by Joe Bandel
The invalid scratched behind his ear and then turned his brown cap in his fingers very ill at ease. He wanted to say something to the professor. Most of the time he was very good at haggling a higher price for his wares. But he couldn’t think of a single thing, only the four miles that he had just come–exactly what the professor was now berating him for. He was completely contrite and comprehended thoroughly just how stupid he had been so he made no response at all. He requested only that he be allowed to leave the artifacts there so he wouldn’t have to haul them back. The Privy Councilor nodded and then gave him half a Mark.
“There Brambach, for the road! But next time be a little smarter and do what I said. Now go into the kitchen and have some butter-bread and a glass of beer!”
The invalid thanked him, happy enough that things had gone so well and he hobbled back across the court toward the kitchen. His Excellency snatched up the sweet tear vial, pulled a silk handkerchief out of his pocket and carefully cleaned it, viewing the fine violet glass from all sides. Then he opened the door and stepped back into the library where the curator from Nuremburg stood before a glass case. He walked up brandishing the vial in his upraised arm.
“Look at this, dear doctor,” he began. “I have here a most unusual treasure! It belongs to the grave of Tullia, the sister of general Aulus. It is from the site at Schware-Rheindorf. I’ve already shown you several artifacts from there!”
He handed him the vial and continued.
“Can you tell me its point of origin?”
The scholar took the glass, stepped to the window and adjusted his glasses. He asked for a loupe and a silk cloth. He wiped it and held the glass against the light turning it this way and that. Somewhat hesitatingly and not entirely certain he finally said, “Hmm, it appears to be of Syrian make, probably from the glass factory at Palmyra.”
“Bravo!” cried the Privy Councilor. I must certainly watch myself around you. You are an expert!”
If the curator would have said it was from Agrigent or Munda he would have responded with equal enthusiasm.
“Now doctor, what time period is it from?”
The curator raised the vial one more time. “Second century,” he said. “First half.”
This time his voice rang with confidence.
“I give you my compliments,” confirmed the Privy Councilor. “I didn’t believe anyone could make such a quick and accurate determination!”
“Except yourself naturally, your Excellency,” replied the scholar flatteringly.
But the professor replied modestly, “You over estimate my knowledge considerably Herr doctor. I have spent no less than eight days of hard work trying to make a determination with complete certainty. I have gone through a lot of books.
But I have no regrets. It is a rare and beautiful piece–has cost me enough too. The fellow that found it made a small fortune with it.”
“I would really like to have it for my museum,” declared the director. “What do you want for it?”
“For Nuremburg, only five thousand Marks,” answered the professor. “You know that I offer all German museums specially reduced prices. Next week two gentlemen are coming here from London. I will offer them eight thousand and will certainly get it!”
“But your Excellency,” responded the scholar. “Five thousand Marks! You know very well that I can’t pay such a price! That is beyond my authorization.”
The Privy Councilor said, “I’m really very sorry, but I can’t give the vial away for any less.”
The Herr from Nuremburg weighed the little glass in his hand. “It is a charming tear vial and I am inordinately fond of it. I will give you three thousand, your Excellency”
The Privy Councilor said, “No, nothing less than five thousand! But I tell you what Herr Director. Since that tear vial pleases you so much, permit me to give it to you as a personal gift. Keep it as a memento of your accurate determination.”
“I thank you, your Excellency. I thank you!” cried the curator. He stood up and shook the Councilor’s hand very hard. “But I am not permitted to accept any gifts in my position. Forgive me then if I must refuse. Anyway, I have decided to pay your price. We must keep this piece in the Fatherland and not permit it to go to England.”
He went to the writing desk and wrote out his check. But before he left the Privy Councilor talked him into buying the other less interesting pieces–from the grave of Tullia, the sister of general Aulus.
The professor ordered the horses ready for his guest and escorted him out to his carriage. As he came back across the court he saw Wölfchen and Alraune standing by the peddler who was showing them his colored images of the Saints. After a meal and some drink old Brambach had recovered some of his courage, had even sold the cook a rosary that he claimed had been blessed by the Bishop. That was why it cost thirty pennies more than the others did. That had all loosened his tongue, which just an hour before had been so timid. He steeled his heart and limped up to the Privy Councilor.
“Herr Professor,” he pleaded. “Buy the children a pretty picture of St. Joseph!”
His Excellency was in a good mood so he replied, “St. Joseph? No, but do you have one of St. John of Nepomuk?”
No, Brambach didn’t have one of him. He had one of St. Anthony though, St. John, St. Thomas and St. Jakob. But unfortunately none of Nepomuk and once again he had to be upbraided for not knowing his business. In Lendenich you could only sell St. John of Nepomuk, none of the other saints.
The peddler took it hard but made one last attempt. “A raffle ticket, Herr Professor! Take a raffle ticket for the restoration of St. Lawrence’s church in Dülmen. It only costs one Mark and every buyer receives an indulgence of one hundred days. It says so right here!”
He held the ticket under the Privy Councilor’s nose.
“No,” said the professor. We don’t need any indulgences. We are protestant, that’s how we get to heaven and a person can’t win anything in a raffle anyway.”
“What?” the peddler replied. “You can’t win? There are over three hundred prizes and the first prize is fifty thousand Marks in cash! It says so right here!”
He pointed with a dirty finger to the raffle ticket. The professor took the ticket out of his hand and examined it.
“You old ass!” he laughed. “And here it says there are five hundred thousand tickets! Calculate for yourself how many chances you have of winning that!”
He turned to go but the invalid limped after him holding onto his coat.
“Try it anyway professor,” he begged. “We need to live too!”
“No,” cried the Privy Councilor.
Still the peddler wouldn’t give up. “I have a feeling that you are going to win!”
“You always have that feeling!” said the Privy Councilor.
“Let the little one choose a ticket, she brings luck!” insisted Brambach.
That stopped the professor. “I will do it,” he murmured.
“Come over here Alraune! He cried. “Choose a ticket.”
The child skipped up. The invalid carefully made a fan out of his tickets and held them in front of her.
“Close your eyes,” he commanded. “Now, pick one.”
Alraune drew a ticket and gave it to the Privy Councilor. He considered for a moment and then waved the boy over.
“You choose one too, Wölfchen,” he said.
In the leather volume his Excellency ten Brinken reports that he won fifty thousand Marks in the Dülmen church raffle. Unfortunately he could not be certain whether Alraune or Wölfchen had selected the winning ticket. He had put them both together in his desk without writing the names of the children on them. Still he scarcely had any doubt that it must have been Alraune’s.
As for the rest, he mentions how grateful he was to old Brambach who almost forced him to bring this money into the house. He gave him five Marks and set things up with the local relief fund for aged and disabled veterans so that he would receive a regular pension of thirty Marks per
year.
Chapter Seven
Shares the things that occurred when Alraune was a young girl.
FROM the time she was eight years old until she was twelve Alraune ten Brinken was raised in the Sacré Couer convent in Nancy. From then until her seventeenth birthday she lived at Mlle. de Vynteelen’s finishing school for young ladies on Du Marteau Avenue in Spa. During this time she went to the ten Brinken home twice a year to spend her vacations.
At first the Privy Councilor tried to have her taught at home. He hired a girl to teach the child, then a tutor and soon after that another one. But even with the best intentions in a short time they all despaired of ever teaching her anything. It was simply not going to happen. It was not something they could point out. She was not wild or unruly. She just never answered and there was nothing that could break through her stubborn silence.
just sat there quiet and still, staring straight ahead and blinking with half-open eyes. You could scarcely tell if she was even listening. She would pick up the slate in her hand but she would not move it, not up, down, or to make a letter–If she did use it, it was to draw some strange animal with ten legs or a face with three eyes and two noses.
What she learned at all she learned before the Privy Councilor sent her to the convent, before her separation from Wölfchen. This same boy that failed miserably in every class in school and looked down with contempt on any schoolwork had an unending patience with his sister at home.
She had him write long rows of numbers, write out his name and her name hundreds of times and she enjoyed it when he made a mistake, when his dirty little fingers cramped up on him. It was for this purpose that she would take up the slate, the pencil or the writing quill. She would learn a number, a word or its opposite, grasp it quickly, write it down, and then let the boy copy it for hours. She always found something to correct, there, that stroke was not right. She played the teacher–so she learned.
Then one day the principal came out to complain to the Privy Councilor about the pathetic performance of his foster son. Wölfchen was especially weak in the sciences.
Alraune heard this and from then on played school with him, controlled him, made him study till dark, listened to him recite his lessons and made him learn. She would put him in his room, close the door and not let him come out until he had finished off his homework.
She acted as if she knew everything already and would not tolerate any doubt of her superiority. She learned very easily and quickly. She did not want to show any weakness in front of the boy so she took up one book after another grasping its contents and moving on to the next in a wild and chaotic manner without tying them together. This went on until the youth would come to her when he didn’t know something. He would ask her to explain it to him because she must surely know it. Then she would put him off, scold him and tell him to think it over.
That gave her some time to search in her books. If she couldn’t find the answer she would run off to the Privy Councilor and ask him.
Then she would come back to the boy and ask if the answer had occurred to him yet. If it hadn’t she would finally give him the answer. The professor noticed the game and it amused him. He would have never even considered placing the girl out of the home if the princess hadn’t kept pressuring him again and again.
The princess had always been a good Catholic and it seemed as if she became more devout with every Kilo of fat that she put on. She was insistent that her Godchild must be brought up in a convent. The Privy Councilor had been her financial advisor for several years now and invested her millions almost as if they were his own. He thought it prudent to go along with her on this point. So Alraune went to the Sacré Couer convent in Nancy.
There were several exceptionally short entries in the Privy Councilor’s hand during this period and several long reports from the Mother Superior. The professor grinned as he filed them, especially the first ones that praised the girl and the extraordinary progress she was making. He knew his convents and knew very well that a person could not learn anything of this world among these pious sisters.
He enjoyed how the first letters filled with the praise that all the parents received very soon took a different tone. The Mother Superior reported more and more urgently on various cruelties and these complaints always had the same basis. It was not the behavior of the girl herself, not her performance in giving presentations. It was always about the influence she exerted on her schoolmates.
“It is entirely true,” writes the Reverend Mother, “that the child herself never tortures animals. At least she has never been caught at it–But it is equally true that all the little cruelties committed by the other girls originate in her head.
First there was little Mary, a well-behaved and obedient child that was caught in the convent garden blowing up frogs with hollow grass stems. When she was called to account for her actions she confessed that Alraune had given her the idea. We didn’t want to believe it at first and thought it was much more likely that she was trying to shift the blame away from herself.
But very soon after that two different girls were discovered sprinkling salt on some large slugs so that they writhed in agony as they slowly dissolved into slime. Now slugs are also God’s creatures and again these two children declared that Alraune had pushed them into it. I then questioned her myself and the child admitted everything and went on to explain that she had once heard that about slugs and wanted to see if it was really true. As for the blowing up of frogs, she said that it sounded so beautiful when you smashed a blown up frog with a stone. Of course she would never do it herself because some of the crushed frog might squirt onto her hands.
When I asked whether she understood that she had done wrong she declared No, she had not done anything wrong and what the other children did had nothing at all to do with her.”
At this place in the report in parentheses the Privy Councilor wrote, “She is absolutely correct!”
“Despite being punished,” the letter continues, “a short time later we had several other deplorable cases that we determined must have originated from Alraune.
For example, Clara Maasen of Düren, a girl several years older than Alraune. She has been in our care for four years now and never given the slightest cause for complaint. She took a mole and poked its eyes out with a red-hot knitting needle. She was so upset over what she had done that she spent the next few days extremely agitated and bursting into tears for no reason at all. She only calmed down again after she had received absolution during her next confession.
Alraune explained that moles creep around in the dark earth and it doesn’t matter if they can see or not.
Then we found very ingeniously constructed bird traps in the garden. Thank God no little birds had been caught in them yet. No one would tell us where she had gotten the idea. Only under the threat of severe punishment did some girls finally admit that Alraune had enticed them into doing it and at the same time threatened to do something to them if they told on her.
Unfortunately this unholy influence of the child on her schoolmates has now grown to the point where we can scarcely find out the truth anymore.
Helene Petiot was caught at recess carefully cutting the wings off of flies, ripping their legs off and throwing them alive onto an anthill. The little girl said that she had come up with the idea herself and stuck with her story in front of His Reverence, swearing that Alraune had nothing to do with it.
Her cousin Ninon lied just as stubbornly yesterday after she had tied a tin pot to the tail of our good old cat and almost drove it insane. Nevertheless we are convinced that Alraune had her hand in that game as well.”
The Mother Superior then wrote further that she had called a conference together and everyone had concluded the best thing was to respectfully beg his Excellency to take his daughter away from the convent and come as soon as possible to get her.
The Privy Councilor answered that he very much regretted the incidents but must beg them to keep the child a little while longe
r at the convent.
“The more difficult the work, the greater the reward.”
He had no doubt that the patience and piety of the sisters would be successful in clearing the weeds out of the heart of his child and turn it into a beautiful garden of the Lord. The reason he did this was to see if the influence of this sensitive child was stronger than the discipline of the convent and all the efforts of the pious sisters.
He knew very well that the cheap Sacré Couer convent did not draw from the best families and that it was very happy to count the daughter of his Excellency as one of its students. He was not mistaken. The Reverend Mother replied that with God’s help they would try once more. All the sisters had declared themselves willing to include a special plea for Alraune in their evening prayers. In generosity the Privy Councilor sent them a hundred Marks for their charities.
During the next vacation the professor carefully observed the little girl. He knew the Gontram family from the Great-grandfather down and knew that they all took in a great love for animals with their mother’s milk. He felt that her influence on this much older boy would at last meet its match, become powerless against this innermost feeling of unlimited goodness.
Yet he caught Wölfchen Gontram one afternoon down by the little pond under the trumpet tree. He was kneeling on the ground. In front of him sat a large frog on a stone. The youth had lit a cigarette and shoved it in the wide mouth and deep down its throat. The frog smoked in deathly fear, swallowing the smoke, pulling it down into its belly. It inhaled more and more but couldn’t push it back out so it became larger and larger.
Wölfchen stared at it, fat tears running down his cheeks. But he lit another cigarette when the first one burned down, removed the stub from the frog’s throat and with shaking fingers pushed the fresh one back into its mouth. The frog swelled up monstrously, quivering in agony, its eyes popping out of their sockets. It was a strong animal and endured two and a half cigarettes before it exploded.