Hanns Heinz Ewers Alraune by Joe Bandel Page A

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