The Dedalus Book of German Decadence (28 page)

He had jumped to his feet and was leaning on the table, staring at the old man with a fixed, penetrating gaze. And the Professor caught his gaze and, squinting, parried it, as a dirty crooked scimitar parries an elegant foil.

‘And then, my dear nephew, and then?’ he asked. ‘When the child is born, what happens then?’

The student trembled, and his words dropped slowly from his mouth. ‘Then, we shall have, a miraculous being.’ His voice was light, supple and resonant, like the tones of a stringed instrument. ‘Then we shall see what was true in the old legend. We shall be able to look into the deepest corner of Nature  …

*        *        *        *

The prostitute Alma Raune, Mandra Gora’s mother, had been charged with burglary. Her case was not helped by her obstinate denials, and the fact that she had a previous conviction. But extenuating circumstances were found, probably because she was very pretty, and also because Dr Gontram was the council for the defence. She was given an eighteen month prison sentence, with her period in custody taken into account.

But Professor ten Brinken was able to have her sentence reduced, even though her behaviour in prison was hardly exemplary. But this behaviour was excused by the hysterical and febrile condition in which she found herself, which ten Brinken stressed in his appeal for clemency: the fact that she was soon to be a mother was also taken into consideration.

She was released as soon as the first labour pain set in, and was taken early in the morning to the ten Brinken clinic. She lay there in her old, white room, no. 17, at the end of the corridor, that same room where, nine months previously, the Professor had persuaded her to undergo that strange operation  …  Her contractions had begun when they had transferred her there; Dr Petersen assured her that it would all be over very quickly.

But he was wrong. The birth pangs lasted all day, the following night, and all the next day. They receded somewhat, but then set in with renewed ferocity. And the girl screamed and moaned and threw herself this way and that in fearful agony  …

In his report on her death Dr Petersen stressed the strong constitution and the splendid physical shape of the mother, both of which promised a smooth delivery. But it was the most unusual transverse presentation of the baby that caused the resulting complications which made it impossible to save both mother and child. It was further mentioned in the report that the baby, a girl, let out the most terrible scream, when it was still in its mother’s womb, a scream so penetratingly shrill and loud such as neither the doctors in attendance nor the attendant midwife had ever heard from a newborn child before. This scream had almost something conscious about it as though the baby had experienced some dreadful pain on being separated from her mother : it was so awful and so penetrating that they were all horrified, and Dr Perscheide had to sit down, whilst cold sweat dripped from his brow.

Then the baby did become quiet, and did not even whimper. She was very delicate and fragile, and when she was bathing her, the midwife noticed an unusually developed
atresia vaginalis
, that is, the skin of both legs was joined down to the knees. But this remarkable phenomenon was found, after careful examination, only to be a superficial fusion of the epidermis which could easily be severed by a prompt and simple operation.

As regards the mother, it was obvious that she had had to suffer dreadful agony. It had been impossible to give her chloroform, or an epidural injection, neither was scopolamine – morphium administered as the bleeding, which could not be staunched, had greatly weakened the heart. For hours on end she had done nothing but scream and moan; her cries had only been drowned at the moment of birth by the shrieking of the baby. Gradually her moans became quieter, and two and a half hours later she died without having regained consciousness. The cause of death was given as a ruptured womb and resultant loss of blood.

*        *        *        *

Sin, my darling, all that is sinful was brought from the deserts by the hot, southerly wind. Where the sun has been baking the earth for endless millennia a white, thin wraith hovers over the sleeping sand, and soft clouds are formed from the wraith, clouds which the whirlwind blows hither and thither, and which change into round, strange eggs, and the hot glow of the sun holds them in its breath.

And in the livid night there creeps a basilisk, spawned by the moon after its strange fashion. The moon – eternally barren – is its father, but its mother is the sand, barren likewise : this is the mystery of the desert. Many say that it is an animal, but this is not so, it is a thought, growing there where there is no earth, and no seed : a thought which sprang from that which is eternally barren, and now assumes strange forms which life does not know. This is the reason that no one can describe this being, because, it is like nothingness, indescribable.

But it is true, as people say, that it is very, very poisonous. For it devours the baking eggs of the sun which the whirlwind rolls in the sandy wastes. And so it is that purple flames shoot from its eyes and that its breath smoulders in grey, hot vapours.

But the basilisk does not devour all the mist-eggs, this child of the pale moon. When it is sated, and bloated with the hot poisons, it spews its greenish saliva over those that are still lying in the sand, and scratches the fragile shell with a sharp talon, so that the foul slime may enter. And when the early morning wind arises it sees a strange pulsing and throbbing amongst the thin shells, as though from veils of violet and moist green.

But when in the lands of the sun the eggs burst, eggs which the sun has hatched – crocodile eggs, toads, snakes, eggs of the ugliest lizards and amphibians – then the poisonous eggs of the desert split also, with a gentle crack. There is no yolk, no lizard, no snake, only a diaphanous, strange formation. Iridescent, like the veils of the dancer whose dance is of fire, perfumed as the pale Sanga-blossoms of Lahore, resonant as the singing heart of the angel Israfel. And swollen with poison, like the basilisk’s dreadful body.

And then the south wind sprang from the tropics, crept from the swamps of the hot forests, danced above the wastes of sand. It lifts the glowing veils of the sand-eggs, carries them far over the azure sea. Seizes them, like gentle clouds, like the loose robes of nocturnal priestesses.

And so the poisoned pestilence of all concupiscence flies to the golden North.

Cool, little sister, as your North, are our silent days. Your eyes are blue and good, and know nothing of hot desire. The hours of your days are like the heavy blossoms of blue wistaria, dropping gently upon the soft carpet : thus my gentle footsteps pass through your sun-dappled arbour.

But when the shadows fall, my blonde sister, a tingling spreads over your young skin. Rags of mist fly up from the south, and your greedy soul inhales them. And in a kiss of blood your lips provide the hot, hot poison of the desert places.

*        *        *        *

Yet no, my fair little sister, you sleeping child of my dream-still days! When the mistral gently curls the blue waves, when the voices of sweet birds sing from the top of my rosy bower, then I may well browse in the heavy leather volume of Professor ten Brinken. My blood flows through my veins, slow as the sea, and with your quiet eyes, in an infinite calm, I read the story of Mandra Gora. And I pass it on, as I found it, simply, clearly as is right for one who is free of passions.

But I have drunk the blood that flowed one night from your wounds, that was mixed with my red blood, this blood that was poisoned by the sinful venom of the torrid wastes. And when my brain is feverish with your kisses, these kisses that bring pain, and with your lustful desires that bring torment, then it might happen that I shall tear myself away from your arms, wild sister.

It may be that, heavy with dreams, I sit at my window on the sea, a window open to the hot blast of the Sirocco. It may be that I shall take up the Professor’s leather volume once more, where I might read Mandra Gora’s story, and read with your hot, poisonous eyes. The sea shrieks on the motionless rocks; then my blood shrieks in my veins.

And that which I am reading seems very very different to me. And I pass it on as I find it, wild, hot, as is right for one so full of all the passions.

*        *        *        *

The leather volume which contained the entries relating to Mandra Gora’s life began with a few episodes which seem to be of interest for our narration  …  The first relates to the operation for the child’s
atresia vaginalis
which Dr Petersen performed and to which we may attribute his untimely end. The Professor mentioned that he had promised his assistant a three months holiday, fully paid, because of the latter’s help in the birth of the child (and also bearing in mind the savings which the mother’s death had brought with it). He had also promised him an extra thousand marks on top of this. Now Dr Petersen had looked forward enormously to his holiday and to the journey that he wished to undertake, the first of any length that he had ever made in his life. He insisted, however, in performing the operation – a very simple one – before he left, although it could have been postponed without any difficulty. He did the operation a couple of days before his intended departure, and with great success as far as the baby was concerned. But unfortunately he sustained severe blood poisoning, which is all the more remarkable because Dr Petersen normally demonstrated the most scrupulous hygiene; he died some forty eight hours later after much suffering. It was not easy to determine the direct cause of this poisoning: there was a wound on the lower part of his left arm which was scarcely visible to the naked eye and may have been caused by a slight scratch from the little patient  …

A further report tells that the baby, which had been left in the clinic under the care of the nurse, was a remarkably still and tender child. It only screamed once, and that was when it received its holy baptism, performed in the cathedral by Ignatius Schroder, the chaplain. And then it shrieked in such a terrible way that the sister who was carrying her, Princess Volkonski and Judge Sebastian Gontram, the godparents, the chaplain, the sexton and as well as the Professor did not know what to do with her. She had started screaming the moment they carried her out of the house and did not stop till they brought her back home from the church. The shrieking had risen to such an intolerable pitch in the cathedral that the Reverend Father had had to execute the holy rites as speedily as possible in order to spare himself and the assembled company the dreadful cacophony. It had been an enormous relief when the christening was at an end and the nurse had carried the baby into the carriage.

In the girl’s first years of life nothing extraordinary happened; at least, we do not find anything inscribed in the leather-bound volume devoted to ‘Mandra Gora’, the name that the Professor, quite understandably, gave her. It was reported that the Professor had taken the decision (even before she had appeared in the world) to adopt her and, in his last will and testament, to make her his sole beneficiary, expressly excluding all his relations. We also learn that the Princess gave her as a christening present an extremely expensive and tasteless necklace consisting of four gold chains studded with jewels and two strings of large and beautiful pearls. But in the middle, again richly adorned with pearls, was a braid of bright red hair which the Princess had had made of a lock of hair from Mandra’s mother, cut from the unconscious woman at the moment of the girl’s conception.

The child remained in the clinic for more than four years until the Professor relinquished it, as well as the other medical practices which he had, anyway, started to neglect. He took Mandra to his villa in Lendenich where the child was to have a companion and playmate who was, actually, nearly four years older than she – Wolfchen Gontram, the judge’s youngest son.

[…]

During the holidays the Professor watched the little girl closely. He knew the Gontram family well, from the time of their great grandfather onwards, and knew that they had always loved animals, that this love had been instilled with their mother’s milk. However much Mandra might be able to influence the boy she would – if she really
did
encourage cruelty to animals, such as sticking red hot needles into the eyes of a mole – meet a stubborn resistance and be powerless against this inmost feeling of goodness.

Yet one day he came across Wolfi one afternoon by the small pond underneath the trumpet tree. He was kneeling on the ground and a large frog was sitting on a stone in front of him. The boy had pushed a lighted cigarette into its wide mouth, deep down its throat. The frog was inhaling the smoke, deeper and deeper into its gullet, but did not breath it out : it was growing bigger and bigger. Wolfi kept staring at it, and large tears were running down his cheeks. But when the cigarette had burned away he lit another one, took the butt from the frog’s mouth and, with trembling fingers, inserted the new one. And the frog swelled to a shapeless mass, its great eyes standing on stalks from its head. It was a tough animal, and survived two and a half cigarettes before it burst. The boy yelled and wailed, his own sufferings, apparently, being worse than that of the creature he had tortured to death. He jumped back, as if to flee into the bushes, looked around and, when he saw that the fragments of frog were still twitching, he ran back and stamped in desperation on the animal to kill it and put it out of its misery. The Professor took him by his ear and first examined his pockets. There were still a few cigarettes and the boy confessed to having taken them from the writing desk in the library. But he refused point-blank to say who it was who had told him that frogs that smoke blow themselves up and finally burst. There was no persuading him, and the thrashing that the gardener administered on the Professor’s behest was to no avail. Mandra also stubbornly denied everything, even when one of the maids explained that she had seen the girl stealing cigarettes. The two remained adamant: the boy insisted that it was he who had stolen the cigarettes, the girl that she had not done so.