Anarchistbanjo's World

Alraune by Hanns Heinz Ewers and translated by Joe E Bandel

Chapter Eight
Details how Alraune became Mistress of the House of Brinken.
WHEN Alraune once more returned to the house on the
Rhine that was sacred to St. Nepomuk the Privy Councilor
ten Brinken was seventy-six years old. But that was only
calendar age. There was no weakness or even the smallest
amount of pain to remind him of it. He felt warm and sunny in the old
village that was now threatened to be seized by the growing fingers of
the city.
He hung like a fat spider in the strong web of his power as it
extended out in all directions and he felt a light titillation at Alraune’s
home coming. She would be a welcome plaything for his whims and
equally amusing bait that should entice many more stupid flies and
moths into his web.
When Alraune came she didn’t appear that much different to the
old man than she had been as a child. He studied her for a long time
as she sat in front of him in the library and found nothing that
reminded him of her father or her mother.
The young girl was petite, pretty, slender, narrow-chested and
not yet developed. Her figure was like that of a boy’s as were her
quick, somewhat awkward movements. He thought she looked like a
doll, only her head was not a doll’s head at all. Her cheekbones
protruded, her pale thin lips stretched over her little teeth.
But her hair fell rich and full, not red like her mother’s, but
heavy and chestnut brown like that of Frau Josefe Gontram, thought
the Privy Councilor. Then it occurred to him that it had been in that
house where the idea of Alraune first originated.
He squinted over across where she still sat, observing her
critically like a picture, watching her, searching for memories–
Yes, her eyes, they opened wide under saucy thin eyebrows that
arched across her smooth narrow forehead. They looked cool and
derisive and yet at times soft and dreamy, grass green, hard as steel–
like the eyes of his nephew Frank Braun.
The professor shoved out his broad lower lip. That particular
discovery did not please him at all– Then he shrugged his shoulders,
why shouldn’t the youth who had first conceived of her not share this
with her? It was little enough and very dearly bought considering the
round millions that this quiet girl had taken from him–
“You have bright eyes,” he said.
She only nodded.
He continued, “And your hair is beautiful. Wölfchen’s mother
had hair like that.”
Then Alraune said, “I’m going to cut it off.”
The Privy Councilor commanded, “You will not do that, do you
hear?”
But when she came to the evening meal her hair was cut. She
looked like a page, her locks falling in curls around her boy’s head.
“Where is your hair?” he cried at her.
Calmly she said, “Here.”
She showed him a large cardboard box. In it lay the shiny meter
long bundles of hair.
He began, “Why did you cut it off?–Because I forbid it?–Out of
defiance then?”
Alraune smiled, “No, not at all. I would have done it anyway.”
“Then why?” he enquired.
She picked up the box and took out the seven long bundles. Each
one was tied and wrapped with a golden cord and there was a little
card attached to it. There were seven names on these seven cards,
Emma, Marguèrite, Louison, Evelyn, Anna, Maud and Andrea.
“Are those your school friends?” He asked. “You cut your hair
off to send them a keepsake? You foolish child.”
He was angry at this unexpected teenage sentimentalism. It
didn’t appeal to him at all. He had imagined the girl much more
mature and cold-blooded.
She looked straight at him, “No,” she said. “I don’t care about
them at all–only”–she hesitated–
“Only what?” urged the professor.
“Only,” she began again. “Only they should cut their hair off
too!”
“Why should they?” cried the old man.
Then Alraune laughed, “–cut their hair completely off! Much
more than I have, right down to the scalp. I’ll write them that I have
cut my hair right to the scalp–and then they must do it as well!”
“They wouldn’t be that stupid,” he threw back.
“Oh yes they will,” she insisted. “I told them that we should all
cut our hair off and they promised they would if I did it first. But I
forgot all about it and only remembered again when you spoke of my
hair.”
The Privy Councilor laughed at her, “People promise all kinds of
things–but they won’t do them. You alone are the fool.”
Then she raised herself up from her chair and came up close to
the old man.
“Yes they will,” she whispered hotly. “They will do it. They
know very well that I will rip their hair out myself if they don’t–They
are afraid of me, even when I’m not there.”
Stirred up and trembling slightly with emotion she stood there in
front of him.
“Are you that certain they will do it?” he asked.
She answered with conviction, “Yes, absolutely certain.”
Then the same certainty grew in him as well and he didn’t even
wonder why.
“So why did you do it then?” he asked.
In an instant she was transformed. All her strangeness had
disappeared and she was once more just a moody and capricious
child.
“Well,” she laughed shortly and her little hands stroked the full
bundles of hair. “Well, you see–it’s like this. It hurts me, this heavy
hair, and I sometimes get headaches from it. I also know that short
hair looks good on me but it doesn’t look good on them at all. The
senior class of Mademoiselle de Vynteelen will look like a monkey
house! The other students will scream at them and call them fools and
Mademoiselle will scold them. The new Miss and the Fräulein will
scream at them and scold them as well.”
She clapped her hands together laughing brightly with glee.
“Will you help me?” she asked. “How should I send them?”
The Privy Councilor said, “Individually, as samples of no value
and have them registered.”
She nodded, “Alright, that’s what I will do!”
During the evening meal she described to him how the girls
would look without their hair. The tall rangy Evelyn Clifford had thin
straight light blonde hair and full-blooded Louison always wore her
brown hair pinned up turban style. Then there were the two
Rodenberg Countesses, Anna and Andrea. Their long curly locks
encircled their hard bony Westfalen skulls.
“With all their hair gone,” she laughed, “they will look like
Meerkats! Everyone will laugh when they see them.”
They went back to the library. The Privy Councilor helped her
get the things she needed, got her cardboard boxes, twine, sealing wax
and postage stamps. Then he smoked his cigar, chewing half of it
while watching her write her letters, seven little letters to seven girls
in Spa.
The old family crest of the Brinkens was on the top of each
letter, John of Nepomuk, patron Saint and protector against floods,
was in the upper field, below was a silver heron fighting with a
serpent–The heron was the heraldic animal of the Brinkens.
He looked at her and a faint itch crept over his old skin. Old
memories began to grow in him, lustful thoughts of half-grown boys
and girls–She, Alraune, was both a boy and a girl. Moist spittle
dribbled down from his fleshy lips, soaking into the black Havana. He
squinted over at her, eager and full of trembling desire. In that minute
he understood what it was that attracted people to this slender petite
creature like the little fish that swim after the bait and don’t see the
hook.
But he could see the sharp hook very well and thought he knew a
way to avoid the hook and still consume the sweet morsel–
Wolf Gontram worked at the Privy Councilor’s office in the city.
His foster father had taken him out of school after one year and stuck
him in a bank as an apprentice. There he had forgotten everything he
had so laboriously learned at school. He settled into his job and did
just what was demanded of him. Then when his apprenticeship came
to an end he went to the Privy Councilor’s office to work as a
secretary.
It was a strange business, being a secretary for his Excellency.
Karl Mohnen, Ph.D. four times over, was office manager and his old
boss found him useful enough. He still went through life looking for
the right person to get married to. Wherever he went he made new
acquaintances and hung out with the new set. But it never led to
anything. His hair was long gone but his nose was still as good as
always–he was always sniffing around for something, a woman for
himself or a business opportunity for the Privy Councilor–and he was
good at it.
A couple of accountants kept the books in order well enough to
keep things going and there was a room that bore the sign “Legal
Business”. Legal Councilor Gontram and Herr Manasse, who had not
yet been promoted to Legal Councilor, sometimes spent an hour in it.
They took care of the Privy Councilor’s ample lawsuits as they
handsomely multiplied. Manasse took the hopeful ones that would
end in a victory and the old Legal Councilor took the bad ones,
prolonging them and postponing them until finally bringing them to
an acceptable compromise.
Dr. Mohnen had his own office as well. Wolf Gontram sat in this
office as his protégé and he sought to educate the boy in his own way.