The Castle in the Forest (46 page)

2

E
ach year, Klara would receive a pension from the government that came to half of Alois' annual salary. In addition, other monies would be paid to the children so soon as they turned eighteen. The total would be enough to keep them comfortable.

Even Adolf had to recognize that Alois' remarks about security in a family did make some kind of sense. He certainly would not have liked to go to work at this point.

There were other compensations. Attending the Realschule for the second half of his third year, Adolf could see that a number of the students were less unfriendly. Was this due to the death of his father? Free of Alois' wrath, he also felt more comfortable with his studies, and soon became more ready to talk back to his teachers, particularly one unhappy middle-aged instructor who was there to conduct religious instruction for several hours each week.

Adolf decided this instructor must be the poor relative of somebody who had had enough influence at the school to procure him the job. Herr Schwamm was sad and dank, so there he was, teaching religion.

During recess one morning, Adolf heard one of the students telling others about a medieval churchman, St. Odon, who was the Bishop of Cluny. “I have a brother who studies Latin,” the boy said, “and he gave me my first lesson:
‘Inter faeces et urinam nascimur.'
” So soon as this was translated, Adolf was shocked, then thrilled. What strong language! True force! He was aroused enough to dare to go to the Anatomy Museum in Linz once school was out. He managed to get in by lying about his age and so was able to see a penis and a vagina, both modeled in wax, as well as a few full-sized naked men and women, also in wax. The Latin kept pulsing through his mind. To be born between piss and shit! That was what he had always supposed. Sex was filthy.

On the other hand, his description of the visit made him more popular with some of his classmates, who asked again and again for the details. This encouraged him to bait the teacher, so he made a point of uttering the phrase that came from the Bishop of Cluny. Herr Schwamm pretended not to understand. Already a few of the boys were tittering.

“Latin cannot be slurred,” stated Herr Schwamm. “The manner by which you try to declaim these words lacks all authority.”

Adolf replied, “Then I must speak in German.” He frowned, he swallowed, he managed to enunciate, “
‘Zwischen Kot und Urin sind wir geboren.'
”

Herr Schwamm had to wipe his eyes. They had filled with tears. “I have never listened to such filth before,” he managed to state, but then hurried out of the classroom. Adolf now enjoyed thirty seconds of bliss. Boys who had ignored him all year were pounding him on the back. “You're a real guy,” he was told.

For the first time in his life, he received a standing ovation from the class. One by one, they rose to their feet. But then two monitors came in to escort Adolf to the principal, Herr Dr. Trieb.

“If it were not so close to the end of the year, and if our school had not worked so hard to improve your consistently poor grades, I would be ready to expel you,” said Herr Dr. Trieb. “Under the circumstances, I will choose instead to assume that the death of your much-mourned father may have been a factor in your unspeakable behavior. So I accept your presence in school for another semester provided there is no continuation whatsoever of this behavior. You will, of course, apologize to Herr Schwamm.”

That proved a curious meeting. Herr Schwamm taught Adolf an unforgettable lesson. It is that one knows nothing about a person until a weak man's strength can be observed.

Herr Schwamm was wearing his best suit on this occasion, and he spoke to the point. He did not try to look into Adolf's eyes yet was able to say in a tone more severe than he could muster in class, “We will not discuss the reason you are here. Instead, I will insist that you read aloud the following prayer.” Whereupon he presented a text to Adolf. In full capitals, the words had been written out on a page of good linen paper.

FULL GLORIOUS MAJESTY, WE SUPPLICATE THEE TO DELIVER US FROM THE TYRANNY OF THE INFERNAL SPIRITS, FROM THEIR SNARES, THEIR LIES, AND THEIR FURIOUS WICKEDNESS—OH, PRINCE OF THE HEAVENLY HOST, CAST INTO HELL SATAN AND ALL EVIL SPIRITS WHO WANDER THROUGH THE WORLD SEEKING THE RUIN OF SOULS. AMEN.

“Do you know to whom this prayer is addressed?” asked Herr Schwamm.

“Is it not addressed, sir, to St. Michael the Archangel?”

Of course! That was one prayer Adolf knew well enough. At the monastery in Lambach, he had repeated it every morning after Mass. Moreover, he still retained an image of himself teetering on a stool, Angela's dress draped over his shoulders. “Yes,” he replied, “the prayer, sir, is to St. Michael the Archangel,” and he even felt an echo of his first erection. Schwamm was a Lutheran and so would not know that if this prayer had once possessed extraordinary force for Adolf, it was by now familiar. He had little fear as he read it aloud. Indeed, his voice resonated with force.

The short speech Herr Schwamm had prepared concerning these fires and perils of hell now seemed nugatory. Indeed, he felt a most unhappy inadequacy once again before this young and sullen student, just one more repetition of unhappy outcomes. So little turns out as one expects.

He offered a few phrases to the effect that he was pleased to recognize “a sober side in you, young Hitler,” and stopped before he began to stammer.

“I apologize most abjectly for my actions yesterday, Herr Schwamm,” Adolf replied, and was not in the least abject.

Herr Schwamm felt himself close to tears once more. He maintained his composure by making a modest gesture of dismissal.

Once on the other side of the door, Adolf was in a fury. These hypocrites should be dragged to see the wax vagina at the Anatomical Museum.

Indeed, he was preparing the speech he would give to his fellow students when they surrounded him at recess to find out what transpired.

“Well,” he would say, “I certainly held my own with poor old Schwamm.”

It was a late afternoon in March when he came out of school, but he initiated a snowball fight with a few of his new friends and they kept at it until twilight. He kept repeating a phrase, “Optimism, fire, blood, and steel,” and was immensely pleased that the three students on his side in this impromptu and ice-cold test of battle repeated it. So far as he knew, the phrase had not come from a book but had sprung from his throat: “Optimism, fire, blood, and steel!” (Was he repeating words I had given him? I cannot always remember every inspiration I have offered to each client.)

Leave it that Adolf did pick up his volume of Treitschke when he reached home and soon proceeded to memorize the following words:

God has given all Germans the earth for a potential home, and this assumes that there will come a time when there will be a leader of all the world, a leader to serve as the embodiment, the incarnation, the essence of a most mysterious power which will tie the people to the invisible majesty of the nation.

He thought of this passage often in months to come. Could he believe it? Was it true? There were all kinds of Germans, and some, he decided, were as spineless as Schwamm. Still, he used this long sentence as a rallying cry to himself when in the rigors of one more battle in the woods. He hardly knew what it meant, and yet he kept repeating the words to himself. Nothing that he would read over the next four decades would live for him with such certainty. We devils have known for a long time that a mediocre mind, once devoted entirely to one mystical idea, can obtain a mental confidence well beyond its normal potential.

By late spring of 1903, his war games took on other complexities. Sometimes, on Saturday afternoons, there were as many as fifty boys to a side, and Adolf was introduced, willy-nilly, to logistics. Each army now had to deal with its wounded and its prisoners. Even as Adolf had been seen (until recently) as a minor presence in his school, so was he now, by full contrast, a generalissimo in the forest. Indeed, he was forever pronouncing new battle codes, then changing his own rules. On a given Saturday he would decide that once a man was captured, the only choice was to put him in prison or kill him.

Then he had to recognize that the latter could end many battles too quickly. Where could the dead soldier go but back to his house? So now, serious discussions arose about the length of time required for incarceration. Should it be for thirty minutes, or an hour? And who could keep track? It had to be a separate timekeeper, loyal to neither side. (They ended by choosing the one boy who owned a pocket watch.) Then Adolf had an inspiration. A prisoner could gain his freedom more quickly by becoming a spy. Or he could refuse all offers and stay in prison, but that choice was not often taken. Adolf was aware that captured men soon get bored.

3

S
chool ended in June. The previous summer, spent at the Garden House, had ended with Alois' first hemorrhage. Now, in the summer of 1903, the family put all that might be needed into two huge trunks, and Klara, Angela, Adolf, and Paula traveled to Spital, where Klara's sister Theresa lived. There they spent the summer. When Alois was alive there had been no question of returning. He could never bear to go back. It reminded him of the cattle trough in which his mother used to sleep. By now, however, the farmer Schmidt, married to Theresa, had a holding large enough to put up all who were in the Hiedler-Poelzl clan. The farm came to no more than the land, the house, the sheds, the outbuildings, and the animals, but Schmidt was a hard worker, and he had managed, by the measure of Spital, to make it profitable. With several fields to work, and woodlands to harvest for nuts, he was ready to use all the labor Klara could offer. “It'll be good for her sorrow that she's here to work it off,” he said.

That summer, unlike other members of the family, Adolf did not work. He played with the younger farm children once their afternoon chores were done, and he tried to teach a few war games, even if his recruits were tired enough to fall asleep at their stations.

For most of the day, protected by Klara, he spent his morning and early afternoon reading or drawing, after which he would wander into the woods to search for new military positions. On one occasion he was asked to join in the field work, but Klara declared that he must do no labor at all, considering the ongoing trouble with his lungs. She even told her sister Theresa that since she did not wish him to do any labor, she would pay for his food. That proved acceptable.

After the summer, Angela was going to marry a man named Leo Raubal, who worked as a notary in a bank. Adolf did not enjoy the sight of him. Whenever Raubal would visit, he would tell his future brother-in-law, “Your lungs are not as bad as you claim, isn't that the truth?” and this was enough to leave Adolf in a cold fury. Where could Raubal have picked up such an idea if not from Angela?

Nonetheless, Adolf could see one positive element in this marriage—his own financial condition would improve. There would be a larger share of pension money for him once his big sister was gone from the household. Of course, Angela was hardly bewitched by her situation. She was entering into marriage with a man she didn't adore, but a man, nonetheless, who was available. So Klara's grand plans for Angela's future had come to little. If Angela was ready to accept such a marriage, Klara was not only disappointed but surprised. She was also furious with herself. She could not forgive herself. She had created no social life for Angela. The family lived in the Garden House, a fine place for a young girl to receive company, but Klara had not known how to make the right kind of friends for that. When it came to meeting strangers and impressing them with your charm, and the possible size of a dowry, well, she and Angela had both been much too shy. Raubal turned out to be the best that was available.

As far as Klara was concerned, this man was lucky to steal her stepdaughter. It was virtually a crime. Angela was entitled to much more. Raubal wasn't even healthy in appearance.

What Klara did not know was that Angela had been living with a guilty secret. She had never stopped pining for Alois Junior. She knew that Junior would never come back, but in the course of these seven years of absence, she had transmuted him into a perfect young man. She remembered how handsome he had been on Ulan. She was certain, of course, that if she and Alois Junior were still together, she would never take one improper step, but all the same she might now allow her brother to dismount from his horse and kiss her. Even after the family moved to the Garden House and Angela had a room to herself, she still kept, carefully hidden, a photograph of her brother taken by an itinerant photographer on a fine warm day in Hafeld. Alois Junior had been proud to obtain a picture of himself standing by his horse. Indeed, he had taken Ulan out of the stable and led him up to the view camera.

Angela had stolen that picture. It had been her way of paying Alois back for the times he had teased her when she refused to mount Ulan. When the photo disappeared, she had to swear to Alois Junior that she had no idea where it might be. “I say this on a stack of Bibles,” she had said.

“Where are these Bibles?” Alois Junior asked.

“In my mind. They are there. You can trust me.”

She did not mind that he was suffering just as much as if he had lost a gold watch. He deserved to suffer for the way he had teased her. So cruel!

Angela still kept this photo hidden, but, as the date of her marriage neared, she became more concerned about the carnal redolence that remained in her heart for this innocent—yet maybe not so innocent—attachment to a fading sepia portrait. Finally, she came to the cruel recognition that the picture had to be destroyed. (Otherwise, Leo Raubal was bound to find it sooner or later.) So, on a night when she was unable to sleep, in a small but most private ceremony, she tore up this small piece of her past and in the dark of early morning put the scraps in a small bowl, set a kitchen match to them, and wept silently as bits of the photograph turned to black.

After the wedding, Adolf was bothered by thoughts of how ugly must be the acts that Angela and Leo were performing in bed. Adolf had seen the groom's phallus one time when they urinated side by side in a field, and thought it was nothing agreeable to look at. Now Leo was rubbing it in and out of this supposedly sacred passage between Angela's two unmentionable holes—how disgusting! His thoughts came to a halt when he recognized that his father and mother were no different from the newlyweds. How awful was this secret that all men and women had to keep silent about.