It was obvious that Der Alte would prefer not to—even as Alois had expected—but Adi spoke up. “Oh, please, sir,” he cried out, “I have never seen the inside of a bees’ home. They have been with us back at the house for so long”—he tried to count quickly—“for seven, no, I think it is eight weeks, and I have not seen even one of them. Must I wait until summer? Please.”
“Spring,” said Der Alte. “It is necessary to wait until spring.” Then, given the disappointment on the boy’s face, he shrugged. “All right,” he said, “but you must be prepared. It is winter. Bees are sluggish during these months.”
Indeed, they were. In the kitchen, bare but for a small stove, a sink, a hand pump above the sink, and a pail beneath for the runoff, was also a table. At one end had been placed a narrow glass box, perhaps two feet long and one foot high, its interior concealed on both sides by black curtains. When the curtains were pulled back, two glass walls were revealed, not three inches apart, and a vertical frame stood in the space between, filled with small wax cells, an uncountable number of them.
Adi was disappointed. A cluster of pullulating things, no larger than dark pills in a bottle, kept climbing over each other, startled by the light, a poor gang, crammed, jam-packed, an assembly of what looked to be squashy little creatures about as ugly as roaches. (Their wings were folded.) Adi had not been so disappointed since he had first seen Edmund’s homuncular face squeezed up on Klara’s breast.
Now these bees could just as well have been beans bumping around in a heated pot, except, no, beans did not look so nervous. What an awful way to live! They miss the sun, the boy thought. Now they were just shoved up against each other. He sighed in preference to bursting into tears.
“At this moment,” said Der Alte, “they are the poorest of the poor, no better than sodden creatures in a slime of their own making. Yet their lives will span the extremities of existence. Now they do nothing, but in summer, you will see them dance in the air, as wonderful as drops of dew in early morning light. So fearless. How they will strut as they enter into the golden petals of the flower-blooms that are waiting for them.”
“Hear, hear,” said Alois. No matter the drear aspects, Der Alte did have a manner. Give that much to the stinkpot.
And Adi was thinking, “These bees can sting you and then you are dead.” He shivered in the old man’s kitchen before the incomprehensibility of dying. Yet, right in the midst of this chill, he felt as close to the old man as to his father, for he could listen all day and all night to the wonderful words that came forth.
“Come and visit me,” the old man managed to whisper before Alois gave the signal to leave.
10
I do not know how powerful an influence this last murmured message could have had on Adi, but I will say that at no moment up to this point did I feel more regret at being obliged to rely on my Hafeld agents. Not long after (on Christmas Eve, no less!), while the rest of the house was asleep, Adi got up from bed, bundled himself into his warmest clothing, and went out to sit on the bench under the oak tree where the two Langstroth boxes had been placed. There he remained for a considerable time, growing colder by the minute. Yet he stayed, and having placed himself between these two boxes, he kept embracing the back of each. He was praying for the continued life of the bees.
This was of signal interest to me. I queried my agents more than once about what they could glean from the boy’s thoughts, and some of it seemed of value. That night, Adi had heard his father complain that the screen protecting the hive entrance had been torn. The entrance was small, but all the same, a mouse might have come into the hive. Alois soon decided that this was unlikely—the hole was simply not large enough—but Adi was not convinced. Since his father had repaired the screen that afternoon, Adi no longer knew as he sat between the boxes which one might be occupied by the mouse. Ergo, he set a hand on each.
What with it being Christmas Eve, the boy was full of his mother’s spirit of celebration. “On this night, one thousand eight hundred and ninety-five years ago,” said Klara, “the Son of God was born, and he was the nicest human being ever to walk on earth. The loveliest, the sweetest. If you love Him, He will love you.”
Adi was certain. This was one night when you could feel free to breathe the night air, no matter how cold. For the Son of God was present. Would He grant the power Adi needed to kill the mouse by the force of his thoughts?
To kill the mouse by the force of his thoughts? I knew the limitations of my agents. They could not have conceived of such a notion. This had come from Adi. It was his. His alone. If I had been present, I would have raised the stakes. I might have gotten the boy ready to believe that he could save certain lives by exercising the special power he possessed to destroy others. That is one of the most useful suppositions we can implant in clients, but it does call for a sequence of dream-etchings.
Since I was not present, I did my best not to brood over the lost opportunity. There was more than enough to occupy me in St. Petersburg. In company with my assistants, I was facing considerable opposition to my activities. I had never encountered a group of Cudgels as determined as this Russian crew. Nor as brutal. Over the last few centuries, these Russian angels had developed a powerful ability to contest the many demons we had installed within Russian Orthodox churches and monasteries. In consequence, these Cudgels—fully as rough as the meanest Russian monks—were in command of considerable zeal. During these months, they were wholly ready to defend the Coronation of the young Tsar-to-be, Nicholas II.
When the Maestro consulted me, as would occur now and again, I was bold enough to tell him that I did not like our chances of disrupting the Coronation itself. Too much would be arrayed against us. It should, however, not be difficult to create a mighty disorder a few days after the event.
I had dared to speak my mind, but then, the Maestro does not look kindly upon a lack of opinion among his close subordinates. “Allow me to muse upon the perceptions that some of you are able to offer. That is signally more useful to me than silence. I won’t allow your fear of being wrong to leave you mentally inactive.”
Enough. It is easy to see that these Russian matters were temporarily, at least, of more concern to me than the small events of Hafeld.
All the same, whether I was interested or not, Klara gave birth on January 21 to the new infant. That brought minimal joy to Alois. The much-anticipated strongman of the future had not arrived. A little girl was in the maternal bed. Now the ruckus of baby feeding at night and baby yowling in the day would go for naught. He had been counting on a powerhouse of a son to sweeten his old age, yes, offer an improvement over the three boys he could not, at present, boast about—the wild one, the mama’s boy, and a crybaby snot. So Alois was unready to celebrate the new birth, yet he did—at the tavern in Fischlham night after night for quite a few nights until the beer began to smell as sour as infant spew. There were now six human beings in his home. Come the end of spring, when Junior returned from Spital, there would be seven. The tumult of voices in the bar was becoming comparable to the childish noise at home.
My agents gained nothing from Alois’ visits to the tavern. Let men drink in a crowded room, and solidarity rises among them. They soar on zephyrs of grain spirit, a brotherly defiance against the inroads of angels and demons, a certainty that as men, they are at this moment equal to external forces.
These are not good conditions for our work, but openings do present themselves when the drinkers are staggering home. We are ready then. Sometimes, disgusted at the hours lost, we slam them to the ground. They usually take it personally, their lament most characteristic. “Somebody shoved me,” they often cry out. Nobody believes them, but they know better. Wrath had struck between the shoulder blades, and it was not their own rage, not at all.
11
On his return, Alois may have been staggering now and again, but he was also feeling too alive to enter his house. Instead, he sat by the hive boxes and fished out a rubber tube he had been keeping in his
pocket. Next, he placed one end of it against a wall of the Langstroth and thereby was able to listen to the thrumming of the tenement dwellers in his little city. A fine sound was there, almost a tune, rich with little swells of contentment. But then, why should his bees not be content? Come morning, hundreds, then thousands, would be in a cluster ready to suck on the mesh cloth of the wide-mouthed jar, gorging on honey-and-water. So, in this dark and nicely drunken hour, separate thoughts passed through Alois like horses on file, one large thought at a time. He tried to count how many bees might be inhabiting the box. No matter how drunk, he could still make an intelligent guess. Call it twenty thousand. That was bound to be the answer. Despite himself, knowing he should not really disturb the hive, he knocked sharply on the side. Because then, through the tube, he could listen to the shift in sound. Were they issuing alerts? The calls had gone up in pitch. Like the strings of a crazy violin. Then quiet again. Soft. Like cats who sheathe their claws. Purring while asleep.
He roused himself long enough to go into the house and get his shirt off and his pants. Then he fell into bed. But he was still hearing the chorus. Strange sounds. His breath lifted over a small hesitation and down he went into slumber. He had one final thought as splendid as a fine horse on parade—it was that he certainly enjoyed these hymns of the bees a good deal more than the caterwauling of an infant.
His dreams, however, were not so good. He had entered a large and cavernous interior where, to his lack of surprise, he found himself among his bees. They were defecating, and there he was, one of many, suffering just like his brother-creatures—no, sister-creatures—wasting away in the contractions of a severe bowel disease, all of them defecating into the narrow aisles of the Langstroth box—what a filthy vision.
He looked to rouse himself. Because this was a dream. Healthy bees did not soil in their own habitat (except perhaps for the worst and laziest of the drones), no, he had listened to the bees in one hive, and their sound was honorable. They would wait until the weather was warm enough to go outdoors.
But now he was awake and painfully aware of all the excrement that had been accumulating in his colonies all these months. How could the little buggers hold it in?
It was warm next morning, the first warm morning of a February thaw, and as Alois came out of the house, his horde was everywhere above, hundreds of them, thousands—who could count? They were leaving their droppings all over the place, fifty and then more than a hundred feet away. It all smelled like ripe bananas, and the snow was a field of white dotted with innumerable yellow spots out there in a large circle around the hive bench. Buttercups in the snow! Hanging on a clothesline, Paula’s diapers were spotted. What an immense shower of defecation had taken place. Alois stepped it off. Yes, you could even find yellow spots one hundred paces away from the hive boxes.
Klara was as furious as she dared to be. “You never told me to be careful,” she said to her husband.
“It is too bad,” he said, “that you will have all this laundry to do again. But how can one apologize? It is, after all, an act we have received from that Good God you are so sure is yours.” She walked away. A half hour later, water churning in two huge pots, she took the diapers off the line and set out to boil them again.
Alois was not about to tell himself that he felt sorry. Rather, he was happy for the bees. What delight they had shown while they flew about. Since it was a Saturday, Adi was nearby in the meadows and Alois, on impulse, decided to call him over. Let him hear some real talk.
“Everybody shits,” he told the boy. “Everything shits, all things living. That is as it should be. What you keep in mind is that you learn how to get rid of shit or it will shit on you. Understand? You keep yourself clean, do you hear? Look at these bees. They are wonderful. They hold it in all winter. They are determined not to dirty the hive. We can do the same. We are good people. Where we live is where we keep everything spotless.”
“But, my father,” said little Adolf, “what about Edmund?”
“What about him?”
“He still does it in his pants.”
“That is your mother’s concern, not yours.”
Later in the day, Adi remembered the time when Alois Junior had stuck a dab of excrement right onto his nose, and even the recollection brought forth the oddest cry. He still felt so humiliated, yet so full of glee. Nor could Adi get over his excitement at the cleansing flight. Those bees had been dancing in the wind. That was because there had been all that caca in them, and now they were free. He couldn’t stop his giggles. It had all made his mother so angry.
Now he remembered what Angela had whispered to him one morning. “Your mother has a saying,” she said. “‘Kinder, Küche, Kirche.’” He nodded. He had heard it already. He yawned in her face.
“Oh, you think you know it all already,” Angela said, “but you don’t. There is a secret word as well.”
“Who told you? My mother?”
“I can’t say. It is a secret word.”
“Who told you?”
She could see he was ready to burst into a tantrum. “All right. I will let you know,” she said. “I heard it, yes, from your mother, your dear mother, who loves me even if I am not hers.”
“Tell me or I will yell and she will hear.”
“That is you. That is just as mean as you.” She held him by the ear. “Remember,” she said, “she told me in secret that the real saying is, ‘Kinder, Küche, Kirche, und…’”—she started to giggle—“‘und Kacke!’”
Now, he was giggling as well. Oh, those bees, worse than babies. He had a crazy picture of every bee with a diaper, the tiniest diaper. He was laughing so hard that he felt like urinating, and that made him think of Der Alte who came into his thoughts so often, especially when he had to urinate.
Now Adi realized that he would like to visit Der Alte, yes, he wanted to, so much.
Next day, Sunday, was warm again, and once more the bees were out. After Klara left for church and Alois dozed, Adi started to run up and down the meadow, as if to use up the impulse to visit the old man, but in his mind he kept seeing each fork in the forest road, and knew he could find the hut. The desire to make such a trip by himself was as compelling as a rope tugging on him.
He went. And Der Alte, prepared for the visit (by the same message, for certain, that Adi had received), was there once again at the door, but the tablespoon of honey was not yet in his hand, no, for that, Adi now had to sit on his lap. “Yes, you are such a good boy,” Der Alte said. “I can love you like a grandson, and you will never need to be afraid of me. Yes, you are so nice and strong.” Der Alte laid a hand upon the boy’s thigh, but with only the lightest touch, even as he fed Adi the honey.
The boy was not afraid, or, yet, perhaps a little. In school, they had fairy tales to read, and sometimes there were ogres in the forest and evil spirits could make little children turn into pigs or goats. However, it did not feel so risky sitting on the legs of Der Alte. It was better than his father’s lap. He never knew when his father would blow pipe smoke into his face.
And indeed, they sat there long after Adi had tasted all of the spoonful of honey, and he felt happy with Der Alte’s old hand resting on his knee.
After a considerable part of an hour had passed, he began, however, to feel less comfortable. Would his father begin to wonder where he was? Yet, when he stirred, Der Alte said a few words which aroused the same sense of surprise as turning a page in a book and there before you was a nice picture.
“Do not tell this to anyone,” said Der Alte, “but I am trying to make one little bee very happy. I have chosen this bee to live by itself close by me. I will tell you. I keep it in the kitchen.”
“Does it try to talk?”
“It does make sounds. For certain!” Der Alte smiled. “But no, dear boy, I do not try to encourage this little bee to speak our language. That is certainly too much to ask. I just try to make her happy. Which is not so easy. Because now that I have selected her, she must live alone in a sma
ll queen box I use for her, even if she is not a Queen.”
“My father says that bees live only for other bees. They are”—he searched to remember the expression—“they are dedicated to the community.”
“Your father is correct. Yes. Bees live in a hive. They do not seek to live alone.”
“Even if they are fed good things all the time?”
“You are the smartest boy I know. You are full of understanding. I did want to see what would happen if I were to select one bee and keep her warm and most well-fed, and think about her all the time with all the good feeling that is in my heart. So when I go into the other room, I take care to speak to her. That is twenty times a day. She cannot comprehend what I am saying. But I want her to know that I am thinking of her. Sometimes I even take her out of the queen box.”
“Doesn’t she fly away?”
“Oh, no. I prevent such a possibility.” He touched the boy’s head tenderly. “When I remove it from its little box, it jumps around, it is so merry, but it knows it must not try to fly.”
“Does it have no wings?”
There was a pause. “No longer does it have wings.”
Adi knew. No need to ask. His happiest feelings were now trying to lift themselves above the bad ones. He asked to look at the bee.
It was little and frisky and jumped about in excitement when Der Alte opened the box. Indeed, it hopped onto the tip of the old man’s finger that had been dipped into honey.
“I do not know how much more will happen,” said Der Alte. “What I am attempting is difficult, and I see little chance for success. But how wonderful if I can brighten the feelings of this little creature. After all, before my intervention, she was insignificant. Can I lift her now to a level her sisters cannot attain? I feel for her. She is so lonely. She misses the horde. She is loneliness itself. But I try to bring the sweetness of relief. That can come when terrible loneliness is replaced by comradeship. Yes,” he said, nodding his head.
The Castle in the Forest Page 19