Pride and Prometheus

by John Kessel

  Now that they approached the end of their journey, both Mary and Adam had been avoiding talk of what they would do when they reached the town. They would have to discover where Victor was. Mary assumed that this was something that she would be better suited to find out, but she was afraid of facing these Scots in her shabby clothes and English accent.

  Mary had never imagined that she might come to this, eating half-raw fish under clouds that hid the stars, huddled beside a meager fire whose smoke permeated her clothes and hair and skin, in the company of a half-human monster that she was increasingly convinced was a man.

  Adam was frighteningly intelligent. The fact that he had learned languages so readily, and could express himself so eloquently, astonished her. His memory was perfect. He was able to reason out a course of action with sureness and confidence. He could follow an argument, and when he chose to speak, could present one that showed he had thought deeply and reasoned his way to a logical conclusion. He was hard to gainsay.

  Then, just when she had accepted that he was familiar with the world, he would exhibit a childlike ignorance that both surprised and, at times, made her want to laugh. He remembered every word he had ever learned, but those he had never heard spoken he would comically mispronounce.

  He was immensely strong, inhumanly agile. While Mary had suffered for lack of food, he could eat almost anything.

  In the countryside he seemed relaxed. He noticed everything. Once near the sea cliffs she had watched him chase away a flock of gulls, waving his arms as he ran among them like a six-year-old boy. His wax face lit up so that he almost looked alive. When they drew within the shadow of human habitation, he seemed to shrink into his coat, wary and quiet, as if willing himself to disappear. Since their contretemps and reunion he had said nothing of their disagreement, and he went out of his way to find her things to eat and to keep her warm even at the cost of covering her with his own greatcoat while she slept.

  Among the many things Mary had done in the last month that she had never done before was to spend hours alone in the presence of this male creature. In order to survive and make her way to Victor, she had surrendered her modesty in a hundred ways. She was aware of Adam’s body almost as well as she imagined a married woman might know her husband’s. His form rivaled that of the statues of Greek gods she had seen, and in motion he was graceful and silent as a cat. On one freezing night, Adam had come close to embracing her to keep her from the cold.

  Yet in the back of her mind always stood Victor’s warning that his Creature’s persuasive powers veiled a black heart. He was a confessed murderer, and when she had offended him, she had seen him struggle to control his rage.

  Mary found a comfortable spot in the barn, leaning against the vertical post of what had once been a stall. “I never imagined that I might spend a night here,” she said. Here: Scotland, the end of the world, this wrecked barn, penniless, beside a monster.

  “This is far from the way you have lived,” Adam said. When he sat cross-legged—the tails of his greatcoat spread around him, his long, tangled black hair shrouding his shoulders, his dead face reflecting the wan light of the fire—he looked like some savage pagan god.

  “Indeed,” Mary said.

  “You have lost your privilege.”

  Mary considered this. “I suppose I had privilege, though it did not seem to me that it was undue, or excessive. I had good things to eat, and fine clothes, and a warm bed—and oh, many other things that I did not appreciate. But a spinster is not considered privileged in the world where I lived.”

  “What is a spinster?”

  “A spinster is an old unmarried woman. People think spinsters are funny, and sad. If one has an income, one may live as one chooses, but a spinster is not doing the things that make a woman’s life worthwhile—marrying, having children, taking care of her husband. It is a hollow existence, tedious in the extreme. The one use of a spinster is to take care of her parents as they age, but she is seldom given much credit for doing this by her siblings, who are wrapped up in their own marriages and children.”

  Adam set another fragment of the broken stall on the fire. “I know what I lack that has set me on the road to this place. What did you lack that brought you here?”

  Mary thought over this question for some time before replying. “I lacked respect and attention. I was alone in the midst of my family. I am not beautiful, and the only man who has ever shown any interest in me as a possible wife is someone who behaves in ways that I find hard to tolerate.”

  “Did Victor show such interest?”

  “He treated me as a person of intellect. Reflected in his eyes I saw myself perhaps better than I am. I thought that he might care for me, if it were not for—for the obligation he has to you. I thought if I saw him again I might discover . . . who he is. I wanted to protect him. I wanted to retrieve Kitty. I wanted . . . many things.”

  She sighed. “That was before I learned that he was engaged.”

  The fire crackled. A slender ribbon of smoke rose through the open roof to the sky. “If he fails me,” Adam said, “you will not be able to protect him from my vengeance.”

  “I think,” Mary said, “that as you continue in your career on earth, you might consider finding some other means of persuasion than threats of death.”

  His eyes flashed with anger, and then his thin, dark lips split in a smile.

  She could not help but smile in return.

  “I should hope not to have to resort to violence,” he said.

  “Assuming that we ever find him, I would feel better about our next meeting with Victor if you should vow not to harm him. Despite all the suffering that you lay at Victor’s feet, I urge you to find in yourself some sympathy for him.”

  “I have sympathy for you,” he said. “I think someone should have protected you from him.”

  Mary had nothing to say to this. If Victor had hurt her, it was as much a matter of her pursuing the opportunity for him to do so as it was by any intention of his.

  “I suppose,” she said, “if I should survive this adventure, I shall spend the rest of my days reading books of sermons, collecting fossils, practicing the pianoforte, and studying thorough bass.”

  Adam lifted his head. “Thorough bass?”

  “Music is one of the few studies considered appropriate for girls.”

  “I know what a pianoforte is, but what is thorough bass?”

  Mary welcomed the chance to speak of something other than her foolishness. “It is a theory of music. In thorough bass, one marks the intervals between the notes. It is quite mathematical. Knowing which notes correspond with the notes of the melody allows one to sing harmony.”

  “What is harmony?”

  “Harmony is the science of musical chords. One sings, for instance, a single note. Let’s say the note is C. Like this.” Mary sang a C as clearly as she could. As a girl she had always been praised for having perfect pitch. Years later Kitty confessed that everyone in the family had told Mary that simply to make her feel better about being plain.

  But she thought that this was a fair C. Good enough for a monster, at least. “Now, can you make that sound? Just breathe in deeply, open your mouth wide, and let the sound come from your throat. Here, I’ll sing and you match my tone.”

  Adam looked skeptically at her. Mary sang another C.

  Adam opened his mouth and emitted a hoarse cry. Mary stopped. She tried not to laugh.

  “That’s right. A little softer, though. You don’t have to strain your vocal cords. Just a steady tone like mine.”

  She sang it again, and the monster joined in, and it was not half as bad.

  She commended him and they practiced until he could hold the note fairly steadily. Despite his guttural speech, he sang in a baritone more pleasant than she would have imagined.

  “Good,” said Mary. We’ll call that note the melody. Now I want you to sing it again—here, I’ll sing a little so you can imitate it—and then I’m going to sing a different not
e, an E, while you keep singing the C. Ready?”

  Mary started in C, and when Adam had matched the note, she switched to E. The two notes, in totally different voices, created a chord that filled the night.

  As soon as he heard this sound, Adam stopped singing. He looked at her in astonishment.

  “That’s harmony,” Mary said.

  “How do you know this?”

  “I have studied it for many years. Have you never heard harmony?”

  “I’ve heard human beings singing a few times, always as a distance. I listen to the birds. But never any sound like this.”

  “Let me teach you a song. I’ll sing ‘The Bailiff’s Daughter of Islington.’ It goes like this.” She sang the ballad about the young squire who loved the bailiff’s daughter, but whose disapproving family sent him away. The girl suffers because she thinks his love was shallow and once he is gone, he has forgotten her. Mary came to the final verses, when the young man, returning after seven years, meets the girl, in rags, on the road.

  “I prithee, sweetheart, canst thou tell me

  Whether thou dost know

  The bailiff’s daughter of Islington?”

  “She’s dead, sir, long ago.”

  “Then will I sell my goodly steed,

  My saddle and my bow;

  I will into some far country,

  Where no man doth me know.”

  “O stay, O stay, thou goodly youth!

  She’s alive, she is not dead;

  Here she standeth by thy side,

  And is ready to be thy bride.”

  Mary taught him the words. It took some practice, but eventually Adam managed to carry the tune through a verse. The next time they tried it, Mary wove a high harmony above Adam’s melody. He closed his eyes and chanted the lyrics, struggling not to be distracted by Mary’s harmony notes.

  When they got to the end, he said, “May we sing it again?”

  They sang it again, and once more for good measure, until Adam was hoarse. When he got to “She’s alive, she is not dead” the last time, his voice broke and he stumbled through the final lines.

  “That was wonderful,” Mary said.

  Adam studied her for a moment in silence. “This is hard. It makes me feel things, here.” He touched his spread fingers to his chest. “It is sweet, yet painful. These are emotions that I do not understand.”

  Of course he had never felt such emotions, Mary told herself. He was three years old.

  Mary found the grocer’s on Sinclair Street in Thurso. She had done her best to clean her coat, and fortunately it was long enough to cover the ragged and filthy ends of her dress. Mary could do nothing about Mrs. Buchanan’s shoes, broken by a month of walking on the poorest of roads. She raised her collar, held her head up, and swung open the door.

  The shop was blessedly warm. A youth was stacking jars of fruit and vegetables on a shelf. Bushels of potatoes, onions, and turnips stood along one wall, with sacks of grain. Other shelves held dry goods, soap, and bottles of spirits. On the counter lay bundles of candles. The air smelled of tea and spices.

  An older man, behind the counter, looked up as she entered. She approached him.

  “Yes?” he said. He had red side-whiskers and wore gold-rimmed spectacles.

  Mary launched into her appeal. “My name is Mary Frankenstein. I wonder if you might help me find someone who I believe is residing in the vicinity of your town.”

  “Ye don’t wish to buy something?”

  “Not at present. I—”

  “Then ye have no business with me. Good day.” He turned away.

  “Sir . . .”

  He stopped and turned, crossed his arms over his chest, and regarded her with eyes hard as flint. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the boy was watching. Her resolve wavered, but she pushed on.

  “I beg your assistance. I am a stranger here, come all the way from England in search of my husband. He left me some months ago on business to Scotland. He is in the—he is a writer, and he came to the remote north to isolate himself and produce a new work. He said he would return in a month, but it has been three now since last I saw him, and he left me insufficient money to live. You see me now in the state to which I have been reduced by his abandonment.”

  “A sorry state indeed,” the grocer said.

  “Has there been a man living here—his name is Victor Frankenstein, and he is Swiss—anywhere in the parish? He would have selected some remote place, but I hazard he may have come here to buy groceries. Mayhap you have dealt with him and may know where he is?”

  “And a sorry tale for a vagabond whore to purvey, ye pretend wife with nary a wedding ring to your hand. I know not yer true purpose, and I do not care.” He pointed across the room. “Ye see the door, and outside it lies the street where ye belong. God help ye.”

  And with that he went about his business, leaving her standing there. She looked at the boy, who ducked his head and resumed stocking the shelf. There was nothing for her to do but leave.

  Two months ago such a humiliation might have killed her, and the idea of persisting would have been beyond her capacities. She stored the experience somewhere inside her for inspection at some later date, unless further humiliations should make it so insignificant that she might never think of this one again.

  Out in the cold Mary considered what she might try next. She walked to the end of the street, turned right and went down that one to the next, then again until she had gone round the block. The streets were not busy, but some of those she passed took note of her. She ignored them. When she had come round to the end of the grocer’s street, she waited at the corner of a building.

  It was not long before the young man came out of the shop carrying several bundles. He started in her direction. Mary let him reach her, then stepped into his way.

  “You heard what I asked your master. In the name of mercy, I ask you if you know anything of Victor Frankenstein.”

  The boy met her eyes, then looked away. He tried to go around her, but she stepped into his way again. If anyone was watching, she did not care.

  “What would ye have me do?” he asked.

  “Just this, and you may be on your way and never think of me again: if you know, tell me where Mr. Frankenstein is living.”

  The boy shifted the packages under his arm. “He’s on Emray Isle, five mile off the coast. Once a week Mr. Lennox sends him a crate of vegetables and bread.”

  “You are telling the truth?”

  “I brings the crates myself, and fetches them back.”

  “And how does one get to this isle?”

  “It’s due north of the river’s mouth by boat. Nobody lives there but a handful of starving sheep men. Yer husband’s picked himself a right lovely place to hide.”

  “So he has.” Mary stepped out of the boy’s way. “You may not think so, but you have done a good deed. God bless you.”

  The boy hurried off down the street.

  By the time she reached Adam, who awaited her below the river bridge, it was four in the afternoon; the sunset was lighting everything in the hasty golden hour of the northern autumn. She told him what the grocer’s boy had said, and they found a prospect from which they could make out the island in the distance.

  “Now,” Adam said, “we steal a boat.”

  It was not until well after midnight that Adam was able to slip away with a skiff, a small boat with a pointed prow and a sail. Adam rowed them past the breakers and they used the sail to direct themselves northward. The sky was lightening in the east when they came upon the barren island, surrounded by rocks and cliffs. They had to sail some distance around it until they were able to land on a stony beach in the first light of dawn.

  Adam dragged the boat ashore, unstepped the mast, and hid it as best he could behind an outcropping of rock.

  “Wait here,” he told her. “I will discover where Victor lives.”

  Mary protested. “Promise me that you will not let him see you. I should be the per
son to reveal to Victor that we are here.”

  Adam said nothing.

  “I know you place little trust in anyone,” Mary told him, “But you must trust me to speak with him before he sees you. His abhorrence of you is the greatest obstacle between you and your desire.”

  Adam’s face ran rapidly through expressions of anger, resentment, and calculation before he replied, “I shall do as you say.”

  Mary sheltered herself in the boat, in the lee of the rock that blocked the wind. The bleak landscape gradually became illuminated by a watery daylight. There was a tightness in her chest at the thought of seeing Victor again. What would he make of her, so out of her element, so sadly reduced? He had lied in more than one way. Better than she had in Matlock’s St. Giles churchyard, she could see that powerful emotions overran his intellect, and that among those emotions was shame.

  An hour later, Adam returned. “I have found the house where he lives. Come.”

  Though it was full day now, it was not difficult to keep away from the other two dwellings on the island, visible from a distance in this barren landscape. The only living things they saw were the ever-present seabirds and the few emaciated sheep that their owners left to crop the meager grass holding its place in the rocky soil. The house that Victor occupied was at the other end of the isle. Awkwardly constructed of plastered stone, it had but two small glazed windows and a thatched roof. Against one end stood a wooden shed that looked to be of newer provenance.

  Adam said that he would not sit waiting on Victor’s grace, and told Mary that if and when she had come to terms with Frankenstein, they could find him on the nearby beach. He did not wait for her reply but stalked off toward the sound of the rolling surf and the cries of gulls.

  She knocked on the door. There was no answer. She knocked again, and it opened. Victor stood there in loose white shirt with an apron over it; his dark hair, longer than it had been, had not seen a comb in some time. He stared at her in incomprehension.