The Dedalus Book of German Decadence (31 page)

‘You will be tempting God,’ the young man had said. ‘You will ask him a question, one so insolent that He must reply.’ Oh yes, and now he had his answer!

But if he were inexorably lost, perished, so the boy must share his fate also, he, Frank Braun, who gave him the idea in the first place! He had a very sharp weapon, his little daughter Mandra! And she would bring Frank Braun to the place that
he
was in now  …

He pondered, shook his head slowly and grinned in the certain knowledge of having gained his last triumph. And he wrote his will without a pause in quick, ugly writing.

Mandra remained his legal heir, she alone. But he left a legacy to his sister and one to his nephew. The latter was also to be his executor and guardian to the girl until she came of age. So Frank Braun would have to come, to be close to her and breathe the sultry perfume of her lips. And he would go the same way as all the others, as
he
had done!

He laughed out loud. He then added a codicil making the University a beneficiary if Mandra should die without issue, thus excluding his nephew. He signed the document, then dated it. And then he took up the leather volume, read it, added the details and scrupulously brought it up to date. He finished with a final address to his nephew, dripping with venom. ‘Try your luck  …’ he wrote. ‘Pity I won’t be there when it’s your turn! I would like to have seen it!’

He carefully blotted the wet ink, closed the volume and carefully placed it in the drawer, alongside other mementoes […] He went across to the curtain and loosened the silk braid. With a long pair of scissors he cut a piece off and threw it into the drawer. ‘Mascotte!’ he laughed. ‘ça porte bonheur pour la maison!’

He moved along the walls, climbed on to a chair and, with considerable effort, removed a massive iron crucifix from its heavy hook. He laid it carefully on the divan. ‘Sorry to have to move you,’ he grimaced, ‘but it’s only for a short time, for a couple of hours  …  You shall have a worthy deputy!’

He knotted the silk braid and threw it over the hook. He tugged at it to make sure it was firmly attached, and then he climbed back on the chair again  …

The police found him early next morning. The chair had fallen over, but the dead man was still touching it with the tip of one of his feet. It seemed as if he had regretted his deed and had tried to save himself at the very last minute. His right eye was wide open, staring at the door. And his thick, blue tongue was hanging out of his mouth. He looked very ugly.

*        *        *        *

And perhaps my blonde little sister, perhaps the silver bells of your quiet days now send forth the gentle tones of sleeping sins.

Now the golden laburnum casts its poisonous yellow where the pale snow of the acacias is lying, and the hot clematis shows its deep blue where the pious bunches of wistaria sound peace to all  …

Sweet is the gentle play of lustful desires, sweeter, to me it seems, the cruel battle of the nocturnal passions. But sweeter than all, I think, is the sleeping sinfulness of hot summer days.

Lightly she slumbers, my gentle friend, and one may not wake her. For she is never so lovely than in such a sleep.

My dear sinfulness rests in a mirror, quite near, resting in a thin silk shift upon white linen. Your hand, my sister, hangs over the edge of the bed, the narrow fingers lightly clenched, fingers that wear my golden rings; your pink nails gleam like the first blush of day. Fanny, your black maid, has manicured them, created this small miracle. And in the mirror I kiss the transparent wonder of your rosy nails.

Only in the mirror, in the mirror alone. Only with caressing glances and the gentle breath of my lips. For when sin awakes they grow, grow and become the sharp claws of a tigress. And tear my flesh.

Your head rises from the lacy pillow, and your blonde curls fall profusely. They fall gently, like a flickering golden fire, like the gentle rustling of the first winds at the young day’s awakening. But your small teeth smile between your narrow lips like the milky opals in the gleaming bracelet of the moon–goddess. I kiss your golden hair, little sister, and your gleaming teeth.

Only in the mirror, in the mirror alone. With the gentle breath of my lips and with caressing glances. For this I know: when hot sin awakes, then the little milky opals become tusks, and your golden locks become fiery vipers. Then the tiger’s claws tear my flesh, and the sharp fangs gouge bloody wounds. The flaming vipers hiss about my head, creep into my ears, squirt their poison into my brain, and whisper and utter the wild legends of monstrous lusts  …

Your silken shift slips from your shoulder, and your childish breasts laugh. They rest like two white kittens, young as the day, and their sweet, pink lips pout upwards. They gaze at your gentle eyes, blue eyes of stone which refract the light: they dazzle as the starry sapphire which gleams in the silent head of my golden Buddha.

Do you see, little sister, how I kiss them back in the mirror? For I know well: when it wakes, when the eternal sin awakes, blue lightning will flash from your eyes and strike deep into my poor heart. Make my blood boil and seethe, and their heat will melt the powerful chains which keep madness in thrall, and madness will roar into the world.

And then the wild beast, free of its chains, will be unleashed, and it will hurl itself upon you, sister, in raging torment. And it will hack its claws into your sweet little breasts, breasts that now – because sin is wakened – become the monstrous breasts of a lustful harlot, and the beast’s wild maw will sink its fangs into you  …  And pain exults in torrents of blood.

But my glances are still gentle, quieter than the tread of nuns at the holy sepulchre. And still more gentle is the breath of my lips. Like the spirit’s kiss on the Host in the minster, the kiss that transforms the bread into the body of our Lord.

It should not wake, this beautiful sin, it should rest and have peace.

For nothing, my dear friend, seems to me sweeter than chaste sinfulness in its tender sleep.

*        *        *        *

Frank Braun had returned to his native land, to his home, from somewhere or other, from one of his fruitless journeys, from Kashmir, or the Bolivian chaco, from the West Indies perhaps, where he had played at being a revolutionary in preposterous republics, or from the south seas, where he had dreamed strange dreams with the slender daughters of dying people.

He returned, from somewhere or other. […] He returned to Lendenich, through the fragrance of Spring, to his ward. […]

Frank Braun crossed the courtyard and noticed that a light was burning in the library. He entered and Mandra was sitting on the couch.

‘Are you here, dearest coz?’ he greeted her flippantly. ‘Up so late?’

She said nothing, but beckoned him to sit down. He sat opposite her, and waited, but she was silent, and he did not press her.

At last she spoke. ‘I wanted to speak to you.’ He nodded, but still she was silent. So it was he who made the first move. ‘You’ve been reading the leather volume?’ ‘Yes,’ she said, and breathed deeply. ‘So I’m just a joke, that you made once, Frank Braun.’

‘A joke?’ he asked. ‘More of an idea if you wish.’

‘So, an idea,’ she said. ‘What difference does a word make? What’s the difference between a joke and an amusing idea? And it’s certainly amusing, I would have thought.’ She burst out laughing. ‘But I’m not waiting for you for that reason. I want to know something else. Tell me, do you think it’s true?’

‘What am I supposed to believe?’ he answered. ‘You mean, whether I believe what Uncle wrote in his book? Yes, I believe it.’

She shook her head impatiently. ‘No, I don’t mean that. It is true, naturally, why should he lie? I want to know if you believe, as my, well, your uncle did, that I am different from other people, that I’m, well, a mandrake, a mandragora, as my name suggests.’

‘How can I answer such a question? Ask a physiologist, he will doubtless tell you that you are human being like everyone else in the world, even if your entrance was rather unusual. He will say that all the subsequent events were accidents, trivia which –’

‘I’m not interested in all that,’ she interrupted. ‘It’s a matter of indifference to me. I only want to know: are you of the opinion that I am an unusual being?’

He was silent, looking for an answer, and did not know what to say. He believed it, and yet, at the same time, did not.

‘Look,’ he started.

‘Go on,’ she urged him. ‘Do you think that I’m some sort of joke which took on shape and form, your idea, which the old Professor threw into his retort, which he boiled and distilled until that creature emerged who is sitting before you now?’

And this time he did not hesitate. ‘If you put it like that, yes, I do believe it.’

She laughed lightly. ‘I thought so. And that was why I was waiting for you this evening, so that you would be cured as quickly as possible of this arrogance. No, cousin, it wasn’t you who put this thought into the world, no more than your dear uncle did.’

He did not understand her. ‘Well, who was it then?’

She put her hand under the cushions: ‘This did!’ she cried. She drew out the mannikin, threw it into the air and caught it again, gently caressing it with her nervous fingers. […] She laid it down on a silken cushion and looked at it with an almost tender gaze. And she spoke to it thus: ‘You are my father and my mother: you are that which created me.’

He looked at her. ‘Perhaps it is true,’ he thought to himself. ‘Thoughts drift through the air, like pollen, swirl about and then settle in a human brain. They often sicken, dry out, and die, only a very few find a good, fertile soil. She may be right, my brain was always a richly fertilized nursery for all sorts of craziness!’ And it seemed to him to be a matter of indifference whether it was he who had thrown this seed into the world, or had been the fruitful earth which had received it.

She slowly rose, still holding the ugly mannikin in her hand.

‘I wanted to say something else to you, to thank you for showing me the leather volume, and for not having burned it.’

‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘Shall I kiss you? I know how to kiss […] I want to kiss you.’

‘Be careful!’ he said, ‘I’ll kiss you too.’

She did not avert her gaze. ‘Yes,’ she said. Then she smiled. ‘Sit down, you’re rather too tall for me.’

‘No!’ he cried gaily. ‘Not like that!’ He walked across to the broad divan, stretched himself out on it and laid his head on the cushions, closing his eyes.

‘Now come, Mandra!’ he called.

She came closer and knelt down before him. She paused, looked at him, then threw herself upon him, seized his head and pressed her lips on his.

He did not embrace her, did not move his arms, but clenched his fingers into a fist. He felt her tongue, and the gentle bites of her teeth.

‘More,’ he whispered, ‘more.’

Red mists swirled before his eyes. He heard the hideous laughter of Professor ten Brinken, the large, startled eyes of Mrs Gontram when she asked the lawyer Manasse to explain what a mandrake was, saw them wiping it with a large napkin.

‘More  …,’ he murmured.

And she, Mandra Gora, saw her mother, with hair red as fire, with large, snow-white breasts shot through with small, blue veins. And the execution of her father as the Professor had described it in his book  …  And the hour in which the old man had created her, and the moment when the doctor brought her into the world.

‘Kiss me,’ he gasped, ‘kiss me.’

He drank in her kisses, drank the hot blood of his lips which her teeth had torn. And he knowingly, wilfully, intoxicated himself, as though he were drinking foaming wine, or the drugs of the Orient  …

Then: ‘Stop!’ he cried suddenly. ‘Stop! you don’t know what you’re doing  …’

Then she pushed her curls ever closer across his brow and her kisses grew wilder and more violent.

The thoughts, the clear thoughts of day lay shattered, and now dreams were born, and a red sea of blood rose and burst. Wild Maenads waved the thyrsus rod, and the holy ecstasy of Dionysus foamed and churned.

‘Kiss me!’ he screamed.

But she let go, and her arms dropped to her sides. He opened his eyes and stared at her.

‘Kiss me,’ he repeated softly. Her eyes were dulled, and she was panting. She slowly shook her head.

Then he jumped up. ‘So, I shall kiss you,’ he cried. He lifted her in his arms and threw the struggling girl on to the divan. He knelt where she had been kneeling.

‘Close your eyes,’ he whispered, and he bent over her.

His kisses were good, tender and cosseting as the play of harps in a summer night. Wild, too, rough and harsh as a tempest over Northern seas. Glowing as the fiery breath of Etna’s mouth, tearing and devouring as the maelstrom’s vortex.

‘It’s going under  …,’ she felt, ‘everything is going under  …’

Then the fires roared forth and the hot flames shot upwards into the skies. The torches blazed, the altars ignited, and with bloody jaws the wolf burst through the sanctuary.

She held him tight and pressed herself hard against his breast.

‘I’m burning,’ she shrieked, ‘I’m burning  …’

Then he tore the clothes from her body.

….

*        *        *        *

The sun was already high when she awoke. She saw that she was naked but did not cover herself. She turned her head and saw him sitting upright next to her, as naked as she was.

‘Are you leaving today?’ she asked.

‘Do you want me to go?’ he retorted.

‘Stay!’ she whispered, ‘stay!’

*        *        *        *

Early, when the young sun arose, he left the room in his dressing gown. He went into the garden and walked along the path past the trellis-work, entering the rose garden, where he cut Boule de Neige, Empress Victoria Augusta, Madame Carl Drusky and Merveille de Lyon. He turned left where the larches were standing and the noble firs.

Mandra was sitting on the edge of the pond. She was wearing her black silk gown and was throwing breadcrumbs to the goldfish. As he approached she plaited a wreath of pale roses and quickly, skilfully, crowned her curls with it. She cast aside her gown and sat there in her lacy shift, her bare feet paddling in the cool water.