Frankenstein's Bride (21 page)

“And all this confusion of mind produced only one clear
thought, though it may have been a thought springing from madness.
I knew I must kill her or she would murder me. I must finish
this dreadful experiment in the creation of life or the
restoration of the dead, whatever I had done. I must finish it and
quickly end this futility and shame. I had been on that island
only six months—a man may wipe out six months of his life, I
reasoned, and go back to a normal life. Why, I thought—a man
may with any luck wipe out years of degradation, shame and
error, may hide all, put all behind him and go back to a contented
and reputable life, enjoying the society of his fellows and the love
of a wife—all crimes gone, healed, swept away. Many men have
done this. Why not I, so I reasoned? Why not I? Why should I
suffer the consequences, for the rest of my days, of those short, ill-fated
years spent in creation of creatures who betrayed me? Why,
said I to myself in my pride, should I be forever doomed for having
made scientific advances of the most extraordinary kind (for
they were, Jonathan, they were).

“What harm would it do if I thrust back into oblivion those
creatures I had made? It was not murder. They were not human,
either of them. How could they be? The man I made. The woman
I had brought back from death, rescued, like some Orpheus rescuing
his bride from the Underworld. I would be doing nothing
but what a potter does when he finds his work come from the kiln
malformed or spoiled in some way and breaks it.

“So I reasoned—so it was done. We packed our goods, a fire
was set and matches put to it and the house burned down as the
woman lay, drugged, inside. Or—so I thought.

“I began to travel in places far from civilization. I had a need
to be alone for a time and my ever-restless mind led me to making
a study of the languages of the regions to which I went. Gradually
I became calmer, and found some kind of forgetfulness. I lived
among the Algonquians of Upper Canada for a time, studying
their languages and customs. On a visit to New York I met my
beautiful wife, Elizabeth van Dahlen. I believed, truly believed,
my penance done, I might leave my solitude and create for myself
a new, happier life.

“We came to England to live. It was here in this house my
child was born, here I continued my studies of language, those
studies which brought us together, Jonathan. But how dreadful
that those very studies made it possible for me to come close to
Maria Clementi and in that way meet the fate which had been
awaiting me for so many years.

“A week ago was the anniversary of the day I saw her. It was
last year, at the end of winter. My wife and I had gone to the
opera. You will remember Maria singing “Remember Me” that
afternoon here at Cheyne Walk, Jonathan? Now, alas, the irony
of that, her satire, will become clear to you. For that night she
was taking the part of Dido, poor deserted queen, in
Dido and Aeneas
.

“At first, like any other individual in the audience I was
charmed by her grace and the uncanny beauty of her voice. Her
hair was dark, she was made up for the stage—how could I recognize
in this talented, fêted, worldly creature that girl who had
opened her slate-grey eyes to mine—and smiled—when she was
born a second time, reborn at my hand?

“Yet slowly, as the performance continued, a strange sense of
familiarity stole in on me—and with it a sick longing to come
closer to Maria Clementi. My wife sat beside me in the box. I
have never felt further away from her. As the performance continued
my yearning grew greater, deeper than I ever felt when about
to marry my first wife—whom I loved but almost as sister, for we
had grown up together—or when courting my second wife, for,
lovely as she was, to me she represented the final lifting of the
cloud that had hung over me since Orkney, was the symbol of my
re-entering the world of my fellow beings. But these are mere
excuses for my feelings for Maria: what I knew was that we were
twin souls, locked together, creator and created. I was afraid, of
course I was afraid of what I felt for the actress, but my longing
was too strong for fear.

“It was when Maria came to the footlights at the front of the
stage to acknowledge the rapture of the audience that I knew—I
knew! Older by seven years, her hair darkened by artifice, I still
recognized her as the woman to whom I had given life on Orkney.
I had of course believed her dead in the fire. But I knew now she
must have escaped for this was her—my Maria—my Eve—my
Maria Clementi.

“I was forced to go home that night with my wife and pretend
that all was well. But all that night I did not sleep and knew that
when morning came I must begin my plans to meet her.

“I showed the caution and cunning of the true villain. Resisting
the temptation to rush and find her, I went to the theatre
later that day and found Gabriel Mortimer. I told him I was a
student of languages presenting him with credentials of every
kind. I said I had heard that Miss Clementi was mute (as all
London knew) and that it might be possible for me to discover
the cause of this condition and, that done, perhaps help her to
find her speaking voice again. This was something of a risk, for I
saw at once that this ‘impresario' was as good as an exploiter of
the young woman and thought therefore that he could have
invented the tale of Maria's dumbness to attract more fame and
attention. And if that were so, Maria could expose me for what I
was—if she remembered.

“I cannot tell you what rage I felt then, and thereafter, when
talking to Mortimer. This man was daily close to the woman I
loved, knew her in all her most intimate moments, was, my
fevered brain told me, perhaps her lover. But I had to suppress
this hostility for I needed Mortimer to get me to Maria.
I enquired into her past and heard she had been found barefoot,
singing in the streets of Dublin, had been taken up by the better
people in that city and produced at their entertainments, then
brought to London by Mortimer, who added that in spite of her
unprotected past she was a good young woman, ever attended by
the most respectable of chaperones.

“As we conversed I acted with calm and cunning. I took
Mortimer in, I think, but he was so hopeful I detected of restoring
Maria's voice, for profit, I believe he would have made a friend of
Satan if he had promised Maria the gift of speech. Though I was
not sincere, I had no desire to help Maria to speak, for she might
denounce me. I only desired her. When I thought she was dead, I
thought my desire for her died. It had not. It merely lay frozen
ready to thaw—and now was the time of the thawing.

“Mortimer detected none of this. He suggested I visit Maria's
companion, Mrs. Jacoby, who would say if she thought me acceptable
to Maria.

“How I endured the three days before the appointed afternoon
I do not know. I writhed, I twisted, was restless, distracted, incapable
of any concentration. My mind was filled with suspicion
about Mortimer's relations with Maria; and I cursed in advance
the old woman who could, if she chose, keep me from her. I was
forced to send my patient wife to the Felthams, so that she would
not see my trouble and begin to question me in an attempt to
share a burden I could not reveal to her. Truth to tell, I wanted
Elizabeth from me. She stood between me and my desires. From
the moment I saw Maria again, I wanted my wife away. This confession
causes me profound shame, but it is the truth.

“Came the day of our meeting. In the small drawing-room at
Russell Square with Mrs. Jacoby's solid presence guarding the
tea-table, I saw again, close to, the face of my Eve—Maria. For it
was she. I knew it instantly. She was composed, charmingly but
quietly dressed in pale blue. She greeted me with a handshake, a
pleasant smile and no apparent recognition in her eyes. Gone was
the girl who opened her eyes and smiled her first smile at me.
Gone the filthy, biting, scratching creature that girl became. But
it was her.

“How could I guess that licentious, spiteful creature, subject
to violent, uncontrolled emotions of every kind, had exchanged
her undisguised lusts and malevolence for a quiet air and smile,
like that of a Sicilian who will wait ten, twenty, thirty years for
his revenge? She knew me, of course. She had known of me for
many years, I have no doubt. But she had not come to me. She
had waited for me to go to her so as to disguise her plans and
make my final torments at her hands more dreadful.

“The lessons designed to help her speak began. To cover my
desires I enticed you, my friend, to share those periods of instruction
with me, and for that I can only say I am deeply sorry. It
was, moreover, useless, for when she rejected me I became desperate,
as you know very well. It was all the beginning of her making
my life a hell.

“Of course, my relations with my poor wife grew worse. I did
what so many other weak and treacherous men have done,
allowed her to grow bewildered, denied there was aught wrong,
became angry when she piteously asked me, yet again, if anything
was the matter. Intimidated by my anger and vehement denials
she then ceased to ask me anything, kept herself away from me as
much as possible, grew thin and pale. I felt nothing for her but
irritation when she was trying to make me speak and relief when
she withdrew from me. I felt no guilt, no shame, nothing. I just
wished I could remove her entirely so that I could pursue Maria
without impediment. What a wretch I was—how unconscious of
my own wickedness—and would that I had made Elizabeth leave
my house and return to America. Had I done so, she would be
alive now, and my child also. But she was too devoted, too loyal
to leave me when she knew all was not well with me, and death
was the reward she reaped for that loyalty.

“It terrified me, Jonathan, when you told me of having seen
that monstrous Other just after my wife was killed. I truly
believed the crime had been committed by a robber disturbed in
the course of conducting a theft. When you told me you had seen
a man in the garden, even then the horrid suspicion came to me
that the creature I had made had somehow found his way back
from the other side of the world to punish me and lay waste my
life. And all the while Maria beguiled me more and more, turning
me into her slave.

“Elizabeth was killed and I—I was so sunk in the mire I was
almost happy. I felt so little for her by then, my head was so full
of Maria. I thought little, even at that moment, except that now
I could court Maria without shame, bring her to the house,
marry her.

“Hugo and Lucy saw me let her in just after my wife's death.
She held me off, though, until that last night, fatal for me.

I still did not suspect her. It was Maria, of course, who killed
my wife and child, Maria who attacked me. The man, that ogre-ish
creature I had made (and whom I believe she paid to have
brought back from Australia) was innocent of anything.

“She waited to tell me until the night came when she acceded
to my desire to possess her. She kept me in torment for two weeks
after she came to the house, an agonizing two weeks, for she
allowed me to kiss her, allowed me every familiarity other than
the final embrace.

“She came to my room late one night when the house was dark
and quiet and in the bed in which I now lie dying she gave herself
to me, coiled about me serpent-like, draining me of vital force, consuming
me. I knew I would never have enough of her. She was
Lamia. She was not Eve, my Eve, but Eve's bad counterpart, Lilith.

“It was as I lay there, weak and extinguished yet utterly happy,
that she pointed to the scar on her shoulder, past relic of the fire
on Orkney from which she had escaped. She began to whisper. It
was at first not so much what she said than that she spoke at all,
which astounded me. She had been all along capable of speech!
And then, as she leaned over me in the bed, her long hair trailing,
I began to hear what she said—that she had known me all along,
that she had escaped my fire and smuggled herself aboard a boat
to Ireland, been picked up hungry and cold on the shore by tinkers
and taken to Dublin. It was true, she said, she could not speak at
first, for she had no language. Had she been able to speak, she
would have had nothing to say. She had no experience of the commonest
things of life, no account of herself to give, no past, no
memories except certain little trailing recollections of France as a
child, then a sharp memory of Paris streets and betrayal. Her only
vivid memories were of Orkney, of me, of Adam, my creature. Otherwise,
she knew nothing, remembered nothing, so what good
would words have been to her, even if she had them?