The Sum of Mankind (Monster/Frankenstein, Chapter 7 & Finale)

For a brief moment in time, Sabin was happy.  Then he learned that his family line was going to come to an end, and he met his last descendant, a woman named Olivia, named in honor in someone who had been a family friend, as far as anyone knew at that point.

     

Olivia was vivacious, charming, beautiful, but if anyone noticed they would have to have looked closely, since she hid herself from the world, and if Sabin ever found out why he was courteous enough not to mention it, and he never forced her to change a thing, accepting her exactly as he found her, and he wondered, eventually, if he would have loved her as she was, if he had not gone looking for her, if he had not intended to use her, and if all this meant perhaps he was exactly as his brother had always feared, and he put all that aside when she became pregnant, was surprised that was even possible, and when the child was born, and it was not a monster, they named him Henry, and that was when Sabin knew he had done something wrong, and he exited both their lives, and that’s why Henry adopted his mother’s name for his own, why he grew up answering to Henry Grenoville, and all the more ignorant of his origins.

     

From afar Sabin watched this family, its struggles and its triumphs, watched as Olivia grew sick with the cancer that would kill her, a cancer he wondered if he might have given her, the impossible trade for the life he had somehow given her.  He watched as Henry grew, telling himself time and again he should have no part in rearing, in guiding, in anything at all, and then the day came in which Henry entered Sabin’s life of his own accord, ignorant of everything he should have known, of everything Sabin could never tell him, but felt compelled to all the same.

     

The years advanced as they always did and Henry grew older, just as Victor had, and Sabin stayed exactly as he had been for two hundred years, and not for the first time he wondered if there was a reason for any of it, or if it was just blind chance and the best he could ever have asked to make of it was the best he could make of it.  He wanted to tell Henry all his secrets.  He wanted to explain.  He wanted a reckoning.  He chose not to, time and time again.  It wasn’t his place, he decided.  He watched as a new Oliver entered Henry’s life.  He remembered that all these people knew or suspected as much as Sabin himself knew or suspected, and had chosen the same paths for just as long.  He poured over the diaries, the books of Victor Frankenstein, trying to find answers, and of course there were none, even though Sabin understood better than anyone what they were.  But that was life.  Sometimes meaning is meaningless.  And maybe that was the point.  He had made conscious choices for however many lifetimes he might be said to have compiled, and he wondered if they had been the right ones, if he had hurt more people than he had helped, hurt the ones that mattered, such as his brother, how his failure to reconcile with him had been a sin for which he could never be absolved, if that was the sum of his life, his judgment, the sum of mankind itself, why he had exiled himself to an embassy of shadows…

     

One day he stopped Oliver Row and asked for a conversation.

     

“I’m new at this, you understand,” said Oliver Row.

     

“That’s okay,” he replied.  “So am I.”

    

“Where would you like to begin?” said Oliver Row.

     

“Right now,” he said.  “This very moment.  I would like to understand it.  I would like to know if I can.  I have decided it’s not important if anyone else does.  Maybe it was a decision I made a long time ago.  Maybe it was a decision I made when my eyes opened again, all those years ago.”

     

“That is a wise decision,” said Oliver Row.

    

“You’re much easier to talk to than I ever imagined,” he said.

    

“Did it ever occur to you to try?” said Oliver Row.

    

“No,” he said.  “I suppose I didn’t.  It just never occurred to me.  I thought it was a different story for so very long.”

    

“The exact nature of my work is something I myself am just coming to grips with,” said Oliver Row.  “Suppose we can help each other.”

    

“I never understood what you were, until now,” he said.  “Perhaps a guardian angel.  I thought you were something else.”

    

“Everyone needs something like that,” said Oliver Row.  “Some more than others.”

    

“I tried to fill the role myself, over the years,” he said.  “I’m not sure I was so successful.  Might have misinterpreted the task.”

     

“I think you got it,” said Oliver Row.

    

“How is he?” he asked.  “I mean, is he okay?  Is he going to be okay?”

     

“I think he will,” said Oliver Row.  “But then, everyone has their struggles.  It can’t be helped, really, if you think about it.”

     

“I suppose you’re right,” he said.  “I never thought of it that way.  Which is a little bizarre, given.”

     

“You’re probably right,” said Oliver Row.  “Listen, I think there’s at least one thing I can put to rest for you.  She forgave you.  She understood.  She always knew the assignment.  You have to, in this line of work.”

     

“Thank you,” he said.  “That means a lot.  I don’t think I was, ah, quite prepared, to hear that.  I will need some time to process that.”

     

“Take your time,” said Oliver Row.

    

“Sometimes I’ve thought I’ve nothing but time,” he said.

    

“Funny how life works,” said Oliver Row.  “It’s going to be okay.”

    

“I think so,” he said.

And the years continued.