Hanns Heinz Ewers Alraune (18 page)

It was also mentioned that the princess, as
godmother, gave the child an extraordinarily expensive and equally
tasteless necklace composed of gold chain and two strands of
beautiful pearls set with diamonds. At the center surrounded by
more pearls was a hank of fiery red hair that the Princess had cut
from the head of the unconscious mother at the time of her
conception.

The child stayed in the clinic for over four
years up until the time the Privy Councilor gave up the Institute
as well as the attached experimental laboratories that he had been
neglecting more and more. Then he took her to his estate in
Lendenich.

There the child got a playmate that was
really almost four years older than she was. It was Wölfchen
Gontram, the youngest son of the Legal Councilor. Privy Councilor
ten Brinken relates very little of the collapse of the Gontram
household. In short sentences he describes how death finally grew
tired of the game he was playing in the white house on the Rhine
and in one year wiped away the mother and three of her sons.

The fourth boy, Joseph, at the wish of his
mother had been taken by Reverend Chaplain Schröder to become a
priest. Frieda, the daughter, lived with her friend, Olga
Wolkonski, who in the meantime had married a somewhat dubious
Spanish Count and moved to his house in Rome. Following these
events was the financial collapse of the Legal Councilor despite
the splendid fee he had been paid for winning the divorce
settlement for the princess.

The Privy Councilor puts down that he took
the boy in as an act of charity–but doesn’t forget to mention in
the book that Wölfchen inherited some vineyards with small farm
houses from an aunt on his mother’s side so his future was secure.
He remarks as well that he didn’t want the boy to feel he had been
taken into a strangers house and brought up out of charity and
compassion so he used the income from the vineyards to defray the
upkeep of his young foster-child. It is to be understood that the
Privy Councilor did not come up short on this arrangement.

Taking all of the entries that the Privy
Councilor ten Brinken made in the leather bound volume during this
time one could conclude that Wölfchen Gontram certainly earned the
bread and butter that he ate in Lendenich. He was a good playmate
for his foster-sister, was more than that, was her only toy and her
nursemaid as well.

The love he shared with his wild brothers for
living and frantically running around transferred in an instant to
the delicate little creature that ran around alone in the wide
garden, in the stables, in the green houses and all the out
buildings. The great deaths in his parent’s house, the sudden
collapse of his entire world made a strong impression on him–in
spite of the Gontram indolence.

The small handsome lad with his mother’s
large black dreamy eyes became quiet and withdrawn. Thousands of
boyish thoughts that had been so suddenly extinguished now snaked
out like weak tendrils and wrapped themselves solidly like roots
around the little creature, Alraune. Whatever he carried in his
young breast he gave to his new little sister, gave it with the
great unbounded generosity that he had inherited from his sunny
good-natured parents.

He went to school in the city where he always
sat in the last row. At noon when he came back home he ran straight
past the kitchen even though he was hungry. He searched around in
the garden until he found Alraune. The servants often had to drag
him away by force to give him his meals.

No one troubled themselves much over the two
children but while they always had a strange mistrust of the little
girl, they took a liking to Wölfchen. In their own way they
bestowed on him the somewhat coarse love of the servants that had
once been given to Frank Braun, the Master’s nephew, so many years
before when he had spent his school vacations there as a boy.

Just like him, the old coachman, Froitsheim,
now tolerated Wölfchen around the horses, lifted him up onto them,
let him sit on a wool saddle blanket and ride around the courtyard
and through the gardens. The gardener showed him the best fruit in
the orchards; cut him the most flexible switches and the maids kept
his food warm, making sure that he never went without.

They thought of him as an equal but the girl,
little as she was, had a way of creating a broad chasm between
them. She never chatted with any of them and when she did speak it
was to express some wish that almost sounded like a command. That
was exactly what these people from the Rhine in their deepest souls
could not bear–not from the Master–and now most certainly not from
this strange child.

They never struck her. The Privy Councilor
had strongly forbidden that, but in every other way they acted as
if the child was not even there. She ran around–fine–they let her
run, cared for her food, her little bed, her underwear and her
clothes–but just like they cared for the old biting watchdog,
brought it food, cleaned its doghouse and unchained it for the
night.

The Privy Councilor in no way troubled
himself over the children and let them completely go their own way.
Since the time he had closed the clinic he had also given up his
professorship, keeping occupied with various real estate and
mortgage affairs and even more with his old love, archeology.

He managed things as a clever and intelligent
merchant so that museums around the world paid high prices for his
skillfully arranged collections. The grounds all around the Brinken
estate from the Rhine to the city on one side, extending out to the
Eifel promontory on the other were filled with things that first
the Romans and then all their followers had brought with them.

The Brinkens had been collectors for a long
time and for ten miles in all directions any time a farmer struck
something with his plowshare they would carefully dig up the
treasure and take it to the old house in Lendenich that was
consecrated to John of Nepomuck.

The professor took everything, entire pots of
coins, rusted weapons, yellowed bones, urns, buckles and tear
vials. He paid pennies, ten at the most. But the farmer was always
certain to get a good schnapps in the kitchen and if needed money
for sowing, at a high interest of course–but without the security
demanded by the banks.

One thing was certain. The earth never spewed
forth more than in those years when Alraune lived in the house.

The professor laughed and said, “She brings
money into the house.”

He knew very well that these things happened
in a natural way, that it was only the result of his intense
occupation with these things of the earth. But still there was some
connection with the little creature and he played with the
thought.

He took a very risky speculation and bought
enormous properties along the broad path of Villen Street. He had
the earth dug up and every handful of dirt searched. He did
business taking great calculated risks, putting a mortgage bank
back on a sound financial basis when everyone else thought it would
go bankrupt in a very short time. The bank held together. Whatever
he touched went the right way.

Then through a coincidence he found a mineral
water spring on one of his properties in the mountains. He had it
barreled and hauled away. That is how he came into the mineral
water line buying up whatever was available in the Rhineland until
he almost had a monopoly in that industry. He formed a little
company, hung a nationalistic cloak around it, declaring that a
person had to make a stand against the foreigners, the English that
owned Apollonaris.

The little owners flocked around this new
leader, swore by “His Excellency”, and when he formed a joint
company gladly allowed him to reserve the controlling shares for
himself. It was a good thing they did, the Privy Councilor doubled
their dividends and dealt sharply with the outsiders that had not
wanted to go along.

He pursued a multitude of things one right
after the other–they had only one thing in common–they all had
something to do with the earth. It was just a whim of his, this
thought that Alraune drew gold out of the earth and so he stayed
with those things that had something to do with the earth. He
didn’t really believe it for a second, but he still entered into
even the wildest speculation with the certain confidence that it
would succeed as long as it dealt with the earth.

He refused to deal with anything else without
even looking into it, even highly profitable stock market
opportunities that appeared with scarcely the slightest risk.
Instead he bought huge quantities of extremely rotten mining
concerns, buying into ore as well as coal, then trading them in a
series of shady deals. He always came out–

“Alraune does it,” he said laughing.

Then the day came when this thought became
more than a joke to him. Wölfchen was digging in the garden, behind
the stables under the large mulberry tree. That was where Alraune
wanted to have her subterranean palace. He dug day after day and
once in awhile one of the gardener’s boys would help.

The child sat close by; she didn’t speak,
didn’t laugh, just sat there quietly and watched. Then one evening
the boy’s shovel gave a loud clang. The gardener’s boy helped and
they carefully dug the brown earth out from between the roots with
their bare hands. They brought the professor a sword belt, a buckle
and a handful of coins. Then he had the place thoroughly dug up and
found a small treasure – genuine Gaelic pieces, rare and valuable.
It was not really supernatural. Farmers all around sooner or later
found something, why shouldn’t there be something hidden in his
garden as well?

But that was the point. He asked the boy why
he had dug in that particular spot under the mulberry tree and
Wölfchen said the little one wanted him to dig there and nowhere
else. Then he asked Alraune but she remained silent.

The Privy Councilor thought she was a
divining rod, that she could feel where the earth held its
treasure. He laughed about it. Yes, he still laughed. Sometimes he
took her along out to the Rhine along Villen Street and over to the
ground where his men were digging.

Then he would ask dryly enough,” Where should
they dig?”

He observed her carefully as she went over
the field to see if her sensitive body would give some sign, some
indication, anything that might suggest–

But she remained quiet and her little body
said nothing. Later when she understood what he wanted she would
remain standing on one spot and say, “Dig.”

They would dig and find nothing. Then she
would laugh lightly. The professor thought, “She’s making fools of
us.” But he always dug again where she commanded. Once or twice
they found something, a Roman grave, then a large urn filled with
ancient silver coins.

Now the Privy Councilor said, “It is
coincidence.”

But he thought, “It could also be
coincidence.”

One afternoon as the Privy Councilor stepped
out of the library he saw the boy standing under the pump. He was
half-naked with his body bent forward. The old coachman pumped,
letting the cold stream pour over his head and neck, over his back
and both arms. His skin was blazing red and covered with small
blisters.

“What did you do Wölfchen?” He asked.

The boy remained quiet, biting his teeth
together, but his dark eyes were full of tears.

The coachman said, “It’s stinging nettles.
The little girl beat him with stinging nettles.”

Then the boy defended himself, “No, no. She
didn’t beat me. I did it myself. I threw myself into them.”

The Privy Councilor questioned him carefully
yet only with the help of the coachman was he able to get the truth
out of the boy. It went like this:

He had undressed himself down to his hips,
thrown himself into the nettles and rolled around in them. But–at
the wish of his little sister. She had noticed how his hand burned
when he accidentally touched the weed, had seen how it became red
and blistered. Then she had persuaded him to touch them with his
other hand and finally to roll around in them with his naked
breast.

“Crazy fool!” The Privy Councilor scolded
him. Then he asked if Alraune had also touched the stinging
nettles.

“Yes,” answered the boy, but she didn’t get
burned.

The professor went out into the garden,
searched and finally found his foster-child. She was in the back by
a huge wall tearing up huge bunches of stinging nettles. She
carried them in her naked arms across the way to the wisteria arbor
where she laid them out on the ground. She was making a bed.

“Who is that for?” he asked.

The little girl looked at him and said
earnestly, “For Wölfchen!”

He took her hands, examined her thin arms.
There was not the slightest sign of any rash.

“Come with me,” he said.

He led her into a greenhouse where Japanese
primroses grew in long rows.

“Pick some flowers,” he cried.

Alraune picked one flower after another. She
had to stretch high to reach them and her arms were in constant
contact with the poisonous leaves. But there was no sign of a
burning rash.

“She must be immune,” murmured the professor
and wrote a concise thesis in the brown leather volume about the
appearance of skin rashes through contact with stinging nettles and
poison primrose. He proposed that the reaction was purely a
chemical one. That the little hairs on the stems and leaves wounded
the skin by secreting an acid, which set up a local reaction at the
place of contact.

He attempted to discover a connection as to
whether and to what extent the scarcely found immunity against
these primroses and stinging nettles had to do with the known
insensibility of witches and those possessed. He also wanted to
know whether the cause of both phenomenon and this immunity could
be explained on an auto-suggestive or hysterical basis.