Anarchistbanjo's World

Alraune by Hanns Heinz Ewers and translated by Joe E Bandel

This man of the world knew a lot, scarcely less than little Manasse,
but he never acted upon that knowledge or did anything with it.
He had gathered his information just like as a boy he had
collected stamps, because his schoolmates were doing it. Now his
stamp collection lay in a desk drawer someplace. Only when someone
wanted to see a rare stamp did he take it out and flip through it.
“There, Saxony, red!”
Something had attracted him to Wolf Gontram. Perhaps it was
the big black eyes that he had once loved when they belonged to
Wolf’s mother. He loved them as well as he could considering how he
loved five hundred other beautiful eyes as well. Yet the farther back
his relationship with a woman, the greater it now appeared. Today he
felt as if he had once had the most intimate trust of this woman whose
son now worked with him even though he had not once even kissed
her hand.
And so it came about that young Gontram took in all his little
love stories and believed them. Not for one second did he doubt the
doctor’s heroic deeds and solidly held him up as the great seducer that
he so terribly wanted to be himself.
Dr. Mohnen selected his wardrobe, showed him how to tie a
bowtie and made him elegant–as much as he understood elegant–
He gave him books, took him with to the theater and to concerts
in order to always have a grateful audience for his stories. He held
himself to be a man of the world and wanted to make Wolf Gontram
into one as well. And it was no lie that the Gontram youth had him
alone to thank for everything that he became. Dr. Mohnen was the
teacher that was needed, that demanded nothing and always gave day
after day. Minute by minute without even knowing it he fashioned a
new life for Wolf Gontram.
Wolf Gontram was beautiful, everyone in the city could see that
except Karl Mohnen who thought beauty was only possible in tight
association with skirts and to whom everything was beautiful that
wore long hair and nothing else.
But the others saw it. Even when he was going to school old
Gentlemen turned as he went by and squinted after him, officers
glanced at him and turned pale whenever he was around. Many a
well-groomed head with jaded tastes sighed–and quickly suppressed
the hot desire and longing that screamed inside them. But now the
glances came from under veils or grand hats. The beautiful eyes of
women now followed the young man.
“That must be nice!” growled little Manasse as he sat in the park
with the Legal Councilor and his son listening to a concert. “If she
doesn’t turn back around soon her neck will really hurt!”
“Who are you taking about?” asked the Legal Councilor.
“Who? Her Royal Highness!” cried the attorney. “Look over
there Herr Colleague. She’s been staring at your rascal for the last half
hour, craning her neck around to look at him.”
“God, just let her be,” answered the Legal Councilor good-
naturedly.
But little Manasse wouldn’t give up.
“Sit over here Wolf!” he commanded and the young man obeyed
sitting beside him and turning his back to the princess.
Yes, this beauty frightened the little attorney. He felt that it was a
mask and he could hear death laughing behind it just as he believed it
had done for the boy’s mother. And that pained him, tortured him
until he almost hated the young man, even as he had once loved his
mother. This hatred was strange enough, it was a nightmare, a burning
desire that young Gontram’s fate would soon be fulfilled, that it
would happen suddenly–much better today than tomorrow.
Still it was the attorney that tried to liberate the boy from his fate
if he could and did everything possible to help, to smooth his life out
as much as possible. When his Excellency ten Brinken stole his foster
son’s fortune he was beside himself.
“You are a fool! An Idiot!”
He barked at the Legal Councilor. He dearly wanted to nip at his
heels like his poor dead hound, Cyclops, had done and he set down to
the father in smallest detail every way his son had been swindled, one
after the other.
The Privy Councilor had taken over the vineyards and fields that
Wolf had inherited from his aunt and scarcely paid fair market price
for them. Then he had discovered no less than three mineral springs
on those same grounds that he now bottled and profited from.
“We would have never thought of that,” responded the Legal
Councilor quietly.
The little attorney spit in anger. “That doesn’t matter! The
properties are worth six times as much today and the old swindler
didn’t even pay that. He deducted over half of the price for the boy’s
upkeep. It is an obscenity–”
But it made no impression at all on the Legal Councilor. He was
a good man, so full of goodness that he only saw the goodness in
others as well. He was ready to find a bit of it in the lowest criminals
no matter what their crimes. So he thought highly of the Privy
Councilor for hiring the boy to work in his offices. Then he threw in
his trump card. The Privy Councilor himself had told him that he
wanted to remember his son sufficiently in his will.
“Him? Him?” The attorney became bright red with restrained
anger and plucked at the gray stubble of his beard.
“He won’t leave the boy one copper!”
But the Legal Councilor closed the debate, “Besides, a Gontram
has never gone bad as long as the Rhine has flowed.” And in that he
was completely right.
Every evening since Alraune returned Wolf rode out to
Lendenich. Dr. Mohnen procured a horse for him from his friend,
cavalry captain, Count Geroldingen, who placed it at his disposal. His
mentor also had the young man learn dancing and fencing.
“A man of the world must know these things,” he declared and
told of wild rides, triumphant duels and huge successes in ball rooms
even though he himself had never climbed on a horse, never stood in
front of a sword and could scarcely skip to the polka.
Wolf Gontram would bring the count’s horse to the stables and
then walk across the courtyard to the mansion. He always brought one
rose, never more than one. That’s what Dr. Mohnen had taught him.
But it was always the most beautiful rose in the entire city.
Alraune would take his rose and slowly pluck it. Every evening it
went that way. She would fold the petals together in her hands and
then blow them explosively against his forehead and his cheeks. That
was the favor she granted him. He did not demand anything else. He
dreamed of having her–but not once did he act on those dreams and
his unmastered desire circled and filled the room.
Wolf Gontram followed the strange creature that he loved like a
shadow. She called him Wölfchen like she had done as a child.
“Because you are such a big dog,” she declared, “with long
shaggy black hair and very handsome. You also have such deep,
trusting and questioning eyes–that’s why! Because you are not good
for anything Wölfchen, other than to run behind me and carry my
things.”
Then she would call him over to lie down in front of her chair
and she would put her little feet on his breast, stroke him across the
cheeks with her soft doe-skin shoes, then throw them off and poke the
tips of her toes between his lips.
“Kiss, kiss,” and she laughed as he kissed all around the fine silk
stockings that enclosed her feet.
The Privy Councilor squinted at young Gontram with a sour
smile. He was as ugly as the boy was beautiful–He knew that very
well, but he was not afraid that Alraune would fall in love with him. It
was just that his constant presence was uncomfortable to him.
“He doesn’t need to come over here every night,” he grumbled.
“Yes he does!” responded Alraune–so Wölfchen came.
The professor thought, “Very well then, my boy, swallow the
hook!”
So Alraune became mistress of the house of Brinken from the
very first day she came back from school. She was the mistress and
yet remained a stranger, remained an outsider, a thing that would not
grow in this ancient earth, not in this community that had planted
roots and breathed the ancient air.
The servants, the maids, the coachman and the gardener only
called her Fräulein and so did all the people of the village. They
would say, “There goes the Fräulein,” and said it as if she came from
somewhere else and was only visiting. But Wolf Gontram called her
the young Master.
The shrewd Privy Councilor noticed these things at once and it
occurred to him that the people sensed she was different. He wrote in
the leather volume, “and the animals sense it too! The animals–the
horses and the hounds, the slender roe-buck that run around in the
garden and even the little squirrels that scurry through the tops of the
trees.”
Wolf Gonram was their great friend. They raised their heads and
ran up to him when he was near. But they slunk quietly away when
the Fräulein was with him.
Her influence extended only to people thought the professor.
Animals are immune and he counted the farmers and servants among
the animals. They had the same healthy instincts, he reflected, some
instinctive dislike that was half fear.
She can be very happy that she was born into this world now and
not five centuries ago. She would have been accused of being a witch
in a month’s time in this little village of Lendenich–and the Bishop
would have been given a good roast.
This aversion of the people and animals toward Alraune
delighted the old gentleman almost as much as the strange attraction
she exerted on the higher born. He always noted new examples of this
affection and hatred even though he did find exceptions in both
camps.
From the records of the Privy Councilor it shows that he was
convinced there was some factor in Alraune that brought about a
sharp and well-defined influence on her surroundings. The professor
was inclined to gather evidence that would support his hypothesis and
to reject anything that didn’t.
As a result his manuscript was much less a report over the things
she did–than a relating of what others did under her influence. It was
primarily an account of the people that came in contact with her, and
how they played out the life of the creature Alraune.
To the Privy Councilor she was a true phantom, an unreal thing
that had no real life of her own, a shadow creature that reflected the
ultraviolet radiation of others back at them, causing them to do the
things they did.
He doggedly pursued this idea and never really believed that she
was human at all. He even spoke to her as if she were an unreal thing
that he had given a body and form, as if she were a bloodless doll that
he had given a living mask. That flattered his old vanity and was why
Alraune affected his life more than she did any of the others.
So he polished his doll and made her more colorful and beautiful
each day. He allowed her to be mistress and submitted to her wishes
and moods just like the others, but with this difference. He always
believed he had the game in hand, was firmly convinced that
ultimately it was only his individual will that was being reflected back
and expressed through the medium of Alraune.