Anarchistbanjo's World

Chapter Three
Informs how Frank Braun persuaded the Privy Councilor to
create Alraune

THEY sat in the carriage, Professor Ten Brinken and his
nephew. They didn’t speak. Frank Braun leaned back
staring straight ahead, sunk deeply into his thoughts. The
Privy Councilor was observing, squinting over at him
watchfully.
The trip lasted scarcely half an hour. They rolled along the open
road, turned to the right, went downhill over the rough road to
Lendenich. There in the middle of the village lay the birthplace of the
Brinken family.
It was a large, almost square complex with gardens and a park.
Back from the street stood a row of insignificant old buildings. They
turned around a corner past a shrine of the patron Saint of the village,
the Holy Saint John of Nepomuk. His statue was decorated with
flowers and lit with two eternal lamps that were placed in niches by
the corners.
The horses stopped in front of a large mansion. A servant shut
the fenced gate behind them and opened the carriage door.
“Bring us some wine Aloys,” commanded the Privy Councilor.
“We will be in the library.”
He turned to his nephew. “Will you be sleeping here Frank? Or
should the carriage wait?”
The student shook his head, “Neither, I will go back to the city
on foot.”
They walked across the courtyard, entered the lower level of the
house at a door on the right hand side. It was literally a great hall with
a tiny antechamber and a couple of other small rooms nearby.
The walls were lined with long immense shelves containing
thousands of books. Low glass cases stood here and there full of
Roman artifacts. Many graves had been emptied, robbed of their
cherished and carefully preserved treasures. The floor was covered in
thick carpet. There were a couple of desks, armchairs and sofas that
stood scattered around the room.
They entered. The Privy Councilor threw his alraune on a divan.
They lit candles, pulled a couple of chairs together and sat down. The
servant uncorked a dusty bottle.
“You can go,” said his master. “But don’t go too far. The young
gentleman will be leaving and you will need to let him out.”
“Well?” he turned to his nephew.
Frank Braun drank. He picked the root manikin up and toyed
with it. It was still a little moist and appeared to be almost flexible.
“It is clear enough,” he murmured. “There are the eyes–both of
them. The nose pokes up there and that opening is the mouth. Look
here Uncle Jakob. Doesn’t it look as if it is smiling? The arms are
somewhat diminutive and the legs have grown together at the knees.
It is a strange thing.”
He held it high, turned it around in all directions.
“Look around Alraune!” he cried. “This is your new home. You
will be much happier here with Herr Jakob ten Brinken than you were
in the house of the Gontrams.”
“You are old,” he continued. “four hundred, perhaps six hundred
years old or even more. Your father was hung because he was a
murderer or a horse thief, or else because he made fun of some great
knight in armor or in priestly robes.
The important thing is that he was a criminal in his time and they
hanged him. At the last moment of his life his seed fell to the earth
and created you, you strange creature. Then your mother earth took
the seed of this criminal into her fertile womb, secretly fashioned and
gave birth to you.
You the great, the all-powerful–Yes you, you miserable ugly
creature!–Then they dug you up at the midnight hour, at the
crossroads, shaking in terror at your howling, shrieking screams.
The first thing you saw as you looked around in the moonlight
was your father hanging there on the gallows with a broken neck and
his rotting flesh hanging in tatters.
They took you with them, these people that had tied the noose
around your father. They held you, carried you home. You were
supposed to bring money into their house. Blood money and young
love.
They knew well that you would bring pain, misery, despair and
in the end a horrible death. They knew it and still they wanted you,
still they dug you up, still they took you home, selling their souls for
love and money.”
The Privy Councilor said, “You have a beautiful way of seeing
things my boy. You are a dreamer.”
“Yes,” said the student. “That’s what I am–just like you.”
“Like me?” the professor laughed. “Now I think that part of my
life is long gone.”
But his nephew shook his head, “No Uncle Jakob. It isn’t. Only
you can make real what other people call fantastic. Just think of all
your experiments! For you it is more like child’s play that may or may
not lead to some purpose.
But never, never would a normal person come up with your
ideas. Only a dreamer could do it–and only a savage, a wildman, that
has the hot blood of the Brinkens flowing through his veins. Only he
would dare attempt what you should now do Uncle Jakob.”
The old man interrupted him, indignant and yet at the same time
flattered.
“You crazy boy!–You don’t even know yet if I will have any
desire to do this mysterious thing you keep talking about and I still
don’t have the slightest idea what it is!”
The student didn’t pause, his voice rang lightly, confidently and
every syllable was convincing.
“Oh, you will do it Uncle Jakob. I know that you will do it, will
do it because no one else can, because you are the only person in the
world that can make it happen. There are certainly a few other
professors that are attempting some of the same things you have
already done, perhaps even gone further.
But they are normal people, dry, wooden–men of science. They
would laugh in my face if I came to them with my idea, would chide
me for being a fool. Or else they would throw me completely out the
door, because I would dare come to them with such things, such
thoughts, thoughts that they would call immoral and objectionable.
Such ideas that dare trespass on the craft of the Great Creator and play
a trick on all of nature.
You will not laugh at me Uncle Jakob, not you! You will not
laugh at me or throw me out the door. It will fascinate you the same
way it fascinates me. That’s why you are the only person that can do
it!”
“But what then, by all the gods,” cried the Privy Councilor,
“what is it?”
The student stood up, filled both glasses to the rims.
“A toast, old sorcerer,” he cried. “A toast! To a newer, younger
wine that will flow out of your glass tubes. Toast, Uncle Jakob to your
new living alraune–your new child!”
He clinked his glass against his uncle’s, emptied it in a gulp and
threw it high against the ceiling where it shattered. The shards fell
soundlessly on the heavy carpet.
He pulled his chair closer.
“Now listen uncle and I will tell you what I mean. I know you
are really impatient with my long introduction–Don’t think ill of me.
It has helped me put my thoughts in order, to stir them up, to make
them comprehensible and tangible.
Here it is:
You should create a living alraune, Uncle Jakob, turn this old
legend into reality. Who cares if it is superstition, a ghostly delusion
of the Middle Ages or mystic flim-flam from ancient times?
You, you can make the old lies come true. You can create it. It
can stand there in the light of day tangible for all the world to see–No
stupid professor would be able to deny it.
Now pay attention, this is what needs to be done!
The criminal, uncle, you can find easily enough. I don’t think it
matters if he dies on a gallows at a crossroads. We are a progressive
people. Our prisons and guillotine are convenient, convenient for you
as well. Thanks to your connections it will be easy to obtain and save
the rare seed of the dead that will bring forth new life.
And Mother Earth?–What is her symbol? What does she
represent? She is fertility, uncle. The earth is the feminine, the
woman. She takes the semen, takes it into her womb, nourishes it, lets
it germinate, grow, bloom and bear fruit. So you take what is fertile
like the earth herself–take a woman.
But Mother Earth is the eternal prostitute, she serves all. She is
the eternal mother, is always for sale, the prostitute of billions. She
refuses her lascivious love to none, offers herself gladly to anyone
that will take her. Everything that lives has been fertilized in her
glorious womb and she has given birth to it. It has always been this
way throughout the ages.
That is why you must use a prostitute Uncle Jakob. Take the
most shameless, the cheekiest one of them all. Take one that is born to
be a whore, not one that is driven to her profession or one that is
seduced into it for money. Oh no, not one of those. Take one that is
already wanton, that learns as she goes, one whose shame is her
greatest pleasure and reason for living. You must choose her. Only
her womb would be like the mother earth’s. You know how to find
her. You are rich–You are no school boy in these things.
You can pay her a lot of money, purchase her services for your
research. If she is the right one she will reel with laughter, will press
her greasy bosom against you and kiss you passionately–She will do
this because you have offered her something that no other man has
offered her before.