Intermezzo
All sins, my dear girl, are brought here by the hot south wind from out of the desert. Where the sun burns through endless centuries there hovers over the sleeping sands a thin white haze that forms itself into soft white clouds and floats around until the desert whirlwinds roll them and form them into strange round eggs that contain the sun’s blazing heat.
There the basilisk slinks around through the pale night. In a strange manner the moon, the eternally infertile moon, fathered it. Yet its mother, the desert sand, is just as infertile as the other is. It is the secret of the desert. Many say it is an animal but that is not true. It is a thought that has grown where there is no soil or no seed. It sprang out of the eternally infertile and took on a chaotic form that life can not recognize. That is why no one can describe this creature. It is fashioned out of nothingness itself.
But what the people say is true. It is very poisonous. When it eats the blazing eggs of the sun that the whirlwinds create in the desert sands purple flames shoot out of its eyes and its breath becomes hot and heavy with horrible fumes.
But the basilisk, pale child of the moon, does not eat all of the vapory eggs. When it is sated and completely filled with hot poison it spits green saliva over the eggs still lying there in the sand and scratches them with sharp claws so the vile slime can penetrate through their soft skin.
As the early morning winds arise a strange heaving like moist violet and green colored lungfish can be seen growing under the thin shells.
Throughout the land at noon eggs burst as the blazing sun hatches crocodile eggs, toad eggs, snake eggs and eggs of all the repulsive lizards and amphibians. These poisonous eggs of the desert also burst with a soft pop. There is no seed inside, no lizard or snake, only a strange vapory shape that contains all colors like the veil of the dancer in the flame dance. It contains all odors like the pale sanga flowers of Lahore, contains all sounds like the musical heart of the angel Israfael and it contains all poisons as well like the basilisk’s own loathsome body.
Then the south wind of mid-day blows in, creeping out of the swamps of the hot jungles and dances over the desert sands. It takes up the fiery creatures of the sun’s eggs and carries them far across the blue ocean. They move with the south wind like soft vapory clouds, like the loose filmy night garments of a priestess.
That is how all delightful, poisonous plagues fly to our fair north–
Our quiet days are cool, sister, like the northland. Your eyes are blue and know nothing of hot desire. The hours of your days are like the heavy blue clusters of wisteria dropping down to form a soft carpet. My feet stride lightly through them in the glinting sunlight of your arbor.
But when the shadows fall, fair sister, there creeps a burning over your youthful skin as the haze flies in from the south. Your soul breathes it in eagerly and your lips offer all the red-hot poisons of the desert in your bloody kisses–
Then it may not be to you that I turn, fair sister, sleeping child of my dreamy days–When the mist lightly ripples the blue waves, when the sweet voices of the birds sing out from the tops of my oleander, then I may turn to the pages in the heavy leather bound volume of Herr Jakob ten Brinken.
Like the sea, my blood flows slowly through my veins as I read the story of Alraune through your quiet eyes in unending tranquility. I present her like I find her, plain, simple, like one that is free of all passions–
But then I drink the blood that flows out of your wounds in the night and it mixes with my own red blood, your blood that has been poisoned by the sinful poisons of the hot desert. That is when my brain fevers from your kisses so that I ache and am tormented by your desires–
Then it might well be that I tear myself loose from your arms, wild sister– it might be that I sit there heavily dreaming at my window that looks out over the ocean while the hot southerly wind throws its fire. It might be that I again take up the leather bound volume of the Privy Councilor, that I might once more read Alraune’s story–through your poison hot eyes. Then the ocean screams through the immovable rocks– just like the blood screams through my veins.
What I read then is different, entirely different, has different meaning and I present her again like I find her, wild, hot–like someone that is full of all passions!
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