The Castle in the Forest (10 page)

4

W
hile I delight in writing about these people like any good novelist, and so am ready by turns to observe them sardonically, objectively, ironically, sympathetically, judgmentally, even compassionately, still I must remind the reader that though I do not present myself as sinister (since I have no desire to gratify a casual reader's notion of how a devil is supposed to behave), I remain a devil, not a novelist. My interest in character is, however, genuine. From the onset of our service, the Maestro instructed us to make humankind an ongoing study. He even encourages us to feel close to what is godly in people. If one is to be alert to the spoils that may be there later, it helps to comprehend the subtle differences between genuine and counterfeit nobility. If we had religious orders in our muster, I might be the equivalent of a Jesuit. I share with them a fundamental understanding. I am always ready to acquire a sympathetic comprehension of an opponent—I see it as my duty to be ready, indeed, to know more about godly sentiments than all but the most gifted of the angels.

That may be why the Maestro encourages us to speak of God as the D.K. (At least those of us who work in German-speaking lands. In America, it is the D.A.—dumb ass! In England, the B.F.—bloody fool! For France, A.S.—
l'âme simple.
In Italy, G.C.—
gran cornuto.
Among the Spanish, G.P.—
grande payaso.
) So D.K. stands for
Dummkopf.
It is not that we look upon God as stupid—never so! Moreover, we know from experience (and lost battles) that the Cudgels can, on occasion, be as bright and incisive as ourselves. Our use of the word Dummkopf comes, I expect, from the Maestro's determination to wean us from our greatest weakness—the unwilling admiration we feel for the Almighty. As the Maestro never allows us to forget, God may be powerful, but He is not All-Powerful. Hardly so. We, after all, are also here. If the D.K. is the Creator, we are His most profound and successful critics.

All the same, we have to recognize that the angels have succeeded in convincing most of humankind that our leader is the Evil One. So our best recourse, the Maestro suggests, is to take pride in the term. When I write E.O., or speak of the Evil One, it is with full knowledge of the irony of the concept. The Maestro has given us so much, our subtle master. “Leave excessive reverence to the God-worshippers,” he tells us. “They need it. They are always on their knees. But we have work to do, and it is tricky. I recommend that you keep thinking of Him as the Dummkopf. For, indeed, given what He could have achieved, this is what He is. Remember: It is our universe to gain. It is His to lose. Keep calling Him the Dummkopf. He has not accomplished as much with his men and women as He intended.”

5

T
he reek of the urine, the shit, and the blood of Luther became the first in a series of episodes remarkable for their powers of
transmogrification
—that is to say, dramatic and thorough-going metamorphosis.

So, for example, Adolf's bowel movements now began to dominate Klara's life in the house on Linzerstrasse. Before the episode with Luther took place, she had certainly been alert, no matter how often Adi soiled his wrapping cloths, to keep the child clean; indeed, the act, as I have remarked, became a dalliance between mother and boy. She wiped him so carefully that his eyes gleamed. He discovered heaven. There it was, right up in his anus next to the gas and the cramps. All the while, his mother subtly, tenderly, delicately expunged the soil, wet or dry, from his
rosebud
(which was, of course, Klara's secret name for her dear baby's incomparably dear little hole—
die Rosenknospe
). She was so proud of its pink sheen that she could not even suppress her joy when her stepchildren were watching. Indeed, unlike other good mothers in Braunau, she barely bothered to teach Angela how to substitute for her. She was, after all, wholly superior to the unhappy elements in the procedure. His stool (which could be as rank as any other colicky child's) did not occasion her disgust. If the voiding had been outrageous in smell, or what was worse, gave a hint of the empty cavern that lurks in the odor of grave illness, her breath remained calm. In truth, she preferred the stink to be rich. The stronger, the better. A sign of health. Such was her love for Adi.

Yes, love sparkled between them. His eyes danced as she dredged his cheeks with feather-smooth wipes of the rag, and her eyes—whether she knew it or not—were so full of admiration that his little penis stood up. She, in turn, would giggle and coax it back (most properly) as they both laughed. For, of course, it jumped up again. Whereupon she wished to kiss the tip, and then blushed. Be assured! She did not. Such innocent joy.

All this had to change after the episode with Luther.

She lived again in high fear of Alois. Now she was always in fear that Adi's swaddling cloths might bag open. What if Alois came upon a plop on the floor? Once, stepping out of the parlor to start a dish in the kitchen, she returned in the next minute to see the child playing with his spoil, and shuddered at the thought of Alois coming through the door.

So, training began. It was like trying to teach a bright but willful dog. In the beginning, Adi might even tug at her skirt, or take her to the closet that held the chamber pot and cry out for her to remove his cloth. After which, as she complimented him for his prowess, they would go, two spirits in one, through the wiping. For such intelligence, she offered full praise. His eyes would glow.

She became, however, too hopeful—which is to say—too ambitious. She wanted Adi to learn how to unsnap the safety pins that held his cloth. Indeed, he was able to. Day by day, success followed success, until one morning, he pricked his finger. After that, he would not go near the pins again. She lost patience. He had come so near and now he refused to continue. Finally, she scolded him, and that was certainly the first time he had heard such a tone issue from his mother. He rebelled. Knowing how important he was to her, his response was keen—he felt the same clarity of mind with which he had watched Alois beat Luther. At that moment, the boy had been illumined by new knowledge. He did not measure the difference between a dog and a man, for Luther was still as much a person to him as his father, but he could see the instant result: Luther had collapsed into abject terror, and yet the dog still loved his master.

So would Klara love him, he decided, even when he would not obey her. Taken out of his cloth and allowed to run naked from the waist down, he began (never when his father was at home) to leave his product right next to the chamber pot. Which brought Klara so close to screaming that Adi could hear every sound she did not make. In consequence, he felt masterful.

He went too far. One day when she was in the midst of waxing her kitchen floor, he spread his spoil over the upholstered arm of the parlor couch, studied it, knew by a new tumult in his chest—so curious in sensation—that this was different. Risk was present. All the same, he would show it to her. He did.

This time she stood stock-still. She sensed that he had done it on purpose, and so did not say a word, merely cleaned the sofa, by which time he had an attack of diarrhea and began to laugh and to bawl, but she did no more than sigh and clean him soundlessly in listless loveless fashion. This made such an impression on him that he awoke in the middle of the night and went to her bedroom. Alois had been called to Passau for preliminary interviews and the house had not seen him for a week, but just before midnight he had come home. Since the boy enjoyed going to his mother's bed whenever she was alone, he was surprised, even as he cracked the door, to hear a little gasping, and wheezing, and then the bull-roar of Alois' voice. Beneath were his mother's cries, soft, and full of the oddest torture, cries that spoke of joy soon to come, so soon to come, yet still, beyond reach, yes, now, almost! No, not yet! Through the half-open door (kept open particularly for her to hear him should he cry) he saw a sight his mind could not take in. Something looked like four arms and four legs and two people, but one of them was upside-down. He could make out Alois' bald head and side-whiskers pressed between his mother's legs. Then, without a word his father sat up. He was now sitting on her face!

Adolf walked away as silently as he had entered, but he had no doubt. His mother was betraying him. Just then he heard a final set of cries intense enough to turn him back toward the room. From what he could see by moonlight coming through the window, his father had begun to belabor Klara with all of his body, his big belly slapping on her belly. And she was grunting like a dog. So full of contentment! “You beast, you are an ugly man, you are an animal, you!” and then again, “You, yes, you,
ja, ja, ja.
” There was no question. She was happy.
Ja!

He would never forgive her. That much the two-year-old knew.

This time Adolf went all the way back to his room. He could, however, hear them still. In the bed next to him, Alois Junior and Angela were giggling. “Goosey, goosey,” they kept saying back and forth.

6

H
e began to bawl for his milk not thirty minutes after Klara had sunk into the best sleep she had known for years.

Must one suppose that because a child's deepest reactions seem to have a half-life of no more than thirty minutes, they cannot be profound? Because of that betrayal, he might never love his mother as much again. Yet his feelings were heightened. There was pain in his love now, and an anger which revealed itself by nipping at her breast with his teeth. Indeed, for a few days, he felt close to Luther, and when drowsy, would sleep beside the dog through an afternoon. Truth, he saw the hound as a sibling, and this brotherly affair went on until Adolf began to take too much advantage, punching Luther in the belly, trying to poke his eyes, and sometimes trying to kick him in the ribs. When the dog began to growl at his approach, Adolf would whine and run to Klara. There was a period when her delight in breast-feeding was gone. The nipping at her breast had done it. The days of weaning were at hand.

In those private councils of her mind that would never be available to her child, her stepchildren, her husband, nor even to the confessional box, she had come to the conclusion that she must have another child. If this came in part from the old fear, even now, that Adolf might not live, she also feared that she would never love him as much again, no, not as once she had, and so maybe there should be another child.

Besides, she was entering a new time in her marriage. She looked forward to being with Alois in their bed. For on such evenings—after all these years—desire came alive again, desire was there!—down in the marrow, deep!

We may remember that the last time we saw Alois, he was burying his nose and lips in Klara's vulva, his tongue as long and demonic as a devil's phallus. (Be it said: we are not without our contributions to these arts.) Alois was certainly being aided by us. Never before had he given himself so completely to this exercise, and quickly he had become good at it, and so quickly that no explanation is possible unless we are given credit as well. (Which is why we speak of the Evil One when joining in the act—we do have the power to pass these lubricious gifts to men and women even when we are not attempting to convert them into clients.)

By morning, Alois could not believe he had done it. To lower himself to such an extent! To make her pay for such bottoming on his part, he had, we must recall, clumped his buttocks once more over her nose and mouth—precisely the frightful sight that drove Adolf back to his bed and caused him to bawl for milk not a half hour later.

Yet, by morning, Alois also felt tender toward Klara. This unexpected gentleness in concert with the astonishing pleasure he had given her by way of his tongue, a joy whose unexpected preciosities had conducted her up to, yes, all-but-occult regions, had also left her ready enough to forgive the rotten part. (Indeed, his heavy behind smelled better than Adi's.)

As a devil, I am obliged to live intimately with excrement in all its forms, physical and mental. I know the emotional waste of ugly and disappointing events, the sour indwelling poison of unjust punishment, the corrosion of impotent thoughts, and, of course, I also have to engage caca itself. It is true. As devils, we live in shit and work with it. So, we often look to comprehend a marriage through the eye of the cloaca—and I will add, that is not the worst way, since parenthood is not only the crown but the outhouse of marriage. As St. Odon of Cluny stated so unforgettably in a remark worthy of the best of devils:
inter faeces et urinam nascimur
—between shit and piss are we born. That leads me to say that the proper study of marriage resides not only in partnership, congeniality, affection, boredom, predictable habit, daily annoyance, verbal scuffles, and daily despair, but in the guts and smear of it all—the comradely knowledge of all the forbidden tastes, smells, and bodily nooks. Indeed, if all of that were absent, the sacrament would have less foundation. On caca, is marriage based. So I would assert. You, in turn, are free to reject my opinion because I am a devil, after all, and we do look for the lowest common denominator to any truth. Small wonder if the condign properties of waste are part of our province.

7

A
lois' promotion came through. The Finance-Watch named him to the post of Chief Customs Officer at Passau, and Klara was pleased, so pleased. She was married to a man of achievement.

On the other hand, they could hardly move before Alois was due to work at his new post in Passau. That was a full day's travel from Braunau which meant there would be weeks at a time when Alois had to live apart from the family. In consequence, Adolf could loll in the big bed next to his mother.

If it was grievous that Klara would put him aside whenever Alois came home, so did the child also learn that the loss of such happiness would be regained so soon as Alois was off again to Passau.

This condition lasted for a year. Even when the family did finally rent a place in Passau, Alois had to oversee other border towns. In consequence, he was absent nearly as much as before—which permitted Adolf to sleep again close to his mother.

As for Alois, the new position gratified his vanity, but introduced a threat to his confidence. In Braunau, a less important station, the smugglers rounded up had usually been petty individuals. Since most of the product crossing was agricultural, weighings were tedious. Braunau might be nicely situated on the river Inn, but even its architecture was humdrum.

In Passau, Austrian Customs, by mutual agreement between the countries, operated on the German side of the Danube. The difference was visible. Passau had once been ruled by a Prince-Bishop, and so could boast of medieval towers. Some of its churches dated back to the onset of the Middle Ages. Passau's walls reflected the grandeur of dedicated duty, ancient crimes, torture chambers, dark secrets, bygone glory, and—much to the point for Alois—criminal smugglers with imagination enough to be something of a match for him.

So, he was not without discomfort in the new position. If, until now, his uniformed presence had been a full warning to would-be malefactors, he knew that much depended upon the rigor of his professional manner. So he took pains to present a personality of monumental official calm, a man who had set an incorruptible seal on himself. Let travelers know that he was not the fellow with whom to play games. He had studied many an upper-class Customs officer—those with university learning, some with livid, invaluable dueling scars. They were the ones to model oneself after.

Taking up his command in Passau left him feeling, however, less inside his own good Austrian skin. His tone, in consequence of being on the German side of the border, became a touch too harsh. Occasionally some trifle would provoke him unduly. Once he went into a tirade because an underling addressed him as “Herr Official” rather than “Herr Senior Official Hitler.” He could sense that his new subordinates were better educated than the ones at Braunau. Could these new faces be growing critical of him? Now and again, looking down from his post at the rush of the Danube below the Customs' bridge, his eyes would sparkle with tears. He would find himself thinking of Braunau, and of the two women buried in the region, dear carnal-spirited Franziska, yes, and for an instant he would also mourn Anna Glassl. No beauty, but she had known what to do under the sheets.

He smoked all the time. His nickname, unknown to him, was “the Cloud of Smoke.” (Here, the German is good enough to offer:
die Rauchwolke!
) “And today, what is the mood of
die Rauchwolke
?” one young officer might ask another as he came on duty. Alois knew these juniors were resentful because he did not allow them the liberty that he enjoyed—nonetheless, the very injustice of it would enforce his authority. While a good officer had to be fair for the most part, he could still exercise a few inequalities. Done judiciously, that proved effective. One's inferiors were reduced a notch.

Now that Klara and the children had joined him in Passau, he also became more severe with his offspring. Alois Junior and Angela soon learned not to speak to him unless they were asked a direct question. Otherwise, they were not to interrupt his thoughts. If Alois Junior happened to be outside, the father would put two fingers to his lips and whistle. It was identical to the call he used to summon Luther. In turn, Alois Junior, fresh cheeked, strong, stocky, and with a face like his father's, had driven Klara and Angela into hysterics one afternoon by picking up a monumental turd that Adi had chosen to deposit on the parlor rug. When stepmother and sister began to scream at the sight of it in Junior's hand, dark, doughty, and as forbidding as a primeval club, he chose to stalk after them, his eyes wild. What a mischief! Klara and Angela were crying out in terror. Then Adi joined the chorus and screamed with the rest even as he chose to prance right behind Alois Junior, keeping on with it until his big brother, tiring of the sport, tore off an inch of the stuff, whirled around, and planted it on the tip of Adolf's nose.

That evening Klara told Alois Senior. The beating that ensued was comparable to the attack on Luther. Next day, Alois Junior could just about crawl off to school. Profound, after that, was the discipline in the house. When Alois came home from his duties, the children dared at most to whisper. Klara, unwilling to upset him, was also quiet. Supper was eaten in silence. The smell of Alois' breath, rich with meat and sour from beer, mingled with the aroma of red cabbage.

After dinner, he would take to the armchair, select one of his long-stemmed pipes, tamp his tobacco into the bowl with all the authority that is ready to ensconce itself in the thumb of a man of official importance, and then proceed to overpower the air with his own smoke. Alois Junior and Angela went to their room once permission was given. But Adi was called forward.

His father would cup the three-year-old's head in his hand, and with a divided grin—50 percent affection, 50 percent pure meanness of spirit—proceed to blow smoke into Adolf's face. The boy would cough. The father would chuckle.

As soon as Alois let go of his head, Adolf would smile and run off to the water closet. There, he might throw up. Sometimes, head bent over the pail, the three-year-old would remember the sounds of Alois making love to Klara, and such groans accompanied him through the lurches of his stomach. He kept asking himself why his mother never complained about the smoke.

She did not dare. She sensed that the greatest provocation to her husband would be to comment on his pipe.

Moreover, Adolf had provided her with new cause for fear. Cleaning his bottom one day (and she did not make this large discovery until he was three—such were her curious proprieties) she came to notice that he had one testicle, not two.

A town doctor reassured her that this medical phenomenon did not have to be fearsome. “Such boys often grow up to be men with large families.”

“So he will not be different from others when he goes to school?”

“Boys of his condition are sometimes active. Highly active. That is all.”

Such kind words did not soothe Klara. The missing testicle left one more stain on the Poelzl family. Her sister Johanna was not only a hunchback, but there was a first cousin—a true imbecile. Not to speak of all of Klara's dead brothers, her dead sisters, her own dead children. There was not enough, she decided, of Alois' strong constitution in Adolf, no, none of the strength Alois had so obviously passed on to Alois Junior. This was also her fault. She had loved her husband on the night that Adolf had been conceived, but only on that night, and in a way—was it unholy?—such a night!

But now—could it be too late?—she would say that she loved her husband again. She came to this conclusion slowly, step by step, over many months, but on one fine night in June, a year and a half after his transfer to Passau, she felt a new respect for him. For just that afternoon he had learned that in another six months, he would be transferred to Linz, the capital of the province, there to serve as Chief Customs Officer. It was the most important assignment you could find in all the Service between Salzburg and Vienna, and it came at a fine time since he would be ready to retire in a few years and this promotion would increase the size of his pension.

On that night, they conceived. Perhaps there was never an hour when she loved Alois more simply, or realized she wanted a second son so much. Little Adi with his one testicle had put a small but yearlong horror into her heart. She did not dare to think any longer that Adi might live a long life. On the contrary, they needed another child. She dared to pray for a boy. The new one, she decided, must belong to Alois as much as to herself.