The Castle in the Forest (30 page)

7

H
is father came upon the hive, touched the box, felt the heat of the wood, but also recognized that the bees were not yet whipping about in too great a frenzy. He had come in time, and he carried the hive back to the shade.

“What were you thinking, idiot?”
he shouted at Alois Junior.

The boy felt as if he had been pulled inside out by the power of his father's voice. The sound came with a thud, heavy as a blow. Adolescents can lose all sense of themselves when an unfamiliar punishment suddenly assaults them. That is because they are not only full of airs, poses, and witless shows of temperament, but, worse—at bottom, they do not possess a real age. In that instant, Junior ceased to be a youth of fourteen. Till then, he had seen himself as “Fourteen,” a clear concept, stark in its outlines. But, like many another adolescent, he possessed the calculations of a twenty-year-old, while other corners of himself were as prone to self-betrayal as an eight-year-old caught in some foolishness. Like leaving a hive in the sun. At this moment, he actually felt full of tears.

He pleaded with his father. To his shame, he pleaded. “You have given me so much good information,” he said. “So new and so stimulating, dear respected father.” He slapped himself on the forehead. “I confess it may have been too much for my ignorant head. I made a mistake. I know that now. But I believed I was supposed to leave the hive in the sun, yes, for a few minutes—no more, I admit—so as to warm the honeycombs. It was so cold last night. For spring—so cold! I hope I did not make a terrible error.”

He could hear the sound of his voice, sliding off every grip that he might keep on some semblance of manhood. So shrill! “You must forgive me, Father. My mistake is an outrage. I cannot apologize sufficiently.”

He knew it was not enough. A massive weather front had come over Alois Senior, dark as the depths of suspicion. “Think of this, Alois,” his father said quietly. “Our bees, all these bees, do their work by obeying the rules.” Then he glared at Junior until the boy looked away. “They do not have patience with those who are weak or lazy. Or too selfish to remember their duties.”

He took hold of Junior's chin. His eyes would not let go of the boy's eyes. He pinched him on the chin, his thumb and forefinger as direct as the claws of a pliers. But the pain rallied the boy. Der Alte had more respect for him, Alois Junior, than for this man, Alois Senior, who happened to be pinching him on the chin. The thought came into his eyes and remained in his expression. By the time it was over, Alois Senior had to recognize that the altercation had taken a good deal from him. Alois Junior had even dared to glare back.

If this bothered his sense of himself as a father, more was soon to come. Now it was Klara. She had received a letter from her mother that devastated all the uncertain confidence Klara had given earlier to her father's letter. So soon as she read her mother's words, she wondered how she could have thought for an instant that Junior had changed.

Of course, writing a letter was agony for Johanna. Klara knew that. From the age of nine, she had been the one to reply to the few letters that came to their house in Spital. Yet now, as if to emphasize the importance of this particular epistolary act, Johanna went on for a full page of the most painful halts and bumps. First she insisted on listing Alois Junior's virtues. He was so bright, very bright, she could say that to anyone. Good to look at, she would say that too. Junior even brought back old memories of his father, your husband, Uncle Alois, back then when your Uncle was so young, so attractive, a good young man, so responsible. All those years ago.

“Klara, I tell you,” she now wrote, “I have to worry. What have we sent to you? Junior is wild. So wild, Klara, and we send him back to you. Had to, yes. Now Johann must hire another man for help. The new one is a drunk fool. We pay wages to this drunk. That is how much we lose by sending Junior back, but, Klara, this no-good drunk is better than Junior. We are not so afraid anymore.”

Klara went to her sewing basket and took out the letter Johann Poelzl had written. Alois Junior had handed it to her on the day he arrived. She searched the top shelf of a cupboard to retrieve an old letter from her father, one she had taken the pains to wrap in a ribbon. It had carried his blessing on the birth of Edmund. Now, so soon as she looked at it, she knew the piece of paper Alois Junior had given her might be close to her father's handwriting but was not the same.

Klara did not say anything to Alois Senior. Not until well after dinner. There in bed, he had begun to complain about Alois Junior.

“I don't get good work from him,” said Alois. “I speak to him, and he does not react to my satisfaction. He is off with the horse. I don't want to worry, but I do. He can get into trouble. He sees girls on the other side of the hill. In part, that can be my fault because of my conclusion not to raise potatoes this spring. Now there is not enough real work for him.”

It was then that she told him about her mother's letter. He nodded. He merely nodded.

“What are you going to say?” she asked.

“I will think about it,” he told her. “I must take my time. The next step could be of consequence.”

She was infuriated. She could not sleep. There might as well have been a bug wandering in the bedclothes. If Alois was not ready to scold his son, she would have to. But she could hardly be ready for this. It was his son, after all.

On the following evening, not long before supper, Alois Junior began to act as if he now knew that there had been another letter. It is the best explanation I can offer for why he chose to break an egg on Adi's head.

The reason was simple. His girl, Greta Marie, had shown him a little more that afternoon of what she was at bottom—a dull cow. So the need for a new endeavor was in his fingertips. Something new. Having felt like smacking Greta Marie around, he now moved close to Angela. His sister was clucking again over her chickens, collecting each egg from each hen as if it were a gold ingot—plain, dirty, hen-stained eggs. So he took one out of her basket. Just to hear her scream. But when she did, he was ready to break the egg on her head. Only, he could not. She was his full sister—who else did he have? So he put the egg back. Nonetheless, this act cost too much. Yet here now was Adi, beside him, slunk up within reach, smelly little hyena. Right after coming back from his gallop with Ulan, he had seen Adi lying on the floor of their barn, screeching away, one more temper tantrum.

Junior lifted him off the barn floor, then forced him into a standing position. “Keep quiet,” said Alois Junior.

“Try and make me,” said Adi.

Alois Junior knew that the kid would go yowling to his mother. He always did. Adi had a mother—whereas he didn't. Therefore, he had to put up with the brat. It was a truce.

On this late afternoon, however, Angela was offering baby talk to her chickens, and Adi was leering at him. So safe on his side of the truce. “Try and make me.”

Junior took an egg out of Angela's basket, smashed it on Adi's head, and took his time rubbing in the yolk and fragments of shell.

Adolf yowled. It was as if he had anticipated just this species of showdown. Now, all on his own, he proceeded immediately to squeeze his gummed-up hair long enough to coat his palm with some of the spattered yolk. Which he wiped on his shirt. When it did not leave a large enough stain, Adolf lifted another egg from Angela's basket—out came a yip from her!—and broke that all over his own head, face, and shirt, after which he caterwauled as loudly as if Alois Junior had kicked him in the shins. Then he ran from the barn to his mother. Vast screams, loud as catastrophe itself, could be heard.

Klara came running back, holding Adolf by the hand, her tirade begun before she reached them. She was trying to tell Alois Junior about the letter, but it spewed forth in no consecutive order. His lies, she told him, were worse than the filth left by pigs in a sty. “They have an excuse. They are pigs. You have nothing. You are a brute. You are a pig. You are nothing but filth.” She could not believe her words. They were so strong. To her surprise, Alois Junior actually began to sob. In all of this, he had not had until now any real idea of how ready he had been to love her, and how ready she was to dislike him right down to the depths. Yes, secretly, he had thought she really did like him, yes, more than she did his father. Now he felt filthy. To his ego, this was equal to a bereavement. He could not bear it. Just as suddenly, his sobs were choked. By his will. He stopped crying on the instant, nodded formally, and strode away. He did not know where the world would take him, nor when, but he understood that he would not remain in Hafeld. He could not. Not for long. He must soon say goodbye to everyone and to everything here, especially to his horse. Or should he steal him?

This last idea proved too large for Alois Junior. Yet it was enough to know that, for the sake of his future self-respect, he would not leave until he was ready to strike back. That must come one way or another. Soon.

8

T
hey were quiet at supper, even Paula, whom Klara kept on her breast. Alois Senior was certainly preoccupied. He had received a few more bee stings than the one or two or, occasionally, three, he was used to accepting on most days—that was part of the occupational hazard, no more. Tonight he not only had little to say, but hardly noticed that the others were silent.

He was waiting for bed. Lately Klara had begun to treat his bee stings and he was able to enjoy that. She was so adept. She was careful. She never pulled the stingers out clumsily. So he did not have to suffer the small bites of barbs left under his skin through the night. Done poorly, it could feel like a needle had been left inside. A tiny wound but a real one, ready to puff up. Sometimes it even felt personal, as if, from meanness itself, it refused to stop hurting. But Klara knew how to nudge the flesh where the stinger was peeping out and then coax it forth by soft pressure.

Now, when they went to bed, he was looking to have his pains cared for. Only, on this night, he had to wait. First she must describe all the mess that Junior had made, all that egg and shell. He did not care to listen. “
Ach,
” he said, “it breeds bad feeling if you always take Adi's side.”

“What are you saying? Tell me of something good we can expect from Junior.”

“No,” he said, “you must listen to me. We are obliged to look for a balance. We must try. A good balance between these boys, and it will all quiet down. That is the secret.”

A silence. It was followed by a deeper silence.

“I will try,” she said at last.

Her instinct was to reduce this space between them. If she didn't, the difference would increase. But could she believe that her husband was right? Young Alois was behaving like Fanni. Only ten times worse than Fanni could ever have tried to be. Yet, was it possible? Had she left a curse?

They certainly had to live with poor omens for more than a few nights. Alois Junior kept giving a demonstration of his skills through these last days of June, doing just enough good work to justify his right to go off with Ulan. The boy was good at his duties, he kept the hive boxes clean, he knew when and where to move the trays. He was even able to locate the Queen and put her into a queen cage without using the glass trap. Like Der Alte, he could do it with his fingers.

Now, at the dinner table, his silences weighed on them. No member of the family crossed him these days, not even Alois Senior, but then, despite himself, he could feel sympathy for this son. He understood one side of young Alois so well. Riding Ulan, the boy must feel as handsome as an officer on one of the better streets of Vienna. But Alois also knew what was hatching beneath. If, at present, the horse came first, soon it would be all about girls. The father knew this as well as if sperm were stirring in his own good equipment. Those revelations! Nothing could be better than the moment when a woman opened her legs for you. That first time! If you had an eye for the little differences, you knew twice as much about her as you could learn from her face. Alois Senior would attest to that. The female organ! Whoever designed this form had certainly been sly about the job. (This was about as close as Alois ever came to admiring the Creator.) Such a wonderful array of meats and juices—such a panoply of flesh in miniature—this offering of archways and caverns and lips. Alois was certainly no philosopher, so he would not have known how to speak of Becoming (that state of existence when Being suddenly feels itself out in the open), but all the same, he could have given a tip to Heidegger. Becoming is, yes, exactly, when a woman opens her legs! Alois felt like a poet. How not? These were poetic thoughts.

Let me leave it at this: If Alois could have talked to his son, he would have had a good deal to tell him. But he would never venture to speak of these matters. Having been a guardian of the border, which is to say a policeman, he could not even trust his children. A good policeman had to live with trust as if he were handling a dangerous bottle of acid. Trust was teeming with risk. To offer your closest thoughts to others was to ask them to betray your counsel.

Still, if he could have spoken to young Alois, he would have been quick to inform him that there was nothing better than to be a young man interested in girls—he, the father, could tell him the best of stories if it came to that—“but, young Alois, I must impart this to you: Young women can be dangerous. Often, they are the sweetest angels, a few of them maybe, but it is not them you have to be ready to deal with. It is the fathers of these angels, or their brothers. It can even be an uncle. Once I almost received a beating from a girl's uncle. I was big enough, but he was bigger. I had to talk my way out of it. So will you. It is certain that you will know how to talk, young Alois, but that is an ability which only works in a good-sized town, or best of all in the city. Out here in Hafeld and Fischlham—not so good—country people can be difficult.”

There was so much he would have told his son. If only they could have confided in each other. It made Alois sad. I must say, however, that it can certainly be construed as his fault. What could be closer to him than maintaining his authority?

So he would not be so generous as to offer the root of his advice. But if he had been able to, he would have told Junior: “Enjoy every woman you can, but be aware of the price. Especially in the country. Listen, young Alois,” he would have said, “country people do not have enough to do with their minds. Their backs are strong, but their lives—year after year, it is the same. They are tired of being bored. So they start to think about the wrongs that have been done to them. I say to you, son, watch out! Do not get a girl in trouble. When the time comes, do not be too certain that you will be able to deny that you are the fellow who made her pregnant. Sometimes that does not work.”

Alois lay in bed, drenched in perspiration. His son's drama unfolded before him with the power of a tragedy. He would have said to young Alois, “Do not take for granted the father of any girl you have had in the straw. Never insult a peasant who has too little to think about. Ten years from now, he will find out where you are living, and he will come to your door, and he will blow your head off with a shotgun. I have heard more than one story like that.”

Since devils know to what extent men and women are able to conceal from themselves a clear view of their own motives, I soon understood that behind all this splendid advice to young Alois, the father was worried about his own safety, yes, Alois Senior felt as if it could be his own treasured buttocks that were exposed.

One evening, over a month ago, while having his beer in the Fischlham tavern, there had been talk which he dismissed at the time as idle, a bit of prattle about a fellow who lived on the other side of the tavern a few miles farther away from Hafeld. Two of the farmers in the tavern actually knew the man, and it seemed this fellow had spoken about Alois. Yes, more than once, they assured him, “He knows you, and he made it clear. He don't like you.” They had laughed.

“I assure you,” Alois said in all of his local majesty, “if I ever met this individual, I have forgotten it. His name means nothing to my mind.”

Indeed, it did not, until the name came back to Alois during the middle of a sleepless June night. When he got up to look out their bedroom window, he was offered a moonlit view of silver fields, and thought of how happy these fields must be to lie fallow and not have to satisfy young potatoes grubbing down for more of the earth's riches. Alois, however, then made the mistake of looking at the full moon, and abruptly, the face of this fellow who had declared his dislike of Alois Hitler came back to him.

Good Lord! That fellow had been a smuggler, yes, he had caught him in Linz one day. Yes, he could remember now. The fool had been trying to take a vial of opium over into Germany. Alois could certainly recall the hatred in the man's eyes when he was caught. The vile look in his eyes had been offensive enough to tempt Alois to strike him, but such an act he considered entirely beneath himself. Certainly, he had not laid a fist on anyone while on Customs duty, not in years.

Was the full moon a mirror to one's memory? It was there before him now, and so clearly. He had not struck the fellow, no, but he had mocked him. “You are angry at me?” he had said. “Be angry at yourself. You are a fool. A measly test tube of opium buried inside a leg of ham. Even my first day on duty when I was eighteen, I would have caught you. That is the kind of fool you are.”

If he was going to recall it properly, could it be that the smuggler had not begun to look back with hatred until Alois began to jeer at him? Smugglers do not hate you for catching them—that is part of the game—but do not mock them. How often had he said as much to young officers. “Have a little fun with a bad fellow, and he will never forgive you.”

Alois suffered a night full of fear—the smuggler he taunted had received a year in jail. Now the man was free! Alois arose from a bed bereft of decent rest with the recognition that there was not going to be a hell of a lot of sleep for him until he got a new dog, a truly fierce hound. Luther was good for no more by now than yodeling at the moon on a night when nothing was happening. He needed a dog who would be ready for a lout stealing across the fields toward them with odium in his heart.