Anarchistbanjo's World

Alraune by Hanns Heinz Ewers and translated by Joe E Bandel

Frau Lisbeth grasped his hand. “Leave it alone!” she decided. “I
will speak with the Fräulein myself.”
She left him standing there, went across the courtyard and
announced herself. While she waited she considered exactly what she
wanted to say so they would be permitted to leave that very morning.
But she didn’t need to say anything at all. The Fräulein only listened,
heard that he wanted to go without notice, nodded curtly and said that
it was all right.
Frau Lisbeth flew back to her man, embraced and kissed him.
“Only one more night and the bad dream will be over.”
They must pack quickly and he should telephone the Councilor
to the Chamber of Commerce to tell him that he could begin his new
job the next morning. They pulled the old trunk out from under the
bed and her bright enthusiasm infected him. He pulled out his iron
bound chest as well, dusted it off and helped her pack, passing things
to her. He ran into the village to hire a boy to bring a cart for hauling
things away. He laughed and was content for the first time in the
house of ten Brinken.
Then, as he was taking a cook pot from the stove and wrapping it
in newspaper Aloys, the servant, came.
He announced, “The Fräulein wants to go driving.”
Raspe stared at him and didn’t say a word.
“Don’t go!” cried his wife.
He said, “Please inform the Fräulein that as of today I am no
longer–”
He didn’t finish. Alraune ten Brinken stood in the door.
She said, “Matthieu-Maria, I let you go tomorrow. Today you
will go driving with me.”
Then she left and behind her went Raspe.
“Don’t go! Don’t go!” screamed Frau Lisbeth.
He could hear her screams but didn’t know who it was or where
they came from. Frau Lisbeth fell heavily onto the bench. She heard
both of their steps as they crossed the courtyard to the garage. She
heard the iron gate creak open on its hinges, heard the auto as it drove
out onto the street and heard as well the short blast of the horn. That
was the farewell greeting her husband always gave each time he left
for the city. She sat there with both hands on her lap and waited,
waited until they brought him back. Four farmers carried him in on a
mattress and laid him down in the middle of the room among the
trunks and boxes. They undressed him, helped wash him and did as
the doctor commanded. His long white body was full of blood, dust
and dirt.
Frau Lisbeth knelt beside him without words, without tears. The
old coachman came and took the screaming boys away, then the
farmers left and finally the doctor as well. She never asked him, not
with words or with her eyes. She already knew the answer that he
would give.
Once in the middle of the night Raspe woke up and opened his
eyes. He recognized her, asked for some water and she gave him
some to drink.
“It is over,” he said weakly.
She asked, “What happened?”
He shook his head, “I don’t know. The Fräulein said, ‘Faster,
Matthieu-Maria’. I didn’t want to do it. Then she laid her hand on
mine and I felt her through my glove and I did it. That’s all I know.”
He spoke so softly that she had to put her ear next to his mouth
to hear and when he was quiet she whispered.
“Why did you do it?”
Again he moved his lips, “Forgive me Lisbeth! I had to do it.
The Fräulein–”
She looked at him, startled by the hot look in his eyes, and her
tongue suddenly cried out the thought almost before her brain could
even think it.
“You, you love her?”
Then he raised his head the width of a thumb and murmured with
closed eyes, “Yes, yes– I –love driving–with her.”
Those were the last words he spoke. He sank back into a deep
faint and lay like that until the early morning when he passed away.
Frau Lisbeth stood up. She ran to the door and old Froitsheim took
her into his arms.
“My husband is dead,” she said.
The coachman made the sign of the cross and made to go past
her into the room but she held him back.
“Where is the Fräulein?” she asked quickly. “It she alive? Is she
hurt?”
The deep wrinkles in the old face deepened, “Is she alive?–
Whether she even lives! She’s standing over there! Wounded? Not a
scratch. She just got a little dirty!”
He pointed with trembling fingers out into the courtyard. There
stood the slender Fräulein in her boy’s suit, setting her foot into the
laced fingers of a Hussar, swinging up into the saddle.
“She telephoned the cavalry captain,” said the old coachman.
“Told him she had no groom this morning, so the count sent that
fellow over.”
Lisbeth ran across the courtyard.
“He is dead!” she cried. “My man is dead.”
Alraune ten Brinken turned around in the saddle, toyed with the
riding whip.
“Dead,” she said slowly. “Dead. That’s really too bad.”
She lightly struck her horse and walked it up to the gate.
“Fräulein,” screamed Frau Lisbeth. “Fräulein, Fräulein–”
Frau Lisbeth ran to the Privy Councilor overflowing with all her
despair and hatred. The Privy Councilor let her talk until she quieted
down. Then he said that he understood her pain and was not offended
at what she had said. He was also prepared, despite the notice, to pay
three months of her husband’s wages. But she needed to be
reasonable, should be able to see that her husband alone carried the
blame for the regrettable accident.
She ran to the police and they were not even polite to her. They
had seen it coming, they said. Everyone knew that Raspe was the
wildest driver on the entire Rhine. They had done their duty many
times by trying to warn him. She should be ashamed of herself for
trying to lay the blame on the young Fräulein! Had she ever been seen
driving? Yesterday or ever?
Then she ran to an attorney, then a second and a third. But they
were honest people and told her that they could not move forward
with a lawsuit even when she wanted to pay in advance. Oh, certainly,
anything was possible and conceivable, why not? But did she have
any proof? No, none at all. Well then! She should just go quietly back
home. There was nothing that she could do. Even if everything that
she said was true and could be proved–her husband would still carry
the blame. He was a grown man, a skilled and experienced chauffeur,
while the Fräulein was an inexperienced scarcely grown thing–
So she went back home. She buried her husband in the little
cemetery behind the church. She packed all her things and loaded
them onto the cart herself. She took the money the Privy Councilor
had given her, took her boys and left.
A couple of days later a new chauffeur moved into her old living
quarters. He was short, fat and drank a lot. Fräulein ten Brinken didn’t
like him and seldom went driving alone with him. He never got any
speeding tickets and the people said that he was a good driver, much
better than wild Raspe had been.
“Little moth,” said Alraune ten Brinken when Wolf Gontram
stepped into the room one evening.
The beautiful eyes of the youth glowed.
“You are the candle flame,” he said.
Then she spoke, “You will burn your beautiful wings and then
you will lie on the floor like an ugly worm. Be careful Wolf
Gontram.”
He looked at her and shook his head.
“No,” he said. “This is the way I want it.”
And every long evening he flew around the flame. Two others
flew around it as well and got burned. Karl Mohnen was one and the
other was Hans Geroldingen. It was a matter of honor for Dr. Mohnen
to court her.
“A perfect match,” he thought. “Finally, she is the right one!”
And his little ship rushed in with full sails. He was always a little
in love with every woman but now his brain burned under his bald
head, making him foolish, letting him feel for this one girl everything
that he had felt for dozens of other women one after the other back
through the years. Like always he made the assumption that Alraune
ten Brinken felt the same ardent desire toward him, a love that was
boundless, limitless and breathless.
One day he talked to Wolf Gontram about his great new
conquest. He was glad the boy rode out to Lendenich–as his
messenger of love. He had the boy bring many greetings, hand kisses
and small gifts from him. Not just one red rose, that was for
gentlemen. He was both lover and beloved and needed to send more,
flowers, chocolates, petit fours, pralines, and fans, hundreds of little
things and knick-knacks. The small bit of good taste that he did have
and which he had so successfully taught to his ward melted in the
blink of an eye in the flickering fire of his love.
The cavalry captain would often go traveling with him. They had
been friends for many years. Count Geroldingen had once been
nurtured by Dr. Mohnen’s treasures of wisdom just as Wolf Gontram
was now being nurtured. Dr. Mohnen had a vast storehouse and gave
it out by the handfuls, happy to find someone that would make use of
it.
The two of them would go off on adventures together. It was
always the doctor that met the ladies and made their acquaintance.
Later he would introduce the count as his friend and boast about him.
Often enough it was the Hussar officer who finally plucked the ripe
cherries from the tree which Karl Mohnen had discovered.
The first time he had pangs of conscience and considered himself
as low as they came. He tormented himself for a couple of days and
then openly confessed to his friend what he had done. He made
vehement excuses saying the girl had made such advances toward him
that he had no choice but to submit to her. He was glad that it had
happened because now he knew the girl was not worthy of his
friend’s love.
Dr. Mohnen made nothing about it, saying that it didn’t matter to
him at all, that it was completely all right. Then he gave the example
of the Mayan Indians in the Yucatan. It was customary for them to
say, “My wife is also my friend’s wife”.
But Count Geroldingen could tell his friend was sick about it so
the next time a new acquaintance of the doctor preferred him, he
didn’t say anything. Thus it happened over the years that quite a few
of Dr. Mohnen’s women also became the handsome cavalry captain’s
women as well, exactly like in the Yucatan. Only there was this
difference, most of them had never been the doctor’s women at all.
He was the chicari, the beater, that tracked down the game and
drove it out into the open–but the hunter was Hans Geroldingen. Yet
he was quiet about it, had a good heart and didn’t want to hurt his
friend’s feelings. So the beater never noticed when the hunter shot
and held himself up as the most glorious Nimrod on the Rhine.
Dr. Mohnen would often say, “Come along count. I’ve made a
new conquest, a picture beautiful English girl. I picked her up
yesterday at the open air concert and am meeting her tonight on the
banks of the Rhine.”
“But what about Elly?” the cavalry captain would reply.
“Replaced,” declared Karl Mohnen grandly.
It was phenomenal how easily he could exchange his current
flame for a new one. As soon as he found someone new he was
simply done with the old one and didn’t care about her at all. The girls
never made any troubles for him either. In that respect he far
surpassed the Hussar who always had difficulty letting go and even
more difficulty in getting his women to let go of him. For those
reasons it required all the energy and persuasive skill of the doctor to
take him along to meet some new beauty.
This time he said, “You must see her captain. God, I’m so happy
that I have come so lightly through all my adventures and never been
caught. Finally I’ve found the right one! She’s enormously rich,
enormously. His old Excellency has over thirty million, perhaps forty.
Well, what do you say count? His foster daughter is pretty as a picture
and fresh as a blossom on a tree limb! By the way, speaking in strict
confidence, the little bird is already in my net. I have never been so
certain of things!”
“Yes, but what about Fräulein Clara?” returned the cavalry
captain.
“Gone,” declared the doctor. “Just today I wrote her a letter
saying that my work load had become so overwhelming that I simply
had no more time left for her.”