Diary of An Immortal Woman (2)

1888

September 28: I survived the Siberian cold.

Above all, I survived the polar mood of my clan, and the madness of the woman who became my mother by biting me a certain day of June 1681.

Never could I forget the fear of my village's people. And even less, the terror that drowned my father's gaze when Miranda attacked us. First, she seduced my father, before killing him; then, she moved to me. I remember my feeling of fear and of abomination mingled with a strange fascination. Since then, the desire of matricide has never left me, perpetually pegged to my body as to my mind. Perpetually struggling with, I must admit, a sense of gratitude. Without Miranda, how could I have known the delights of immortality?

Urban effervescence missed me so much!

Coming back to London after thirty years, having fled the Great Stink of the Summer of 1858, transports me with joy and opens a sea of enticing prospects.

I retrieved my Whitechapel home, rediscovering the pleasure of meddling in the crowd of pitiless busy Londoners.

Did I wait long enough?

In fact, returning places of the past risks always the danger of meeting, at a street corner, an old acquaintance. Who would have grown old and exclaim: My God, Liv! you have ab-so-lute-ly not changed, it's really astonishing!!!

Looking through my library, I found Mary’s manuscript. What a novel! And how that day of 1817 seems at once distant and near.

I have so many memories…

Although Mary knew that I preferred she visit in afternoon, she rang my door in the morning, trembling with emotion and cold, holding tight under his arm a manuscript – Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus.

She drank two brandies and let her tea cool, talking unrestrainedly -about Byron and his virile love stories, about her stay in Geneva. Exasperated by her feverish nervousness and anxious looks, I ended up sending her home, before finally immersing myself in reading. With delight.

What glory would attend the discovery if I could banish disease from the human frame and render man invulnerable to any but a violent death! These are Dr. Frankenstein’s words, unaware of what it will portend.

Mary Shelley has been a faithful friend and a fascinating woman in many ways. What would she think of my exceptional longevity? Of my own youth never extinguished?

This morning when a pale sun has pierced the clouds, while I was looking at myself in the mirror where I am eternally 28 years, I took an important decision.

To be continued…

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