Frankenstein Unbound (11 page)

“I had listened to them spellbound, just as I once, as a small girl, hid behind my father’s sofa and heard Samuel Coleridge recite his ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner.’ There was a nightmare awaiting me that night!

“I could see how the notion of raiding charnel houses for the secrets of life had always been present in Shelley’s thought; but these horrid machine speculations were new.

“I slept. I dreamed—and in that dream Frankenstein was born. I saw the engine powerfully at work, its wires running to a monstrous figure, about which the scientist flitted in nervous excitement. Presently the figure sat up in its bandages. At that, the scientist who had played God was dismayed with his handiwork, as was God with our general ancestor, Adam, though with less reason. He goes away, rejecting the power he has assumed, hoping the creation will fall back into decay. But that night, when he is asleep, the creature enters his chamber and rips back his curtain—
so
!—so that he wakes up with a start to find its dreadful gaze upon him, and its hand outstretched for his throat!

“I also started out of my sleep, as you may imagine. Next day, I set myself to writing out my dream, as Horace Walpole did with his dream of Otranto. When I showed my few pages to Shelley, he urged me to develop the story at greater length, and to underline the main idea more powerfully.

“That I have been doing, at the same time infusing some of my illustrious father’s principles of conduct into the narrative. Indeed, I suppose I owe a great deal to his novel,
Caleb Williams
, which I have read several times with a daughter’s care. My poor creature, you see, is not like all the other grim shades who have preceded him. He has an inner life, and his most telling statement of his ills is embodied in a Godwinian phrase, ‘I am malicious because I am miserable.’

“Those are some of the effects which prompted me to write. But greater than they is a sort of compulsion which comes on me, so that when I invent I scarcely know what I am inventing. The story seems to possess me. Such power made me uneasy, and that is why I have laid the manuscript by for some days.”

She lay back, looking up at the little discolored ceiling. “It is a strange feeling, one on which I have known no author remark. Perhaps it stems from a sensation that I am in some way making a prediction of awful catastrophe, and not just telling a story. If you are from the future, then you must tell me honestly, Joe, if such a catastrophe will take place.”

I hesitated before replying.

“You do have true presentiments of doom, Mary. In that way, you are ahead of your age: I come from a civilization long hypnotized by the idea of its nemesis. But to answer your question. The fame of your novel—when you finish it—will rest in part on its power of allegory. That allegory is complex, but seems mainly concerned with the way in which Frankenstein, standing for science in general, wishes to remold the world for the better, and instead leaves it a worse place than he finds it. Man has power to invent, but not to control. In that respect, the tale of your modern Prometheus is prophetic, but not in any personal way.

“What makes me curious is this. Do you know that there is a real Victor Frankenstein, son of a distinguished syndic of Geneva?”

She looked very frightened, and clung to me.

“I can’t bear it if you alarm me! You know my story is an invention; I have told you so! Besides, I set my tale in the last century and not today, because that is a convention which readers like.”

“Do you know that your characters are alive today, only a few miles down the road in Geneva? You must know, Mary! You must have read the newspapers and seen that the maidservant, Justine, was on trial for murdering—for murdering one of her charges.”

“Why do you come to tax me about things—things that move only in my mind and my dreams?”

She started to weep, and cry that her life was difficult enough without further complications. I began to comfort her. What started as an innocent embrace grew more intent, as I held her and kissed her lips, soft with crying.

“Percy accuses me of not being loving enough. Oh, Joe, do you find me so?”

“Oh, Mary, I had to journey two centuries to find such a lover! There never was a love like ours before! Dearest Mary!”

“My dearest Joe!”

And so on. Why do I tear my heart by recalling our words then?

In our restlessness, we walked about the house, talking, touching each other.

“You must not reproach yourself at any time. You know I must go... Just remember me as a spirit who brought you good news you richly deserved, no more!”

“Oh, much more, very much more! But two centuries... I am dust to you, Joe, no more than moldering bones...”

“Never have you been less than a living spirit.”

We took little William with us into the garden. Mary brought out a rough-and-ready picnic on a cloth and we sat under old apple trees on which the apples were already beginning to glow with ripeness. Great moon-daisies were shedding their yellow petals all round us; a mint grew in the grass which made the air extra sweet. But I had to return to the subject of Frankenstein.

“Something has happened to us, Mary, that enables us to step between worlds. It may not last. That’s why I must go. For while I have it in my power, I must put an end to Frankenstein’s monster. You have told me that your book is not finished. But to track the creature down, I must have advance information. Tell me what happens after the trial of Justine.”

She bit her lip. “Why, it is the history of the world. The creature naturally wants a soul mate. Frankenstein repents some of his harshness and agrees to make one, a female.”

“No, I don’t remember that in the book. Are you sure?”

“So I have written. That is as far as I have got.”

“Is this female made? Where? In Geneva?”

She frowned in concentration.

“Frankenstein has to go away to make it.”

“Where does he go?”

“He has to make a journey, as we must...”

“What do you mean by that? There is a close link between him and you, isn’t there?”

“He’s just my character. Of course there’s an affinity... But I don’t know where he goes, only what his intentions are. And of course his creature follows him.” We sat in silence, watching William play, and listening to the sound of insects.

“You’ve told me nothing about your future. What books are written? Do people still believe in God? Did socialism come in? Is my father’s name still honored? What do women wear? Has Greece been liberated? What things do people eat?”

“Human nature is the same. If that changes at all, the change is gradual. We have had wars greater than the wars against Napoleon, fought with more terrible weapons and less mercy, and involving most of the nations of the globe. People are still malicious because they are miserable. Women are still fair and men still love them, but there are fashions in love, as in other things. We hope the human race will continue to exist for millions of years, and grow to more understanding but, in the year 2020, the world seems to be falling apart at the seams.”

And I told her about the timeslips, and how I had found myself back in her time.

“Take me to see your car. Then perhaps I may believe I am not dreaming!”

She carried William, and I led her, holding her small hand, back to where the automobile was parked. Unlocking it, I made her climb in, showed her the swivel gun, the maps, and many other things at hand.

She made no apparent effort to take it in. Instead, she stroked the back of the driving seat.

“This is beautiful material. Is it from some hitherto undiscovered animal, surviving perhaps in the Southern Continent?”

“No, it is plastic, man-made—one of the many tempting gifts of Frankenstein’s heirs!”

She laughed. “You know, Joe, you are my first reader! A pity you don’t remember my book a little better! A pity I do not have a copy bound to present you with! How grandly I would inscribe it... Are you going now?”

I nodded, suddenly almost too full of emotion to speak. “Mary, come with me! You are a displaced person, I swear!—Come and be a displaced person with me!”

She held my hand. “You know I can’t leave dear Shelley. He means to mend the world, but he needs me to mend his clothes... Do you like me, Joe?”

“You know it goes beyond that! I worship and respect your character. And your body. And your works. Everything that is Mary Shelley. You are woman and legend— all things!”

“Except the fictitious character by which I am best known!”

“It stands greatly to your credit that you warned the world about him.”

We kissed and she climbed out onto the track, clutching Willmouse to her neat breast. She was smiling, although there were tears in her gray eyes.

“You must say my farewells to Lord Byron and Shelley. I am ashamed that I have abused their hospitality.”

“Don’t spoil things by being conventional, Joe! We have been phantoms out of Time.”

“Oh, dearest Mary...”

We smiled hopelessly at each other, and I started the auto rolling, back in the direction of Geneva.

For a long while I could see her in the rear-view mirror, standing in the dusty road in her long white dress, holding her child and looking after the Felder. Only when she was out of sight and I had turned a corner did I remember that I had left the little willow leaf from her body lying upstairs on her Sophocles.

She would see it when she climbed up to bed that night.

Geneva began to seem almost a familiar place to me, with its thriving waterfront, grand avenues, narrow streets, and busy horse traffic.

I had left my automobile behind a farmer’s barn beyond the city walls, and was making my way to Frankenstein’s house. I had resolved that I would make an alliance with him, persuading him net to create a female creature and helping him to hunt down and exterminate the creature already at large in the world.

As if that quest were not macabre enough in itself, I went as if under some sort of malediction. For the date was now early in July. So I had ascertained from newspapers. The harvest I had seen gathered a few kilometers away was back on the stalk.

Even allowing for the probability that time was no nonstop streamliner, faring ever forward at the same speed every day of creation, some fresh interruption of Nature must have occurred to explain its present serpentine course. Two possibilities came to mind. The first was that the time shock I had suffered was inducing some highly lifelike illusions. The second was that the grave time ruptures of my own age, produced by the damage done to space time, were sending their ripples backwards.

This second possibility was the one I preferred, especially since I saw on reflection that such ripples might produce some of the effects of the first possibility. The time distortions might cause mental illusions in their own right.

One of those illusions was my persistent sensation that my personality was dissolving. Every act I took which would have been impossible in my own age served to disperse the sheet anchors that held my personality. Embracing Mary Shelley, enjoying her love and her perfumes, had produced the greatest solvent effect so far. It was a strangely anomic creature who strode up to the door of the house of the Frankensteins and rapped for admittance.

Once more the manservant was there to show me into the drawing room. Once more, that room was empty. But only for a moment. Pale Elizabeth came in, imperious and dressed in a satin dress, high-waisted and very decolleté, with Henry Clerval at her side. He was as ruddy as she was pale, his manner as indolent as hers was severe and to-the-point.

Clerval was a round-faced man, pleasant of feature, I thought, but his expression was far from friendly. He made no attempt at any civility, and left Elizabeth to do the talking.

She said, “I cannot imagine why you have returned here, Mr. Bodenland. Do you have any more messages to bring me from Victor Frankenstein?”

“Am I so unwelcome, ma’am? I did you a small service once by delivering a letter. Perhaps it is fortunate for my own sake that I have no further letter now.”

“It is unfortunate for you that you brazenly appear at all.”

“Why should you say that? I had not intended to trouble you on this occasion. Indeed, I may say it was not my wish to see you at all. I hoped to speak to Victor, or at least have a word with his father.”

“The syndic is indisposed. As for Victor—you probably know his whereabouts better than we do!”

“I have no idea where he is. Isn’t he here?”

Clerval now decided it was his turn to be unpleasant. Coming forward accusingly, he said, “Where is Victor, Bodenland? Nobody’s seen him since you delivered that last message. What passed between you on that occasion?”

“I’m answering no questions until you answer a few. Why should you be hostile to me? I’ve done nothing to offend you. I spoke to Victor twice only and had no quarrel with him. You have more reason to wish him harm than I have, isn’t that so?”

At that, Clerval came forward angrily and seized my wrist. I struck his arm down and stood ready to hit him again, harder. We glared at each other.

“We’ve good reason to have our suspicions of you, Bodenland. You are a foreigner with no settled establishment, you did not pay your hotel bill at Sécheron, and you have a horseless cabriolet that smacks of strange powers!”

“None of that is your business, Clerval!”

Elizabeth said urgently, “Here they come now, Henry!” And I had already heard footsteps in the hall.

The door was flung open and two burly men in boots, sturdy breeches, coarse shirts, and bicorne hats marched in. One had a pistol in his belt. I doubted not that they were law officers, but did not linger for a second look, being already at the casement windows into the side garden. Clerval I pushed aside.

As I dashed out, Ernest Frankenstein loomed up. They had had the forethought to post him in the garden. He was a slip of a lad. I struck him in the chest and sent him reeling. The delay was enough for Clerval to catch me and seize me from behind. I turned round and caught him a blow in the ribs. He grunted and got an arm round my neck. I brought my heel down on his instep, and then caught his forehead with my knee as he instinctively doubled with pain.