The Castle in the Forest (44 page)

9

T
o Adolf's surprise, there came a night when Alois did take him to the opera. This event—they were to hear
Lohengrin
—had come about by way of an improvement in his report card for February of 1902. Due to his previous failure, the first half of his second year had been a repeat of the first half of the first year, and so he did receive a passing grade in every course. There were even favorable comments on his diligence and conduct. This occasioned Alois to declare, “A good sign. Once you allow conduct to be your first concern, the rest has been known to follow.”

Alois was easing up on his demands. He had been ill. Two months earlier, in December of the previous year, 1901, he had had influenza, which frightened him. Once again he felt an overbearing need to be able to improve this recalcitrant son.

So, in early February, soon after the second anniversary of Edmund's death, Alois decided to try once again to come a little closer. Having noticed that Adolf listened with intense interest whenever the conversations at the Buergerabends were described, he was also pleased to see that Adolf would read all the newspapers that were brought home. Indeed, by virtue of a few remarks Adolf offered at the family table, Alois knew that some of his son's fellow students (obviously from the more well-to-do families) did talk in recess about operas they had attended. Alois decided it was time to take the boy.

It came as no surprise that Alois was also ready to speak derogatively of the Linz opera house. “To Linzers,” he told Adolf, “this opera house is a splendid building, but if you have spent time in Vienna and know, as I do, a true opera house, you would find the performance here not so impressive. Of course, coming from Hafeld and Lambach or even Leonding, I expect that you will think you are hearing high opera tonight. And, indeed, Linz has obtained the right to call itself a city and be proud of its opera house. Nonetheless, tonight will be in no way equal to Vienna. Adolf, if you prove successful in a career, then someday, perhaps, you will live in Vienna. That is when you will truly enjoy the heights of musical pleasure.”

Alois was pleased with the speech. He had come to the point in his life where he felt that if much else was diminishing, the ability to express himself with the well-rounded criticisms of a true
Buergerabender
had certainly developed.

So Adolf was taken to hear his first Wagner in a second-rate opera house. And despite his father's comments, he was more than once enthralled. If he sneered at the entrance of the great swan who was towing Lohengrin's boat onstage to rescue Elsa (for Adolf could hear the squeak of the boots made by the two men installed inside the swan), he was overcome by Elsa's aria of welcome to Lohengrin. “I see in splendor shining, a knight of glorious mien…. Heaven has sent him to save me. He shall my champion be.”

Tears came to Adolf's eyes. Tomorrow, he would mingle among the students who spoke of operatic performances they had attended. During intermission, therefore, he listened to the comments of the most impressive-looking operagoers. “How fastidious of Wagner,” said one such man to another, “that he uses the violins and woodwinds rather than allow himself to be trapped by the harp. Wagner knows his celestial sounds. It is as if he is the first to have discovered them. Violins, oboe, bassoon, yes, but away with the harps.”

Yes, thought Adolf, he would repeat this tomorrow at school.

Alois, in turn, was off on his own meditation. Brooding over the skill of the upper classes, he decided that they had a foundation for their good fortune. They knew how to obtain proper installations for their sons in the army, the church, or the law, and thereby could continue to be proud of the family achievements. Yet why conclude that he was not as good as them? Granted, he had started from a low place, but he was ready now to live with their point of view. They understood that the oldest son, able or not, must still be ready to fulfill the destiny of the family. That was not only true for the army and the church but could include government officials as well. Some bureaucrats, after all, did become ministers of state. If that had not been the case for him, not when a man had to start at the bottom of the ladder, still he felt entitled to one certainty. If he had had these advantages of birth, he would have made a fine minister. Now, should Adolf ever become a man worthy of respect, he would also be in position to rise above his father's achievements. Listening now to this music, so true to his elevated mood, so vaulting, so ambitious, so bold, Alois allowed himself to shed in the dark a few happy tears upon a well-spent life, and these sentiments were now so finely mingled with
Lohengrin
's final sounds that his palms were red from the applause he gave to the company of this second-rate opera house.

Adolf, however, was not ebullient. Given the power of the last chords, he soon plummeted from a high and splendid mood into his familiar despondency.

I would say this is one of our basic problems. We have more than our share of clients who can rise high into the intoxications of their private dreams but then plummet down to the ugliness of their real condition. So we have to calm them. Even as he was soaring into the empyrean with Wagner, the downfall of his confidence was commencing. Wagner was a genius. Adolf had come to that opinion instantly. Every note spoke to him. But could he say this was also true of himself? Or was he not a genius after all? Not next to Wagner.

10

G
oing back to Leonding on the last trolley car, Alois was no happier than his son. Now that he had given Adolf the gift of
Lohengrin,
he must find a way to present the bill. Would the boy feel ready to accompany him on a visit to the Customs House? For months he had been contemplating each and every reasonable occupation for Adolf to pursue and had come to the conclusion that Customs remained the best choice. It would, at least, be comparable to entering an esteemed profession from a good family.

Whenever conversation moved in that direction, however, Adolf would speak of becoming an artist. Alois would then suggest, “You can do both. Without question, you can do both. Have I not done more than one thing in my life?”

Well, there was the boy nodding in gloomy resignation, as if it was obligatory to keep paying homage to a father's repetitions. In time, Alois had ceased speaking of the Customs service. The meager results left him feeling liverish.

Yet the slight improvement in Adolf's marks did remind Alois that a father must not fail to pick up any hint of a positive change in an adolescent son. Another effort must be made, therefore, to give the boy a worthy life. He would get him to come along on a visit to the Customs House.

On a given night, therefore, Alois gave one of his monologues at the family table and felt that the spirit of the Buergerabends now enabled him to display more rhetorical gifts than ever. “There is one fellow in our club who keeps saying, and I must agree it is an interesting opinion, that the gap between the wealthy and the poor is being diminished.”

“Is that so?” asked Klara, wishing to come into the conversation.

“Absolutely. We've had fine discussions on this matter. It is due to our railway system. You can be rich or you can be poor—no matter! You travel at the same high speed. Oh, I tell you, and you, children, pay attention to this, you, Angela, and you, Adolf. Remember this prediction: The cities are going to expand, and there will be money everywhere. I've heard talk in these evenings at the Buergerabends of peasants, people so poor that—I will use an expression you are now old enough to understand. There are people so poor that”—he had to whisper the next—“they use their hands to wipe themselves.”

“Oh, Daddy!” screamed Angela.

Alois could not resist. “And then they scrape their fingers in the dirt.”

To which Angela could only scream again, “Oh, Daddy! Oh, Daddy!” but she was laughing at how ready he was to be disgusting, and yet how well he knew her. It was true. He knew how to make her laugh.

“Oh,” said Alois, “that was the way it used to be. But now some of these once-impoverished people are smart enough to know what is coming. I even hear of peasants who are sharp enough to sell their holdings to the men who are planning to build factories in those places just so soon as the roads come in. And the roads will come. Yes,” he said, “everything is racing forward, and even the peasants are in this race. But you, Adolf, with your intelligence, well, I've come to the conclusion that you are potentially a very intelligent young man, and will yet be cultured. So I would look to warn you. These changes in society are going to alter the nature of the work we do. Education is coming, and it will take over everything. Even fools will be able to read and write. Of course, it is also important that not everybody become so well educated that we lose all distinction of what it means to be called Herr Doktor. Adolf, if you study hard at your school, yes, it is only the Realschule not the Gymnasium, nonetheless, you will be able to go on and become an engineer, may it be, and they will call you, once you get your Ph.D., yes, that will be the day for you and for all of us, for then you, too, will be called Herr Doktor. I can tell you I would have liked to have been addressed in such a way and thereby enjoy even a higher level of respect in the community than I do now.” He held up his hand. “Although I certainly do not complain. Not at all. But if I had been Herr Doktor, your mother would have been called Frau Doktor even though she has never seen the entrance gates to a university.” At this point Alois laughed and Klara turned red. “Yes,” said Alois, “it is possible that your interests may turn to business. In my day that was not possible for someone with my origins. But now is not like it was when I was young. Now maybe your gift will be for commerce or technology. And yet, I do not really see you as an engineer or a businessman because there is one fault with all such success—you have no time to yourself. A businessman has no peace. He takes his work home with him. So does an engineer. What if his bridge collapses?” Alois paused, took a deep breath, and remarked: “If you should ever decide to work in Customs, your evenings and your weekends will always be there, open to your choice. You will be able to work at your art.”

Despite all, Alois was having his effect. Such talk left Adolf with a nervous stomach. But that was because he was no longer certain whether his father was absolutely a fool or might have to be listened to. If the latter, then there could be some most miserable choices ahead and nothing but awful people to live and work among. What if he was not destined to be a great artist or a great architect? What if he was no Wagner? There was one thing that could be said for Customs, and his father had made the point—he could have a separate life after work.

So they went to the Customs House. Despite all of Alois' locutions, the visit did not succeed. The worst of it was that they entered into the main accounting house, where the clerks were at work. An unhappy smell came up from the general collection of middle-aged bodies gathered together under gas lamps with eyeshades on their foreheads. Naturally, his father would not mind such aromas. When young, he had made boots and had to sniff officers' toes during the fitting. No, he, Adolf, would not spend his life in a mausoleum full of the old smells of old men sitting on top of each other like monkeys in their cubicles.

After the visit, Alois made another attempt. “So many of my colleagues,” he said, “are now fine friends. Should I choose to, I can visit good people all over Upper Austria, men still in Breslau and Passau, yes.” Adolf was wondering where they all might be. He had rarely seen anyone come to visit, not even Karl Wesseley, often mentioned as his father's best friend. But Alois went on: “There are so many benefits, yes. The pensions, the time that is there for yourself. I can tell you, security plus a good pension enables a man to avoid all misery after he retires. He does not have to worry then about not having enough funds. Nothing, I warn you, Adolf, creates more discord in a family than lack of money. That is why our family does not have ugly arguments. There is no need for that.”

Since this speech was at the dinner table, Angela could not help herself. She was thinking of the sudden departure of Alois Junior. No ugly arguments! How could her father speak that way? Passing behind his back, she stuck out her tongue. Klara saw this, but said nothing. It would be bad enough when Alois came to realize that his fine talk would go for nothing. Indeed, she was correct. As the months went by, Alois gave up the idea of the Customs House. His son was not going to follow decent advice. But it did spoil many a mood.

His spirits picked up, however, on hearing of a fine bargain in the neighborhood. A small coal merchant who lived nearby needed to sell a load to pay off some debts. Since customers were all too few in summer, Alois was able to make a very good deal for the coal.

He chose, however, to ignore Klara's advice. She told him to hire an assistant to help with the task of getting all that coal down to the cellar bins. He also ignored her second suggestion that he use Adolf. He did not wish to share labor with the boy—they were bound to have a dispute.

Still, Klara's suggestions did bear some weight. Having succeeded in purchasing the coal at half price, he tried to bargain with the seller. “I expect you,” he told him, “to bring it down to the bin,” at which point the dealer replied, “Oh, you rich fellows. You are always ready to keep us poor. No, sir, I cannot carry your coal down for you. Not at the price you reduced me to.” So Alois decided to do it himself. “I may not be as rich as you think I am,” he told the man, “but I am certainly stronger than I look.”

Ergo, he toted a half ton of coal down to the bin. It took two hours up in the sun and down in the dust of the cellar. Once the job was completed, he keeled over with a hemorrhage.

11

F
or the weeks following Alois' recovery, Adolf would hear wonder in his mother's voice at how much blood had issued from Alois' mouth, and if he could not quite admit it to himself, he regretted that he had not been present on that occasion.

For that matter, following a suggestion from the Maestro, I encouraged Adolf to brood upon the matter, and he was soon illuminated by a concept. Blood possessed magic. It could be shared by a people. When he looked at the strongest and most handsome boys in his class, he tingled in those places his groin usually reserved for the forest. When blood charged to his penis, it was blood that he possessed in common with fellow students.

I, of course, was free of attitude on this matter. I was ready to work with Austrian clients who, like Adolf, believed in German blood, but I could be just as effective with Orthodox Jewish clients who believed in the supremacy of their blood. I could also work, and very well indeed, with Jewish clients who were Socialists, or with German Socialists, although that called for being comfortable with intellects whose emphasis was on the air and the spirit—all of those invisible currents and gases where enlightenment and the security of un-bloody worldviews might be found. And, of course, I also worked with clients who were Communist and would not have called themselves Reds if they did not, in their fashion, believe in blood. We were always able to improve on the beliefs which our clients held. Once established in their prejudices, we could move to alter their certainties. Often we would intensify the hatred such clients felt for all that was opposite to them in other humans.