Roots of Evil(59)

But in fact the posters 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.

It had been hoped to indicate a resemblance between Alice and the actress playing the prostitute, and Alice thought this had been reasonably successful, although the woman looked blowsy and over-painted on the screen. What Alice’s mother might have called laced mutton, although whatever you called it, it was to be hoped that Alice herself did not look the same in a few years’ time. I’ll cut down the kohl on my eyes when I’m thirty-five, promised Alice. I really will. Or could I stretch that to forty? But I think I’d rather become a plump grey-haired grandmother-figure than look so tawdry.

The audience stirred expectantly at the baroness’s first appearance, which was the grown-up Alraune being incarcerated inside a convent so that the scientist could study her as she grew up. Do they like me? thought Alice glancing round the theatre. Or are they simply curious?

Here was the brief scene with the music-master, with whom Alraune had her first real taste of passion. There had been some anxious moments about the timing of this, and Conrad had threatened to walk angrily out of the theatre if his music did not synchronize perfectly with the actor’s simulated playing of a violin, but Alice knew he would not do so, because he would not spoil her night.

But it was all right. The music – beckoning and faintly sinister – came in exactly on cue, and the scene moved from the music room to the bedroom, the bed discreetly veiled in gauze drapings, again in deference to the censor. It was a sumptuous setting, and Alice was still surprised that no one had seen anything bizarre about having such a sensual scene inside a convent.

The story spun itself on to the discovery by Alraune of her own heredity, and to the first unfolding of the black and bitter hatred. Alice remembered that scene very vividly indeed; she had found it almost impossible to imagine how a girl of sixteen or so would react on learning she had been conceived in such circumstances. The pain and the self-loathing all looked convincing on the screen though; in fact they looked frighteningly real, and Alice was again aware of a sense of deep unease. Where did I get those emotions from? Supposing such feelings don’t always come out of the past or the present? Supposing they sometimes come from the future…?

The writers had added a scene in the fourth reel, in which Alraune, now eighteen, destroyed the damning evidence of that grotesque conception. Alice watched critically as the camera moved to the tall old house where the prostitute lived. In an upstairs room, stuffed into an old bureau, were the letters exchanged between the scientist and the prostitute, clearly testifying to their dark pact. A good scene, the writers had said, pleased. A shocking and dramatic scene. Herr Ewers had been consulted, partly as a courtesy, but mostly because of copyright, and he had approved the scene. Entirely in character for Alraune to do that, he had apparently said. Very good indeed.

As the cloaked and hooded outline that was Alraune crept up the stairs of the house, casting its own distorted shadow on the wall, Conrad’s music began to trickle in again. At first it was so fragile it was barely audible – no more than a wraith of sound, tapping gently against your mind. But then it began to take on strength and substance, becoming rhythmic and menacing. The beating of a hating heart…

As the fire, ignited to burn the letters, blazed up, the camera panned outwards to take in the whole house front, and there, at one of the windows, surrounded by the leaping flames, was the terrified figure of the prostitute. Alraune’s mother. Trapped in the burning building, her hair already alight and blazing, her mouth wide open in a silent cry for help…Get-me-out…Get me out before I burn alive…