The Castle in the Forest (43 page)

5

T
here was an irony of which Adolf's schoolmates were not aware. Far from being a mud-ridden town, Leonding did have an upper class and they were regulars at the Buergerabends. The subtle differences of status between these members began to intrigue Alois and became a small diversion from his grief. Such surcease could not, however, last for long. He knew that he must continue to descend into his sorrow, step by step, and all the while he encountered such confusion that he had to wonder if his mental balance was in question.

It was not always fearful. In time, he began to feel as if he might recover from the death, perhaps regain his strength. Only not altogether. Not ever. There remained a hole drilled through his heart.

Nonetheless, these evenings did help. He needed to hear witty conversation. These were the smartest and best-educated people he had ever associated with socially, and that warmed his need to believe that he, too, was a man of sophistication. On one night, for example, he listened with high attention when one of the gentry, obviously possessing a comfortable, even superior knowledge of wine, remarked in passing, “The British call this hock. But that is only because the Riesling they like so much comes from Hochheim.” Alois had learned to give a self-satisfied nod, as if each bit of culture just gained was already in his possession. One night Silvaner was served in oddly shaped bottles called
Bocksbeutel.
A round of laughter followed.
Bocksbeutel
meant “Ram's Testicle.” Alois' mood lifted sufficiently to wonder whether he should speak up. Who could know more about rams' testicles? Hadn't he once owned a well-endowed pair? Ask the ladies. But he did not dare to speak. He knew the difference between himself and these gentry. They, for the most part, were able to stay in bed after the sun was up. So they could eat and drink well into the evening. If it came to it, they could go on to midnight. Even when he was younger, he had rarely reached such an hour unless he happened to be in a new woman's bed. Sad to say, he might just as well have been a common laborer going to work with a loaf of bread, some liverwurst, and a jar of soup. He could see these gentry, now in their retirement, getting up to have a light breakfast—Eggs Benedict!—and then a fine cigar. Often in the late afternoon, such people could enter their carriages and drive into Linz with their wives in order to have a five o'clock tea at the Hotel Wolfinger or the Drei Mohren, founded in 1565. There they would listen to violins. What did he know of that? Yes, it would be a rare late afternoon when he would have five o'clock tea at the Drei Mohren or in the lobby of the Wolfinger. As he told Klara, these were the men of Leonding with the most elevated idea of themselves.

“Forget about Mayrhofer,” he told her. “He's a fine fellow, but these people come from very old families, the kind who have six courses for dinner. I have heard of as many as eight.”

Klara remarked, “I could do that for you.”

“No, my dear, no,” he told her. “I am not even considering such a venture. Because the secret is you can't offer fancy recipes unless you have Meissen china or proper wineglasses.”

“Proper wineglasses?” she asked. To her surprise, she was in some pain listening to him.

“Yes,” he said, “they give a ring if you flip your finger on them.”

Indeed, he was invited to one of those dinners. He went alone. Klara stayed home to take care of the children. When he came back, Klara remarked that perhaps they should invite these people to their home.

Alois replied, “They have indoor plumbing. Their bathroom is not an outside shed. The door to their bathroom does not have a hole cut into it in the shape of a quarter-moon. Our new friends, if they were such, would look upon such conditions as…
droll.
” He had never used the word before. “No,” he went on, “we cannot have guests of that sort. What could I say when they ask, ‘Where might I find the water closet?' Do I tell them, ‘Don't mind the hole. Nobody will peep!'?”

6

O
n the last day of January, five months after Adolf had begun his studies at the Realschule, Klara was requested to come to the school.

Afterward, on the trolley, her eyes shut tight to control her tears, Klara did not know whether she had the courage to tell Alois that Adolf's report card was dreadful.

Indeed, when Alois did learn on the following evening, it came after what was now the second-worst morning of the year for him, the first of February. He was trying to be ready for the anniversary of Edmund's death on the next day, February 2, and in the course of walking through Leonding, ready to think of nothing, he encountered Josef Mayrhofer. The Mayor then suggested something most unusual. Rarely did he leave his shop in the care of his assistants unless as Mayor of Leonding tasks were awaiting him in Town Hall, but now he proposed that they go to the tavern for a drink.

Once there, they spoke of the oncoming weight of this first anniversary—good men in the grip of sorrowful emotions. Then Mayrhofer did something he had never done before. He said: “You must promise not to punish the messenger.”

Alois replied with confidence, “You would never be the bearer of ill tidings,” but already he could feel stirrings in his chest.

Mayrhofer said, “I must ask, do you have an older son who shares your first name?”

Alois seized the Mayor's forearm so hard that he bruised it. Mayrhofer freed himself with an unhappy smile. “Well,” he said, “you have punished the messenger already.” He held up a hand. “Enough,” he said. “I have to tell you—a report came through today that circulates through the district. Your son is in prison.”

“He is? For what?”

“I am so sorry. It is for theft.”

A low guttural sound came forth. “I cannot believe it,” Alois said. But he knew it was true.

Mayrhofer said, “You can visit him should you so desire.”

“Visit him?” said Alois. “I don't think so.” He was full of sweat, and on the edge of losing his good manners.

“The hardest thing I ever had to do in my life was to disavow my oldest son,” he managed to put together. “Mayrhofer, you understand, we are such a good family. My wife and I have been careful to raise them properly. But Junior was the bad apple in the barrel. If I had not disavowed him, the other children would have suffered. And now the three who are still alive”—he caught himself, he did not sob—“will turn out very well indeed.”

That evening, at Klara's insistence, Adolf had to show his report card to Alois. Now, witnessing the expression on Alois' face, she felt as if she had betrayed her son.

In tones sufficiently somber to pronounce the onset of war, Alois stated: “I gave a vow to your mother. It was at her request. I said that I would never whip you again. That was a year ago. We were thinking of the tragedy in our family. But now, you can be certain, I will break my vow. That is the only course to take when the vow has been dishonored by the person most protected by it. Come! We are going to your bedroom.” Once more, he was holding his temper. It broke, however, so soon as he took off his belt.

At the first lash, Adolf told himself, “I will not cry out!” The blows were, however, so severe that he began to shriek. Alois had never used a leather strap before. It felt as if a tongue of flame was at the end of it. All the boy could think was that he did not wish to die! Indeed, he did not know what would destroy him first—this scourge upon his buttocks or the shock to his heart. At that moment, his father, seriously winded, stopped, pushed Adolf off his knee, and said, “You can stop crying now.”

Alois went into his own depression—to live as long as he had and now feel no confidence in the poor remains of his male line.

7

A
dolf was suffering true torment. He had dared to show his drawings to the art teacher. He had assumed the submissions would be chosen at once and would dominate the cork wall reserved for students. He had even meditated on how to phrase some quietly confident response to the praises he would receive. These fine moments would compensate for the poor marks on his first report card.

I can admit that I affected the result. While Adolf had talent, it was nothing remarkable—I could see at a glance that he would never be an artist of large promise. (Young Pablo Picasso, for example, was already by 1901 a young man in whom we were most interested.) By contrast, young Adolf Hitler produced drawings just good enough to tack to the cork wall.

“Prevent this,” was the instruction I received from the Maestro. “The last thing we need is one more artist full of sour spirit at his lack of large recognition. I say it's better to put him into a real slump.”

I was in position to accomplish this. Adolf's art instructor was one of our clients. (Indeed, he bore a close resemblance to the mediocrity described by the Maestro.) By way of an altercation I developed between him and his wife, I gave him a fearful headache. Adolf's work was seen through the light shafts of a migraine. None of the drawings were selected.

He could not believe it. In that hour, he withdrew forever from the idea that he would ever look again for success in school. He would learn to live on his own.

Of course, he would not, like Alois Junior, leave home, no need for that. Toga Boy still brought sweat to his back. No, he would continue to live among others while developing, unbeknownst to all, a will of iron.

He continued to do poorly in school. The report card of his first full year, which he handed over to his father in June, showed a failure in two courses, Mathematics and Natural History. Poor Alois. He could not muster the energy to give Adolf a beating.

That summer, knowing that he would have to repeat his first year, Adolf was equally depressed, but did manage to tell himself (with my assistance) that he comprehended the art of learning better than other students. He had the secret. He would retain only the essentials. Students were too ready to busy themselves with endless memorization of nonessential details. They were just like the teachers. They could only recite lists and categories. They were bores. They squawked like parrots. They acted as if they were truly intelligent whenever a teacher approved of what they said. They were the ones who got the good marks.

He was considerably above such concerns. So he told himself. He was interested in the core of each situation. That was the valuable knowledge. So he would not subject his mind to the methods others used. That could only reduce the power of his mind.

It was imperative to cheer him up. His best amusement these days had become his power to tease Angela. Physically, he was, at last, her equal in strength. So whenever she criticized him, he called her a “stupid goose.” For Angela, this was a dreadful term. She would even complain to Klara. She hated geese. She had seen them landing in the town pond, and to her, they were filthy. Angela had watched these geese as they crowded up on the banks, leaving their droppings behind them. She was, she told herself, more like a swan.

I did allow Adolf one fantasy where he proceeded to imagine himself a teacher at the Realschule, dressed in elegant style, clear voiced, incisive, and regarded with admiration for his wit.

ADOLF:
Here is the essential, young men. Do not try to remember all the facts of every historical event. I would say instead: “Protect yourself. You are swimming in clouded water.” Most of the facts you have memorized are no better than debris which contradict other facts. So you will be in a state of confusion. But I can rescue you. The secret is to retain essentials. Select only those facts which clarify the issue.

8

O
n a lively night at the Buergerabends, one speaker, a portly man, offered the thesis that railway travel had affected long-established social relations. “Our sense of the world,” he declared, “has been turned inside out by the railroads. The king of Saxony, for example, is not in favor of such travel. As he put it recently, ‘The laborer can now arrive at his destination on the same train as a king.' This is equal to saying that men who are well-off no longer travel more rapidly than the lower classes. Social disharmony could be an eventual consequence of all this.”

Another member stood up to say, “I agree with my distinguished friend that many of these so-called improvements are of dubious value. Pocket watches are certainly a prime example. In these days, anyone can buy a timepiece at a reasonable price. Yet I still recall an era when it was a privilege to carry a fine watch. A person in one's employ had to take note of the fine quality of your watch and chain. They would leave your presence respectfully. Now any roustabout can pull a piece of shoddy out of his pants and declare that his piece keeps better time than yours. Do you want to hear the worst of it?—sometimes that is true.”

Laughter followed this remark. “No, gentlemen,” the speaker went on, “a cheap watch can be more accurate in this matter than our family heirlooms, which, after all, are cherished because they have been with us for so long.”

One evening, the lecture was on dueling scars. That left Alois wistful. He listened with full attention to varied opinions on the best location for the wound. Should one desire the left or right cheek, the chin, or the corner of the lips? He did, however, chime in toward the end by remarking that when he was a young officer in the Customs service, many of his superiors bore those scars and “we did respect them.” He sat down flushed. His remark had contributed little.

On another occasion his feelings were hurt by a young sportsman (with a prominent dueling scar) who entered into a long conversation with him. The first auto tour from Paris to Vienna had recently passed through Linz, and the man with the dueling scar not only owned a motor car but had been in the race.

Earlier on this same evening, the sportsman had enlivened a debate over the question of whether it was sensible to purchase an automobile, and the back and forth of oratorical heat stimulated fiery comment. Those who were opposed to motor cars spoke contemptuously of the dust, the mud, the uproars, and, worst of all, the fumes.

The sportsman replied, “Yes, I know—these infernal machines are awful to you, but I happen to like the fumes. For me, they are an aphrodisiac.”

This remark was received with hoots and howls. He laughed, “Say what you will, the fumes do offer a hint of debauch.” At which he dared to sniff his fingers. Groans and laughter were the response of the company. “You can rest content with your carriages and your stables,” he went on to say, “but I like traveling at high speeds.”

“Oh, that is much too much!” someone called out.

“Not at all,” the speaker told him. “The sense of danger is welcome to me. I am stimulated by the roar of the engine. The attention of those many pedestrians who used to admire a fine horse and carriage is now offered to the virtues of my iron monster. I see it out of the corner of my eye even as I rush by.”

Alois was certainly impressed by this rich sport, who capped his argument by saying, “Yes, to drive a motor car does offer some peril. But it is also dangerous to rein in a maddened horse. I would rather risk my neck in a motor car than shatter my bones in an overturned coach. Or sit behind some old nag of a beast who secretly loathes my guts.”

How they roared at that! Nothing worse than such a horse.

Later, when the debate was over, the speaker chose to engage Alois in a quiet conversation whose concealed agenda soon became evident, since he chose to ask more than a few questions about Customs procedures. Alois was offended. Brilliantly full of himself at the podium, the man was now obvious in his motive. “You sound as if you are going to cross a few borders,” Alois remarked.

“Indeed I am,” said the Sport. “But it's the English I am thinking about. They say the English can be the worst.” He made a point of speaking in profile, so that Alois might be properly impressed with the dueling scar on his left cheek.

It was a good jagged cicatrix, perfect for a man as handsome and self-possessed as this fellow, but work in Customs had offered its own sagacities, and so Alois could distinguish a genuine scar occasioned by the saber of a dueling partner hacking through the padding on your face and thereby leaving a bona fide laceration from a self-created dueling scar worked up by some ambitious toad looking to charm the ladies. A fellow like that would use a razor to open a wound on his face and then embed a horsehair in the gap. That could build the scar up into a welt high enough to dignify the rest of his career.

When well done, such a scar might appear to be authentic, but Alois had already decided that this fellow had almost certainly used a horsehair. The scar did sit too perfectly on his face.

So Alois said no more in return than, “I expect we are still just as good as the English if it's a matter of spotting some joker who looks to bring precious objects into Austria without paying duty.
Celer et vigilans,
” added Alois. “That used to be my motto.” It was a happy prevarication—he had happened to memorize the saying just that afternoon.
Celer et vigilans
—quick and watchful. That ought to give the fellow some pause.

“
Numquam non paratus,
” answered the Sport, to which Alois could only smile.

His first act on returning home was to look up the meaning. “Never unprepared.” An old wrath came back to him for a moment. How he would like to get his hands on this man in a Customs shed.

All the same, Alois was feeling expansive at dinner. The excitement of the discussion was still with him, and as he recounted his final observation on the dueling scars, Adolf did listen avidly. Someday he would have his own motor car. Perhaps, even, his own dueling scar.