged among the hills, bringing back herbs and roots, sometimes an entire sheep stolen from a herd.
He spent his days looking at an atlas that was among my father’s books, determining where we should go. To the wilds of South America? To parts of Africa where the natives had never yet seen a white man? The Arctic? He wanted a place where we could live undisturbed and raise our children—for he wished us to have children. He did not know it was impossible, that in the process of assembling me, my father had removed the organ popularly believed to cause hysteria. From an excess of caution, I suppose. I am like any other woman, but—I cannot bear a child. I feared Adam too much to tell him the truth, and seemed to accept his plans. What else could I do? He was stronger than I, and ever watchful.
He tried, I think as well as he could, to make me love him. In the evenings, we sat by the fire and he would talk to me—of philosophy, history, literature. Indeed, if he had not been my father’s murderer and my captor, I might have been charmed. He was as intelligent as my father, perhaps more so, and I could speak with him on many topics. I learned much, during those conversations. But always, as the fire burned down, he would say, “It is late, Justine. Come to bed.” And I would remember that I was not a free woman.
I knew that if I left while he was foraging for our food, he would follow me. He had the senses of an animal, and I was the only one of his kind—his mate. If necessary, he would follow me to the ends of the Earth.
“We are man and wife,” he would say to me.
“Not in the sight of God,” I would say. “Not until we are united by a minister.” And then he would rage against religion, like a freethinker and radical.
Lying beside him at night, in the bed where my father had once lain, I thought of throwing myself off the cliff. After all, I was already dead. Surely God would not punish me? But then I thought, What if I am still Justine Mortiz, with an immortal soul? A soul that belongs to God and not myself, which will one day reunite with its true Creator? No, I could not kill myself. Not while I believed myself to still be God’s creature.
And then I thought that perhaps I should kill Adam. He had already killed William and my father. He would never appear before a jury, as Justine Mortiz had. Perhaps I had a duty to be his judge and executioner. But even if I could find a way to overcome his greater strength, I lacked the courage. I could not kill the spider that wove its web in a corner of the ceiling. I had never killed anything in my life, and could not do so now, in my death-life.
One night, he was sitting in my father’s chair, waiting for me to finish making our dinner. My father had brought several bottles of whiskey from Mainland. He used to drink a glass after dinner, to aid digestion, he said. I thought it was foul stuff myself, but then I have never liked the taste of spirits, not even as Justine Moritz. Adam had found the bottles and taken to drinking, first after dinner, and then during the daytime. That night, he had already drunk several glassfuls of the amber liquid. And he was excited
: he had finally decided that we would go to Africa. With our superior strength, we could traverse jungles and deserts that made the interior of the continent dangerous for white men. We would see what no European had ever seen. Surely the rude savages would worship us as gods. All day, he had been talking about it, asking if I wished to go to Africa with him, there to start a new race, more than human. I would be his Eve in that distant paradise. Eventually our children would return to Europe and rule over civilized men, who had grown weak and overconfident through their use of technology. I said yes, of course I was excited at such a prospect. I agreed with him so he would not get angry, to keep him in good humor.
I was cooking potatoes in lard over the fire, stirring them in a skillet with a wooden spoon. The skillet was set on a metal grill directly over the flames. I was trying not to burn the potatoes, and although I said that yes, we would go to Africa, to start a new race there, I suppose my distracted assents did not satisfy him. Suddenly, he was next to me.
“You are going to love me, are you not?” he asked. He smelled of whiskey. “Justine, look at me. Tell me that you will love me, in time.”
I looked up at him, startled. This was a question he had never asked before. I did not love him—I loathed the sight of him, and at that moment he saw the truth in my face. He roared with rage and caught me by the throat. “I shall make you love me! You shall either love me or die.”
I gasped for air. What madness was this? We were the only two of our kind in the whole world, and he would kill me? I, whom he had called his Eve, whom he considered a mate and the mother of his future children?
But he was enraged, and the whiskey was clouding his mind. Slowly, I could feel his hands closing around my windpipe. I still had the handle of the skillet in my hand. I swung it toward him, flinging the hot lard and potatoes into his face. He screamed and let go of my throat, stumbling back and clawing at his eyes. I did not give him time to recover—if I had, he surely would have killed me. I swung the skillet, hitting him on the side of the head. Over and over I swung it, hitting him about the head as he staggered back, then fell on one knee, roaring and still trying to see, in pain. Blow after blow, for he was so strong that it took many to fell him. Finally he lay on the ground, still.
I did not know if I had killed him or merely rendered him unconscious, but as soon as he was no longer moving, I dropped the skillet and ran, out of the cottage and down to the shore where my father’s boat was pulled up beyond the tidemark. I lifted it and carried it to the water, then pushed it out as far as I could. I got into the boat and began to row. I had never done such a thing before, and it took a moment to adjust to the oars and the buoyancy of the water beneath me. But I had seen my father do it, and I stroked as he had. Slowly, but steadily, I rowed away from that island, south toward the Scottish shore. I worried about missing it, not knowing how the ocean currents might carry me, but I consigned myself to God and prayed that He would guide my boat. If He wished me dead upon the seas, that was His prerogative. At least I would not die by Adam’s hand.
Night fell, but my father had taught me about the stars, so I continued to row, heading always south. When the sun rose, I saw that I had reached a rocky shore, and I breathed a prayer of thanks that I had not crashed upon it. I did not know where I was, but I pulled my boat up on the rocks and climbed to the highest point, a hill of scrubby grass. There, I looked about me. As far as I could see, there was nothing: the sea on one side and barren hills on the other. What could I do but walk, following the shore, knowing that sooner or later I might reach a fishing village? To the west, the shore veered south, so I went both westward and southward at once, with the wind howling over the hills on my left, and the sea crashing on my right.
After three days of walking, I came upon a village, a small one tucked into a cove. It was clear that the village made its trade from the sea, for there were fishing boats in the harbor. I know now that it was a tiny place, scarcely a hamlet, but at the time it was the largest I had ever seen.
I was starving. I had been walking for three days, all day and most of the night, sleeping as little as possible, curling into what crevices I could find. I could go for a long time without food; nevertheless, I felt the pangs of hunger like any other creature. I had eaten some berries that grew on the low shrubs—no berries were poisonous to my constitution. I had eaten mussels washed up on the shore, and some snails, raw because if Adam was following me, a fire might alert him to my presence.
I knew how the people of that village would treat me, for Adam had told me how men and women treated our kind. Even the children had thrown rocks at him, called him monster, driven him from their midst in fear. But the town had a bakery, and I could smell bread, fresh because it was still morning. It stirred a distant memory of Justine Moritz taking a basket of bread, fresh from the oven in the great kitchen of the house in Geneva, to her mother’s house. I imagined what that bread would taste like and thought, What if they kill me? Perhaps I deserved death after all, not for my actions, which I thought had been justified, but because of what I am. That is what hunger and tiredness will do to the mind. At last, even the instinct of self-preservation begins to go.
I walked into that village, my clothes stiff with mud and saltwater, my hair tangled like a bird’s nest. The fishermen saw me first, back from their morning’s catch, gutting their fish or mending their nets. They stared at me, as at an apparition that had walked into their midst. Then a boy who had been kicking a ball in the village square saw me, and called to his playfellows. They shouted at one another, but not with fear, neither with hatred. No, it was . . . excitement. Even a sort of delight. I looked at them curiously.
Several of the fishermen left their boats and walked toward me. Ah, I thought. Now the stoning will start. But I could not make myself turn and walk away. These were the first men I had seen, apart from my father. I wanted to stay with them and continue to smell the tantalizing scent of fresh bread from the bakery.
One of them, roughly dressed, his face red from the sun and wind, stood before me and said, “What are ye, then? Some sort of freak?”
But I did not understand him, for my father had taught me only French, which was his native language and the language of Justine Moritz.
“Pardon, monsieur, je ne comprends pas ce que vous dites,” I said. “Je suis fatiguée et affamée, et je prie que vous puissiez me donner un peu de pain.” A little bread, that was what I wanted more than anything on Earth.
“She’s a furriner,” said another one of them.
“She’s a giantess!” said the boy with the ball. “Like the one at the fair, but even taller. I wonder how strong she is?” He pulled up his sleeves, clenched his fists, and made muscles, as though he were a strongman himself. “Are you strong, giantess?” he asked.
Giantess . . . la géante. They were not afraid of me. I was, to them, a figure out of a fairy tale. I pulled up my sleeve and showed the boy my muscles. They were not particularly impressive, for my arms were as slender then as they are now. He looked disappointed. I smiled and lifted a wheelbarrow that had been left by the side of the square over my head. It’s not large muscles that make you strong, I wanted to tell him.
He laughed, delighted, and the other boys applauded, and then the fishermen. They asked me to lift more things: a log that had been cut for a mast, a rather large pig. Hearing their shouts and laughter, the shopkeepers came out of their shops: the butcher and grocer, the baker with his apron still on. Soon I had a circle of villagers around me, all wanting to see me perform feats of strength. One of them threw a coin at my feet, and soon there were other coins, not many but a few. They clinked on the cobblestones. I gathered them up and put them into the pocket of my skirt. I was starting to tire, for I had walked long and slept little. I bowed to the villagers, signaling that I was done for the day. They clapped and began to disperse, but the baker’s wife ran into the bakery and brought out a loaf for me, with a smile and a shake of her head to indicate that I would not have to pay
for it. I blessed her in French, but I believe she understood me.
As I left that square, most of the loaf under my arm, the rest in my mouth, I looked at myself in the bakery window. I had never seen my own reflection. My father’s cottage had no mirror, and I had not passed a lake or pond or even puddle, no water still enough that I could see myself in it. I stared at myself. I looked . . . ordinary. Taller than women are, but there was nothing hideous about me. I could pass among human beings.
It came as a relief. You have seen Adam—his hideous countenance. Any part of it would be handsome enough, but all together—my father had made him from corpses that had lain dead some days, taking what body parts were not yet corrupted. He had not been preserved carefully, as I was. And my father had been younger, less experienced. I was no longer the pretty girl who had called herself Justine Moritz, but I was not a monster.
I continued walking south along the coast. I slept in meadows and pastures, finding what shelter I could—beneath a tree, or in a barn or shepherd’s hut. Sometimes I stopped in the villages. In one, I saw a man painting a boat with pitch to make it waterproof, and I begged him, in gestures, for his brush. On a broken piece of wood I painted, in black letters, GEANTESSE STRANG WOMEN. These were the words I had heard the villagers speak. When I showed my sign in the towns, which were getting larger, I would be given coins, with which I could buy bread and cheese and onions. By this time I had a canvas bag, and a pair of men’s shoes, and an old hat to gather the coins in. But I kept on moving, always afraid that Adam would find me, afraid he would hear of the “geantesse” who performed in the towns. Perhaps I had killed him—but no, although I tried to tell myself that he must be dead, something in me did not believe it. My only safety lay in the fact that men ran from him or attacked him, instinctively.
The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter Page 32