Fire on the Water

Prologue-1

Prologue

––––––––

* * * *

To: Margaret.Saville@newyork.com

From: WaltonRachel@freemail.ch

Date: December 11

Dear Margie,

Arrived in Montreux early this evening on the 7:05 from Geneva.

I was reticent to leave Geneva’s cobbled passageways, its chic restaurants and unexpected bars hidden in dark subterranean basements. The blaring techno, filling clubs no bigger than my tiny Manhattan apartment, always promised a good night surrounded by sexy French-Swiss sailors, invariably with their shirts off by midnight.

You’ll be glad to hear the months I spent researching Mary in the Université de Genève archives have allowed me to complete the first draft of the bio. Methodical review of several scores of tomes and essays, thousands of paper scraps, notes and ledger entries, as well as personal documents belonging to Byron and a number of Geneva households of the time period, have created a broader view of my subject than would have been possible back in Manhattan—or even during my time spent in the reading rooms of the London Literary Museums. But it has been without a doubt the days and nights wandering the twisting streets and quiet squares of Geneva’s medieval Vieille Ville that have heavily influenced the style of the work. I can picture Mary at eighteen, exuberant and full of life, self-exiled from the strictures of Mother England with Percy and Lord Byron, taking tea and croissants in the cafes surrounding the Pice du Bourg-de-Four, or walking hand-in-hand along the Promenade des Orpailleurs as it hugs the churning current of the Arve toward the Rhone—and always with the majesty of Mont Blanc in the distance.

How it must have excited their imaginations!

I could have daydreamed on the ferry for the full length of the lake from Geneva to Montreux, but decided to make the journey by train instead so I might spend the afternoon in Lausanne with the subtle ambience of Quai d’ Ouchy, the exhilarating sumptuousness of the Beau-Rivage Palace.

I’ve yet to find permanent accommodation here in Montreux. Meanwhile, I have booked into the Suisse Majestic Grand Hotel for the week, hoping to locate a small studio to call home for the next several months while I complete the research and writing.

You may think me strange, but I’m certain there is more to Mary Shelley connected with this beautiful, idyllic town than the archives would suggest. There’s something that keeps nagging at me. While her husband, Percy, and friend Lord Byron crisscrossed the lake and Swiss Alps on their own adventures, did she really stay within the confines of her suite to write Frankenstein? This magnificent village calls for afternoon constitutionals, beckons to be explored, demands visitors be awed by its simple beauty and mystery. I see her sitting at her graceful Maggiolini desk, her pen lying dormant in its well of ink, yet to write the horrors filling her head as she stares out the window. Would she dare step out alone into the crooked and convoluted laneways? Did she make her own discoveries in the primordial apothecaries, decaying bookshops, and intimate cafes and salons?

Something must have occurred here to jolt the monster into existence.

Something occurred while she was here on her own.

Alone.

This evening, I spoiled myself with a magnificent steak tartare at the Confiserie Zurcher on Avenue du Casino. The maître d'hôtel assured me the onions, capers, and raw egg were all from the chef’s own garden. The rye bread was unbelievable. It was dark by the time I walked the several blocks along Avenue des Alpes back to the hotel. Grand apartment buildings rise on either side to cast the street into an almost pitch blackness, lit only by the glow of light seeping through closed shutters. Mansions in the Belle Époque style loom like whitewashed specters from secretive walled gardens that make the imagination wander. A chilling December breeze promised snowfall, however I stopped awhile in the dark, listening to the tones of a saxophone drifting from somewhere up above me. The somber, haunting melody transported me to another time when Mary may have strolled unaccompanied along this very avenue. I pressed my back against a cold, stone façade among voluminous reams of ivy, and took in a vista of an ancient streetscape altered little since she was here.

There was not another soul to be seen.

Just me, the intriguing, forbidding avenue, the first flakes of snow, and my thoughts of Mary . . .

I promise to e-mail the initial draft of the biography by the end of this week. I’m certain you’ll agree with what I’m feeling. But for now, my dear editor and friend, it’s time to crawl up into my oversized bed with its quilt almost two feet thick with duck and goose feathers.

Rachel

* * * *