Hanns Heinz Ewers Volume I (Collected Short Stories by Hanns Heinz Ewers)

by Hanns Heinz Ewers

  They are still insulted about her leaving over there in Paraguay. The people there are uneducated and have no respect for the priestess that keeps watch in her temple at Weimar. They tell stories about her-

  Mostly they tell stories about him, about her man, the reddish blonde Förster. They laugh sometimes too, but with tears in their eyes, the way people in a tragicomedy laugh. Oh yes, it is so pathetic, such great genuine enthusiasm, beautiful and stupid. But it is always honest, so much courage, work and naïve misunderstanding.

  A New Germany in the promised land, free, huge, magnificent! How it made this man’s heart beat! Then came the collapse and the end—his death.

  He was their leader. They came out of Germany for him, with him and after him, counts, barons, aristocrats, officers and country squires. They were a strange company. They were people that wanted to go back to the old ways. The Germany they once loved had become too modern—like America.

  I found a Hussar cavalry Captain in Tebicuary. He was digging a well. His friend, a Prussian heavy cavalry commander, stood near him and neither one had any idea of how to dig a well. They were playing like two boys that wanted to scratch a hole through the earth.

  Another time I went into a shop, “A cognac please.”

  But the Count from Mecklenburg remained sitting quietly in his chair absorbed in an ancient issue of the Reichs Messenger.

  “Will you give me a cognac?”

  He didn’t move.

  “The devil,” I yelled. “I want a cognac!”

  He was bothered by my yelling and finally moved to reply, “There’s the bottle. Get it yourself.”

  They are precious, these people from out of a dead time, stuck in the middle of a primeval forest. Right or wrong, they nourish themselves from the capital that they brought with them, beating a miserable existence through a bit of agriculture and cattle breeding. All of them are like children, and that’s the life they want over there. You need to laugh at them, but with tears in your eyes.

  In general they are very hospitable in those lands and you will be taken in whether you are German, French, English, Spanish or Italian. Everyone is happy to have you as a guest at their lonely ranch. Only the best is good enough for a complete stranger and you are treated royally. In fact they would be very happy if you never left at all.

  This is especially true for blue-blooded Germans and they are treated much differently. Yes, they are a so much better people and it is a great honor to have one stay with them. Times are hard there and you will finally have to pay dearly for your enjoyable stay with them. But they will on no account call their home a hotel. Pfui. That would be indecent. Maybe a boarding house, a boarding house fit for a Baron. Naturally these Gentlemen are not concerned about it. Not once do they polish a single boot. They only take your money. Almost everyone has such a boarding house and every ten years or so some unsuspecting guest will stay there once.

  At that time I was living at the boarding house of the Countess Melanie. I can describe her very easily. If you want to meet someone like her get up early one morning and go to the zoo. You will see someone just like her there. She wears an ugly little silk hat and a black riding dress whose inventor was the greatest enemy of women that ever walked the earth. She is very blonde, bony and thin, the perfect German officer’s wife.

  After you are introduced to one of these women you have to greet all of them. You never know if she is the one you know or someone else. They all look exactly alike. I once met someone I thought was Countess Melanie, I was certain it was her but I was wrong. It was someone else that I had never met before.

  She was thirty-five and had been already living on the land for at least a quarter of a century. She was rich and could have had a really good life in Europe but she lived simply and poorly, commanding the household just like her father had once commanded them, swearing with the peons and riding around the ranch side saddle in a black dress. That was the only feminine thing about her. When she gave an order it rang out like that of a Prussian cavalry captain, clear and sharp.

  One day she cried so loudly that it resounded through all the rooms.

  “Marie!”

  Marie came and this time I couldn’t be mistaken. I knew her. It was none other than Jesus Maria Von Friedel. He wore a black riding dress like the Countess and led both horses up right under my window. The Countess grabbed the reins, laced her fingers together. He stepped into them and swung up into the saddle, sidesaddle understandably. Then she climbed onto her horse and they both flew into the forest.

  Countess Melanie was the successor to the star of the Medea and the Stockholm performer. Where one was a dramatic actor and the other a social reformer, this one was a Lieutenant and certainly a lot more man than many probation candidates were. In return, Baron Friedel had become much more feminine. He ran around in women’s skirts and worked as lady’s maid to the Countess.

  I didn’t see him any more that day but I met him the next morning on the veranda. He recognized me immediately and I nodded to him. In an instant he had turned around and ran away. But a half-hour later he came to my room in men’s clothing.

  “Are you going to be staying here very long?” he asked.

  I replied that I had absolutely no plans and could leave today or next week. Then he asked if he could travel with me. It would be best if I left right away. I excused myself, said that my arrival was pure coincidence and that I in no way wanted to intrude at all in his life at this villa with his amazon. He didn’t need to worry. I would ride on alone and leave him in peace.

  Then he said, “No that’s not it at all. I’m a different person now but I must leave today under all circumstances. I can’t stay here an hour longer.”

  We traveled together for half a year. We hunted in Choco, Columbia, and I will gladly admit that Baron Friedel was a better rider and hunter than I am. There were some dangers in our adventures mainly because he would not leave the Indian girls alone. He was only half way contented with the European ones. Once he dragged one around with him all day sitting in front of him on the saddle.

  In Assucion, Paraguay, the consulate awaited him with good news. The last of his aunts had died and he was now in possession of a considerable fortune. We traveled together back to Europe.

  In Bologue, France, I was glad to see him go. He had been insufferable and giddy on the steamer. Every night he gambled, drank and kicked up a row before falling to sleep in the smoking room.

  The Stewardesses were very obliging to his intrusions and advances, but a couple girls in steerage that he stalked complained about it to the Captain. It created a big scene with a lot of bad slander and gossip. Nevertheless he still found the opportunity to seduce the young wife of a traveling salesman and fellow traveler while on an outing in Madeira, Spain. He seduced her so openly and brazenly that I am still astonished no one except myself noticed.

  It always seemed to me that everything he did came out of an irresistible compulsion, out of a burning desire to prove his manhood to himself again and again. I must say that he did a pretty good job of it.

  That was a year before his death. The bullet struck him at castle Aibling, the place he retired to after his return from Europe. He lived a solitary life there in the truest sense, removed from every form of communication. He let himself be waited on by the old servants, at times rode through the beech trees and by far spent the greatest part of his time in the castle library.

  I know all this from Joseph Cochfisch, his lawyer. He also let me read what his master wrote during the weeks and months before his death. I call them “notes” because that is the only word for these remarkable writings.

  Apparently the Baron at first intended to write down his memoirs in a black bound book but very soon it turned into a type of journal that after a few pages again dissolved into a mixture of essays, poems and all kinds of strange contemplations. Later everything became even more tangled and confused.

  One of the things that made this book so difficult was that it
contained two sets of handwriting. It began with the slanted firm handwriting of the Baron that I knew so well. This dominated the first four dozen pages. Then suddenly on a new page a fine elegant lady’s hand asserted itself for twenty pages. This was again followed by the Baron’s strong hand which very soon dissolved a second time into that of the woman. Later in the book the handwriting would change so often that finally they would both appear in the same sentence.

  I was able to determine that all of the poems except two were written in the woman’s hand. Furthermore, she also wrote a sensitive essay about the musical art of L. von Hoffman as well as a couple excellent translations of Alfred de Vigny.

  The following were only in the handwriting of the Baron, a series of episodes depicting the Boer wars, an exhaustive, almost mathematically precise critical composition tearing apart Hoffman’s influence on French artists in the XIX century. There was also a critique of Walt Whitman and his verses that had nothing good to say about him at all. Finally there was a long and broad presentation of a chess study that recommended a variant of the Ruy Lopez opening that was not very convincing.

  There were only two poems in the hand of the Baron. One was a true smoking and drinking song. The other is quite informative so I will write it down here.

  The Woman from Warens

  Your gray eyes speak your desire

  Your clever kiss knows such silent wisdom

  Will this spark end in distant flickering flames?

  You kiss a girl: a boy grows out of your kiss

  And flees with your daughter wrapped

  In his joyous arms and bearing a glow so warm

  That she gives heat to the middle of the night

  Yet her kiss brings unknown fortune

  Breaking what is and desiring to become someone new

  He tears himself loose and returns in the morning dawn

  Returns to you, as a beautiful woman

  It seems to me that the heading is certainly influenced by some remembered poem of Rousseau. I don’t know whether the subject matter of this poem is derived out of personal experience or just word imagery. Yet this sketch thoroughly permits a deep enough glance into the writer’s soul, confirming the sexual psyche of the Baron as I understand it. It has taken me a long time to put the things I know of his life in order. This image is not really as remarkable as it might seem at first glance. The entire sexual life of the Baron is not that unusual except for the sharp extremes and he is certainly not alone in his experiences.

  On the contrary I wish to assert that the psyche of any individual is not of a single sex but contains both male and female aspects. We may honor our manhood but that does not stop the feminine in us from breaking through from time to time, thank God. It is a great deficiency when this does not happen.

  Even the way this feminine aspect is aroused within the Baron’s psyche in such a crude manner appears to be only a surface consideration for me. Such perceptions and feelings must be addressed as completely normal and natural.

  In a thoroughly masculine body there is a psyche with pure masculine sexual feelings. I use the word psyche as a word image to make a quick point. There is also within this same body a feminine psyche that perceives and feels in a sexually feminine way. In general these feminine feelings and perceptions are not strong enough to overcome all of the inhibitions that are contrary to its expression.

  The natural instinctual feelings of the male body stand in opposition to those of the female aspect and support the male psyche instead. While in theory we have both male and female aspects equally within ourselves, under normal conditions the desire of the male body for a woman remains stronger and the feminine is only a mask that shows from time to time.

  In the case of Baron von Friedel I see an unusually sharp exaggeration of this classic phenomenon in a manner that I have often observed before but never in such pronounced form.

  The proof of the validity of my statement lies in the crude case of my friend, who always chose to partner with pronounced lesbians that had strongly developed masculine psyches. The fact appears to be that the opposing psyche always goes through a metamorphose and becomes a partner to the opposite sex psyche. I’ve received explicit permission from one of these ladies to say that she has never in her very rich life had any relationships with men except for her relationship with the Baron.

  You may suspect that this phenomenon of an otherwise male avoiding woman suddenly expressing feelings for one man or another is a backlash of the repressed feminine feelings that lie slumbering within her or that she is responding to the feminine nature within the man. They probably both go together.

  This reminds me amusingly enough of the old fable of Plato and the three sexes of ancient times. It puts this strange love into an entirely different light.

  For the average citizen love between a man and a woman is the simplest thing in the world. But when you consider it more closely things become immensely complicated. Such as a man that feels like a woman but loves a woman and a woman that feels like a man yet loves a man!

  This intricate problem resolves itself finally in the entirely natural, normal feelings of both sexes that resound within each of them. The mutual feelings are experienced as normal and only slightly tainted by a hint of inversion.

  For all of these reasons the notes of Baron Jesus Maria von Friedel offer very splendid material for me in this study of sexual psychology. They do not possess much of interest except in the several places that come out of the extreme masculine and feminine divisions of his psyche and show how far over these boundaries he crossed. It explains much that we ourselves are capable of. These places are almost all to be found at the end of the book. They appear mostly in the Baron’s hand with a few appearances in between in the lady’s hand as well. It is necessary that I put them down together as they appear in his book for the full effect even though they are often unorganized and simply stuck in randomly like prunes in a batter.

  It is worth mentioning that the entire last portion of these notes possesses a fantastic force and artistic imagery that resounds and is born out of this strange conflict of hostile sexual instincts. These passages give the impression that this Baron is not the one I knew, he was a dilettante and while possessing a deep perception and impressive insight was not capable of crossing over into these last boundaries of the psyche.

  Page 884 In the hand of the Baron

  Gray land crabs ran over the ground now that evening had fallen. They were unending, it was as if the earth’s crust lived. The repulsive creatures swarmed over everything. There were all sizes, little ones not bigger than my fingernail and others with claws worn away, tiny ones and others as large as plates, waves of them. One powerful beast was so huge and powerful it was deformed. There were spider crabs, thick and hairy with eyes on long stalks, poisonous bristle crabs with long stretched out limbs like monstrous bugs.

  All around me the ground was torn up and deep holes kept spitting out new ones. I could not ride my horse, had to lead the mare by the reins as she carefully searched her way through.

  They kept coming, more crabs, always more of them, crawling out of the earth and they were all marching in one direction. They were marching to the west, toward the setting sun. There was no deviation to the right or left, the eight-legged creatures marched straight as a string further, further into the distance.

  I knew very well why they were marching. Somewhere in the west there was a carcass that the vultures had abandoned now that evening was falling, or else—yes, that was it! They were running to the graveyard, the graveyard at San Ignacio. Just this morning they had buried three peons that had died of swamp fever scarcely an hour before.

  I had seen all three of them just yesterday drunken and noisy in front of the Spanish restaurant. But tomorrow before the sun comes up they will only be smooth bones in the ransacked earth where their bodies now lie. The rest will be torn into millions of pieces and distributed into the millions of stomachs of these repulsive gray land crabs.
Oh, how ugly they are! No Indian disturbs these unclean creatures that plunder their graveyards. Only the Negro eats them, cooks them in his abominable soup or grasps them, breaks their claws off and sucks the flesh out before throwing it back. The others rush to the weaponless creature and eat it alive. Not even the smallest piece is left behind. Crack; crack the shell breaks and the armor—

  I know this woman is like a huge repulsive crab. Am I then already a carcass that she smells, digs up and devours down to the smooth bones? Oh, yes. She must have my flesh so that she can live. But you will see. I will not be devoured! I will turn it around, break her claws off and like the Negro, suck out her flesh-

  Page 896 In the hand of the Baron

  In Buenos Aires I was once in the Royal Theater. We sat above in the box, Walter Gellig, two coquettes and I. We drank champagne, made noise and had the screen shut. We scarcely threw a single glance at the stage and only then to shout some cheeky word or insult. We were having fun.

  The French-Vietnamese on stage, well that was Whitley, a friend of the girls. We drank to her, shouted that her twins and we wished her a happy birthday. The crowd down below yelled at us to keep quiet. By the time the Loop-the-loop maiden had finished her act and come up to us Gellig was so drunk he could scarcely yell any more. The attendant carried him down and the women took him back home in the carriage.

  I stayed behind and drank alone. Three Yankee lads came up on stage next, stupid, ugly fellows out of the Bowery bellowing some foolish song. The audience hissed, booed, screamed and shouted at them to go to blazes but the lads came back on stage for another round.