Alraune by Hanns Heinz Ewers and translated by Joe E Bandel
Chapter 1
Describes the house on the Rhine before the thought of
Alraune came into the world.
THE white house in which Alraune was thought into
existence existed long before she was born–long before she
was even conceived. This house lay on the Rhine a little out
of the city on the large Villa Street leading out to the old
Archbishop’s Palace where the university is today. That is where it
lies and Legal Councilor Sebastian Gontram and his family once lived
there.
You walk in from the street, through the long ugly garden that
has never seen a gardener. You come to the house, from which stucco
is falling, search for a bell and find none. You call and scream and no
one comes. Finally you push the door open and go inside, climb up
the dirty, never washed stair and suddenly a huge cat springs through
the darkness…
Or even better–
The large garden is alive with a thousand monkeys. They are the
Gontram children: Frieda, Philipp, Paulche, Emilche, Josefehe, and
Wülfche. They are everywhere, in the boughs of trees, creeping
through the earth in the mine pits. Then there are the hounds, two
cheeky spitzes and a Bastard Fox terrier. In addition there is a dwarf
pinscher that belongs to Attorney Manasse. He is quite the thing, like
a brown quince sausage, round as a barrel , scarcely larger than a hand
and called Cyclops.
The yard is filled with noises and screams. Wülfche, scarcely a
year old, lies in a child’s wagon and screams high obstinate screams
for hours. Only Cyclops can beat this record and he yelps, hoarse and
broken, incessantly. Wülfche never moves from his place, only
screams, only howls.
The Gontram rogues are resting in the bushes late in the
afternoon. Frieda, the oldest, should be looking out for them, taking
care that her brothers are behaving. But she thinks they are behaving
and sits under the decaying Lilac leaves with her friend, the little
Princess Wolkonski.
The two chatter and argue, thinking that they soon will become
fourteen years old and can get married, or at least have a lover. Right
now they are both forbidden from all this and need to wait a little
longer. It is still fourteen days until their first Holy Communion. Then
they get long dresses, and then they will be grown up. Then they can
have a lover.
She decides to become very virtuous and start going to the May
devotions at church immediately. She needs to gather herself together
in these days, be serious and sensible.
“–and perhaps also because Schmitz will be there,” says Frieda.
The little Princess turns up her nose, “Bah–Schmitz!”
Frieda pinches her under the arm, “–and the Bavarian, the one
with the blue cap!”
Olga Wolkonski laughs, “Him? He is–all air! Frieda, you know
the good boys don’t go to church.”
That is true, the good ones don’t do that. Frieda sighs. She
swiftly gets up and shoves the wagon with the screaming Wülfche to
the side, and steps on Cyclops who is trying to bite her ankles. No, no,
the princess is right. Church is not the answer.
“Let’s stay here!” she decides. The two girls creep back under
the Lilac leaves.
All the Gontram children have an infinite passion for living.
They can’t say how they know but deep inside, they feel in their
blood that they will die young, die fresh. They only have a small
amount of time compared to what others are given and they take this
time in triple, making noise, rushing, eating and drinking until they
are saturated on life.
Wülfche screams in his wagon, screaming for himself alone as
well as for three other babies. His brothers fly through the garden
making themselves numerous, as if they were four dozen and not just
four. They are dirty, red nosed and ragged, always bloody from a cut
on the finger, a scraped knee or some other good scratch.
When the sun sets the Gontram rascals quietly sweep back into
the house, going into the kitchen for heaping sandwiches of buttered
bread laid thick with ham and sausage. The maid gives them water to
drink colored lightly with red wine.
Then the maid washes them. She pulls their clothes off and sticks
them in wooden tubs, takes the black soap, the hard brush and scrubs
them. She scrubs them like a pair of boots and still can’t get them
clean. Then she sticks the wild young ones back in the tubs crying
and raving and scrubs them again.
Dead tired they fall into their beds like sacks of potatoes,
forgetting to be quiet. They also forget to cover up. The maid takes
care of that.
Around this time Attorney Manasse comes into the house, climbs
up the stairs, knocks with his cane on a few doors and receiving no
answer finally moves on.
Frau Gontram moves toward him. She is tall, almost twice the
size of Herr Manasse. He is a dwarf, round as a barrel and looks
exactly like his ugly dog, Cyclops. Short stubble stands out all over
him, out of his cheeks, chin and lips. His nose appears in the middle,
small and round like a radish. When he speaks, he barks as if he is
always snapping.
“Good evening Frau Gontram,” he says. “Is my colleague home
yet?”
“Good evening attorney,” says the tall woman. “Make yourself
comfortable.”
“Why isn’t my colleague home yet?–and shut that kid up! I can’t
understand a single word you are saying.”
“What?” Frau Gontram asks. Then she takes the earplugs out of
her ears. “Oh yes,” she continues. “That Wülfche! You should buy a
pair of these things Attorney. Then you won’t hear him.”
She goes to the door and screams, “Billa, Billa–or Frieda! Can’t
you hear? Make Wülfche quiet!”
She is still in apricot colored pajamas. Her enormous chestnut
brown hair is half-pinned up and half-fallen down. Her black eyes
appear infinitely large, wide, wide, filled with sharp cunning and
scorching unholy fires. But her skeletal face curves in at the temples,
her narrow nose droops and her pale cheeks spread themselves tightly
over her bones. Huge patches burn lividly on–
“Do you have a good cigar Attorney?” she asks.
He takes his case out angrily, almost furiously.
“How many have you already smoked today Frau Gontram?”
“Only twenty,” she laughs. “But you know the filthy things are
four pennies apiece and I could use a good one for a change. Give me
the thick one there! – and you take the dark, almost black Mexican.”
Herr Manasse sighs, “Now how are you doing? How long do you
have?”
“Bah,” she made a rude sound. “Don’t wet yourself. How long?
The other day the doctor figured about six months. But you know how
precise they are in that place. He could just as well have meant two
years. I’m thinking it’s not going at a gallop. It’s going at a pretty trot
along with the galloping consumption.”
“You shouldn’t smoke so much!” The little attorney barks.
She looks at him, her thin blue lips pulling high over gleaming
teeth.
“What? What Manasse? No more smoking? Now stop with the
friendly airs! What am I supposed to do? Bear children all year long?
The brats in this house already drive me crazy. That’s why it’s
galloping–and I’m not supposed to smoke?”
She blows a thick cloud of smoke into his face and makes him
cough.
He looks at her, half-poisoned, half-living, and admires her. He
doesn’t take anything from anyone. When he stands before the bar he
never tells a joke or minces words. He barks, snaps, bites without
respect or the smallest fear.–But here, before this dried up woman
whose body is a skeleton, whose head grins like a death’s head, who
for a year and a day has stood three quarters in the grave and laughed
at herself the last quarter, here he feels afraid.
Her unrestrained shimmering locks are always growing, always
thicker, always fuller as if pulling nourishment from her decaying
body. Her perfect gleaming teeth clamp around a cigar; her eyes are
enormous, without hope, without desire, almost without awareness
but burning with fire–These leave him silent. They leave him feeling
smaller than he really is, almost as small as his hound.
Oh, he is very educated, Attorney Manasse is. She calls him a
veritable conversational encyclopedia. It doesn’t matter what the topic
of conversation, he can give the information in the blink of an eye.
Now he’s thinking, has she given up on finding a cure? Is she in
denial? Does she think that if she ignores death he will not come?
Does she think death is not in this house? That when he does come,
only then will she go?
But he, Manasse, sees very well that death is here even though
she still lives. He has been here all along hiding throughout the house,
playing blind cow with this woman that wears his face, letting her
abandon her numerous children to cry and race in the garden.
Death doesn’t gallop. He goes at a pretty trot. She has that right.
But only out of humor, only because he wants to make a joke, to play
with this woman and her life hungry children like a cat plays with the
fish in a fish bowl.
Only this woman, Frau Gontram, thinks he is not even here. She
lies on the lounge all day long smoking big dark cigars, reading
never-ending books and wearing earplugs so she can’t hear the noise
her children make–He is not here at all?–Not here?
Death grins and laughs out of her withered mask, puffs thick
smoke into his face. Little Manasse sees him perfectly enough. He
stares at him, considers for a long time which great artist has painted
this death. Is it Durer? Or Bocklin? Or some other wild harlequin
death from Bosch, Breughel or a different insane, inexcusable death
from Hogarth, from Goya, from Rowlandson, Rops or Callot?
It is from none of these. Sitting before him is a real death, a death
you can willingly go with. It is a good, proper and therefore romantic
Rhinelander’s death. It is one you can talk with, that sees the comedy
in life, that smokes, drinks wine and laughs. It is good that he smokes
thought Manasse, so very good, then you can’t smell him–
Then Legal Councilor Gontram comes into the room.
“Good evening colleague,” he says. “Here already? That’s
good.”
He begins a long story about all that has happened during the day
at the office and before the court. Purely remarkable things that only
happen to lawyers once in a lifetime happen to Herr Gontram every
day. These strange and often lusty occurrences are sometimes comic,
often bloody and highly tragic.
Not a word is true. The Legal Councilor has an incurable shyness
of telling the truth. Before his morning bath, yes, even before he
washes his face in the basin, from the moment his mouth first opens
wide he lies. When he sleeps, he dreams up new lies. Everyone knows
that he lies, but his stories are so lusty and interesting they want to
hear them anyway. Even when they aren’t that good they are still
entertaining.
He is in his late forties with a short, very sparse beard and
thinning hair. A gold pince-nez with a long black cord always hangs
crookedly over his nose and helps his blue shortsighted eyes see to
read.
He is untidy, disorderly, unwashed, and always has ink spots on
his fingers. He is a bad jurist and very much against doing any work,
always supervising his junior lawyers but not doing anything himself.
On this basis he oversees the office managers and clerks and is often
not seen for weeks at a time. When he is there, he sleeps. If he is
awake, once in awhile he writes a short sentence that reads, “Denied”
and stamps the words “Legal Councilor” underneath.
Nevertheless he has a very good practice, much better than the
knowledgeable and shrewd Manasse. He understands the language of
the people and can chat with them. He is popular with all the judges
and lawyers because he never makes any problems and all his clients
walk. For the accused and for the jury he is worth the gold he is paid,
you can believe that.
Once a Public Prosecutor said, “I ask the accused be denied
extenuating circumstances, Legal Councilor Gontram is defending
him.”
Extenuating circumstances, his clients always get them, but
Manasse seldom receives them despite his scholarly ways and sharp
speeches.
There is still more, Legal Councilor Gontram had a couple of
big, important and provocative cases that created sensations
throughout the land. In both cases he fought through the entire year
and finally won. These cases suddenly awoke in him a strange energy
that up until then had lain sleeping inside of him.
The first was so full of tangles, a six times loser, nearly
impossible case that went from lawyer to lawyer, a case with
complicated international questions that he had no suspicion of when
he took it. He just thought it was interesting and liked it.
The Koschen brothers out of Lennep had been condemned to
death three times. In a fourth resumption he continued on and won
their freedom despite hair splitting circumstantial evidence.
The other was a big million-dollar dispute over Galmeiberg Mfg.
from Neutral-Moresnet that every jurist in three countries knew about.
Certainly Gontram at the least had fought through to the very end and
obtained a victorious verdict.
Since then for three years he handles all the legal casework for
Princess Wolkonski. Remarkably, this man never says a word about
it, about what he really does. Instead he fills the ears of those he
meets with lies, cheeky inventions of his legal heroics. Not a single
syllable comes over his lips of the real events of his day. This makes
it seem like he detests all truth.
Frau Gontram says, “Dinner is just about ready and I’ve already
set out a bowl of fresh Woodruff salad. Should I go get dressed?”
“Stay the way you are woman,” the Legal Councilor decides.
“Manasse won’t mind–” he interrupts himself, “Dear God, how that
child screams! Can’t you hold him?”
She goes past him with long, slow strides, opens the door to the
antechamber where the maid has pushed the child’s wagon. She takes
Wülfche, carries him in and sits him in a highchair.
“No wonder he screams,” she says. He’s completely wet.”
But she does nothing about it, leaving him to dry out by himself.
“Be still, you little devil,” she continues. “Can’t you see I have
company?”
But Wülfche is determined to disturb the entire visit. Manasse
stands up, pats him, strokes his chubby back, and brings him a Jack-
in-the-box to play with. The child pushes the Jack-in-the-box away,
bellows and screams incessantly. Cyclops accompanies him from
under the table.
Then Mama says, “Now wait, sugar drop. I have something for
you.”
She takes the chewed black cigar stub from out between her teeth
and shoves it into the baby’s mouth.
“There Wülfche, how do you like that? Well?”
The child becomes still in the blink of an eye, sucking, pulling
and beams, overjoyed, out of huge laughing eyes.
“Now attorney, you see how you must deal with children?” says
the tall woman. She speaks confidently and quietly, completely
earnest.
“But you men don’t understand anything at all about children.”
The maid comes and announces that dinner is ready. While the
others are going into the dining room she goes with unsteady steps up
to the child.
“Bah,” she says and rips the cigar stub out of his mouth.
Immediately Wülfche starts to howl again. She takes him up, rocks
him back and forth and sings him a melancholy lullaby from her
Wolloonian homeland in Belgium.
She doesn’t have any more luck than Herr Manasse. The child
just screams and screams. She takes the cigar stub again, spits on it
and rubs it against her dirty apron to make sure the fire is completely
out and puts it back in Wülfche’s red mouth.
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