“Wojnicz had noticed that every discussion, whether about democracy, the fifth dimension, the role of religion, socialism, Europe, or modern art, eventually led to women.”
Mischief. More literary mischief from Olga.
That the first death in the book happens to be of a woman whom our dear Wojnicz mistakes for a servant, when she is in fact the guesthouse proprietor’s wife, is not negligible.
And then, mushrooms. Then the puns in the names: January and August, two characters named after months, months named after a two-faced Roman god and a Roman Caesar; Dr. Semperweiss, because, always white; and it’s not a mere coincidence how the owner of the Guesthouse for Gentlemen where Wojnicz lodges is named Wilhelm “Willi” Opitz (see Opitz syndrome, especially in males); the Tuntschi, definitely a nod to the Sennentuntschi of Alpine folklore involving an ill-treated doll that retaliates; and Empusium, after Empusa, the female shape-shifter of Greek mythology.
The Empusium is Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain reframed, they say. Friends who have known me way back from my Thomas Mann reading phase know the story of how I developed a fever while reading the Magic Mountain. (They tried to assuage my sickness by saying that it’s the best state in which to read Thomas Mann. Hah!) Strangely enough, I also got sick a day after I started reading The Empusium. Whether that’s part of Olga’s mischief, I cannot say for sure, but, “The story has a spirit of sickness,” says my mom ominously.
While Mann’s mountain was an allegory for a sick Europe, Olga’s mountain is glaringly sick with misogyny. In the author’s note, Olga divulges that the chauvinistic passages were paraphrased from the words of history’s famous men, and she names all of them. Why do you think it’s labeled as a “horror story”?
The Book-Butterfly 