By HANNS KRÜGER-WELF (Bandelbooks.com; 1925/2024)
Another 2024 translation of an early twentieth century European text by Joe E. Bandel (following THE FIRE LILY by Leonhard Stein, GHOSTS IN THE SWAMP by Karl Hans Strobl and HANNS HEINZ EWERS: THE STORY OF HIS DEVELOPMENT by Hanns Krüger-Welf). The German language WITCH OF SANLÚCAR, which Bandel calls “very special in many ways,” was a rare example of fiction by the Hanns Heinz Ewers biographer Hanns Krüger-Welf, and one of the most affecting Bandel translations I’ve read.
Informed, evidently, by its author’s affinity for the sharp and cynical yet staunchly poetic horror fiction of Mr. Ewers, THE WITCH OF SANLÚCAR offers up a dark parable of ignorance and the (apparent) supernatural in a highly picturesque environ. Those are all attributes shared by the writings of Krüger-Welf’s inspiration, but THE WITCH OF SANLÚCAR has a focus and economy that tended to elude the bloat-happy Ewers.
The narrator is a young man stationed in an impoverished seaside neighborhood on the southwest coast of Andalusia. One day said narrator meets a stooped old crone with a highly unpleasant disposition who according to the locals is a witch. Her story is related by an especially disapproving Sanlúcar resident.
It seems the “witch” is a gypsy woman named Lola who forty years earlier was pursued by the strapping fisherman Antonio Martinez, a.k.a. “The Bitten One” (because he once survived a shark bite). He initially demonstrates his affection by ravishing Lola, and then decides he wants to marry her—and she, despite being (understandably) upset about his actions, consents: “Thus he conquered her for the second time, this time without brute force, only with his warm voice.”
The Bitten One’s actions shock his neighbors, who conclude that Lola has bewitched him. Lola for her part doesn’t care what people think of her, but is tormented by premonitions of an impending ocean-based tragedy, suggesting the claims about her being supernaturally endowed aren’t entirely inaccurate.
The reader is teased about the possibility that Lola may indeed be a witch, as a climactic plot development strongly suggests just that. Yet the ignorance and superstition that inform Sanlúcar’s residents are just as vividly portrayed, and as pivotal to the foreseen climactic tragedy as Lola’s apparent witchy-ness. The deeply haunting, mournful final line is pitch-perfect, elevating a good story to the “very special” category specified by Joe Bandel.