by Sarah Rayne
Now, under Conrad’s aegis, Alice listened to, and learned to appreciate the music of, Stravinsky and Hindemith and Schönberg, and danced to the melodies of Ivor Novello and Irving Berlin and Franz Lehár. On New Year’s Eve she and Conrad attended the famous Vienna Opera House Ball, and danced together beneath the glittering chandeliers. Whirling around the ballroom in Conrad’s arms, Alice thought: if only I could take hold of this moment and keep it – lay it away in lavender and tissue paper, so that in years to come I can unwrap it and relive it, and think: yes, of course! That was the night when I was happier than at any other time in my life.
The exotic baroness was invited everywhere – often with Conrad, but frequently on her own. The damson gown alternated with the jade green, but after wearing the jade one a couple of times Alice managed to sell it back to the second-hand shop and bought in its place a very plain, much cheaper, black two-piece. To this she added several velvet and beaded scarves and stoles: rich reds and glowing ambers and one in sapphire blue silk, shot with kingfisher green. It was remarkable how a different scarf changed a plain black outfit.
Conrad wanted to take her to the great fashion houses, so that she could be robed in silks and velvets and furs. She must always wear black or dark red gowns, he said: the colours of wine and heliotrope and wood-violets. Perhaps jade green was also acceptable at a pinch. As to the cost, oh, that was of no matter; no one ever paid a dressmaker’s bill, in fact most people considered it slightly vulgar even to consider doing so. Alice was starting to feel extremely close to Lucretia as a person and she was starting to know her very well indeed, but she did not think she could be close to someone who did not pay bills, purely because some people considered it vulgar.
As well as that, she was starting to be aware of a strong vein of independence. I’ve survived by my own wits and without help this far, and I’d like to keep it that way! So she said, coolly, that she could buy her own gowns, thank you, although she might at times ask Conrad’s opinion of a colour or a style.
At this he called her stubborn, and said she was a cold, too-proud English spinster and a sexless feminist, but Alice saw at once that he had expected her to accept his offer and display suitable gratitude – despite his unconventional ways he was rather old-fashioned in many things. She also saw that her refusal had intrigued him, and that so far from finding it sexless, he found it very sexually alluring indeed. Very well then, if this kind of feminism intrigued him, he should go on being intrigued and he should certainly go on being sexually allured.
The hair dye lasted for about six weeks and then it was necessary to shut herself away and go through the complicated procedure all over again. The powder and lipstick lasted a lot longer because she only wore them in public.
At first she only wore Lucretia’s identity in public as well, but gradually Lucretia became stronger and more clearly defined. It was not precisely that she began to gain the upper hand; it was more that Alice, like the polite obedient girl she was, gave way to the more dominant personality. Oh, do you want the limelight? she seemed to be saying to Lucretia with a touch of ladylike surprise that anyone should actually want such a thing. Then of course you may have it: it would not become either of us to quarrel over such a thing.
But once or twice she had the uneasy suspicion that there might be things Lucretia would want to do that Alice would flinch from. It was already clear that the baroness could be very self-willed.
It had probably been inevitable that at that time, in that city, mingling with Conrad’s musician friends, Lucretia would attract the attention of people within the rapidly evolving world of film-making. It was still the era of the silent film but the technicalities of sound were starting to be enthusiastically explored. One day – and that day might be soon – the movies would be known as the talkies and people would not only be able to watch an unfolding story, but would also be able to listen to it. One day it might even be possible to make films in colour – now there was a dream to aim for!
But in the meantime it was the dark-haired, pale-complexioned females who best suited the monochrome images; they were striking and vivid and memorable.
Dark-haired, pale-complexioned females…Just as the Vienna of the day might have been created as a frame for Lucretia von Wolff, so, too, might Lucretia von Wolff have been created specifically for the film-makers.
It happened because of Conrad – Alice thought that everything in her life of any real importance happened because of Conrad – who was approached by a well-known German studio to write background music for two films. Music was important for setting a mood, for creating an atmosphere, they explained, as seriously as if Conrad would not know this. Someone at the studios had attended Conrad’s last concert, and had said why should they not secure the gifts of this rising young composer. Why not indeed?
Conrad was delighted to be approached, although he would not admit it. He told Alice that he was being offered an entirely contemptible sum for his beautiful compositions: did these plebeians, these groundlings, believe him to be a machine to churn out beautiful music at a button-press?
‘Press of a switch,’ said Alice, more or less automatically. ‘Will you do it?’ she asked, and Conrad hunched a shoulder and looked at her from the corners of his eyes like a mischievous child who knows it is being clever, and said he might as well. But the money was still an insult to an artist, he said, although to Alice, still juggling the damson frock with the black, the money seemed a very large amount indeed.
He shut himself away for several weeks, but when he emerged (a little thinner from not always bothering to eat, smudgy shadows around his eyes from fatigue and concentration), he was perfectly right about the music being superb. The film-makers were delighted with it, and they were delighted, as well, with the sultry baroness who appeared to be the composer’s frequent companion – it was best, perhaps, not to inquire too deeply into the precise nature of this companionship. They were all men of the world, yes?
They beamed at Alice across a table at the Café Sacher, which was where Conrad took them to celebrate, but which Alice, managing not to blink at the menu, thought might cost him most of the film-makers’ fee. (She had worn the damson gown for the occasion, and had added a narrow black velvet throat-band which was a new idea, and already being copied.)
The film-makers studied Lucretia, at first covertly and then, since she appeared not to notice their regard, more openly. There was the dark hair that was so much admired these days, and the smooth magnolia complexion. Very alluring. And would the baroness perhaps find it entertaining to see the inside of their studios? A very short journey – a car would of course be sent. And – perhaps while she was there, she might agree to a test for the screen? An experiment, an hour or so of amusement for her, probably nothing more.
This was unexpected. Alice thought: Do I want to do their screen-test? I don’t suppose anything will come of it, but I think I’d better agree, because those two frocks won’t last for much longer, and there’re other things to be bought. Underwear, shoes, food…And I won’t ask Conrad for money; I’ll hate it and it’ll put me under an obligation to be grateful to him, and I won’t do it.
And so Lucretia took the screen test, staring with seductive insolence into the camera lens, and the results were pronounced to be dazzling.
A film called Alraune – the story of a girl born in macabre circumstances, growing up with the burden of a dark legacy, growing up to be a wanton – went into production.
In the village where Alice had been a child, they had sometimes played games of Let’s Pretend. Let’s dress up and pretend to be somebody else for a while. I’ll be the queen or the empress, and you can be the servant, and for a few hours we’ll believe it’s real. Like that old poem, ‘When I was a King in Babylon, and you were a Christian slave…’
Making films was a little like a grown-up version of the game. Let’s pretend to be a girl called Alraune; a creature consumed by bitterness and surrounded by dark sexuality…
Alice knew,
with the logical, sensible part of her mind, that Alraune was not real. She knew that Alraune was a being forged from dark dreams and subterranean myths; and that she had been born out of a writer’s macabre fantasies.
‘But I don’t think,’ she said to Conrad, ‘that I should like to meet that man, that Hanns Heinz Ewers who created Alraune’s story. I suppose he’s long since dead; the original book was written years ago, wasn’t it? In 1911 or 1912.’
‘He is not dead, and I think he still writes a little,’ said Conrad. ‘Most of his work is as dark and as – as uncomfortable as Alraune.’ He paused, and then said, ‘I think he has campaigned quite strongly for the German cause, and I believe he is a supporter of the Nazi Party and Herr Hitler.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with that, though, is there?’
‘No,’ said Conrad slowly. ‘No, of course not.’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The irony was that while the film-makers’ money solved one set of problems, it set up a whole new set of difficulties of its own. Alice Wilson, that sheltered English girl, had never in her life seen a bank cheque, and when the first one was given to her, at first she had no idea how to deal with it. Her parents had said banks were not for such as them; servants were paid their wages on each Quarter Day in the year, as was right and proper, and their own tiny pension was brought to them on the first of each month by his lordship’s agent, who counted it out on the kitchen table and then made them sign a piece of paper. Alice’s mother had always maintained that it was not for women to know about money; Alice had found this slightly exasperating at the time, but looking back she found it rather sad.
In Miss Nina’s employment she had been paid the princely sum of £40 a year, ten shining sovereigns on each Quarter Day, together with a Christmas gift of two dress lengths of cloth, one of wool, one of muslin, and a stout pair of leather shoes. This was all that any servant, fed and housed and wanting for nothing, could possibly need or expect. But now Alice would have to deal with banks whether she wanted to or not, because the film people assumed she had a bank account into which she would pay their cheques. They also expected her to sign what Alice uneasily suspected to be legal documents – contracts and agreements requiring her to act in a specific number of films for them over the next two years. This was gratifying, but it was also worrying. She could not possibly sign her real name to the contracts, but she was afraid that signing her false name might constitute the committing of a crime.
In the end she took the problem to Conrad, who said, Pouf, it was a matter easily dealt with. He took her to the offices of a discreet Viennese lawyer who drew up something called a Deed Poll that made her new name legal. She could be called anything she liked, said the lawyer, and once the appropriate documents were signed and witnessed, all would be entirely legal and proper.
When Alice said, But what about the title? the lawyer had said, zut, what, after all, was a title? Nothing but what someone created for you, or that you created for yourself. Sign here, Madame Baroness, and you have created it. Alice had thought: yes, creating it is exactly what I have done. I have created a person out of dreams and fears and shadows and hopes, and now that person is real. I really am a King – I mean a Queen – in Babylon.
The accent that most people found so fascinating had needed no legal documents. Alice’s mind was quick and inquiring, and she had acquired a good smattering of German since she had been in Austria with Nina’s family. The housekeeper had marvelled at how she could get her tongue round the heathenish foreign words: would you just listen to that Alice Wilson gibbering and gabbering away – better than a music hall turn, it is! Now, living among German-speaking people, Alice was daily more fluent. She spoke the language with an accent, and she did not make any attempt to smooth it out. Viennese society adored it and thought it seductive.
It was Conrad who said that the illusion required an occasional display of temper in public; it would be expected of her. All great artists succumbed to temperament. Nonsense, of course she could do it.
But while the baroness’s occasional displays of fiery anger became legendary, what also became legendary was her unfailing habit of afterwards making some lavish, generous gesture of reparation towards those who had suffered the most. A gift of wine or perfume, or a dress-length of expensive silk. Cuban cigars or supper at one of Vienna’s sumptuously expensive restaurants. Who minded the scenes when they were followed by such prodigality? And one had to remember all that Romanian passion. Oh – was the baroness not Romanian? Well, Hungarian then, or Russian. Or something. Who cared.
The première of Alraune was a glittering occasion.
Alice wore a Chinese silk gown in a rich dark wine colour. It turned her shoulders and arms the colour of polished ivory, and clung sinuously to her figure. Black jewellery to set it off – could she manage that? Yes, she could. Ebony and jet earrings and a long rope of black pearls twisted negligently around her neck.
‘Pearls for Madame von Wolff?’ the jeweller had said, beaming. ‘But of course. A very great pleasure, and here are some exceptionally fine stones…Ah yes, they are quite superb worn like that…The cost? Oh, zut, the cost will be arranged to please all parties.’
The black pearls were stunning and exotic. Alice had studied them longingly, thinking, Of course I can’t possibly afford them. And then – oh, be blowed to the cost. She had left the shop with them coiled in a plush velvet-covered box.
On her hands she wore two large rings of ebony. She enamelled her nails to match the wine silk gown and painted her lips the same colour. Over the dark red gown she draped a cloak of mink edged with sable tails dyed a glowing crimson to match the gown. (‘Four times she returned it to be re-dyed!’ the designer had said, weeping hysterically. ‘Four times!’) The cloak was slightly too long for her – the edges would trail on the ground when she walked, which pleased her greatly. I am so rich, you see, that I do not give a second thought to the hem of my furs becoming draggled in the gutter. The practical side observed that luckily it was a fine, dry night, with no rain-puddles anywhere.
Conrad was at her side, dressed in exceedingly well-cut evening clothes, his eyes bright with delight and expectation. He was overjoyed to see his little English sparrow tasting this success. Pouf! who were this Clara Bow and this Marlene Dietrich! Alice would show all of Austria and all of Germany – all of the world! – that she could out-act every one of them.
He had written the music for tonight, of course – Alice did not think he would have allowed any other composer to do so – and he was pleased with the results. His music would make a fitting background to Alice’s fine performance, he said. There would, of course, be a gramophone recording of it later.
There were posters and photographs outside the film theatre near to Vienna’s famous Opera House. ‘Lucretia von Wolff as the mysterious, sinister Alraune,’ they said. And, ‘The Baroness von Wolff IS Hanns Heinz Ewers’ astonishing creation of soulless evil…’ ‘Von Wolff is the definitive child of the mandragora root…’
There were illustrations of mandragora – the plant said to grow in the shadow of the gallows – and there were brief descriptions of the legend.
‘All to do with the fable of the hanged man,’ Conrad had said, when Alice cautiously broached this subject once, wanting clarification, not wanting to appear naïve before the film-makers or her fellow actors. ‘It is told that mandrake root – mandragora – grows beneath the gallows because of the seed spilled by the men hanged there.’
‘And – does it?’
‘Who knows?’ He had smiled at her. ‘There is a lewd old belief that when a man is hanged, semen is forced from him by the death spasms he endures. So to the legend of the half-mythical mandrake root growing where the seed spills—’
‘And so,’ Alice had said thoughtfully, ‘to Herr Ewers’ book, and Alraune’s conception. Yes, I see. It’ll be interesting to see how they deal with that aspect for the film’s publicity, won’t it?’
But in fact the poste
rs merely said, quite decorously, that mandragora was said to possess powers to enhance men’s prowess as lovers, and mentioned, as a chaste afterthought, that the roots were said to shriek when torn from the earth.
‘A model of restraint and purity,’ said Alice drily, reading this as the taxi drew up before the theatre and the driver leapt to open the doors.
She took a deep breath, and, remembering to let the sables trail negligently on the ground, swept into the auditorium on Conrad’s arm.
She had seen rushes of the film, but tonight, for the first time, she saw the finished article flickering across the screen in its proper sequence; edited and trimmed and polished. It was astonishing and shocking but it was also utterly compelling.
The opening scenes were of Alraune’s macabre conception in the shadow of the gibbet. The gibbet itself dominated the first few frames: it was black and forbidding and it cast its unmistakable outline on to the patch of scrubland, and on to the figure of the unstable brilliant scientist as he scrabbled in the earth for the phallus-shaped mandrake roots.
Mandragora officinarum, thought Alice, who had managed to read up on some of the legends by this time. Sorcerer’s root. Devil’s candle. And mandrakes live in the dark places of the earth – they drink the seed spilled by dying men in their last jerking agonies, and they eat the flesh of murderers. Myths and old wives’ tales, of course, but still…
Now came the furtive meeting between the scientist and the prostitute and the prostitute’s unmistakable greed as he offered her money. She tucked the money into her bodice in the age-old courtesan’s gesture, glanced about her as if making sure there were no watchers, and then lay on the ground, her arms automatically held welcomingly out, but her eyes weary and bored. The camera moved away at that point – the censor would not have permitted anything explicit – but the director had focused on the uprooted mandragora roots, subtly suggesting movement from them, and this was so strongly symbolic, Alice wondered if the censor had missed the significance altogether.