Hanns Heinz Ewers Alraune

by Joe Bandel

  Princess Wolkonski sat there with her daughter Olga, now Countess Figueirea y Abrantes, and with Frieda Gontram. Both were visiting her for the winter.

  Then there was Attorney Manasse, a couple of private university speakers, professors and even a few officers and of course the Privy Counselor himself who had taken his little daughter out for her first ball.

  Alraune came dressed as Mademoiselle de Maupin wearing boy’s clothes in the style of Beardsly’s famous illustrations. She had torn through many wardrobes in the house of ten Brinken, stormed through many old chests and trunks. She finally found them in a damp cellar along with piles of beautiful Mechlin lace that an ancient predecessor had placed there. It is certain the poor seamstress who created them would have cried tears to see them treated like that.

  This lacey women’s clothing that made up Alraune’s cheeky costume netted still more fresh tears–she scolded the dressmaker that could not get just the right fit to the capricious costume, the hair dresser that Alraune beat because she couldn’t understand the exact hair style Alraune wanted and who couldn’t lay the chi-chi’s just right, and the little maid whom she impatiently poked with a large pin while getting dressed.

  Oh, it was a torture to turn Alraune into this girl of Gautier’s, in the bizarre interpretation of the Englishman, Beardsly.

  But when it was done, when the moody boy with his high sword-cane strutted with graceful pomp through the hall there were no eyes that didn’t greedily follow him, no old ones or young ones, of either men or women.

  The Chevalier de Maupin shared his glory with Rosalinde. Rosalinde, the one in the last scene–was Wolf Gontram, and never did the stage see a more beautiful one. Not in Shakespeare’s time when slender boys played the roles of his women. Not even later since Margaret Hews, the beloved of Prince Rupert, was the first woman to play the part of the beautiful maiden in “As You Like It”.

  Alraune had the youth dressed and with infinite care had brought him up to this point. She taught him how to walk, how to dance, how to move his fan and even how he should smile.

  And now, even as she appeared as a boy and yet a girl kissed by Hermes as well as Aphrodite in her Beardsly costume; Wolf Gontram embodied the character of his compatriot, Shakespeare, no less.

  He was in a red evening gown and train brocaded with gold, a beautiful girl, and yet a boy as well. Perhaps the old Privy Councilor understood all of it, perhaps little Manasse, perhaps even Frieda Gontram did a little as her quick look darted from one to the other. Other than that it was certain that no one else did in that immense hall of the Gathering in which heavy garlands of red roses hung from the ceiling.

  But everyone felt it, felt that here was something special, of singular worth. Her Royal Highness sent her adjutant to fetch them both and present them to her. She danced the first waltz with him, playing the gentleman to Rosalinde, then as the lady with the Chevalier de Maupin. She clapped her hands loudly during the minuet when Théophile Gautier’s curly headed boy bowed and flirted with Shakespeare’s sweet dream girl directly in front of her.

  Her Royal Highness was an excellent dancer herself, was first at the tennis courts and the best ice skater in the city. She would have loved to dance through the entire night with only the two of them. But the crowd wanted their share as well. So Mademoiselle de Maupin and Rosalinde flew from one set of arms into another, soon pressing into the muscular arms of young men, soon feeling the hot heaving breasts of beautiful women.

  Legal Councilor Gontram looked on indifferently. The Treves punch bowl and its brewed contents interested him much more than the success of his son. He attempted to tell Princess Wolkonski a long story about a counterfeiter but her Highness wasn’t listening.

  She shared the satisfaction and happy pride of his Excellency ten Brinken. Felt herself a participant in the creation and bringing into the world of this creature, her Godchild, Alraune.

  Only little Manasse was bad tempered enough, cursing and muttering under his breath.

  “You shouldn’t dance so much boy,” he hissed at Wolf. “Be more careful of your lungs!”

  But young Gontram didn’t hear him.

  Countess Olga sprang up and flew out to Alraune.

  “My handsome chevalier,” she whispered.

  The boy dressed in lace answered, “Come here my little Tosca!”

  He wheeled her around to the left and circled through the hall, scarcely giving her time to breathe, brought her back to the table breathless and kissed her full on the mouth.

  Frieda Gontram danced with her brother, looking at him for a long time with her intelligent gray eyes.

  “It’s a shame that you are my brother,” she said.

  He didn’t understand her at all.

  “Why?” he asked.

  She laughed, “Oh, you stupid boy! By the way, your answer ‘Why?’ is entirely correct. It shouldn’t make any difference at all should it? It is only the last shred of those morals that our stupid education has given us. Like putting lead weights in our virtuous skirts to keep them long, stretched smooth and modest. That’s what it is, my beautiful little brother!”

  But Wolf Gontram didn’t understand one syllable. She laughed, left him standing there, and took the arm of Fräulein ten Brinken.

  “My brother is a more beautiful girl that you are,” she said. “But you are a sweeter boy.”

  “And you,” laughed Alraune, “my blonde abbess, you prefer sweet boys?”

  She answered, “What is permitted for Héloise? It went very badly for my poor Abalard, you know. He was slender and delicate just like you are! There I can learn much about self-modesty.

  But you, my sweet little boy, you appear like a strange priest with a new and fresh doctrine. One that would harm no one.”

  “My doctrine is ancient and venerable,” said the Chevalier de Maupin.

  “That is the best covering for such sweet sin,” laughed the blonde abbess.

  She took a goblet from the table and handed it to him.

  “Drink, sweet boy.”

  The countess came up with hot pleading eyes, “Let me have him!”

  But Frieda Gontram shook her head. “No,” she said sharply. “Not him! Fair game, if you like–”

  “She kissed me,” insisted Tosca and Héloise scoffed.

  “Do you believe you are the only one tonight?”

  She turned to Alraune, “Decide, my Paris. Who shall it be? The worldly Lady or the pious one?”

  “For today?” asked Fräulein de Maupin.

  “Today–and as long as you want!” cried Countess Olga.

  The fancy dressed boy laughed, “I want the abbess–and Tosca as well.”

  He ran laughing over to a blonde Teuton that was strutting as a red executioner with a mighty axe made of cardboard.

  “You–brother-in-law,” she cried. “I’ve got two mama’s. Will you execute them, both of them?”

  The student straightened up and raised both arms high.

  “Where are they?” he bellowed.

  But Alraune found no time to answer; the Colonel of the 28th regiment had snatched her up for the two-step.

  –The Chevalier de Maupin stepped onto the professors’ table.

  “Where is your Albert?” asked the professor of literature. “Where is your Isabella?”

  “My Albert is running around here somewhere, Herr Professor,” answered Alraune. He appears in two dozen different versions in this very ballroom!”

  “As for Isabella–her eyes searched around the room–Isabella,” she continued, I will present her to you as well.”

  She stepped up to the professor’s daughter; a fifteen year old, timid thing that looked at her with large amazed blue eyes.

  “Will you be my page, little gardener?” she asked.

  The flaxen haired girl said, “Yes, gladly–If you want me to!”

  “You must be my page when I am a lady,” the Chevalier instructed, “and my maid when I go as a gentleman.”

  The little
girl nodded.

  “How is that, Herr Professor?” laughed Alraune.

  “Summa cum Laude!” acknowledged the professor. “But leave my dear little Trudi here with me.”

  “Now I ask!” cried the Fräulein ten Brinken and she turned to a short, round botanist.

  “Which flowers bloom in my garden, Herr Professor?”

  “Red hibiscus,” answered the botanist. He knew the flora of Ceylon very well, “golden lotus and white temple flowers.”

  Wrong!” cried Alraune. “Entirely wrong! Do you know, Herr Rifleman from Harlem? Which flowers grow in my garden?”

  The art professor looked at her sharply, a light smile tugged at his lips.

  “Les fleurs du mal; the flowers of evil,” he said. “Aren’t they?”

  “Yes,” cried Mlle. de Maupin. “Yes, you’ve got it right.”

  “But they don’t bloom for you my dear scientist. You must patiently wait until they are dried and pressed into a book or in a frame after the varnish dries.”

  She pulled her pretty sword, bowed, saluted and snapped her sword-cane back together. Then she turned around on her heel, danced a few steps with the Baron von Manteuffel from Prussia, heard the light voice of her Royal Highness and sprang quickly up to the table of the princess.

  “Countess Almaviva,” she began. “What do you desire from your faithful cherubim?”

  “I’m really disappointed with him,” said the princess. “He has really earned a beating! Scampering around the hall with one scoundrel after another.”

  “Don’t forget the Susanna’s either,” laughed the prince-escort.

  Alraune ten Brinken pulled her lips into a pout. “What should such a poor boy do,” she cried, “who knows nothing of this evil world?”

  She laughed, took the lute from the shoulder of the adjutant who was standing in front of her dressed as Frans Hals. She strummed, stepped back a few paces and sang:

  “You, who instinctively

  Know the ways of the heart

  Tell me, is it love

  That burns so here in mine?”

  “From whom do you want advice cherubim?” asked the princess.

  “Doesn’t my Countess Almaviva know?” Alraune gave back.

  Her Royal Highness laughed, “You are very daring, my page!”

  Cherubim answered, “That is the way of pages!”

  He lifted the lace on the sleeves of the princess and kissed her on the hand–a little too high on the arm and a little too long.

  “Shall I bring you Rosalinde?” he whispered, and he read the answer in her eyes.

  Rosalinde danced past–not a moment’s rest was she allowed this evening.

  The Chevalier de Maupin took her away from her dance partner, led her up the steps to the table of her Highness.

  “Give her something to drink,” she cried. “My beloved thirsts.”

  She took the glass the princess handed to her and placed it to Wolf Gontram’s red lips. Then she turned to the prince consort.

  “Will you dance with me, wild outrider from the Rhine?

  He laughed coarsely and pointed to his gigantic brown riding boots with their immense spurs.

  “Do you believe that I can dance in these?”

  “Try it,” she urged, and pulled him by the arm away from where he was sitting.

  “It will be alright! Only don’t trample me to death or break me, you rough hunter.”

  The prince threw a doubtful glance at the delicate thing in perfumed lace, then put on his buckskin gloves and reached out to her.

  “Then come, my little page,” he cried.

  Alraune threw a hand kiss over to the princess, waltzed through the hall with the heavy prince. The people made room for them and it went well enough diagonally across and then back. He raised her high and whirled her through the air so that she screamed. Then he got entangled in his long spurs–oops! They were both lying on the dance floor.

  She was up again, like new, reaching out her hand to him.

  “Get up Herr Outrider. I can’t very well lift you.”

  He raised his upper body, but when he tried to get onto his right foot a quick “ouch!” came out of his mouth. He steadied himself with his left hand, tried to get up again, but it didn’t work. An intense pain took his Majesty across the foot.

  There he sat, big and strong, in the middle of the dance floor and couldn’t get himself up. Several came up and tried taking off the mighty boot, which covered his entire leg, but it wouldn’t go. The foot had swelled up so quickly they had to cut away the tough leather with sharp knives. Professor Dr. Helban, Orthopedic, examined him and determined the anklebone was broken.

  “I’m done with dancing for today,” grumbled the prince-escort.

  Alraune stood at the front of the thick circle that surrounded him. Near her pressed the red executioner. A little song occurred to her that she had heard the students howling at night.

  “Tell me,” she asked. “How does that song go? The one about the fields, the forests and the strong man’s strength?”

  The tall Teuton was thoroughly drunk and reacted as if someone had thrown a coin into an automated machine. He swung his axe high into the air and bellowed out:

  “He fell on a stone.

  He fell on a–crack, crack, crack –

  He fell on a stone!

  Broke three ribs in his body

  In the fields and the forests

  And all of his strength–

  And then his righ –crack, crack, crack

  And then his right leg!”

  “Shut up!” whispered a fraternity brother to him. “Are you entirely crazy?”

  That quieted him. But the good natured prince laughed.

  “Thanks for the appropriate serenade! But you can save the three ribs–My leg here is completely enough!”

  They carried him out on a chair, helped him into his sleigh. The princess left the ball with him. She was not at all happy about the incident.

  Alraune sought out Wolf Gontram, found him still sitting at the abandoned Royal table.

  “What did she do?” she asked quickly. “What did she say?”

  “I don’t know,’ answered Wölfchen.

  She took his fan, hit him sharply on the arm.

  “You do know,” she insisted. “You must know and you must tell me!”

  He shook his head, “But I really don’t know. She gave me something to drink and smoothed back the hair on my forehead. I believe she also squeezed my hand, but I can’t say exactly, don’t know exactly all that she said. A couple of times I said, ‘Yes.’ But I wasn’t listening to her at all. I was thinking about something entirely different.”

  “You are terribly stupid Wölfchen,” said the Fräulein reproachfully. “You were dreaming again! What were you dreaming about this time?”

  “About you,” he replied.

  She stamped her feet in anger.

  “About me! Always about me! Why are you always thinking about me?

  His large deep eyes pleaded with her.

  “I can’t help it,” he whispered.

  The music began, interrupting the silence that the going away of the Royalty had caused. “Roses of the South” sounded soft and seductive. She took his hand, pulled him out with her.

  “Come, Wölfchen, we will dance!”

  They stepped out and turned around. They were alone in the large hall. The gray bearded art professor saw them, climbed up on his chair and shouted:

  “Quiet! Special waltz for the Chevalier de Maupin and his Rosalinde.”

  Hundreds of eyes rested on the beautiful couple. Alraune was highly aware of it and felt the admiration with every step that she took. But Wolf Gontram noticed nothing, he only felt, as he lay in her arms and was carried by the soft sounds. His heavy black eye lashes lowered, shadowing his deep, dreamy eyes.

  The Chevalier de Maupin led, certain, as confidant as a slender page that has lived on the smooth dance floor since the cradle. His head was bowed slightly for
ward, his left hand held two of Rosalinde’s fingers while the right rested on the golden knob of the sword-cane that he had pushed down through the lace trimmed sash till the other end showed behind him. His powdered hair curled like tiny silver snakes, a smile spread his lips revealing smooth white teeth.

  Rosalinde followed every light pressure. Her red and gold train slid smoothly over the floor and her figure grew out of it like a graceful shaped flower. Her head lay back, white ostrich plumes dangled heavily from her large hat. She was worlds away from everyone else, enraptured by the garlands of roses that hung throughout the hall. They passed under them again and again on their way around the dance floor.

  The guests pressed to the edges, those in back climbed up on chairs and tables. They watched, breathless.

  “I congratulate you, your Excellency,” murmured Princess Wolkonski.

  The Privy Councilor replied, “Thank you, your Highness. You see that our efforts have not been entirely in vain.”

  They changed directions, the Chevalier led his Lady diagonally across the hall, and Rosalinde opened her eyes wide, throwing quiet, astonished glances at the crowd surrounding them.

  “Shakespeare would kneel if he saw this Rosalinde,” declared the professor of literature.

  But at the next table little Manasse barked from his chair down to Legal Councilor Gontram.

  “Stand up and look just this once, Herr Colleague! Look at that! Your boy looks just like your departed wife–exactly like her!”

  The old Legal Councilor remained sitting quietly, sampling a new bottle of Urziger Auslese.

  “I can’t especially remember any more how she looked, “ he opined indifferently.

  Oh, he remembered her well, but what did that have to do with other people?

  The couple danced, down through the hall and back. Rosalinde’s white shoulders rose and fell faster, her cheeks grew flushed–but the Chevalier smiled under his powder and remained equally graceful, equally certain, confident and nimble.

  Countess Olga tore the red carnations out of her hair and threw them at the couple. The Chevalier de Maupin caught one in the air, pressed it to his lips and blew her a kiss. Then all the others grabbed after colorful flowers, taking them out of vases on the tables, tearing them from clothing, loosening them from their hair, and under a shower of flowers the couple waltzed to the left around the hall carried by the sounds of “Roses of the South”.