Alraune by Hanns Heinz Ewers and translated by Joe E Bandel
Wölfchen stared at it, fat tears running down his cheeks. But he
lit another cigarette when the first one burned down, removed the stub
from the frog’s throat and with shaking fingers pushed the fresh one
back into its mouth. The frog swelled up monstrously, quivering in
agony, its eyes popping out of their sockets. It was a strong animal
and endured two and a half cigarettes before it exploded.
The youth screamed in misery as if his own pain were much
greater than that of the animal he had just tortured to death. He sprang
back as if he wanted to run away into the bushes, looked around and
then quickly ran back when he saw that the torn body of the frog was
still moving. Wild and despairing he crushed it to death with his heel
to free it from its misery.
The Privy Councilor took him by the ear and searched his
pockets. He found a few more cigarettes and the boy confessed to
taking them from the writing desk in the library. But he could not be
moved to tell how he had known that smoking frogs would inflate
themselves until they finally explode. No amount of urging worked
and the rich beating that the professor gave him through the garden
didn’t help either. He remained silent.
Alraune stubbornly denied everything as well even after one of
the maids declared she had seen the child taking the cigarettes.
Despite everything they both stuck to their stories; the boy, that he
had stolen the cigarettes and the girl, that she had not done anything.
Alraune stayed at the convent for one more year. Then in the
middle of the school year she was sent home and certainly this time
unjustly. Only the superstitious sisters believed that she was guilty
and just maybe the Privy Councilor suspected it a little as well. But no
reasonable person would have.
Once before illness had broken out at Sacré Couer, that time it
had been the measles and fifty-seven little girls lay sick in their beds.
Only a few like Alraune ran around healthy. But this time it was much
worse. It was a typhoid epidemic. Eight children and one nun died.
Almost all of the others became sick.
But Alraune ten Brinken had never been so healthy. During this
time she put on weight, positively blossomed and gaily ran around
through all the sick rooms. No one troubled themselves over her
during these weeks as she ran up and down the stairs, sat on all the
beds and told the children that they were going to die the next day and
go to hell. While she, Alraune would continue to live and go to
heaven.
She gave away all of her pictures of the saints telling the sick
girls that they could diligently pray to the Madonna and to the sacred
heart of Jesus–but it wouldn’t do them any good. They would still
heartily burn and roast–It was simply amazing how vividly she could
describe these torments. Sometimes when she was in a good mood
she would be generous. Then she would promise them only a hundred
thousand years in purgatory. That was bad enough for the minds of
the pious sick little girls.
The doctor finally unceremoniously threw Alraune out of the
rooms. The sisters were absolutely convinced that she had brought the
illness into the convent and sent her head over heels back home.
The professor was tickled and laughed over this report. He
became a little more serious when shortly after the child’s arrival two
of his maids contracted typhus and both soon died in the hospital.
He wrote an angry letter to the supervisor of the convent and
complained bitterly that under the existing circumstances they should
have never sent the little one back home. He refused to pay the tuition
payment for the last half of the year and energetically insisted that he
be reimbursed for the monies he had put out for his two sick maids–
From a sanitary point of view the sisters should not have been
permitted to act as they had done.
His Excellency ten Brinken did not handle things much
differently. While he was not exactly afraid of contagion, like all
doctors he would much rather observe illness in others than in his
own body. He let Alraune stay in Lendenich only until he found a
good finishing school in the city. By the fourth day he had already
sent her to Spa, to the illustrious Institute of Mlle. de Vynteelen.
Silent Aloys had to escort her. As far as the child was concerned
the trip went without incident but he did have two little incidents to
report. On the train trip there he had found a pocket book with several
pieces of silver and on the trip back home he had slammed his finger
in the compartment door of the car he was riding in. The Privy
Councilor nodded in satisfaction at Aloy’s report.
The Head Mistress was Fräulein Becker who had grown up in
the University City on the Rhine and always went back there on her
vacations. She had much to relate to the Privy Councilor over the
years that Alraune stayed with her.
Right from the first day that Alraune arrived in the ancient
building on Marteau Avenue her dominion began and it was not only
imposed on her schoolmates. It was also imposed on the instructors,
most especially over the Miss, who after only a few weeks had
become a plaything for the absurd moods of the little girl, without any
will of her own.
At breakfast on that very first day Alraune declared that she
didn’t like honey and marmalade and much more preferred butter.
Naturally Mlle. de Vynteelen didn’t give her any. It was only a few
days until several of the other girls began to crave butter as well.
Finally a large cry for butter went up throughout the entire Institute.
Even Miss Paterson, who had never in her life enjoyed anything
with her morning tea other than toast with jam suddenly felt an
uncontrollable desire for butter. So the principal had been obliged to
give in to the demand for butter but on that very same day Alraune
acquired a preference for orange marmalade.
In response to the Privy Councilor’s pointed question Fräulein
Becker declared that the torturing of animals never came up during
those years at the Vynteelen School. At least no incidents had ever
been discovered. On the other hand, Alraune had made the lives of the
other children miserable as well as those of all the instructors, both
male and female.
Especially the poor music instructor who always placed his
snuffbox on the mantel in the hall during class so he would not be
tempted to use it. From the moment of Alraune’s entrance into the
school the most remarkable things had been found in it. For example,
thick spider webs, wood lice, gunpowder, pepper, writing sand black
with ink and once even a chopped up millipede. Several girls were
caught doing it and punished–but never Alraune.
Yet she always showed a passive resistance toward the musician,
never practiced and during class laid her hands in her lap and never
raised them to play an instrument. But when the professor finally
complained in despair to the principal Alraune quietly declared that
the old man was lying. At that point Mlle. de Vynteelen personally
attended the next hour and saw that the little girl knew her lesson
exquisitely, could play better than any of the others and showed a
remarkable talent.
The Head Mistress reproached the music instructor heavily. He
stood there speechless and could say nothing other than, “But it is
incredible, incredible!”
From then on the little schoolgirls only called him “Monsieur
Incredible”. They called after him whenever they saw him and
pronounced the words like he did, as if they didn’t have any teeth in
their mouths either.
As for the Miss, she scarcely ever experienced a quiet day. New
stupid pranks were always being played on her. They sprinkled itch
powder in her bed and one time after a picnic placed a half dozen
fleas in it. Then the key to her wardrobe was missing, then the hooks
and eyelets were torn from the dress that she wanted to wear. Once as
she was going to bed she was almost frightened to death by an
effervescent powder reaction in her chamber pot. Another time so
many stinging insects flew through her open window that she
screamed out for help. Then the chair she sat on was smeared with
paint or with glue or she found a dead mouse or an old chicken head
in her pocket.
And so it merrily continued, the poor Miss could hardly enjoy an
hour of her life. Investigations took place and those girls found guilty
were always punished but it was never determined to be Alraune even
though everyone was convinced that she was the mastermind behind
all the pranks.
The only one that angrily rejected this suspicion was the English
woman herself. She swore the girl was innocent up until the day she
left the de Vynteelen Institute.
“This hell,” she said, “only shelters one sweet little angel.”
The Privy Councilor grinned as he noted in the leather volume,
“That sweet little angel is Alraune.”
As for herself, Fräulein Becker related to the Professor that she
had avoided coming into contact with the strange little creature from
the very start. That had been easy for her since she was mostly
occupied in working with the French and English students. She only
had to instruct Alraune in gymnastics and sewing. As for the latter
subject, she had quickly exempted her from it when she had seen that
not only did Alraune have no interest in sewing, she showed a
downright aversion to it.
But in calisthenics, which by the way Alraune always excelled
in, she always acted as if she never noticed the joking around the
child did. She only once had a little confrontation with her and that
was just after Alraune’s entrance into the school. She had to confess
that unfortunately Araune had gotten the better of her.
By chance she had overheard Alraune telling her schoolmates
about her stay in the convent. The boasting and cheeky bragging was
so abominable that she took it as her duty to intervene. On one hand
the little one told how splendid and magnificent the convent was and
on the other hand she told truly murderous stories about the various
misdeeds of the pious sisters.
She herself had been brought up in the Sacré Couer convent in
Nancy and knew very well how simple and plain it was and knew as
well that the nuns were the most harmless creatures in the world. So
she called Alraune into her office and reproached her for telling such
fraudulent stories. She also demanded that the girl immediately tell
her schoolmates that she had not been telling the truth. When Alraune
stubbornly refused, she declared that she would tell them herself.
At that Alraune rose up on her toes, looked straight at her and
quietly said, “If you tell them that, Fräulein, I will tell them that your
mother has a little cheese shop in her home.”
Fräulein Becker confessed that she had become weak and given
in to a false shame. She let the child have her way. There had been
something so deliberate and calculated in the soft voice of the child in
that moment that she had become afraid. She left Alraune standing
there and went to her room happy to avoid an outright quarrel with the
little creature.
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