The Castle in the Forest

by Norman Mailer

  And Klara thought of the years to come when Paula would be ready to play, and that left her full of love for little Edmund, who was so kind to the baby, the only one of the children who was. Angela couldn’t really care (although she was dutiful enough), and Adi was a worry—once she had seen him pinch Paula’s cheek hard enough to make her cry. Klara had spanked him for that, one sharp slap across his little seat, but she wouldn’t do it again in any kind of hurry. For who would think? He had glared back at her—the prince of princes, so strong a look that she had to use all the strength of her eyes to stare him down.

  It was too beautiful a day to think of that moment of misery—so intense it had been—no, she would rather thank God for having given her so sweet a baby, a daughter who would yet grow up, so she knew, to be her own good sweet best friend. And she even said as much aloud to Paula. “May the angels hear me,” she whispered to her child before she turned back to the house and her duties.

  BOOK VIII

  THE CORONATION OF NICHOLAS II

  1

  If I am now ready to disrupt the narrative by my move to Russia, I would remind the reader that I, too, am a protagonist. Since I will continue to be Adolf Hitler’s guide for decades to come, his future development will, to a great degree, be dependent on my own, and I can vouch that the eight months I lived in Russia from late 1895 to the early summer of 1896 became a prominent element in my development as a high devil. Afterward, I was considerably more ready to foresee the outcome of large events—which is an instinct that only the highest devils are able to develop. Needless to add that by the 1930s Hitler had developed similar talents. What I learned about Russian Grand Dukes over my eight months in Russia proved convertible to my later understanding of German tycoons. While such gentlemen are usually more powerful in essence than royal figures, they prove equally narcissistic, and Adolf’s developed gifts were able, when necessary, to play to their vanities.

  I also learned how to manipulate the will of the people. I speak of the blind will of the people. When properly incited, they rush to enter the ranks of the mad. It need not be debated whether this was of use to Adolf.

  I also learned a good deal about God’s strengths and His increasing weakness. In 1942, a decision had to be made whether to activate the gas chambers in the concentration camps—a daunting move even for Himmler and the SS, but Adolf was ready. God would not be equipped to punish him. So he saw it.

  If there are readers who still will say, “I would rather go on with what is happening in Hafeld,” I have a reply. “That is your right,” I can tell them. Just turn to page 261. Adolf Hitler’s story will pick up again right there.

  2

  The beauty of the spring day when Klara felt so happy holding Paula happened to coincide (even to the hour) with the Coronation of Nicholas II. Indeed, the same early summer warmth was in the Moscow air. Even after I came back to Hafeld in June, this fine period continued across much of Europe, and these long sunny days were compatible with my recollections of the Coronation and the days that followed.

  As I have stated, I was the one to suggest to the Maestro that any direct attack we mounted on the crowning event was not likely to succeed. We could, of course, initiate many an episode. Nowhere in Europe could we field as many agents and clients as in Russia. A number were of high rank. We possessed more than one Grand Duke and Duchess among the several branches of the royal family. We infested the Okhrana. We certainly had more agents among these secret police than did the Cudgels. We also had government ministers who were as loyal to us as hounds slavering over kibble. We were well installed among all the royal families of Europe, not to mention the nobility and/or the generals. Nouveaux riches lay before us like open whores. Tycoons were among our most valued and protected clients. We also had our share of anarchists, nihilists, and terrorists. When it came, therefore, to calling upon such actors, we knew that if we were ready to accept the cost, we could bring off a major disruption on Coronation Day.

  Nonetheless, I was opposed to such ventures. The Cudgels would be expecting our attack that day and so our losses might be severe. That is why I proposed that we postpone our attack until the Peasants’ Festival which was scheduled to take place four days later. When the Maestro accepted this suggestion, my delight was mixed with woe. What if I was wrong? Did I begin to comprehend the monumentality of Russia? Never had I felt the D.K.’s presence so directly. It was obvious—God wanted this Coronation to succeed! This lay upon my judgment with all the weight of a hard fact—a stone too heavy to lift, and so a large source of my dread remained. How to explain God’s immense commitment to this Coronation?

  In recent years, the Lord had invested in a variety of Russian people and Russian causes. Attention had been paid to Monarchists and to Republicans, to the most established aristocrats and to revolutionaries who were ready to die for the honor of overthrowing these overlords. Nor for that matter did He ignore the Pope and the Vatican (but then, neither did we!). He was open to the calls of liberty and the demands of autocracy. As the Maestro once remarked, “It is not difficult to hear the workings of His Mind. ‘I may make My mistakes,’ He says, ‘but I do pay attention to who wins. That is the best way to discover what works.’

  “Why, after all,” added the Maestro, “did He give liberty to men and women? Obviously, the Dummkopf wanted to obtain some notion of what He had actually put together.”

  The Maestro might be enjoying his irony, but what if God had decided that His best prospects now rested on the need for a Tsar who could enjoy a close alliance with the Russian Orthodox Church? Could He be encouraging, thereby, a monumental ceremony to fortify Crown and Cross? Guided by Him, the new young Tsar might even obtain some purchase on the vast if inchoate energies of the Russian people.

  If true, this was an amazing decision. To depend on Russia—so invested with corruption. So teeming with injustice! It was what we looked to find. Injustice was a yeast to inspire hatred, envy, and the loss of love. For rare was the man or woman who did not possess an intense sense of the injustice done to them each day. It was our taproot to every adult. It was a fury in every child. Our work would fall apart if humans ever came to brood as intensely upon the injustice others might be suffering.

  I concluded, therefore, that an answer might be found in the young man who would soon be crowned. Was there something angelic about him? I made a request to the Maestro: Could I devote my efforts to learning as much about Nicholas as was possible? “Do what you can” was the reply. I could hardly decide whether I was being promoted or abandoned.

  As I soon learned, it would not be routine to approach this Nicky—which is how everyone in his large family referred to him. Nicky had a beautiful Danish mother, Empress Marie, the widow of his recently dead father, Tsar Alexander III, plus four Grand Dukes for uncles, as well as brothers, sisters, cousins, and in-laws. So far as one could discern, these relatives seemed surprisingly fond of him.

  But I could not, as I say, come near. I had never encountered a human being so well guarded by squadrons of angels. Usually, I can call upon keen senses that enable me to take in the spiritual weight of a human being. From the far end of a large room, I can perceive flaws of character in the corner of a nostril or the ridges of an ear. Yet I do not look to muster these fine senses for every occasion. Satanic existence would be enervating if we were always obliged to operate at our highest level. Instead, we call upon these gifts only when our need is to learn a good deal about a particular man or woman, and most quickly.

  I was not able to approach Nicky, however—too many Cudgels. Once again, I had to rely on materials that our Russian devils had picked up from royal valets working in the palaces of St. Petersburg or serving in the churches and offices of the Kremlin. They were able to provide copies of numerous letters and diaries. It seemed as if everyone in every royal family of Europe was ready to write letters to parents, children, aunts, uncles, cousins, and intimates. In addition, most of them kept diaries. The Tsarevitch, soon to be Nichol
as II, had made an entry in his embossed little book every day from boyhood on. By the time of the Coronation he felt so close to Alix (his soon-to-be Tsarina Alexandra) that she was always by his side. Literally. His diary was not only open to her perusal, but she even added her entries to his pages.

  I was fascinated. These two young people were related to the highest monarchs in Europe. Alix might be only a princess from Hesse, but her mother, Alice, had been one of Queen Victoria’s three daughters. When Alice died, Alix was only seven years old but Queen Victoria brought Alix to England on frequent visits.

  There was also Wilhelm II, who would yet become the much-reviled Kaiser Wilhelm of World War I. He happened to be the son of Queen Victoria’s oldest daughter. So he was Alix’s cousin. The English prince who would yet become King George V of England was Nicky’s cousin. In time, King George’s oldest son would become Edward VIII until he abdicated his throne to marry Wallis Simpson. Surrounded by our devils, that couple would live on for decades as the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. (The D.K. did not even bother to assign an angel to them.)

  If I list all these family ties, it is to emphasize how royal in their roots were Nicky and Alix. I can add that these august relatives seemed to agree that they were very much in love, a rare and bona fide love.

  The Maestro had his doubts. To me, he remarked, “The Dummkopf presents Himself as the Almighty Avatar of Love. He is Love, and those who love Him are full of Love, and Love itself will solve all human problems. With this noxious pomade, He not only gulls a good three-quarters of humankind but deludes Himself. No one believes in Love so much as the Dummkopf.”

  Could this account for the number of Cudgels here? Had God retreated to His medieval assumption that monarchy was there to provide the best foundation for society? Did He actually suppose that if a handsome young king and attractive young queen remained magnificently in love with each other and were wholly devoted to belief in His Goodness, why, then, He, God, would be ready to underwrite a bold experiment? Might it turn out better than some of His other ventures? Previous monarchies had for the most part been notably void of love between the principals.

  I was relieved. I now had a premise. The D.K. was no longer in full possession of His Faculties. Could that be true or was it false?

  3

  All the same, how could the Lord be seen as senile? When, on occasion, I find myself near the sea, it is difficult to believe that He is suffering any loss of His Capacities. For that matter, similar uneasiness can be aroused in me by a fine field, a rocky crag, a peerless sunset, or the retort of the heavens as lightning is followed by thunder. One can even cite the dazzlements of grass when dew is on the ground.

  Of course, He could have fashioned all this aeons ago, back at the peak of His Creative Powers. In that case, did He now brood on the possibility that His Force might be slackening, which could be why humankind had become His least successful Creation? Were we now awash in the dithering of an old divinity? This Nicky and Alix—they seemed so naïve, so unfitted for any vast project. While I had not been able to get near to their living presence, I had certainly absorbed the tone of their love, their piety, their innocence. I had read hundreds of communications between them. If I now choose to present a few of those missives, it is to provide a sense of how young they were.

  In June of 1894, when their engagement was just two months old, Nicky wrote to her in English, a language they could share:

  I love you too deeply and too strongly for me to show it: it is such a sacred feeling, I don’t want to let it out in words that seem meek and poor and vain! But now I will try to break the habit of hiding my feelings, because I think it wrong and selfish in some occasions. Darling primrosy-mine, I love you my darling!!!!!

  Be it said, I took pains to count the exclamation marks. Is that not, after all, a point of kinship between us? The observant reader may have noticed that I am fond on occasion of such emphasis at the end of a parenthesis. (Interruptions of attention should pretend, at least, to be vital!)

  Four months later, Nicky’s father is grievously ill. Alix, always ready to add her sentiments to Nicky’s diary, offers this:

  Tell me everything, dushka, you can fully trust me, look upon me as a bit of yourself. Let your joys and sorrows be mine, so that we may be ever drawn nearer together. My sweet One, how I love you, darling treasure, my very own One.

  Only yours, quite your very own little spitzbub, Pussy mine!

  Nicky’s diary, 20 October, Livadia

  My God, my God, what a day! The Lord has called unto Him our adored, dearly beloved Papa.

  My head is going round, I cannot believe it—it seems inconceivable, a terrible reality.

  It was the death of a Saint! Lord, help us in these terrible days!

  Later I learned that Nicky was recalling the hour in his childhood when a nihilist had managed to plant a small bomb in the railroad car where the royal family was traveling, but in the event, the roof was blown upward by the blast. As a result, no one was injured. Then, however, the roof began to settle down on them. Alexander III, a giant of a man, used the holy and unholy strength of his arms to support the collapsing structure long enough for his wife and children to be rescued. Only a saint was capable of such strength, declared Empress Marie, a small and beautiful woman.

  Nicky, being short like his mother, would also revere Alexander’s powerful chest. Through his adolescence, Nicky had worked, therefore, at bodybuilding. He also excelled at horsemanship and at hunting—a point of honor to him. He grew a fine brown mustache and beard, yet he never became hefty enough to look like a Romanov.

  21 October, Livadia

  After luncheon we held Prayers for the Dead and again at 9 o’clock in the evening. The expression on Papa’s face was wonderful, smiling as if he were about to laugh!

  22 October

  Last night we had to carry Papa’s body downstairs, as unfortunately, it has rapidly begun to decompose.

  Indeed, they soon had to cover the Emperor with an imperial cloth. His hands and face were turning black.

  The marriage to Alix came just a few days after the funeral—it would not do for the new Tsar to remain an unmarried man. While the event took place a full year before I arrived in Russia, I was offered detailed accounts by our resident devils sufficient to inspire the confidence that I had been standing in the Winter Palace with ten thousand of the gentry. All of us were without chairs. The Russians seem to believe that devotional services should exact a penance on the body. The mighty had to remain on their feet for three hours while liturgies were recited. All the while, choral music continued, sad in its way, but majestic, due to the length of the occasion. It was as though the deepest groans of Jesus Christ had to be heard again and then again before the Bride might be proclaimed Empress. All were quick to comment on her dignity, her beauty, and on the manner in which her head bowed whenever she greeted anyone. Our devils, being not in the least generous about such matters, remarked that this bobbing of her head was reminiscent of a pigeon.

  4

  On a stay at Tsarskoe Selo, Nicky told his diary:

  Such a dear place for us both; for the first time since our wedding we have been able to live alone and live truly soul-to-soul.

  Alix added:

  Never did I believe there could be such utter happiness in this world, such a feeling of unity between two mortal beings. I love you—those three words have my life in them.

  On the next day she wrote:

  At last united, bound for life, and when this life is ended, we meet again in the other world to remain together for all eternity.

  I was intrigued by her confidence that they shared the same passport to the Eternal. Rarely had I encountered newlyweds who seemed as infatuated. Yet Nicky was twenty-six, and no neophyte in these matters. Since Alix had been a virgin, I was disposed to look upon her entries as much too concerned with demonstrating how much she was in love.