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

by Hanns Heinz Ewers

  Naturally she rules, permits no other will in the house besides her own. This concerns me because I am always getting punishment slips on a daily basis.

  Five Marks because I’m late for breakfast, twenty Marks because of a mocking smile, thirty Marks because I don’t find the coffee as excellent as usual, ten Marks because of a sullen face.

  It’s cheap as she sees it, but I can never go a day without at least a fifty Mark penalty coming to me. Mother is very cheerful about the discovery of this new source of income. She has absolutely no sense of the value of money. She helps everyone in need while naturally making them feel guilty as a student.

  Then she gives back to you or me as a friendly settlement what she has so carelessly collected when we come for a visit.

  This is all very charming and like any other, I fall under the spell of this old woman that we are permitted to call mother. Everything is harmonious around her and any small mistakes only make this entire picture more quaint and attractive. That is why this woman is—

  A little past eleven she wanted to go to bed. I brought her to her bedroom, said goodnight to her and went up to my room. I had forgotten a book downstairs so a little later I went back down to get it. I came through the hall, knocked carefully on her door, no answer. She couldn’t be asleep yet. I knocked again and finally opened the door carefully. The room was half lit, the bed undisturbed.

  I went through the dining room to the living room. I saw her sitting there in an armchair completely dressed with her elbows resting on the table, her head resting in her hands. Her eyes were wide open, staring vacantly into space.

  I entered softly at first and then made an intentional noise. She didn’t appear to hear me. At first I was frightened. Was there something wrong with her? Then in the next moment I calmed down. She was living and breathing.

  I sat down too, a distance away from her, on the sofa and observed her. She didn’t move. Her breathing was regular but not strong, yet her eyes appeared to move as if they were watching some invisible thing moving in the room. I could have been mistaken. There was no light in the room except the light of the August full moon that fell through the wide-open window. She sat in the middle of this silver light.

  I was as still as she was, waiting, waiting, for something to happen. But nothing did. I heard the grandfather clock in the hall by the stairway strike half past twelve. I felt a firm conviction that a rare secret was being revealed there in front of me, but I couldn’t make any rhyme or reason out of it. Nothing happened, nothing at all.

  Finally, she appeared to come out of the trance, sighed lightly once or twice, then laughed. She was unquestionably now fully awake. I saw her break off a few withered leaves from a geranium and throw them out the window. Then she turned around without noticing me in the corner and with firm strides went into her bedroom.

  I sneaked through the door and listened. It sounded like she was getting undressed and into bed. Then, after a very short time, I heard the quiet breathing of her sleeping. I went lightly out of the room. It was not yet half past one. Her trance had lasted at least thirty-five minutes.

  I began my vigil the next evening. I stepped lightly into the living room after she had gone to bed and waited in my corner to see if she would come back, but she didn’t. She did come back on the fourth night, however, not at the same hour as the first time, but a little later. Apparently she was waiting, consciously or unconsciously for the moon to come out.

  She stepped into the living room and sat in an armchair, not the one she had sat in before but one that was in the moonlight. This time she was not as relaxed, her hands gripped the armrests of her chair as she stared out into space.

  I know exactly how long she remaining unmoving; it was for thirty-six minutes. Then she got up and went back into her room. Nothing happened again for several weeks. I understood that it must have something to do with the moon. So I waited for the full moon in September.

  She came again and it was the same show in general as before. This time I noticed something that made things a little clearer for me. While mother was in the trance her long silvery blue hair was let down and bathed in the moonlight as it covered her shoulders.

  I made a clumsy movement and knocked two vases off the small table. Mother didn’t stir despite the loud noise. Apparently she hadn’t heard it.

  Her body sat before me in the moonlight, but her spirit was many hundreds of miles away.

  After she had gone back into her room I listened at the door like before. I suddenly heard her coming. I quickly turned on the light and turned to the cupboard as if I was looking for something.

  Mother opened the door.

  “Did you forget something?” she asked.

  Her voice sounded as it always does. She did not remember the somnambulistic condition that she had been in just minutes before. I said I was looking for my writing quill. She laughed and said she had forgotten how late it was. I gave her another goodnight kiss and she sharply told me not to stay up too late. I better not be late coming down for breakfast.

  Apparently she remembered nothing about her trance condition, or perhaps, it had been going on for so long that she scarcely noticed the few missing minutes that she had forgotten. Yet this somnambulistic sleep was so deep that she didn’t waken at the sound of two vases falling off the table. It was also certain that in her half-hour of rapture, her awareness, her ghost, her soul, whatever you want to call it, her life force was somewhere else.

  But where? That was something worth finding out.

  By now I’ve collected an entire series of odd details that I have very slowly tracked down. Several of them I have only now discovered, but I have known about many of them for years. I just didn’t recognize what they meant.

  You know, dear brother, that we have many toads in our garden, very beautiful, huge toads with green and golden yellow eyes. I must confess that I share the partiality of our mother for these animals entirely.

  Do you remember when we as children put them in milk bowls? They were probably looking for grubs and angleworms.

  It always made mother happy when she went out into the garden and a toad hopped into her path. You know how she occasionally spoke to these animals. But this is something new that I have observed for a week.

  I was looking for mother one evening at dusk to go for a walk with her. Then I heard her light voice in the garden. I went down. She was walking slowly down the path and leading an enormous brown toad on a silk cord like it was a puppy. She spoke to it.

  As I came up to her, she laughed and said, “Lise” had been naughty today and wool wouldn’t work. Then she explained to me how all the little girls went around with toads on leashes. She untied the animal and set it carefully under the Fly Agaric mushroom near the large fern. Such a small sign, this mushroom!

  What reasonable gardener would allow poisonous mushrooms in their gardens? Our mother has fought with the gardener year in and year out that he must under no circumstances disturb these mushrooms.

  A day later the gardener came to work on the flowerbeds and I asked him what kind of mushrooms we have in our garden. We have Fly Agaric, Giftreizker, Panther Mushrooms, Satan Mushrooms and Speitaubling. They are all poisonous as sin! Yet we don’t have a single harmless mushroom growing in our garden.

  That got me to thinking I might need to examine her houseplants and flowers a little closer. They are really a complete mix. Some are harmless. Our mother has flowers and plants from all over the world in her house, that is obvious.

  I will take this opportunity to only speak of the ones she especially treasures, the ones that have been her favorites for many years.

  Do you remember, dear brother, when we were getting ready for Christmas and she would send us out to the cloister garden or the park to search for the white Christmas flowers under the snow and bring them back?

  The Christmas rose was the first flower of the year and mother always wanted it just as the hollyhock was the last flower of the year. As you kno
w, they are both very poisonous. In the spring enormous bushes of laburnum grow out of her vases. Later she grows red foxglove and blue eisenhut. In fall and winter big pots stand all over the house with cyclamen that bloom with the flower we call anemones and the same with rosemary heath.

  Now, all of these flowers are very poisonous. Do you wish me to believe, dear brother, that it is just coincidence that all these poisonous plants are scattered around near the harmless ones?

  I might mention her nightshades and prize winning hemlocks as well, even if they can be found in many homes. But where can you find the beautiful wolf’s milk, heartsease or Devil’s eye? They grow here in the garden or in pots. She has these amazing flowers growing in the same pots with the abominable henbane. You must believe me, dear brother, when I say that you can search for a very long time before you will find these in another house!

  She treasures all of her flowers, especially her roses. But a full bough of the yellow blossoms and grapes of the laburnum is most certainly her very favorite. This strange partiality is instinctual. She loves these flowers for no other reason than because they are poisonous but she doesn’t give it any thought.

  On the other side, I have no objection because she has no idea of the poisonous nature of her plants and flowers at all. She does nothing with them. She was a bit astonished when I told her that the Christmas rose and the hollyhocks were poisonous. She simply would not believe me when I said the laburnum were as well.

  These things are no different than the secret discovery of her setting toads beside the poisonous mushrooms and plants that she loves so dearly.

  By the way, she doesn’t do anything with these poisons. She touches a plant once in awhile, kisses an especially beautiful flower. But she does that with her harmless peach blossoms, fuchsia and giant snapdragons as well.

  The only poisonous plant she does things with is perhaps the worst of them all, the henbane. I have never seen what she does with it. I have noticed that she will occasionally take a pot into her bedroom with her, she has four.

  I must take a break, dear brother, mother calls.

  Mother called, she wanted me to go to the zoo with her. She goes there often and I can tell you, dear brother, that she thinks of the animals just like people. Every single one runs up and presses against the bars when she comes. Now, it is true that she always has a large pair of gloves and food that she brings along.

  This time she had me carry a small sack full of ripe chestnuts that had fallen from the trees. She sent me out into the garden to get them before we left.

  The elephant, camel, bears, apes, the doe and the stag, even the rabbits and Guinea pigs, all know that she always brings something along. What is even more amazing is how they continue to be well behaved even after her provisions are gone and there is nothing left. Some go without anything.

  But what about the affection of the animals she is not permitted to feed, those that must eat fish or flesh, things she can’t really bring along? I understand why the small raccoon leaps with joy when the old woman comes by his cage and gives him a piece of sugar. I’ve seen him cry almost like a human when she leaves.

  But I don’t understand why the old marabu, a black and white carrion eating stork, that stands in his meadow on one leg the entire day despising the human mobs that come by, suddenly remembers that he has two when mother comes by. He immediately begins a crazy Fakir dance and rattles out a melody with his beak.

  Why does the tiger rise up from his dark corner and come up pressing itself against the bars with hissing sounds? A man of good will could interpret it as purring.

  Why do the sea lions swim through the water, crawl on the banks, openly showing their joy at her approach? They know very well that mother has no fish for them, just like the other carnivores know she has no meat!

  There is only one animal in the zoo that doesn’t openly show joy even when she brings its favorite treat. It belongs to the race of Andalusian mountain goats from the Sierra Nevada. It is an amazingly huge grayish white buck. The fellow stays back on his rock and doesn’t care at all who comes up, while the other mountain goats quarrel over the delicious treats mother gives them. She must call this old one, almost beg him to come. Finally he decides, climbs very stiffly down from his rock and comes slowly with deliberate strides up to the fence.

  He takes the entire piece of sugar, but as if he were doing her a large favor by taking it. He has a magnificent full beard, a large crumpled nose, and a pair of gray eyes. The short horns stand out high over his ears. The old fellow really looks almost human, like the great Pan himself. He stinks, that is for sure, and mother gladly takes her Eau de Cologne bottle out and sprays a little on him.

  By the way, don’t think for one minute that this only happens at the zoo. It happens with all animals. She comes up to every dog and every cat and makes friends with them in a moment. So does every horse that stands on the street hitched to their wagon.

  The wild vines and ivy that climb our house and grow in our garden are filled with the nests of dozens of birds. It is the same in the bushes and trees in the garden as well. When we eat breakfast on the balcony, we continuously have sparrows and black thrushes as our guests.

  A small red squirrel that lives in the cloister garden comes at an ungodly hour every morning and goes into mother’s bedroom to get the nuts that she leaves on the nightstand. Mother says that he is her alarm clock.

  During the summer a butterfly will once in awhile fly through an open window into every house. It will certainly make use of the next opportunity to find its freedom again. But in our house butterflies are always in the house. Several stay two, three or even four days. One, a gorgeous Peacock butterfly, stayed for over a week in mother’s living room.

  Yet another time we had a cricket in the room. It didn’t come in by itself like the butterflies. On one of our evening walks we passed by a bakery and heard its little chirping. Mother immediately went into the bakery and explained that she wanted to take the little thing home with her. He laughed and replied that he would gladly give it to her if he could. But the animal was very hard to catch. It had already been there in the bakery for several weeks.

  I tell you, dear brother, the small black creature was the first thing we saw sitting on the floor. It quietly allowed mother to pick it up, put it into a matchbox and carry it back home.

  Coincidence? You will say, dear brother, that it is all coincidence! I tell you most emphatically that it is not, that it is something else!

  Every single one of these things that I have written about and shared with you might be coincidence by itself. But taken all together, can you still call it coincidence?

  So, that is mother’s amazing connection to people, to animals and to plants. You will now see some of the other things that she does.

  She doesn’t say a single word about jewelry. She always wears a small black enamel broach with your initials—or are they mine? Anything else that she once possessed of jewelry she has long since given away or lies completely forgotten at the bottom of her jewelry box.

  You already know about the art that hangs on the walls and stands all over the house. The art pieces that mother has collected over the course of her long life are mostly of animals and monsters. There are bronze and porcelain toads, snails, lizards and others, but many are mythological creatures out of storybooks.

  She has a very large and beautiful statue of the Egyptian Goddess Bast, you know, the one with the head of a cat. Mother claims that she can hear it purring and that sometimes it opens its eyes.

  The candlesticks on her desk, by her bed and other places are bronze copies of the gargoyle of Notre Dame. I tell you, dear brother, that our mother is surrounded with all the wildest figments of Gothic imagination! They stand around you and over you!

  She has an intense liking for mythological creatures, especially mixtures of human and animal. There are now figures of Egyptian, Chinese and Indian origin scattered throughout the house. But the Gothic ones seem to mean
the most to her.

  She has entire portfolios with illustrations, engravings, prints and photos of things she has once seen and been attracted to. It makes her very happy whenever she adds something to her collection.

  I would like to say that a few of the “Temptations of St. Anthony” are amazing. She has a complete collection. What is significant is that she is not a book lover like Flaubert who created these images. You will agree with me that Flaubert is certainly not light reading!

  Mother knows all about these devil sects, the Gnostics, Manichaeins, Ophites, Marconists and Priscillians. She knows what they are called and even little things like how they celebrate the memories of their prophets and magicians. She knows their names, Irenaeus, Simon Magus, Apollonius, Valentinian, Marcus, Montanus and others. She knows them well enough to converse about them in Flaubert’s own words.

  If that isn’t amazing enough, there is something else she finds just as interesting. What can a person say about her collection of brooms?

  In the dark narrow passage that goes between the other rooms into her bedroom mother has no less than forty three brooms, new and old! I believe there is an example of every kind of broom ever made in our house. They are all resting like retired civil servants in rows and files on both sides of the narrow passageway. You can’t see them from the stairs because of the curtain that blocks the view.

  There is certainly a much better place for such a collection. The great loft next to the kitchen that leads to the garden is almost completely empty and would be a good place for such a collection. You could hang hundreds of brooms there quite comfortably. But no, she presses them tightly together in the small narrow passageway that leads to her bedroom! There are more. One or two brooms stand by themselves in her bedroom behind a small curtain in the corner where her dressing table stands.