I love weird fiction because so much of sounds like something that would happen to me. Ewers’s ‘The Spider’ is about a student who talks a police commissioner into letting him stay in a room where three mysterious suicides occurred for free because he promises he can solve their deaths, promptly gets obsessed with a neighbor woman he’s been spying on, and dies horribly. I understand this kind of protagonist, the kind who’s nosiness and curiosity lead them to doom. I’m the same kind of guy.
A short note: the translation I am working on was done by Walter F. Kohn. The introduction lets us know that Ewers joined the Nazi party early on and left because they were homophobic and anti-semetic, and the Nazis banned his works and stole all his money, but he’s still not anthologized because of The Connotations. I am mentioning all this so no one can get mad that I didn’t.
Because what I want to talk about is vampires. Or: when is a vampire a vampire, and when is it Something Else? Ewers is clearly evoking some vampire symbolism. When our poor hapless medical student observes spiders mating, in a situation we, who are aware of the story’s title, are forced to associate with the woman across the way, he says “Then she thrust her sharp pincers into his body and sucked out the young blood of her lover in deep draughts (83).” This lets us know Richard, our doomed diary writer, is in deep danger but also clues us into the kind of danger. We, because we understand symbolism, know the mysterious woman sitting at the window spinning thread must be the titular spider. But now we know that the spider is not just here to entrap. She is here to consume. So I ask again: is this a vampire?
She certainly has the vampiric hypnotism. Richard and the spider-woman, who he names Clarimonde, sit at the window and play a game of gestures, that he initially describes as “a certain telepathy or thought transference…(83.)” He sits at the window and gestures, she gestures back. And before he knows, it, four diary entries in a row read: “We played all day long. Sunday, March 20: Today I can only repeat: We played all day long. Monday, March 21: We played all day long. Tuesday, March 22: Yes, and today we did the same. Nothing, absolutely nothing else (84).” He is at the center of the web and doesn’t even know it.
By the time he does, it’s too late. He tells us: “I have made a discovery: I don’t play with Clarimonde–she plays with me.” And goes on to describe the complete loss of control of his own movements. He has given up all autonomy to Clarimonde. And before long, she forces him to cut his phone line, and he is promptly found dead with a spider crushed between his teeth.
The slow mental takeover of Richard by Clarimonde is done to truly chilling effect, and if you’re a fan of such things, as I know some of you are, you will very much enjoy this piece. Your stomach drops at those repeated “We played all day long’s” and by the time he is kissing the window and professing his love you are screaming for him to get out of there. And his realization he’s doomed and it’s too late is also delicious.
So where does the weirdness lie? For me, it’s the question: what is Clarimonde? Is she a spider? Is she a ghost? Is she some kind of vampire? Ewers pulls in elements from so many different kinds of codified creatures that he ends up creating something entirely undefinable. To me, that is weird fiction: a synthesis of disparate elements into something wholly new and unique.
I love this story deeply, and I must admit, have forgotten what my running ranking was. The thing is: I love spiders. And so I love Clarimonde. I would let the evil spider woman hypnotize me and eat me in a heartbeat. I know this about myself. If you are also the kind of person who befriends the bathroom spider and would rear window yourself into oblivion, this one is worth tracking down.
Signing off,
Marlowe
Marlowe Writes 