Hanns Heinz Ewers Alraune (7 page)

“I hope you can stay eternally as pure as you
are tonight,” he finished.

He lied, he didn’t want that at all. No one
wished that, much less the two young ladies, but they clapped with
the others, went over to him, curtsied and thanked him.

Chaplain Schröder stood next to the Legal
Councilor complaining powerfully that the date was nearing when the
new Civil Law would go into effect. Less than ten more years and
the Code of Napoleon would be gone and people in the Rhineland
would have the same civil rights as over there in Prussia! It was
absolutely unthinkable!

“Yes,” sighed the Legal Councilor, “and all
the work! A person has to learn everything all over again, as if
they don’t have enough to do as it is.”

He was completely indifferent on the basis
that it would not effect him very much since he had studied the new
laws already and had passed the exam, thank God!

The princess left and took Frau Marion with
her in her carriage. Olga stayed over with her friend again. They
stood by the door and said goodbye to the others as they left, one
after the other.

“Aren’t you going too, Uncle Jakob?” the
student asked.

“I must wait a bit,” said the Privy
Councilor. “My carriage is not here yet. It will be here in a
moment.”

Frank Braun looked out the window. There was
the little widow, Frau von Dollinger, going down the stairs nimble
as a squirrel in spite of her forty years, down into the garden,
falling down, springing back up. She ran right into a smooth tree
trunk, wrapped her arms and legs around it and started kissing it
passionately, completely drunk and senseless from wine and
lust.

Stanislaus Schacht tried to untangle her but
she held on like a beetle. He was strong and sober in spite of the
enormous quantity of wine that he had drunk. She screamed as he
pulled her away trying to stay clasped to the smooth tree trunk but
he picked her up and carried her in his arms. Then she recognized
him, pulled off his hat and started kissing him on his smooth bald
head.

Now the professor was standing, speaking some
last words with the Legal Councilor.

“I’d like to ask a favor,” he said. “Would
you mind giving me the unlucky little man?”

Frau Gontram answered before her husband
could. “Certainly Herr Privy Councilor. Take that nasty alraune
along with you! It is certainly something more for a bachelor!”

She reached into the large wine bowl and
pulled out the root manikin but the hard wood hit the edge of the
bowl, knocking it over, and it rolled to the floor with a loud
crash that resounded through the room. The magnificent old crystal
bowl broke into hundreds of crystal shards as the bowl’s sweet
contents spilled over the table and onto the floor.

“Holy Mother of God!” she cried out. “It is
certainly a good thing that it is finally leaving my house!”

Informs how Frank Braun persuaded the Privy
Councilor to create Alraune

T
HEY
sat in the carriage, Professor Ten Brinken
and his nephew. They didn’t speak. Frank Braun leaned back staring
straight ahead, sunk deeply into his thoughts. The Privy Councilor
was observing, squinting over at him watchfully.

The trip lasted scarcely half an hour. They
rolled along the open road, turned to the right, went downhill over
the rough road to Lendenich. There in the middle of the village lay
the birthplace of the Brinken family.

It was a large, almost square complex with
gardens and a park. Back from the street stood a row of
insignificant old buildings. They turned around a corner past a
shrine of the patron Saint of the village, the Holy Saint John of
Nepomuk. His statue was decorated with flowers and lit with two
eternal lamps that were placed in niches by the corners.

The horses stopped in front of a large
mansion. A servant shut the fenced gate behind them and opened the
carriage door.

“Bring us some wine Aloys,” commanded the
Privy Councilor. “We will be in the library.”

He turned to his nephew. “Will you be
sleeping here Frank? Or should the carriage wait?”

The student shook his head, “Neither, I will
go back to the city on foot.”

They walked across the courtyard, entered the
lower level of the house at a door on the right hand side. It was
literally a great hall with a tiny antechamber and a couple of
other small rooms nearby.

The walls were lined with long immense
shelves containing thousands of books. Low glass cases stood here
and there full of Roman artifacts. Many graves had been emptied,
robbed of their cherished and carefully preserved treasures. The
floor was covered in thick carpet. There were a couple of desks,
armchairs and sofas that stood scattered around the room.

They entered. The Privy Councilor threw his
alraune on a divan. They lit candles, pulled a couple of chairs
together and sat down. The servant uncorked a dusty bottle.

“You can go,” said his master. “But don’t go
too far. The young gentleman will be leaving and you will need to
let him out.”

“Well?” he turned to his nephew.

Frank Braun drank. He picked the root manikin
up and toyed with it. It was still a little moist and appeared to
be almost flexible.

“It is clear enough,” he murmured. “There are
the eyes–both of them. The nose pokes up there and that opening is
the mouth. Look here Uncle Jakob. Doesn’t it look as if it is
smiling? The arms are somewhat diminutive and the legs have grown
together at the knees. It is a strange thing.”

He held it high, turned it around in all
directions.

“Look around Alraune!” he cried. “This is
your new home. You will be much happier here with Herr Jakob ten
Brinken than you were in the house of the Gontrams.”

“You are old,” he continued. “four hundred,
perhaps six hundred years old or even more. Your father was hung
because he was a murderer or a horse thief, or else because he made
fun of some great knight in armor or in priestly robes.

The important thing is that he was a criminal
in his time and they hanged him. At the last moment of his life his
seed fell to the earth and created you, you strange creature. Then
your mother earth took the seed of this criminal into her fertile
womb, secretly fashioned and gave birth to you.

You the great, the all-powerful–Yes you, you
miserable ugly creature!–Then they dug you up at the midnight hour,
at the crossroads, shaking in terror at your howling, shrieking
screams.

The first thing you saw as you looked around
in the moonlight was your father hanging there on the gallows with
a broken neck and his rotting flesh hanging in tatters.

They took you with them, these people that
had tied the noose around your father. They held you, carried you
home. You were supposed to bring money into their house. Blood
money and young love.

They knew well that you would bring pain,
misery, despair and in the end a horrible death. They knew it and
still they wanted you, still they dug you up, still they took you
home, selling their souls for love and money.”

The Privy Councilor said, “You have a
beautiful way of seeing things my boy. You are a dreamer.”

“Yes,” said the student. “That’s what I
am–just like you.”

“Like me?” the professor laughed. “Now I
think that part of my life is long gone.”

But his nephew shook his head, “No Uncle
Jakob. It isn’t. Only you can make real what other people call
fantastic. Just think of all your experiments! For you it is more
like child’s play that may or may not lead to some purpose.

But never, never would a normal person come
up with your ideas. Only a dreamer could do it–and only a savage, a
wildman, that has the hot blood of the Brinkens flowing through his
veins. Only he would dare attempt what you should now do Uncle
Jakob.”

The old man interrupted him, indignant and
yet at the same time flattered.

“You crazy boy!–You don’t even know yet if I
will have any desire to do this mysterious thing you keep talking
about and I still don’t have the slightest idea what it is!”

The student didn’t pause, his voice rang
lightly, confidently and every syllable was convincing.

“Oh, you will do it Uncle Jakob. I know that
you will do it, will do it because no one else can, because you are
the only person in the world that can make it happen. There are
certainly a few other professors that are attempting some of the
same things you have already done, perhaps even gone further.

But they are normal people, dry, wooden–men
of science. They would laugh in my face if I came to them with my
idea, would chide me for being a fool. Or else they would throw me
completely out the door, because I would dare come to them with
such things, such thoughts. Thoughts that they would call immoral
and objectionable. Such ideas that dare trespass on the craft of
the Great Creator and play a trick on all of nature.

You will not laugh at me Uncle Jakob, not
you! You will not laugh at me or throw me out the door. It will
fascinate you the same way it fascinates me. That’s why you are the
only person that can do it!”

“But what then, by all the gods,” cried the
Privy Councilor, “what is it?”

The student stood up, filled both glasses to
the rims.

“A toast, old sorcerer,” he cried. “A toast!
To a newer, younger wine that will flow out of your glass tubes.
Toast, Uncle Jakob to your new living alraune–your new child!”

He clinked his glass against his uncle’s,
emptied it in a gulp and threw it high against the ceiling where it
shattered. The shards fell soundlessly on the heavy carpet.

He pulled his chair closer.

“Now listen uncle and I will tell you what I
mean. I know you are really impatient with my long
introduction–Don’t think ill of me. It has helped me put my
thoughts in order, to stir them up, to make them comprehensible and
tangible.

Here it is:

You should create a living alraune, Uncle
Jakob, turn this old legend into reality. Who cares if it is
superstition, a ghostly delusion of the Middle Ages or mystic
flim-flam from ancient times?

You, you can make the old lies come true. You
can create it. It can stand there in the light of day tangible for
all the world to see–No stupid professor would be able to deny
it.

Now pay attention, this is what needs to be
done!

The criminal, uncle, you can find easily
enough. I don’t think it matters if he dies on a gallows at a
crossroads. We are a progressive people. Our prisons and Guillotine
are convenient, convenient for you as well. Thanks to your
connections it will be easy to obtain and save the rare seed of the
dead that will bring forth new life.

And Mother Earth?–What is her symbol? What
does she represent? She is fertility, uncle. The earth is the
feminine, the woman. She takes the semen, takes it into her womb,
nourishes it, lets it germinate, grow, bloom and bear fruit. So you
take what is fertile like the earth herself–take a woman.

But Mother Earth is the eternal prostitute,
she serves all. She is the eternal mother, is always for sale, the
prostitute of billions. She refuses her lascivious love to none,
offers herself gladly to anyone that will take her. Everything that
lives has been fertilized in her glorious womb and she has given
birth to it. It has always been this way throughout the ages.

That is why you must use a prostitute Uncle
Jakob. Take the most shameless, the cheekiest one of them all. Take
one that is born to be a whore, not one that is driven to her
profession or one that is seduced into it for money. Oh no, not one
of those. Take one that is already wanton, that learns as she goes,
one whose shame is her greatest pleasure and reason for living. You
must choose her. Only her womb would be like the mother earth’s.
You know how to find her. You are rich–You are no school boy in
these things.

You can pay her a lot of money, purchase her
services for your research. If she is the right one she will reel
with laughter, will press her greasy bosom against you and kiss you
passionately–She will do this because you have offered her
something that no other man has offered her before.

You know better than I what happens then, how
to bring about with humans what you have already done with monkeys
and guinea pigs. Get everything ready, ready for the moment when
the murderer’s bleeding head springs into the basket!”

He jumped up, leaned over the table, looked
across at his uncle with intense forceful eyes. The Privy Councilor
caught his gaze, parried it with a squint like a curved dirty
scimitar parries a supple foil.

“What then nephew?” he said. “And then after
the child comes into the world? What then?”

The student hesitated, his words dripped
slowly, falling, “Then–we–will–have–a–magickal–creature.”