Hanns Heinz Ewers Alraune (23 page)

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 runs 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 any thing 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.

Speaks of Alraune’s lovers and what happened
to them.

T
HESE
were the five men that loved Alraune ten
Brinken: Karl Mohnen, Hans Geroldingen, Wolf Gontram, Jakob ten
Brinken and Raspe, the chauffeur. The Privy Councilor’s brown
volume speaks of them all and this story of Alraune must speak of
them as well.

Raspe, Matthieu-Maria Raspe, came with the
Opel automobile that Princess Wolkonski gave to Alraune on her
seventeenth birthday. He had served with the Hussars but now he not
only had to drive the car, he had to help the old coachman with the
horses as well. He was married and had two little boys. Lisbeth,
his wife, took care of the laundry in the house of ten Brinken.
They lived in the little cottage near the library right beside the
iron-gated entrance to the courtyard.

Matthieu was blonde, big and strong. He
understood his work and used his head as well as his hands. The
horses obeyed his touch just as well as the automobile did. Early
one morning he saddled the Irish mare of his Mistress, stood in the
courtyard and waited. The Fräulein slowly came down the steps from
the mansion. She was dressed as a young boy wearing yellow leather
gaiters, a gray riding suit and a little riding cap to cover her
hair.

She did not use the stirrup but had him lace
his fingers together, stepped into them and stayed like that for a
short second before swinging herself up astride the saddle. Then
she hit the horse a sharp blow with the whip so that it reared up
and tore out through the open gate. Mattheiu-Maria had all kinds of
trouble mounting his heavy chestnut gelding and catching up to
her.

Brown haired Lisbeth closed the gate behind
them. She pressed her lips together and watched them go–her husband
whom she loved and Fräulein ten Brinken whom she hated.

Somewhere out in the meadow the Fräulein came
to a stop, turned around and let him catch up.

“Where should we ride today, Matthieu-Maria?”
she asked.

He said, “Wherever the Fräulein
commands.”

Then she tore the mare around and galloped
further.

“Jump Nellie!” she cried.

Raspe hated these morning rides no less than
his wife did. It was as if the Fräulein rode alone, as if he were
only air, a part of the landscape, or as if he did not exist at all
to his mistress. But then when she did take the trouble to notice
him for even a second he felt still more annoyed. For then it was
certain that she was going to demand something unusual of him once
more.

She stopped at the Rhine and waited quietly
until he came up to her side. He rode as slow as he could, knowing
that she had come up with some new notion and hoped she would
forget it by the time he got there. But she never forgot a
notion.

“Matthieu-Maria,” she said, “should we swim
across?”

He raised objections knowing ahead of time
that it would be useless.

“The banks on the other side are too steep,”
he said. “You can’t climb back up out of the water, especially
right here where the current is so rapid and–”

He got angry. It was all so pointless, the
things his mistress did. Why should they ride across the Rhine?
They would get all wet and cold. He would be lucky not to come down
with a cold from it. It was all for nothing, once more for nothing.
He made up his mind to stay behind. She could do her foolishness
alone. What was it to him? He had a wife and children–

That was as far as he got before riding into
the stream. He plunged deep into the water with his heavy
Mecklenburger and had all kinds of trouble arriving safely
somewhere onto the rocks on the other side. He shook himself off
angrily and swore, then rode out of the stream at a sharp trot up
to his mistress. She gave him a brief sardonic glance.

“Did you get wet, Matthieu-Maria?”

He remained quiet, insulted and angry. Why
did she have to call him by his forename? Why was she so familiar
with him? He was Raspe, the chauffeur, and not a stable boy. His
brain found a dozen good replies but his lips didn’t speak
them.

Another day they rode to the dunes where the
Hussars practiced. That was even more embarrassing to him. Many of
the officers and non-commissioned officers knew him from the time
he had served with the regiment.

The mustached sergeant of the 2nd squadron
called out derisively to him.

“Well Raspe, are you going to ride with us
awhile?”

“The devil take that crazy female,” growled
Raspe.

But he galloped along at the rear and during
the attack rode at the side of the Fräulein. Then Count
Geroldingen, cavalry captain, came over with his English piebald to
chat with the Fräulein. Raspe stayed back but she spoke loud enough
so that he could hear.

“Well count, how do you like my esquire?”

The cavalry captain laughed, “Splendid! Well
suited for such a young prince as yourself!”

Raspe wanted to box his ears, the Fräulein’s
as well, and the sergeant’s, and the entire squadron that was
grinning at him. He was embarrassed and turned red as a
schoolboy.

But the afternoons were even worse when he
had to go driving with her in the automobile. He sat in his place
behind the wheel squinting at the door and sighed in relief when
someone came out of the house with her, suppressed a curse when she
came out alone.

Often he had his wife find out if she wanted
to go driving alone. Then he would quickly take a few parts out of
the machine and lie under it on his back, greasing and cleaning
them as if he were repairing something.

“We can’t go driving today Fräulein,” he
would say.

Then he would smile in satisfaction after she
was out of the garage. One time it didn’t go so well for him. She
stayed there in the garage quietly waiting. She didn’t say
anything, but it seemed to him as if she knew very well what he was
up to. Then he slowly bolted everything back together.

“Ready?” she asked.

He nodded.

“You see,” she said, “how better it goes when
I’m here Matthieu-Maria.”

When he came back from that drive, when his
Opel was once more in the garage and he was setting down to the
meal his wife set out for him, he trembled, he was pale and his
eyes stared at nothing. Lisbeth didn’t ask, she knew what it was
about.