The Castle in the Forest (17 page)

3

A
s they strode along at a good pace, Alois proceeded to supply Adi's head with so many new names and thoughts that before long the boy was twice breathless. He did not dare to lag behind by a step or a word. In turn, Alois, rarely in the habit of spending time or thought on this little Adolf, was a hint short of breath himself. Over the years, he had packed enough rheumatism into his knees and enough smoke into his lungs to move as a rule with more deliberation. But now the discovery that he could actually talk to the boy offered a stimulus to his legs. It was not Alois' habit to harbor many sentiments toward his younger children, indeed, he never found fatherhood a subject of personal interest until Alois Junior and Angela worked with him on the farm. Now, most unexpectedly, he did feel a sense of something not ordinary coming to him from this little one.

Adi, in his turn, was more than excited. To be in the
company
of his father! He had barely learned to spell but Alois stood before his eyes as
MEIN VATER
. Just so large was his recognition of the immanence of the heavy man beside him. Alois aroused in him the same kind of awe that came over the expression of his mother when she would speak of
der gute Gott.

How the boy wanted to please Alois! At the start of the walk, their mutual silence had been formidable, and it remained so until Adi found the words. “Have there always been bees?” he asked at last. It was a simple question but fortuitous.

“Yes. Always. Bees,” Alois amended, “have been on our fine earth for a long time.”

“They go very far back, Father?”

Alois gave him an encouraging pat on the nape of his neck. The boy's obvious desire to keep the conversation in flow now served to activate Alois' funds of exposition. “Yes, far back. Maybe even for a longer time than us. And there has never been a day when we didn't look to steal their honey.” He laughed. “Back in the time of the Bronze Age, already we were eating honey, yes, and I can say for certain that I have seen old drawings in glass cases right there in the old Linz museum, going back into the Middle Ages, that show how beekeeping had already become a serious activity. Although wild, very wild then.”

Despite his touch of rheumatism, Alois was certainly walking fast. Adi's breath was now seizing his lungs in a unique mixture of happy fervor at the fact of the conversation itself and the desperation that he might not be able to keep walking (half running) at his father's pace. So many unfamiliar words were coming into his mind at once. This past August, while he stood under the walnut tree nearest their farmhouse, a gale of wind came by like the crack of a whip, whereupon three walnuts, hard as stone, had pelted his head with such authority that he did not even dare to cry—it was as if the walnuts told him to be silent. Now he was buffeted by “the Bronze Age,” and next, “the Middle Ages”—maybe he had heard “Middle Ages” before. He felt as if he might know it. Charlemagne, maybe. No question of stopping to ask—he strode along as fast as he could, the air burning in his lungs.

“They had,” said Alois, “no hives in the Middle Ages. They had to go out hunting to where they could find a swarm of bees gathered together. Where? In hollow trees—where else? Locate such a tree, and then grab what you can of the honey before the bees sting your head off. That was how good men must have done it then. Only, that was not enough. They also had to scoop up the wax. This beeswax was just as important. With beeswax, you could have light for your hut. Every night. Candles! But, oh, they had to pay. So many bites. Then along would come their Duke or their Baron. If he heard about your honey, you had to pay up. A good share he took. Imagine. What do you think he gave you back?—a bow, a nice strong crossbow. Why? Because the bears in the forest were also looking for honey. Think how crazy those bees must have gotten when a bear stuck his nose right in to lap up their hive. It is one thing to sting a man, but how do you stop a bear? A bear with his thick skin! They had to go for the eyes. It didn't matter. The bear would still come looking. So a man needed a crossbow—to kill the bear. Not so easy to go near honey if the bear got there first, but you could have compensation. Sometimes you had bear meat. Once in a while, you had bear meat
and
honey.”

By now, Adi's breath was on fire. Their path was passing through a small wood, and he was on the lookout for a bear. One more fear to lay on the tumult in his lungs.

“Sometimes,” said Alois, “on a cold day this time of year a man would find a tree ready to fall, a dead tree with a big hollow in it, and a swarm of bees clustered right there in the hollow, trying to stay warm against the cold. Well, an enterprising fellow might dare to take the tree down. He would have to do it carefully. Don't stir up too much! He would have to do it in the evening, when bees are more quiet, especially when it is cold, and then he and his son, or maybe his brother, would carry the tree back near their hut, where they could manage to extract the rest of the honey.”

“What about the bears? Would they come?”

“Yes. The kind of man we're talking about had to be ready to kill the first bear and hang him up near the bees. That kept other bears away. This is exactly how it began. But now, what is it? What has it become? A hobby! A little risky, maybe, but profitable.”

“Hobby,” the boy repeated—another new word.

“Soon,” said Alois, “it will be a business.”

They walked in silence.
Das Steckenpferd
was how Alois had put it—a horse-on-a-stick, a plaything, a hobby. Soon it would be a business, he had said. The boy was confused. Their rapid pace was now pinching his breath past the point where he could ask even one more question.

Abruptly, Alois stopped. He had become aware at last of his son's discomfort. “Come,” he said, “you sit down.” He pointed to a rock, then sat next to him on another rock. Only then did he feel the pain in his own knees.

“You must understand,” he said, “this beekeeping will not be fairy tales for us. Honey is sweet, but bees are not always so sweet. Sometimes they are cruel to each other. Very cruel. Do you know why?”

“No,” said Adi. His eyes were, however, alight. “Please, you must tell me why, Father.”

“Because they obey one law. It is so clear to them. This law says: Our colony must survive. So nobody can dare to be lazy. Not inside this hive of bees.” He paused. “Nobody, except for the drones. They are there to serve their one good purpose. But then it's all over for them. They are gone. Goodbye.”

“Are they killed?” The boy knew the answer.

“Of course. All of those drones. Once a year, right about now—just after summer, they are gotten rid of. No charity.” He began to laugh again. “In the home of the bees, there are no good Christians. No charity whatsoever. You will not find one bee in any hive who is too weak to work. That is because they get rid of cripples early. They obey one law and it sits on top of everything.”

But as they rested, Alois drew back into silence. He was feeling some dread. The neighboring peasants had praised Der Alte, they had echoed each other concerning his vast knowledge of this subject of apiculture. Yet Alois could hear no allegiance to the man himself. Now he was afraid of being cheated by Der Alte.

This was but one hint of his fear. If the attractive location of the farm rather than the land had been his good reason to purchase, he did not wish to be half-cheated again. Indeed, he had kept putting off the decision to go into beekeeping. Now August was lost. It might even be too late to start a winter colony. He must buy, and buy soon. He might even have to pay an unnatural price. He certainly did not enjoy the thought of these peasants laughing at him, but that was not his prime uneasiness. He could not quite admit it to himself, but the last time he had been in the bee business, he had gone at it as a horse-on-a-stick, just one hive, a skep he kept in a little town at walking distance from Braunau, a place he could go to in the evening as a respite from the tavern and his fellow officers, or visit on Sunday in order not to have to watch everyone going to church. But then he had a near disaster. On a given Sunday, because of no mistake he could recognize, he had been stung quickly and repeatedly by so many infuriated bees that he decided afterward he must have been poking about in the Queen's quarters. Who could tell with a skep? Straw has so little shape! He realized his ignorance of the real stuff. In the course of working with that straw hive, he had been open to ambush.

But he knew. He could tell. He was preparing in advance to recount to this man, Der Alte, that he had once taken many stings on his hands and his knees and that the event had actually proved beneficial to the stiffness in his joints. For certain, he felt ready to impress Der Alte with his understanding of bee venom. He would speak of the degree to which diseases in ancient Egypt and Greece had even been treated in that manner. He would speak of the Romans and the Greeks, Pliny and Galen. Great doctors. They knew how to make ointments from bee venom and honey. Charlemagne and Ivan the Terrible could also be cited. He would speak of these monarchs' afflictions of the joints and how they had had such pain eliminated, or so it was reputed, by bee stings.

But was he really prepared to enter such a conversation with Der Alte? When you got down to it, this might not be the correct step to take. What if Der Alte happened to be more knowledgeable on this matter than himself?

4

A
s I have indicated, Der Alte has been one of ours. I have called him a pensioner, and that is also accurate. Over recent years, we hardly used him, and any benefits he received from us were small. From time to time, we offered a new insight to one of his old perceptions, a species of gift-giving practiced by angels and demons alike to revive the faded confidence of the client's mind. In return, we expected to be obeyed. Certainly, the old doctor was there with dispatch to put a spoonful of exquisite honey on Adi's tongue even as father and son came through the door.

Now, I may yet refer occasionally to Der Alte as Herr Doktor, but I considered it one of his more unseemly vanities. He would insist that he was an honored and learned university graduate. I have heard him refer on separate occasions to his years at Heidelberg, Leipzig, Göttingen, Vienna, Salzburg, and Berlin, none of whose eminent universities he attended. Indeed, only Heidelberg and Göttingen ever saw him, and that was for a brief visit. Our old and learned doctor was a fraud, a half-Jewish Pole of no certified higher education, who, nonetheless, much through his own efforts, had acquired some of the verbal skills and superior manner of a tried-and-true Doctor of Philosophy. If he had chosen in his old age to look like a confirmed drunk, an odd choice, since in fact he did not drink, he was attracted all the same to many of the slovenly habits of old sots. His clothes were filthy. Even his long woolen cap managed to be full of soup stains (for he wiped his mouth with the tail of it) and his white beard was discolored with nicotine. He not only smelled of the unhappy scents we look to reduce in our clients but, to put no pretty word on it, was incontinent. Even his furnishings, let alone his garments, retained the harsh persona of old urine.

Nonetheless, he was striking. That long stocking cap which he wore even indoors in summer did serve some devoted image of himself as a court jester. And indeed, there was an old cape full of faded bright colors, a fool's motley. One could hardly expect him to be impressive in his person, yet he was. Undeniably. His eyes were extraordinary, as blue as the coldest skies of the north, yet full of lights that offered a clue to many a trick he had learned.

For forty years Alois had encountered hundreds of people a day, and so was hardly to be surprised by an unorthodox appearance. Moreover, he had developed an ability to capture the first moment in just about every passing exchange. Travelers were not prepared for the phenomenon of meeting a Customs official who possessed such a degree of authority, and few were prepared for the intelligence that stood out in his immediate glance. “Try to fool me—you will fail!” was the unmistakable sentiment offered by his eyes.

This was a prime reason for my direction to Der Alte that he must meet the father and son at the door with a spoonful of honey, and insert it without leave into the boy's mouth. Whatever Alois had been preparing for, it could hardly have been this. So rude. So gracious. And both at once! Nothing was offered to Alois but a superior smile from Der Alte, as if his piss-soaked den, worse than an abode of fifteen cats, was nonetheless Der Alte's realm and he was happy in it and, I may as well add, diabolically unembarrassed.

Der Alte won the boy on the instant. It took no more than this one move placed on top of my dream-etching. Adi's eyes were alive with the same intensity of admiration that Alois had been receiving from his son during their walk together.

They sat down. The old man fussed a little (albeit most skillfully) at preparing tea. To Alois' further discomfort, the procedure was courtly. A very old gentleman, or even a very old lady, might have been demonstrating to an unsophisticated visitor the putative elegance of a tea ceremony.

All the same, I did not approve of Der Alte. For all his gifts, he had never accomplished much for us, not as much as I had anticipated. For a time I had expected he would become one of my prize clients. He certainly did not have to end as a bizarre, impossibly smelly hermit with an immense reputation for dealing with hives of bees in a pretty little corner of Austria, a country already filled with pretty little corners. I had lost standing with the Maestro by remarking decades ago that I saw promise in this young half-Polish, half-Jewish Magnus. Of course, he was at that time a satyr with the ladies. As far as I was concerned, he had turned by now into a client who settled for too little.

Der Alte took his tea in little sips, Alois in three scalding gulps. That enabled his host to pour him a quick second cup (a most subtle reproof). Only then did they begin to talk about the purpose of the visit. Alois did begin by citing Pliny and Galen, then Charlemagne and Ivan the Terrible. He spoke in a most moving manner of the afflictions of the two great monarchs and the dedication of Pliny and Galen—two medical geniuses who had known how to deal with ailments so grievous that others could find no cure. It was not, he would vouchsafe, that he, personally, had suffered inhumanly from gout or from rheumatism, but he had indeed received a few intimations that there could be future miseries. Nonetheless, he had learned a great deal on one particular occasion when he had been prey to an unprecedented attack, “just the one time, but with many bites to the knees which subsequently provided considerable easement against the early pains of rheumatism. I admit that I would have given much to be a medical scientist, for then I could have begun research on just this subject. I am even sufficiently confident of myself to believe I would probably have made significant discoveries.”

“Just so,” said Der Alte, “you might, you might very well have done just that. Because, dear sir, what you at the time believed was there to be discovered had been detected by no less a figure than Dr. Likomsky back in 1864, thirty-one years ago when you were still a young man, and I might also mention Herr Dr. Terc, who put the crowning cap on what could have been your thesis. Yes! Herr Dr. Terc came forth with serious chemical studies on the nature of bee venom and its as-yet-undeveloped potential for precisely these valuable cures. Rheumatism and gout might both be seen by now as ailments of the past if not for the innumerable obstacles that stand in the way of administering treatment. We are still looking for more precise positioning of the bee sting onto the affected body. It is rumored that the Chinese”—now with a melting look designed to add to the mutual delight that existed already between him and the boy, he added, “the Chinese who live on the other side of the earth from us. Have you heard?” he asked.

Adi nodded solemnly. He had heard of the Chinese, heard of them in his one-room schoolhouse during the hour when Fräulein Werner instructed the geography class on the specific placement of India and China upon the great continent of Asia.

“Yes, in that far-off near-mythical land, esteemed Finance-Watch Chief Officer Herr Hitler, it is said that some Chinese can employ the power to puncture possessed by sharp needles in order to alleviate gout, an excellent solution I would think, since the least attractive aspect of my beloved bees is their eagerness to sting, yes, we love them for their honey, but not necessarily for their haste to provoke us even as they surrender their lives.”

Alois sensed that he would do well to leave this topic. The tea had left a penetrating aroma in his nostrils which, to his surprise, was compatible with the urine. Needless to say, he would have preferred a good swallow of beer to pump a few of his prepared remarks up into more forceful delivery, but as of now, this conversation did belong to Der Alte. At what length he went on!

“I cannot,” he remarked, “begin to call you my good friend as yet. For I do not know you. Except, of course, by way of your fine reputation. Word of your former most respected position precedes our meeting.

“Your father,” he now said to Adi, “is well regarded by all, but”—and he was now back, once more, to Alois—“I am still ready to call you my friend because I feel in myself an imperative to counsel you, for, oh, I must say, there is, dear sir, so much to learn about these bees and their good keeping.” He sighed with a sound of woe physically intimidating in its resonance.

“Let me note that I would not wish in any manner to impose on your pride.” He stopped. Since a man's pride was involved, he would proceed no further without a
laissez-passer.

“No, tell me, good Doctor, you must tell me what you think,” said Alois, his voice normal (to the degree he could command it) but his nostrils were near to quivering. He hardly knew if he was at the onset of an intolerable sense of woe or whether a true burden was about to be lifted. What could be this imposition on his pride?

“Given your gracious permission, I would say that I must caution you about your honorable and honest desire to enter the endless vagaries of apiculture. It is, you see, a vocation.” He nodded. He turned again to Adi as if the boy was one more equal, yes, all three sitting there quite alike in implicit stature. “You, little fellow,” Der Alte said. “You, who look so smart, are you smart enough to know what a vocation might be?”

“No,” said Adi, “but maybe I do. Yes. Almost.”

“You do. You know it even before you are aware that you know it. That is the first sign of a truly intelligent person, not so?” Der Alte's voice vibrated into the tender pit of Adi's stomach.

“A vocation,” said Der Alte, “is not something you do because others tell you that this is what you must do. Not so. With a vocation, there is no choice. You give all that you have to doing whatever has become important to you. ‘Yes,' says the vocation, ‘you must do it.'”

“I would not wish to dispute your learned words,” said Alois, “no, I do not wish to commence a dispute, but surely one can keep a hive without building a monastery. For myself, I foresee no more than a modest investment for a retired man like myself.”

“Dear sir, it cannot and will not ever be that way,” said Der Alte. “That much I can promise a strong person like yourself. Heartbreak or happiness. Nothing between.” He nodded with all the profundity of the decades he had continued to present himself as a great and learned doctor. “Herr Hitler, I cannot allow you to consider such a project until you are made fully aware of the risks that await you, the diseases and mortal enemies that surround our delicate sweet-seeking bees. After all, the honey they make is to the world of nature an exact equivalent of gold. So many of the creatures of nature, large and small, are jealous of the life of these remarkable little creatures who are not only able to make honey but dwell constantly amidst that golden and intoxicating presence. In consequence, honeybees are hated. They are pursued and entrapped. I can inform you of one species of spider who is evil, nothing less.
Die Krabbenspinne,
it is called. So soon as it finds a promising flower, this creature ensconces itself deep within the small perfumed cavern of the bloom. There the crab spider waits. I would suppose he even feels at home. He proceeds to activate the scent of this flower by stirring about in those blessed folds of the corolla; soon, the spider's own awful odor is concealed by the intoxicating elixir of the petals. What then? The crab spider waits. When the forager bee, our sweet hardworking female with its undeveloped ovaries—only the Queen, as we know, is completely in possession of that most mysterious avatar of female existence!—
ach,
these other females are there to work for the length of their short lives. So here, contemplate this poor little forager. Our honeybee smells the inimitable redolence of the flower's cavern. She enters, full of greed, to pick up her lusty store of nectar and pollen and, at once, she is done in. Cruelly! Sadistically! For the poor bee is not killed but is certainly paralyzed by a sting from the crab spider, and so must stay there, numb and incapable of saving herself, whereupon the spider, altogether without mercy, proceeds to sup on the vital liquids and subtle constituents of the bee's internal elements. When nothing is left but the dry whisper of a husk, this crab spider goes to the actual labor of ejecting the remains from the flower, after which, it lingers in all the bliss of sleep, yes, a successful destroyer's slumbers, sated, all sated, in the corolla. There, it nestles.”

Adi would dream for weeks of the bee, the flower, and more than one evil bug. More came his way. Der Alte went on to describe the bee wolf, a wasp who would strike at the honeybee just as it was alighting on a flower. The bee wolf would always go for the throat. “Always. The honeybee has a soft throat. So once again, our forager is paralyzed. The wasp is now in complete command. She proceeds to squash the belly of the honeybee in order to disgorge all the nectar that hardworking little being has already taken into herself. This nectar squeezed up from the belly overflows out of the bee's mouth into the maw of the bee wolf. Is that enough? No. This female brute is now ready for the labor of flying off with her stricken victim. She transports this paralyzed and ruptured little creature to a nest most specially prepared. There, she lays her capture down next to as many as six or eight still-living but wholly stricken other honeybees caught earlier. Then the wasp deposits into this same crypt one egg, one solitary egg that will soon feed on these live, but unmoving bees. After which, this larvae, now well fed, is ready to come forth as one more bee wolf. While it is apparent that the stricken bodies served as nutrients for her growth, and were ingested, limb by limb, how were these bees able to live long enough to serve as living food, piece by piece, sip by sip? And the answer is to be found in our so-called good and wise system of nature which also demonstrates here the cunning of the cruelest maniac. The venom in the wasp's sting has preserved the flesh of these paralyzed bees. It has kept them alive for days while one hungry little wasp-to-be became a bee wolf.

“I have offered these two exceptional cases as lively examples of the perils to the life of any colony you may hope to protect. There are so many enemies. A rat will fret his claws on the front wall of a hive until the guardian bees within must come forth to repel him. These soldier-guards are heroic, but futile. They are swallowed en masse. Toads wait beneath to pick up the droppings. Another variety of spider will wrap cocoons about each bee that happens to fly right into its web. Ants may invade your hive. I have seen colonies where the bees are obliged to tolerate the ants, and will even surrender a portion of their territory in order that these indefatigable invaders do not attack the combs that hold the future brood. With mice, it is worse. In summer, they loot the combs directly for the honey. In winter, they move into the hive seeking warmth, then proceed to construct a mouse nest in one or another corner. The most valiant of our home guard attack the intruder and can on occasion succeed through the force of sheer numbers. It is not impossible. They can sting to death the invading monster. A glorious victory. But what can they then do with the carcass? For them, it is larger than Leviathan. Just so soon as the mouse begins to decompose, the hive becomes intolerable. So the bees proceed to cover this rotting presence with disinfectant. Contemplate their fabulous skill. They have managed to manufacture this now-necessary substance from pollen plus a few chosen green buds. Have you heard of it? Propolis?”