There are more miracle workers in our day than ever before and they all do an excellent business. Only a few days ago “Jesus from the lower Rhine” sent a postcard to all his patients saying that for 20 Marks he would touch them with his holy body. Business was good and he went back home to Switzerland and retired. This honorable man had scarcely been a year in our city and earned over a million Marks.
The blissful public runs to all these swindlers and enlightened congregations, yet becomes deeply offended when you ask them to believe in witches. They will gladly wrap a sacred Indian cloak around themselves without feeling how strange and unsuited the Indian teachings are to the West.
They don’t have the slightest idea that the small grain of truth that does lay in these swindles is descended out of the Middle Ages. Let alone that the Middle Ages corrupted the wisdom of the Gnostics who in turn got it from the Chaldeans, the Babylonians and the Akkadians.
The Gothic that was once in the fine arts is now again coming into fashion. I have only the highest scorn for it by the way. That is why I became suspicious and compiled for you these examples. Such naive credibility is conclusively the child of our time.
Nevertheless dear brother, I am curious what you make of the following occurrences.
We had just sat down around mother’s table for the evening meal, eight men and women. We were speaking about Indian magic tricks and one of the Gentlemen showed us the well-known needle trick. He stuck a long hatpin into his back and out under his arm. He then made his arm into an attractive pincushion.
The Indian fakir can do this to perfection and apparently does not feel any discomfort from the nails, glowing coals and other things. I have seen this trick performed often and even tried it myself a few times. It is really a simple trick and requires only a little practice and willpower. The slight injury to the skin does hurt but is bearable. People naturally have favorite spots in which to stick the pins and needles. A favorite spot is one with a lot of fat under the skin that is less sensitive. They laugh while sticking needles, nails and shoestrings into the spot. It always amazes people.
The only real danger is of getting blood poisoning when the wound becomes infected by naïve self-torturers. It does occasionally happen. Stab one of these dazzlers unexpectedly with a sharp pin and you can bet they will feel it and yell out.
That gave me the idea of performing a little experiment with mother. She is extremely sensitive to the smallest pain and cries out loudly when she pokes herself on the finger with a needle. Now she has a small pale birthmark on the side of her neck.
One night as I gave her a goodnight kiss I put both arms around her neck and poked her there with a small needle. She didn’t feel a thing. The next night I had the opportunity to push the small needle in almost to the bone in the same spot. She didn’t notice anything.
You know that before executing witches they would strip and torture them with needles looking for so called witch marks on the body that were completely insensitive to pain. Our mother has such a spot and an old time judge would very quickly pass judgement on her.
That same evening I was able to again observe mother during the full moon. I sat hidden on the sofa in the corner, saw the door to her bedroom open, saw her come out and sit in her chair in the middle of the moonlight. I saw her pushing her silver hair back under her black scarf as she stared out the open window.
She looked wonderful, our mother. She sat there unaware, the street below was dead still and there was a deep quiet in the room. Then mother’s cricket began to sing, nice and gentle, much more softly than it usually does. It was as if the animal were afraid to break the sacred stillness. Suddenly its shrill voice broke off.
I glanced around the room looking for the little thing. At the moment as my eyes once more fell on mother I saw something spring out_ come from her?_from near her?_from over her? I don’t really know. It wasn’t the cricket, oh no. It was large and gray. It landed on the carpet without making a sound. Then it sprang up onto the back of the small couch by the open windowsill. It crouched there for a little while on the yellow fabric.
That’s when I saw that it was a huge cat. One minute the gray animal was sitting there and the next it sprang out through the open window. I was involuntarily frightened and still hadn’t heard the slightest sound. I immediately hurried to the window, then hesitated because I heard a loud purring right next to my ear. I turned around and there near me stood Bast, the goddess statue with the cat’s head. The one that mother claimed would purr at times. I didn’t hear it anymore, apparently it had only been my imagination.
I continued to the window and looked out. The cat sat there under the window. Then it slowly got up, paced a bit and sprang from the first story down to the stones below without apparent injury.
It didn’t seem to be aware of me as I ran down the stairs, opened the house door and went out onto the street. I saw the cat running a few doors down and followed at a distance. It went through the streets as if it knew where it was going. It didn’t move like most cats do around houses. Instead it moved quietly and proudly down the middle of the empty street. I wondered which house it could be going to and where it lived. Even though mother liked cats, she never had any in her house.
I finally understood where it was going. The animal was going straight to the churchyard. Perhaps it was wild, I thought. There in front of the cemetery I heard a couple of drunken voices. I saw two gentlemen and a beautiful brown dachshund chasing after the cat, which never made a sound as it ran quietly on its way.
The cheeky little dachshund sprang at it. In the bright moonlight I could see perfectly how it seized the top of the left ear with its teeth. But the cat shook him off, sprang to the side and attacked. In a moment I saw the cat on top of the hound, clawing into its neck. The poor fellow became so frightened that it ran around trying to get rid of it as quickly as possible.
The cat was riding the bowlegged hound horseback around the cemetery. Behind the bushes you could hear a pitiful howling and whining, then the dachshund came running up to the men covered in blood with its tail between its legs, very ashamed of its disgraceful defeat. It looked so comical that I had to laugh good naturedly in sympathy along with the men. I went on to the graves but the cat had already gone so I went slowly back home.
As I stepped back into mother’s living room I saw her still sitting there in the same motionless position. I walked up to her quietly, kissed her on the forehead. That’s when I saw the top of her left ear was bleeding, exactly on the same spot where the dachshund had bitten the ear of the gray cat!
What did it mean? What did it mean?
Mother had been sitting there, there on that exact spot without stirring during all this time just like all the other nights! But what of her spirit? And what had I seen going out of her? The gray cat had come out of her! It was our mother. Put rhyme or reason to that dear brother, if you can! She was the gray cat that ran among the graves.
* *
*
I came to breakfast with a fluttering heart the next morning. Perhaps it had all only been a dream. There sat mother quietly drinking her tea. On the top of her left ear was a bit of small hard plaster.
“What did you do to your ear?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she answered completely unembarrassed. “I must have hurt myself and not been aware of it. My pillow was all bloody this morning!”
It sounded so completely harmless, so completely innocent that she couldn’t be pretending! It appears that our mother is a werewolf and doesn’t know it!
* *
*
One evening I was sitting alone with mother. We chatted for a long time, heartily drinking our customary evening glass of wine. Without noticing I had already opened a second and then a third bottle. Mother laughed.
“You are really drinking today,” she said.
“Really?” I replied. “I hadn’t noticed.”
“It’s ok,” she nodded. “Drink up! It makes me happy that you enjoy
the taste of my wine.”
Mother drank much less than I that night. She didn’t have any more than two, at the most three small glasses. That night for no reason at all I drank four bottles and then did something that I have never done in my life. I drank alone.
After I went back to my room I was suddenly thirsty for a highball. I got some whiskey and a couple bottles of soda and mixed myself one. I needed to wait a few hours for the moon to come out so I sat in my room smoking and drinking whiskey, one after the other. When the time came to go to my observation post I felt completely clear headed and refreshed. On the contrary it seemed that I could see and think much more clearly than normal.
Soon mother came. She sat in her armchair again like she had done last night. She sat there unmoving in the moonlight with her black scarf over her hair. Then I suddenly saw an old broom leaning against her chair. I didn’t know how it had gotten there, but it was there.
I rubbed my eyes, got up and went over to it. I grabbed the broomstick with both hands to convince myself that it was really there. In front of her there on the table I noticed a small round jar. I opened it. There was a green ointment inside. Slowly I went back to my place. Then I saw mother raise both arms and remove the scarf from her head. Like the other times she pulled out the hairpins and let her hair fall down.
She grabbed the broom, took the little jar and rubbed some of the green ointment on the broomstick. I don’t know how it happened but suddenly she was astride it, floating in the air. Then she flew out through the open window. I heard her voice as she cried:
“Up and away! There and nowhere else!”
Then I saw her riding through the air. There were others riding on broomsticks and fire tongs as well. They were there in the clouds and in the fog. I couldn’t see them clearly, but mother was in front, in front of them all. She led the entire group to a hill that was covered with short alder trees.
A buck, a huge buck, stood on the hill in the middle of a clearing. It was the Andalusian buck from the Sierra Nevada! His short horns glowed and glinted over the others. The witches danced in a circle, their faces turned away.
“Ha, ha,” they cried. “Devil, Devil! Spring here, spring there! Hop here, hop there! Play here, Play there!”
I saw this as though through a hazy veil, far away across the meadow on the hill.
And mother still sat there in the moonlight in front of me unmoving in her chair. I don’t know when I fell asleep that night. I awoke early the next morning, but it was already light. I wiped the sleep from my eyes, found myself curled up, freezing, on the sofa. I stood up. Mother was long gone, but near her chair stood the old broom and the jar of green ointment was on the table.
I started laughing out loud.
Slowly I walked through the room, went up the stairs, undressed, washed up, went to bed and slept till noon.
* *
*
That dear brother is everything. I don’t know whether it will convince you or not. Do whatever you want. Just consider it carefully.
* *
*
Three weeks later doctor Kaspar KrazyKat received this reply:
“We want you to know, dear brother-in-law, that we were married yesterday. My husband gave me your long letter to read shortly after he received it. We read through it together. At first we laughed and considered it all unbelievable. But then I must say that we took things much more seriously the more we read. Both of us have very seriously considered what you have shared about your mother. We have read your letter again and again.
To make it short, dear brother-in-law, you are completely right about your mother. Your brother and I are in complete agreement with you and thoroughly convinced.
Only, dear brother-in-law, we take it all differently than you do. We are married and I hope to give my husband children, perhaps a couple of girls. I have no greater wish than that they might be such lovely, pretty witches like your mother.
* *
*
Doctor Kaspar KrazyKat read that and thoughtfully shook his head.
Sibylla Madruzzo
The guard received him loudly; he sat at the table with the landlord, while Teresa served the food. Proudly he showed his new helmet and said that he would never in his life forget the night on which he had lost the old one. He looked admiringly at Frank Braun. Yes, there was a fellow for you!
Frank Braun was not in a mood to sing and drink. Drenker’s praises annoyed him, so he changed the subject.
“I didn’t know the old beggar-woman was a friend of yours?”
The guard said, “Assuredly she is a friend. She’s not as old as you think: a couple of years younger than me, and at least ten years younger than Raimondi. He repeated this three times, three times, so that the landlord could understand him.
The latter nodded affirmatively, “She only looks old.”
Drenker laughed, “Sibylla looks as if she were eighty or a hundred or a hundred and twenty! It’s all the same. And it’s true, nevertheless, that we were all three in love with her.”
Frank Braun was glad that the affair of the wines and the helmet was settled. He held the other fast.
“Three? Who was in love with the old woman?” he asked.
“Oh, we were in love with the young Sibylla—not with the old one!”
Drenker corrected him.
“We were all three in love with her: Raimondi, Ussolo and myself—three gallant men of the Emperor’s Rifles! Never did a girl in Val di Scodra have better lovers—eh, Raimondi? But it came to an evil end, and poor Sibylla is dragging her cross around to this day. For in those days, sir, she was as straight and slender as a young fir tree and there was no prettier girl in all the Tyrol. But when poor Ussolo came to such a wretched end, it was then that something gave way inside her.”
“Do tell me about it,” Frank Braun urged him.
“Tell about it—yes, but it’s quite a long story!” cried Drenker. “And without anything to drink?”
He poured the last drop from the bottle into his glass. Frank Braun bade the landlord fetch a few bottles of the Vino Santo from the valley of Toblin. He stood them up close in front of the guard. Drenker wanted to pour some for him, but he warded him off.
“No, thank you, I don’t care to drink today.”
Drenker shook his head.
“You learned gentlemen are queer! One time you’ll drink like ten old skippers, and then again not a drop! There’s neither sense nor reason to it.”
“No,” Frank Braun agreed. “There is absolutely neither sense nor reason to it. But now drink, Drenker, and tell us about the three lovers of the young Sibylla Madruzzo.”
The guard cleared his throat and lit his pipe. He raised the glass to his lips, drank, and clicked his tongue in praise of the wine. Then he began. He told his story loudly, hastily, and in disjointed sentences. Constantly he turned, shouting to the landlord:
“Wasn’t it so, Raimondi?”
The latter nodded silently or muttered a “Yes” between his teeth.
“I suppose it was thirty years ago,” said Aloys Drenker. “We were all stationed at Bozen, and were the best friends in the world. Ussolo, he was from Val di Scodra, too; over there where the path leads up to the promontory with the crosses, stood the house of his people. It has long fallen into ruin. Poor Ussolo lies in the churchyard and all his relatives are over in the Argentine. No one is left of his kith and kin! Well, we three belonged to the Emperor’s Rifles in Bozen; Ussolo and I were sergeants—but Raimondi had just been promoted to be sergeant-major, eh, old man?
Very well, when those two were on furlough they went home, and I went with them a couple of times. For, you know, I had no home; my poor mother delivered me in a ditch along the road and the shock of my birth killed her. So I was pushed around and beaten among strangers, and I felt contented only when I joined the company. The Emperor’s Rifles—they were my family—and a smart family, too, weren’t they, Raimondi? The devil take me if there’s a better regiment in
the whole world!
As I told you, I came several times with my friends down to Val di Scodra—once with Raimondi and twice with Ussolo. Well, you can imagine how the people stared when we arrived! The whole village was in love with us. And we three—were in love with Sibylla, and each did our best to please her.
But none of us said anything, either to the others, or to the girl. Each one considered, and each one determined upon a plan, but no one would out with it. We all wrote her letters and she wrote to us, too, but, I must tell you, to all three together. And so, one evening in winter as we were sitting together in the canteen, Ussolo said that he would resign and not re-enlist. I thought he had had a stroke, and I asked him whether the devil had gone after him?
Then it came out! He said that he was in love with Sibylla and wanted to marry her and live with her and cultivate his land in Val di Scodra. He had already written his mother—for his father was dead—and she had agreed that he should take over the farm. Now at his next furlough he intended to talk to the girl. Then Raimondi broke loose!—You needn’t be ashamed old man, it was so—For remember that in those days he hadn’t yet met the beautiful Maria, the daughter of the schoolmaster in Brixen, who later became his wife and Teresa’s mother. In those days his one thought was Sibylla and always Sibylla! Well, wasn’t it so, old fellow?. . .Therefore he went for Ussolo and said he shouldn’t dare to think of the girl. It was he who must have her and no one else! And he was the older and a sergeant-major. But I couldn’t restrain myself any longer either. It didn’t matter a bit, I said, whether one was older or younger, a sergeant-major or not. I loved Sibylla too, and wanted her, and didn’t give a damn about these Italian fools. I cried out and Raimondi roared and Ussolo howled, and before we had time to think we were pulling each other’s hair and beating each other so that it was great fun.
Hanns Heinz Ewers Volume I (Collected Short Stories by Hanns Heinz Ewers) Page 18