Pride and Prometheus

by John Kessel

  With this last remark much became clear. “I never swore to the former,” I said. “As for the latter—”

  “Clerval told me you’ve been engaged for six years yet show no eagerness to marry. Of course he does not know about the burden you carry. That alone might explain why you have not fulfilled your promise to your betrothed.” Her hopeful tone spoke volumes.

  “Keeping my engagement from you was wrong. My regard for you was never feigned, but my dear Mary, you would do better to invest your affections elsewhere.”

  She looked away. She took up a spool of copper wire, and turned it in her hands. She put it down again and looked me in the eye. “I shall not regret my concern for your welfare. Whatever becomes of our friendship, you must complete this task and free yourself of Adam’s threats of revenge.”

  I brought this conversation to as cordial an end as the difficult emotions it revealed might allow. Knowing her affection for me at least let me hope that, if she ever had to decide between the monster and me, I might trust her. Yet in that final week, Miss Bennet spent much time with him. During the afternoons he would wander the desolate cliffs and beaches, and she would go out to speak with him. I told myself it was in the effort to keep him to his promise, but I could not know.

  One evening, after Miss Bennet and I had shared a meager meal of white bean soup in the room that I had given over to her, I became aware of a presence in the next room. When I stepped through the door into the laboratory, I found the Creature standing beside the bench, staring down at the female in her cloudy bath.

  I had caught him studying her like this more than once. An expression of great longing would take over his dead face, on which it seemed a parody of human desire. But then I thought: a cat is not human, yet even in a cat’s face one may read emotions. Was this Creature not infinitely more than a cat? If so, might his passions be true? And what did they portend?

  And then I thought of the thing growing in the vat, which had once been the sister of the woman in the other room. What might it feel, once I gave it the power to feel things, and then put it into the hands of one whose sole motive was self-gratification?

  When I entered the laboratory, the Creature looked up.

  “You’ll have her soon enough,” I said.

  He regarded me with distaste. When I stepped forward, he turned and left by the laboratory’s rear door. Something in his silence charged my blood, and I followed him outside.

  “I’ll give you your bride!” I said. “You’ll soon have the chance to inflict yourself on her rather than on poor Miss Bennet.”

  He stopped at the entrance to the shed.

  “You know that Miss Bennet is in love with you,” he said.

  His words took me by surprise. “You know nothing of what is in Miss Bennet’s heart,” I said.

  “I can see the effect your attentions have on one who has been alone. You owe her better than you have given.”

  She was in the room on the other side of this stone wall. Could she hear us?

  The demon said, “It would be a sad thing if, while providing me a balm for my pain, you neglected the pain of someone who has done you none of the wrong I have.”

  He crawled into the shed, leaving me standing there.

  I returned to my pallet and blew out the candle. In the dark, for the first time, I let my thoughts travel forward to ponder what I should do once I had freed myself of the Creature. It was true: once he and his bride had left, I would be obliged to deal with Miss Bennet and her forlorn hopes. It would not be pleasant, but I would do my best to be kind. Then, at last, I might return home and marry Elizabeth, in some confidence that my family would be safe from further threats. Henry and I might once again take pleasure in each other’s company. I fell asleep thinking of the comfort I would bring my dear father by the simple act of uniting with my beloved.

  Ten days after Miss Bennet and the monster had arrived, I judged that it was time to conclude my task. The preparations took all of the day; by the time we were ready, another cold night had begun, the waxing gibbous moon gliding noiselessly through the clouds. A gleam of its light shone through the window, augmenting the two candles and a lamp that dimly illuminated the laboratory. All three of us were tense with anticipation. Knowing how disturbing the first sight of this thing coming to life would be, contemplating that it had once been her sister, I implored Miss Bennet to wait in the other room. She would not. With a troubled conscience I pressed forward.

  First it was necessary to remove the female from its bath. Using a linen hose, I siphoned off the generational fluid. When its surface had drained enough to expose the body, I climbed onto a bench beside the basin, slid my arms under the naked female, and lifted. The limp body was slimy. Its head lolled, hair dripping fluid, and the legs hung down. I struggled to raise it over the lip of the tank. I lost my balance and struck the head of the new female against the edge.

  “Don’t hurt her!” the Creature said. He stepped to the opposite side of the tank and took her from me. He held this naked thing, so much smaller than he, like some obscene parody of Michelangelo’s Pietà.

  Miss Bennet had averted her eyes. “Help me remove this tub,” I told her.

  She came to one end of the table and took hold of the copper tub. With the fluid drained, it was just light enough so that together she and I could wrestle it from the table to the floor.

  “Lay the body on the table,” I told the Creature.

  With his help I rolled the body over so that we might drain the fluid from its lungs; milk white it bubbled up through the female’s nose and leaked from its slack mouth. When that was accomplished, we laid the thing on its back. It smelled strongly, but not unpleasantly, of the fluids in which it had grown.

  Now that she was exposed, it became apparent that the female’s skin had not knit together properly: some areas were fair, but others were dark and discolored. Patches of dark hair grew on her thigh and abdomen. A dark purple stain like a birthmark, pebbled with knots of flesh, ran from her forehead, over one eye, her nose and mouth, and down her neck to her bosom.

  “You may wash the body now,” I told Mary.

  Miss Bennet brought a basin of warm water and, with a sponge, carefully washed the female. When that was done, I began a minute examination.

  First I moved the joints of the legs, hips, ankles, shoulders, elbows, and wrists. The female showed none of the rigidity of a body dead four months. Despite the areas of discoloration and the irregularity of the birthmark, there were no signs of decay. I palpated the abdomen, which had grown smooth over the incision where I had surgically sterilized her after removing the embryo I had found in her womb. The flesh was supple. The fingernails and toenails were soft and pink as a baby’s.

  Both Miss Bennet and my monster stared at the bride. Although the birthmark made it hard to judge, the shape of its face was that of Catherine Bennet, but the lips were much fuller, the ears larger. The teeth were of pearly whiteness, the forehead high and broad, the eyes widely separated. Where not blemished, the pores of its skin were so small as to be invisible, as smooth as a satin pillow, pale as a figure cut from marble. No event had been written on its vacant face.

  “She looks like Kitty,” Miss Bennet said.

  The Creature hovered behind her. “She does not,” he said.

  In deference to Miss Bennet’s sensibilities, and aware of the Creature’s concupiscence, I drew a sheet up to its neck.

  I hung my lamp above the face and pulled back the lids of its eyes. Unlike Kitty’s blue, these were so pale and watery that the pupils were black beads. The whites glistened like the skin of a peeled egg.

  I fastened copper bands to the body’s wrists and ankles. A bracket held disks to its temples and a canvas strap bound similar disks to either side of the heart. Careful not to cross the positive and negative, I attached copper wires. These wires were connected to one side of a switch; wires from the other side ran to the batteries. I had previously wired the batteries, two by two in parallel,
with each of these pairs wired to the others in series. From them I could call upon as strong a source of electrical current as any laboratory in Europe.

  I forced a dowel wrapped in cloth between the jaws of the female. “When I close this switch,” I said, “a powerful surge of electrical fluid will flow into the body. If nothing has gone awry in its preparation, it should be brought to life. I am sure there will be some spasms, but you must not assume that indicates that it has yet taken life. No matter what occurs, you must not touch the body while the switch is closed, and should refrain from touching it even after I have completed the infusion of electricity.”

  Miss Bennet moved away from the table. The Creature reached up to steady himself with a hand on one of the rafters. I closed the switch.

  The legs and arms of the body went rigid. The jaw clenched. Beneath the sheet its back arched and its chin lifted as the head was thrown back. I let the electricity flow for a moment, then opened the switch. The body fell to the table, limp.

  I leaned over and held a listening tube against its breast. There was no heartbeat. I stepped back. “Again.”

  I closed the circuit.

  Once more the body went rigid. I let it run longer this time, fifteen, twenty, thirty seconds. A wisp of smoke rose from its forehead, carrying a scent of charred flesh. When I opened the circuit and listened, there was still no heartbeat.

  If we were to keep trying, the power of the batteries would soon fade. I removed the connections to the wrist and ankle bands, and adjusted only the disks bracketing the heart.

  This time, when I closed the circuit, the body did not twitch. But when I turned off the current, the thing suddenly convulsed. The bride jerked upright and coughed explosively, spitting the dowel across the room. She fell back, then gasped for air and coughed again. Her eyelids flew open and her pale eyes stared blindly. Her hands twitched. For the second time in my life I fell back, appalled at what I had accomplished.

  Miss Bennet exclaimed, “She cannot breathe!”

  “Help her,” the Creature said.

  Despite my warnings, they both converged on the table.

  “Turn her over,” I said. “She still has fluid in her lungs.”

  The Creature took the female by its shoulders and helped roll it to its side. It coughed up more fluid. Miss Bennet held its head, keeping the damp hair out of its face, and eventually it was able to breathe. When they laid it back onto the table, its eyes were open but unfocused. It lay there, unmoving but for the flutter of its eyelids.

  Miss Bennet asked. “Does she feel anything?”

  It was all I could do to bestir myself to respond. Now that it was clear that I had done it again, the experience of the first creation had come back to me strongly. Unlike that first time, when horror and revulsion so overwhelmed me, those emotions were second to my understanding that this was no accident. I indeed possessed the ability to create life, and with that knowledge came the conviction that this was as depraved an ambition as any human being had ever possessed in the history of our race. I was unworthy of such knowledge. I was not capable of wielding it wisely. And what was true for me was a thousand times over more true for the rest of humanity, whose vices and follies and unholy desire for power were all too evident to me.

  I steeled myself, took a scalpel from my surgical kit, and ran its blunt end up the sole of the female’s foot. It twitched, as did the other, and both of the hands when I tried them. “The nerves are functioning. I cannot say how well the muscles will respond.”

  When the bride had sat up, its sheet had slid to the floor. Mary said, “We must clothe her.”

  I unfastened the disks from its chest. Miss Bennet took one of the dresses I had purchased and, struggling to manipulate the bride’s limbs, pulled it onto her body. The dress of a serving girl, the same dress that Miss Bennet wore. She buttoned it up the front. In it the female looked more vile than she had naked. Yet if Miss Bennet was repulsed by the thing’s appearance, or by the enormity of the transgression against God and nature that had just transpired, she kept her reaction hidden.

  The bride lay upon the table, limbs awry, breathing slowly, eyes unfocused, burn marks on her temples, face obscured by the disfiguring birthmark, fingers occasionally twitching. Her heart beat steady and strong.

  The Creature looked down upon his hideous bride with eyes full almost to tears. Watching him and his mate, products of my own ingenuity, who would soon go out into the world to commit, in my name, I knew not what atrocities, tormented me beyond my capacity to express.

  EIGHTEEN

  At the north end of the island, above the sea cliffs, stood a circle of stones, remains of some ancient druidic ritual ground. Some of the stones were missing, others fallen, but one yet stood. Two days before the bride’s birth Mary found Adam there.

  As a way of understanding what they might expect from the bride once she was brought to life, she asked him about his first impressions of the world.

  “My recollections are vague,” Adam told her. “I remember feeling cold. I could not see well—my eyes reacted to light, but I had no understanding of the objects that I saw or of how they related to one another, no concepts of depth or distance. Sound and scent and touch affected me, but all senses seemed mixed together. My body obeyed to my desire to move, but I was terribly clumsy. Still, despite my having no more knowledge than a newborn infant, within hours after my awaking I had wandered out of Victor’s apartments into the countryside. It may be that because I possessed the body of an adult I had by instinct that power of motion.”

  “Did you understand speech?”

  “No. When I encountered human beings they made sounds, but those sounds meant nothing to me. I was sensitive to their emotions, however. I could tell if the speaker was afraid, or angry. Fear and anger: those were the first emotions I could distinguish, because they were the only emotions I aroused.”

  “We should make sure that the first voice your bride hears is not that of someone afraid or angry.”

  “A noble intention,” Adam said slowly. “Perhaps you can sermonize to the rest of the human race about that.” He sat staring down at the rocks, his dark lips compressed. With his livid, flawless skin he looked as cold as the ancient stone they sat on, fashioned by the hands of men dead a thousand years.

  In the week leading up to the quickening of Victor’s new creation, Mary’s chief occupation had been to serve as go-between for Victor and Adam. The two seldom spoke to each other, and then only a few words. Victor never acknowledged that his creature had taken the name Adam, and Mary caught him looking at her with distaste when she used that name.

  Their hostility to each other troubled Mary. She tried speaking with each about this, approaching the subject by means of other talk. In the evenings Mary would share her meal with Victor, and in the mornings with Adam—neither would eat in the other’s presence, but each allowed Mary to join him as long as the other was not present.

  Over those evening meals she was able to converse as she had never done with a man not related to her by family. Victor’s professions of gratitude for her appearance at his door were borne out by his demeanor whenever he could be brought to forget the distasteful task they were about. He spoke with hope in his voice, as if, with the birth of the bride, he himself would be reborn. His face would open and the darkness lift from his eyes. Was it foolish for Mary to imagine there might be a place for her in Victor’s new life? How ironic would it be if, with Adam’s finding a mate of his own species, she might find one herself?

  Mary worried that her happiness might come at the expense of Elizabeth Lavenza, but such situations occurred all the time in society, if under vastly different circumstances.

  It gratified her that Victor trusted her to construct the batteries he would need. They spent much time together in his laboratory, and however distasteful he found the process, when Mary asked him questions he was the most patient of teachers. He showed her dead and living cells through his microscope and described their st
ructures. He discoursed on the nature of positive and negative electrical fluids.

  Three things impressed her most strongly about Victor in his laboratory: first, that his knowledge of science was vast. He understood nature’s complex and subtle ways, and had an ability to leap from an observation to a sound conclusion without having to labor through the dozen intervening steps that he must explain to Mary to make his process clear. His was a brilliant and original mind, and in those few moments that he could forget the purpose to which all their work intended, she could see the delight he took in discovery.

  Her second observation was that he seldom forgot that purpose, and it blighted what would otherwise be a happy nature. Creating a bride for Adam harrowed him to the depths of his soul. He would give nearly anything to abandon the effort, and would do so instantly if there were any way he could without dooming himself and everyone around him to destruction. Under this aspect he hated his work, hated that his mind was capable of it, and hated Adam for forcing him, holding all that he loved hostage, to do this thing.

  Mary’s third observation was that Victor had given no thought to the female that he was creating other than as an object to appease Adam. Whether Adam thought of her as other than the focus of his desire was a question whose answer was less apparent. Mary attempted to move both of them to consider the being that was growing in the copper tub as a person, not some thing.

  Mary pointed out to Victor that it would not be humane to thrust the female out the door as soon as she was created.

  “It is not my responsibility what happens to her,” he said. “The monster forces me to create her. Let him care for her.”

  “I will care for her until she is able to care for herself,” Mary said. “She will share my room with me.”

  “Don’t be a fool, Miss Bennet. Her only predecessor is that thing out there, who has chased a family from their home, burned it to the ground, strangled a ten-year-old boy, and implicated a young woman in that murder. This history does not recommend that you share a bed with his female counterpart.”