Anarchistbanjo's World

Alraune by Hanns Heinz Ewers and translated by Joe E Bandel

Chapter Fifteen
Tells how Alraune lived in the park.
HE didn’t write his mother on that day, or the next, pushed it
off for another week and further–for months. He lived in
the large garden of the Brinkens, like he had done when he
was a boy, when he had spent his school vacations there.
They sat in the warm green houses or under the mighty cedars,
whose young sprouts had been brought from Lebanon by some pious
ancestor, or strolled under the Mulberry trees, past a small pool that
was deeply overshadowed by hanging willows.
The garden belonged to them that summer, to them alone,
Alraune and him. The Fräulein had given strict orders that none of the
servants were permitted to enter, not by day or by night. Not once
were the gardeners called for. They were sent away into the city,
charged with the maintenance of her gardens at her villas in Coblenz.
The renters were very happy and amazed at the Fräulein’s
attentiveness.
Only Frieda Gontram used the path. She never spoke a word
about what she suspected but didn’t know. But her pinched lips and
her evasive glance spoke loudly enough. She avoided meeting him on
the path and yet was always there as soon as he was together with
Alraune.
“What the blazes,” he grumbled. “I wish she was on top of
mount Blocksberg!”
“Is she bothering you?” asked Alraune.
“Doesn’t she bother you?” he retorted.
She replied, “I haven’t noticed. I scarcely pay any attention to
her.”
That evening he encountered Frieda Gontram by the blossoming
blackthorns. She stood up from her bench and turned to go. Her gaze
held a hot hatred.
He went up to her, “What is it Frieda?”
She said, “Nothing!–You can be satisfied now. You will soon be
free of me.”
“Why is that?” he asked.
Her voice trembled, “I must go–tomorrow! Alraune told me that
you didn’t want me here.”
An infinite misery spoke out of her glance.
“You wait here, Frieda. I will speak with her.”
He hurried into the house and came back after a short time.
“We have thought it over,” he began, “Alraune and I. It is not
necessary that you go away–forever. Frieda, it’s only that I make you
nervous with my presence–and you do the same for me, excuse me for
saying it. That’s why it would be better if you go on a journey–only
for awhile. Travel to Davos to visit your brother. Come back in two
months.”
She stood up, looked at him with questioning eyes that were still
full of fear.
“Is that the truth?” she whispered. “Only for two months?”
He answered, “Certainly it’s true. Why should I lie Frieda?”
She gripped his hand; a great joy made her face glow.
“I am very grateful to you!” she said. “Everything is alright
then–as long as I am permitted to come back!”
She said, “Goodbye,” and headed for the house, stopped
suddenly and came back to him.
“There is something else, Herr Doctor,” she said. “Alraune gave
me a check this morning but I tore it up, because–because–in short, I
tore it up. Now I will need some money. I don’t want to go to her–she
would ask–and I don’t want her to ask. For that reason–will you give
me the money?”
He nodded, “Naturally I will–Am I permitted to ask why you
tore the check up?”
She looked at him, shrugged her shoulders.
“I wouldn’t have needed the money any more if I had to leave
her forever–”
“Frieda,” he pressed, “where would you have gone?”
“Where?” A bitter laugh rang out from her thin lips. “Where?
The same place Olga went! Only, believe me, doctor. I would have
achieved my goal!”
She nodded lightly to him, walked away and disappeared
between the birch trees.
Early, when the young sun woke him, he came out of his room in
his kimono, went into the garden along the path that led past the trellis
and into the rose bed. He cut white Boule de Neige roses, Queen
Catharine roses, Victoria roses, Snow Queen roses and Merveille de
Lyon roses. Then he turned left where the larches and the silver fir
trees stood.
Alraune sat on the edge of the pool in a black silk robe, breaking
breadcrumbs, throwing them to the goldfish. When he came she
twined a wreath out of the pale roses, quickly and skillfully making a
crown for her hair.
She threw off her robe, sat in her lace negligee and splashed in
the cool water with her naked feet–She scarcely spoke, but she
trembled as his fingers lightly caressed her neck, when his soft breath
caressed her cheek. Slowly she took off the negligee and laid it on the
bronze mermaid beside her.
Six water nymphs sat around the marble edge of the pool pouring
water out of jugs and urns, spraying thin streams out of their breasts.
Various animals crept around them, giant lobsters, spiny lobsters,
turtles, fish, eels and other reptiles. In the middle of the pool Triton
blew his horn as chubby faced merfolk blew mighty streams of water
high into the air around him.
“Come, my friend,” she said.
Then they both climbed into the water. It was very cold and he
shivered, his lips became blue and goose bumps quickly appeared on
his arms. He had to swim vigorously, beat his arms and tread water to
warm his blood and get accustomed to the unusual temperature.
But she didn’t even notice, was in her element in an instant and
laughing at him. She swam around like a little frog.
“Turn the faucet on!” she cried.
He did it. There, near the pool’s edge, by the statue of Galatea,
light waves came from the water as well as three other places in the
pool. They boiled up a little, growing stronger and higher, climbing
higher and higher, until they became enormous sparkling cascades of
silvery rain, higher than the spouting streams of the mermen.
There she stood between all four, in the middle of a shimmering
rain, like a sweet boy, slender and delicate. His long glance kissed
her. There was no blemish in the symmetry of her limbs, not the
slightest defect in this sweet work of art. Her color was in proportion
as well, like white marble with a light breath of yellow. Only the
insides of her thighs showed two curious rose colored lines.
“That’s where Dr. Petersen perished,” he thought.
He bent down, kneeled and kissed the rosy places.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked.
He said, “ I’m thinking that you are the fairy Melusine!–See the
little mermaids around us–they have no legs, only long, scaly fish
tails. They have no souls, these nymphs, but it is said that sometimes
they love a human, some fisherman or wandering knight.
They love him so much that they come out of the water at high
tide, out onto the land. Then they go to an old witch or shaman–that
brews some nasty potion they have to drink. Then the shaman takes a
sharp knife and begins to cut into the fish tail. It is very painful–very
painful, but Melusine suppresses her pain. Her love is so great that
she doesn’t complain, doesn’t cry out, until the pain becomes so great
she loses consciousness. But when she awakes–her little tail is gone
and she goes about on two beautiful legs–like a human–only the scars
where the shaman cut are still visible.”
“But wasn’t she always still a nymph?” she asked. “Even with
human legs?–And the sorcerer could never create a soul for her.”
“No,” he said. “He couldn’t do that, but there is something else
they say of nymphs.”
“What do they say?” she asked.
He explained, “She only has her strange power as long as she is
untouched. When she drowns in the kisses of her lover, when she
looses her maidenhood in her knight’s embrace–then she looses her
magic as well. She can no longer bring river gold and treasures but
the black sorrow that followed her can no longer cross her threshold
either. From then on she is like any other child of man–”
“If it only was!” she whispered.
She tore the white crown from her head, swam over to the
mermen and Triton, to the water nymphs and threw the rose blossoms
into their laps–
“Take them, sisters–take them!” she laughed. “I am a child of
man–”
An enormous canopy bed stood in Alraune’s bedroom on low,
baroque columns. Two pillars grew out of the foot and bore shelves
that shown with golden flames. The engraved sides showed Omphale
with Hercules in a woman’s dress as he waited on her, Perseus kissing
Andromeda, Hephaestus catching Ares and Aphrodite in his net–
Many tendrils of vines wove themselves in between and doves played
in them–along with winged cherubs. The magnificent ancient bed,
heavily gilt with gold, had been brought out of Lyons by Fräulein
Hortense de Monthy when she became his great-grandfather’s wife.
He saw Alraune standing on a chair at the head of the bed, a
heavy pliers in her hand.
“What are you doing with that?” he asked.
She laughed, “Just wait. I will soon be finished.”
She pounded and tore, carefully enough, at the golden figurine of
Amor that hovered at the head of the bed with his bow and arrow. She
pulled one nail out, then another, seized the little god, twisted him this
way and that–until he came loose. She grabbed him, jumped down,
laid him on top of the wardrobe, took out the Alraune manikin,
clambered back up onto the chair again with it and fastened it to the
head of the bed with wire and twine. Then she came back down and
looked critically at her work.