The Castle in the Forest (4 page)

Johanna began to weep. Klara was her seventh child. Of the others, four were now dead, one was a hunchback, and her son, now nineteen, the oldest remaining, had consumption. “God never ceases punishing us for our sins,” she said, at which Klara nodded.

Alois had no desire to hear about God. Spend a little time with Him, and the Hound might moan for shame. He preferred to enjoy the thought that he could soon see more of this niece.

He took a walk outside the village with the mother and daughter. They went to that part of Nepomuk's fields which now belonged to the husband, Johann Poelzl, who—no surprise to Alois—bore no resemblance to this rare blue-eyed Klara. Poelzl had gray, clouded eyes and a face full of lines that drooped in concert with a sad nose. It was obvious that he had given up the once-enduring hope that sooner or later he would be certain to prosper because he was an honest farmer. Nor did Alois stay. Poelzl had the expression on his face of a man who still has a host of chores. On this day, scattered in the rows of stubble, were stray ears of corn not yet too rotten to feed to the pigs, and Poelzl stood on one foot and then the other (as if to talk for another two minutes would allow more of the remaining ears to spoil). If he was also discomforted by the implicit prosperity of Alois' uniform, Poelzl's mood took no happier turn when Alois remarked that his own wife was not well and needed a maid who was pious and of reliable breeding. Was it possible—not to rush things!—that Klara might be just that person?

Poelzl could hardly say no when he was told of the amount his daughter would be able to send back. Cash not dependent on a crop was the best of crops, and, as always, he needed money. The alternative—to borrow further sums from his brother-in-law Romeder or his father-in-law, Nepomuk, was unpleasant. Poelzl could hear the diatribe that would come from his wife's family. Johanna's disposition had become so sour that he often thought (very much in private) that her blood must taste like vinegar. Nor did he wish to listen to the loud sigh of his brother-in-law as Romeder came up with some kronen. He certainly didn't want to hear the advice which was bound to come from Nepomuk. That would insult his judgment. A farmer could have fine instincts for husbandry and still be prey to bad luck—did that mean he must pay tribute twice by listening to others when he had already paid once by living with an insufficient return from his fields? So he accepted the fact that Klara would go to work for Uncle Alois, but his feelings turned over in him with the emptiest anger of them all—rage that has lost its heat.

One week after Alois' return to his post in Braunau, Klara followed with a small chest filled with a modest cache of clothes and a few possessions.

4

A
lois and Anna Glassl had three rooms in the second-best inn of Braunau—the Gasthaus Streif. There was also a small room for Klara on the top floor where other maids and servants slept.

For a while, Alois entertained the happy notion that he might be able to spend a little time up there with Klara, but his niece did not welcome him, not exactly. It was evident to all including his wife that Klara was steeped in respect for her exceptional uncle, but it seemed no cause for concern to Anna Glassl—not yet! The girl was pious to a degree that would have seemed incomprehensible if one did not understand that death was her nearest relative. There were lights in those pale-blue eyes that spoke of angels—godly angels and fallen angels. Her face was so innocent that one could ask in all honesty what she could know of fallen angels, if not for that second sense which is there to tell us that devils hover like moths at the closing doors of life. Even the innocent do not always like to dream of the departed.

Alois could envision other dubious portals—the doors to Klara's chastity might open to an icehouse. So he was charming to his niece but made a point never to touch her. His wife, as unhappy by now as a crow with a broken wing, had put up with his yen for maids and cooks, but then, about the time she began her campaign to expunge the name of Schicklgruber, she allowed her distrust of him to take on new force. Never had Alois encountered jealousy so passionate, so far-ranging, and so much to the point. Yet he felt ready to deal with it.

While he considered his first quality as a man to be dedication to his work—to the cleanliness of his personal appearance, and the punctilio he presented in each and every working hour, he had not stood for years at a border post looking to root out the attempts of travelers and merchants to cheat the Hapsburg Crown of its tariff without learning a good deal about false presentation and outright mendacity. Now he was having to exercise such abilities himself in order to divert Anna from another girl he had taken to visiting on the top floor of the inn.

There was an old Viennese joke that to have a flourishing society, both the police and the thieves must keep improving at what they did. He thought often of the remark. It was true for Anna Glassl and himself. The more acute her sense of what he might be up to, the finer were his lies.

She had cause for distrust. There were days when he made love to each of the three women he could look upon as regulars. In the morning, full of the bounty of sleep, he would take care of his wife, and in the afternoon when Anna Glassl was napping and his off-duty time coincided with an hour when the chambermaid washed their floors, he usually enjoyed the coquetry of her hips as she, down on her hands and knees, slung a wet cloth from side to side—truth, he rarely saw her face at such times. And in the evening after Anna Glassl had gone to sleep, there was Fanni.

So if he was ready to wait for Klara Poelzl, it was because his nocturnal and, for the present, true interest was with this waitress at the inn, a nineteen-year-old named Fanni Matzelberger, who was voluptuous but lithe, and—by every good measure—smoldering. He had learned to strip his eyes of all expression when she crossed the room, but she did have an irrepressible turn to her hips that spoke to him—Fanni was a good girl who did not want to be so good.

Indeed, as he soon learned by visits to her attic room, she was a virgin of the most tormented sort, a maiden in the old peasant tradition: She had kept the formal entrance to her chastity intact but the same could not be said of its neighbor. This was not all so agreeable for Alois. The Hound was too large to permit a good poke into “the smelly and the damned” (or so he would characterize it). Fanni would moan in a very low voice (in order that the rest of the attic not hear) but they were both suffering. All the more intense became their embrace. In the heat of the hour, they loved each other, a not uncommon reaction when the carnal ore is considered to be contraband.

He told himself that she was no more than a good-looking daughter of a prosperous farmer—she did have a decent dowry—but he also told her that he loved her. She said, “Enough to give up your wife and live with me?”

“I will give her up,” he said, “when you give me something else!”

No, she must remain a virgin. So soon as she was ready to do what he wanted, there would be a child. She knew. Then there would be another child. Then she very well might die.

“How do you decide such things?”

“We have gypsies in my family. Maybe I am a witch.”

“What a remark!”

“No, you are a bad man and I am a witch. Only witches put their mouths in forbidden places. Now I am afraid to go to confession.”

“Stay away from priests. They are there to suck your blood. They are the ones who will leave you weak and good for nothing.”

They argued round and round about whether she should or should not go to confession. She was tempted to let him win, and then, given the force of his desire, she did give it to him, she gave it up, and proceeded to tell him one month later that she was pregnant. Had the time come, she asked, to tell his wife?

He no longer trusted Fanni. He did not think she would have become pregnant if she was really afraid of dying. Besides, he had been lying to his wife with so much skill that now he did not dare to confess. Prevarication, like honesty, is reflexive, and soon becomes a sturdy habit, as reliable as truth. Anna Glassl-Hoerer Hitler was fifty-seven and looked ten years older (although to his continuing surprise she could be a virago at dawn). To lose her would reduce his financial situation measurably. Moreover, he would be giving up a lady for a farm girl, a most attractive farm girl, but then he had decided long ago that in the end a peasant was like a stone. Throw a stone high in the air—it will always come down. Whereas a lady was like a feather. A lady could tantalize you with her intelligence. He would hate to give up his ever-increasing skill as a liar.

Here is a sample from the dining room at the Gasthaus Streif:

         

A
NNA
G
LASSL:
I see you are looking at her again.

A
LOIS
: I am. You have caught me. If your eyes were not so beautiful, I would have to say that you own the eyes of an eagle.

A
NNA
G
LASSL:
Why don't you catch up with her after we eat? Just give her a good one for me.

A
LOIS:
Your mind is wicked. I like it when your tongue is so crude.

A
NNA
G
LASSL:
Cruder than it used to be.

A
LOIS:
Anna, you are exceptionally wise, but, in this case, you are wrong.

A
NNA
G
LASSL:
Look, my dear, I have put up with chambermaids and cooks. You have come to bed smelling of onions on many a night. And that is better than sniffing laundry soap. But I don't care, I tell myself. The man must remain amused. Only, why do you still try to insult my intelligence? We know the girl is beautiful. At least once in your life make love to a waitress who does not look like last night's pudding.

A
LOIS:
All right, I will tell you the truth. I like her looks, yes, a little bit. Although she is not truly my type. No, she is not. But in any case, I would not go near her. One hears the worst talk. I don't even want to tell you because you like her.

A
NNA
G
LASSL:
Like her? She's a tart. She's a tart in training. Your true type.

A
LOIS:
No, she is diseased. I have heard that she has an infectious disease between her legs. I would not go near her.

A
NNA
G
LASSL:
I do not believe you. I cannot believe that.

A
LOIS:
Do as you choose. But, I can promise you, she is the last girl for you to worry about.

A
NNA
G
LASSL:
Who then do you want me to worry about? Klara?

A
LOIS:
You have a splendid sense of humor. If we were not in public, I would laugh out loud, and then you know what I would do. You are so attractive, so wicked. You would even send me out to kiss a nun.

5

F
inally, Fanni told Anna Glassl that she was two months pregnant and soon to show. For Anna, that was the end of the marriage. For Alois to tell her that the girl had a disease. When all the while he knew she was pregnant—unforgivable! Besides, Anna Glassl was more tired of Alois by now than fearful of living alone. It was truly exhausting to muster up her remaining arts in order to pretend to be a virago at dawn. By now she craved peace. She even decided that her jealousy had been some last inoculation against what was worse—precisely the chill distaste for a mate that seeps in even as jealousy loses heat. So she moved out. Since they were Catholic, divorce was not possible. To obtain even a legal separation, Anna, by Austrian law, had to declare not only their incompatibility but state in writing that she felt a direct aversion to him. Alois was obliged to read this. The phrase stood out in the document like a boil on one's chin. It irked so much that he showed his copy to drinking friends. “Look, she speaks of a personal aversion. This is nothing less than outrageous. If not improper, I could tell you how much aversion was there. On her hands and knees so soon as I would say, ‘Get ready.'”

They would laugh and move to other subjects. He was in a state of irritation these days for more reasons than Anna Glassl's departure. Fanni and he were now living together in the same suite of rooms at the Gasthaus Streif. That was fine with him: he was the first to say that he was never attached to the past. Then he discovered that Fanni was not pregnant—she had only thought she might be. Or was it that she had had an early miscarriage? She was resolutely unclear.

He thought that was a terrible lie to have told him, but what could he do? He had never known such pleasure with a woman. Of course, Fanni was soon as jealous as Anna Glassl, and her ears had perfect pitch when it came to hearing any trace of desire in his voice for another woman. Soon enough, she stove a hole in the well-guarded vessel of his future plans. Klara, she told him, would have to go. Otherwise, Fanni would.

This was too much disruption for Alois. Fanni would soon be truly pregnant, or so he expected, given the hints he took from the declarative surge of her womb at the happiest moment, which billowed through him even as he was racing full stream into her—not the sort of conclusion he usually came to with other women. (Except once—so long ago—with Johanna.) Besides, he was certainly ready for a child, preferably a son, to carry on his name. Yes, when he was not in the midst of his best moments with Fanni, he thought often of the oncoming time when she would be six or seven months along, and it would be Klara's turn. The likelihood of future complications did not deter him. It was in the nature of his work to be able to handle more than one problem at once.

As for scandal, he did not worry. Not unduly. In Braunau, he was used to being a center of gossip. The townspeople might complain to the stars above that he was living with a common-law wife, but that would go nowhere. He saw himself as equal to an officer garrisoned in a town to which he owed nothing. He received his money from the Finance-Watch in Vienna. So long as his work proved flawless, this faraway arm of the Hapsburg government would hardly care how he acted in his personal life.

Having risen to the highest level of the middle ranks, there he would probably remain. His job was secure. The Customs needed him. After all, it took years for an official to become as practiced as himself. In turn, he needed the Customs. How could he ever find another job that paid as well? He had developed into the perfect instrument for what he did, but that was not a skill to be used for anything else. He was fixed therefore in his job, and the Finance-Watch was locked in with him. So, devil take the townspeople. What they said might rankle, but it would not interfere with more interesting pursuits. One girl would bear his child, and the niece (who trembled in front of him when he spoke) would become his mistress. Of course, she would be more than ready when the time came. Why else did she quiver? It was because the niece knew he could teach her all the things she did not know, and did not even dare to think about.

This was the secret project into which Fanni intruded. No girl named Klara was going to keep working for them.

“You are mad,” Alois answered. “Can't you see? Klara would be happier in a convent.”

“Your interest is not in her happiness, but yours. She must go.”

“Do not speak to me that way. You are young enough to be my daughter.”

“Yes, I am, and I have heard the Polish people say that a father should never make love to his daughter or she will lose all respect for him.”

Klara had to go. He could not relinquish what he now had in Fanni, not for the uncertain promise (when all was said) of a transformation from angel-nun to all-compliant madly loving niece. No, that was hardly guaranteed.