The Castle in the Forest (50 page)

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^O

^{n the day of Edmund’s funeral Alois told Klara that he would not go. He could not even give a reason. He stood there like a pillar of stone.}

^{Then he began to weep. “I cannot control my feelings today,” he said. “Would you have me make a spectacle of myself in church? A church that I hate?” For the first time in their marriage, she raised her voice in anger. “Yes,” she said, “this church that you hate. But I go to it for peace. For a little consolation. I am able to speak to our Gustav then, and to Ida and Otto, and now”—it was her turn to burst into tears—”to Edmund.”}

^{They did not quarrel. They wept together. She said at last, “You must stop being so hard on Adolf. He is now the only hope left for you to have a good son. Why must you beat him into the ground?”}

^{Alois nodded. “I will make a promise,” he said. “That is, if you will stay here with me today. For I cannot go to the funeral. I am not able to keep myself together.” Before he could finish speaking, he was weeping again. He hugged her. “I need you,” he said. “I need you to stay with me in this house.” He had never said that to her before. He could hardly believe he was saying it. “Yes,” he declared, “I will take a solemn promise. I will not strike Adolf again.”}

^{It is a mistake to characterize a husband and wife who are in pain, but I cannot resist remarking that in my experience, few marriages exist where a vow is not countermanded by a secret covenant.}

^{Yes, that is our Alois. He has already told himself, “No, I will not strike Adolf again unless he does something awful,” but then,}

^{Klara was not of one piece either. Not now. She was beginning to wonder if it was the fate of her family to be destroyed. Indeed, she was not ready for the funeral. This once, let God pay attention to her.}

^{So Klara told Angela that she must represent the family. “If people ask, just say that your parents are stricken. This is true,” said Klara. “I don’t trust myself to go, and your father cannot. I have never seen him weep before. He is near to out of his mind. Angela, it is so terrible for him. I cannot leave the man alone. I must not! So today, you will act as the woman of the family. For today at least, you must be the woman.”}

^{Angela said, “You have to go to church with Adolf and me. It will be a scandal if you don’t.”}

^{“You,” said Klara, “are much too young to worry about scandal. Tell them we are ill. That has to be sufficient.”}

^{“Will you stay here at least, will you promise to stay in the house?” asked Angela. “I am afraid he will want to go out. He will want you to bring him to the tavern. He will get drunk so it doesn’t hurt so much. You must not leave the house.”}

^{“It depends on your father.”}

^{“You are his slave.”}

^{“Silence yourself!” Klara said.}

^{So to Adolf’s surprise, he and Angela went to church by themselves. When asked for a reason, all Angela said was, “Before we go, you must take a bath. You smell awful again.”}

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^A

^{lone with Alois, Klara could not bear to think of each and every death in her family. It was not only her children, but the deaths of her brothers and sisters. “Cannot God have mercy?” she asked herself. She felt a frightening exhaustion, as if she were standing in an old house and the floor was falling apart and she had no interest in saving herself. She was tired of believing that the fault must be her own.}

^{I have to admit that I was tempted to approach her, but I knew this would be refused by the Maestro. What, after all, could be gained by looking to pick up a client like Klara? We could put the Cudgels in disarray for losing her. But what labor there would be to train so new and difficult a client.}

^{Indeed, I soon recognized that Klara was having no more than a rebellion, which is common among pious people. Piety can also serve as a wall to keep the pious from recognizing how profoundly angry they are at God—this God who has failed to treat them by what they see as their proper right. Since this illicit wrath is usually submerged in pestilential waters of modesty, they do not make sterling clients for us, although, in the event, we do use some. Pious people can derange those in their family who are less pious. Repetition kills the soul.}

^{On this long day, Alois felt so savaged by the loss of Edmund that he had to look into the long-buried recollections of his incest. Were he and Klara polluted people? If so, Edmund might be better off dead. Again he wept.}

^{When, at one point, Klara began to have second thoughts and}

^{said, “Maybe we should go to the church after all,” he was gripped with fear. “For me to break down in public?” he repeated. “That is worse than death.” Now Klara asked herself, “What is wrong with weeping in church when one’s heart is broken?” She began to wonder. Was Alois evil? Was she? What of the vow she had taken when Alois Junior seemed lifeless on the ground? Perhaps it was better, yes, actually better, that they stay away. For evil people to attend a funeral might hurt the departed. Slowly, over that long day, as they remained at home, she felt an awful flush in her breast. Was this a fury directed at God? She, too, was now afraid to go to church. Yes, how could one ever dare to bring such fury into a holy place? That would be like taking another vow of allegiance to the foul one.}

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^A

^{t the funeral, Adolf heard none of the words. His head was ablaze. In the hour that Edmund died, Alois had said to him, “You are now my only hope.”}

^{“Yes,” Adolf said to himself, “it is true, my father used to see Edmund as the only hope. That is what he really was saying. But actually, he hates me. He thinks I was cruel to Edmund.”}

^{Yet Adolf refused to agree that he might have mistreated Edmund. “It was no more,” he told himself, “than the way Alois Junior used to treat me.” All too soon, however, he began to feel full of dread. How deep and unrelenting might be the anger of the angels!}

^{In the days just before he came down with measles, he had taken Edmund for a walk in the woods. He was still uneasy about the fire and so he remained concerned over Edmund’s loyalty to him. He picked up a twig on the path and scalped his brother by drawing}

^{the stick in a circle across his forehead, above the left ear, under the back of the head, and then above the right ear, before returning to the forehead. Then Adolf said in a most vibrant voice, “Now I own all. Your brain is mine.”}

^{“How can you say such a thing?” said Edmund. “That is stupid.”}

^{“Don’t be a fool,” said Adolf. “Why do you think Indians wanted scalps? It is because it is the only way to own the person just captured.”}

^{“But you are my brother.”}

^{“It is better that your brother owns your brain than some stranger. A stranger could throw it away.”}

^{“Give it back to me,” said Edmund.}

^{“I will when the time comes.”}

^{“When will that be?”}

^{“When I tell you.”}

^{“I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you own anything. My brain feels the same.”}

^{“Oh, you will see a difference. You will feel headaches. They will bother you. That is the first sign.”}

^{Edmund was ready to cry, but he did not. They walked home in silence.}

^{Now, in church, Adolf’s heart was beating in time, step by step, with the strides they had taken on returning from the woods.}

^{He was also feeling a most peculiar pain from this recollection. It was in his heart and was as sharp in sensation as a splinter driven under one’s fingernail.}

^{He told himself not to think about Edmund anymore. Not on this day. Indeed, he prayed to God to be able to cease thinking of Edmund. With my help, he succeeded to some degree, as much as one can remove most of a splinter under the nail. The fragment that remains, however, has now become a root ready to offer its own discomfort. So the memory festered in his heart.}

^{It was his turn now to be ready to weep. He thought of how Klara used to call him “
ein Liebling Gottes.
”
“Oh,” she used to tell him, “you are so special.” That was true, he told himself. (“God’s}

^{own Beloved.”) He had not been like Gustav and the others. Perhaps he had been selected by Destiny. He had survived.}

^{I could see the extent of the reconstruction that lay before me. I would have to restore him once more to what he had felt when he was three and his mother had adored him.}

^{Now he felt that his mother was ready to abandon him, just as she had abandoned Edmund. Why, then, must he feel so guilty? Let her be the one to feel the pain. She had pretended to love Edmund and yet she was not here in church. How awful. So unfeeling!}

¹⁰

^E

^{ven as brother and sister came away from the grave, some mourners began to pay attention to Angela, who was embarrassed by knowing how red-faced she had become. How could she avoid that? She was trying to speak of how terrible were her parents’ feelings. “It is so frightful a day for them—they are both in bed. They are too weak to move.” On she went, embarrassed yet excited to be the center of this occasion.}

^{Once they were alone, however, and could walk off into the forest, Adolf did say, “Why do I know that my mother will not come to my funeral?”}

^{Angela berated him: “Klara is the finest person I have ever known. The kindest. No one is more good! How can you say something like that? She is suffering for your father. He loved Edmund so much!” And when in payment for this remark, Adolf looked venomous, she added, “As well he should. Edmund was a beautiful child. I cannot say that of you. Even on this day of your brother’s funeral”—she had to repeat it!—”you still have an unpleasant body odor.”}

^{“What do you mean?” he answered. “I took a bath. You know that. You even forced me to. You said, ‘Going to the funeral, smelling as you do? Get into the tub,’ and I told you it would take too long to boil the water. What did you care?”}

^{He had had to use cold water. It had been a splash and a wipe, no more. Maybe he still did smell. “No,” he said now, “I forbid you to speak that way to me. I do not have an unpleasant odor. I did take a bath.”}

^{Angela said, “Bath or no bath, Adolf. You just may not be a very good person.”}

^{He was so furious with her that he stepped off the forest trail into the unpacked snow. She, just as angry, followed him. The moment they were out of earshot of any person who might have been at the service, she yelled at him so loudly that he ran off, “Not a good person! An awful one! You are a monster!”}

^{Alone in the forest, Adolf began to have fears of his own death. It was so cold in the snow. He was recalling the look of terror in Edmund’s eyes as he listened to the tales of the Grimm brothers.}

^{When Angela caught up with him, they walked home silently to find that their father now had a red and swollen face. He turned to Adolf and said, “You are now my life.” He embraced him and began to weep all over again. How false were his words, thought Adolf. His father still believed that Edmund was the only hope. He could not even pretend that anything else was true. “I hate my father,” Adolf told himself once more.}

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^S

^{everal nights after the funeral, I prepared a dream-etching for Adolf. An angel told him that his cruelties to Edmund would yet be justified. Why? Because Adolf’s life had been spared in infancy. There was a special purpose yet to come. He need only remain loyal to every command he received from above. In this manner, he could escape any and every ordinary death. He would yet become God’s gift to the people, fierce as fire, as strong as steel. It was a carefully worked-up dream, but I had to ask myself whether such a belief was being implanted too soon. It did suggest that he would live forever. Of course, that is not at all impossible to believe. There is good reason why it is difficult for any man or woman to picture their own death: The soul, I would offer, does expect to be immortal. To a degree, this may even be true. Many humans, after all, are born again. I would not wish to suggest that this is by way of the passing hand of a priest or by a reverend as one is submerged in the river, no, they are born again through reincarnation. The Maestro has told us that this is part of a conceptual scheme developed by the D.K. “He does see Himself as the Divine Artist. Of course, He is also a blunderer—so many of His creations are botched. A good many are disasters which He then proceeds to plow back into the food chain. That is His only means of keeping His multitudinous, mediocre, and often meaningless spawnings from choking the existence of the rest. Yet, I will admit, He is dogged. He is still looking to improve His previous creations.” As the Maestro describes it, the Dummkopf is bound to try to improve even His most unsatisfactorily developed humans. And that}

^{is why few men and women really believe that they will cease to exist. They would say it aloud if not for their fear of appearing ridiculous. Indeed, their real anxiety is that the new life, because of the ways in which they wasted the last one, might bring them closer to the heat of the Dummkopf’s Wrath, yes, closer than in their previous existence. One’s new situation in life might reflect how badly the last life was lived. So the rebirth could offer a pure example of living hell. While the Maestro does not impart such answers to us, I am convinced that there is a region in the unconscious of every human being where belief does exist that one is immortal.}