The Castle in the Forest

by Norman Mailer

  I do find it interesting, however, that close to the last few months of his life, Hitler did wish to be cremated. The meanest aspect of his life had always been his body, but by then, late in life, his soul—by any but our measure—was more befouled than his torso. Of course it is also true that when one has become an overseer of death who holds the power to liquidate masses of people, one is also in great need of a very hard shell to the ego in order to feel no intimate horror over the price to one’s soul. Most statesmen who become successful leaders of a country at war have usually risen to such eminence already. They have installed in themselves an ability not to suffer sleepless nights because of casualties on the other side. They now possess the mightiest of all social engines of psychic numbification—patriotism! That is still the most dependable instrument for guiding the masses, although it may yet be replaced by revealed religion. We love fundamentalists. Their faith offers us every promise of developing into the final weapon of mass destruction.

  If these are personal conclusions, I must also warn the reader that the Maestro detests large thoughts in his minions. He speaks of such ideas as “your vapors.” He reminds us to return to matters within our competence.

  I think by the end Hitler may have been weary enough to share this sentiment. In 1944, one of the worst years of his life, with the war going badly, the Führer, out at his underground retreat in East Prussia—the Wolfschanze—would try to relax by telling his secretaries old anecdotes over dinner. He would relate how his father, on many a night, would lay a whipping on him. But, as he assured his secretaries, he had been brave, yes, just as brave as an American Indian under torture. Never had he made the smallest sound. The ladies were regaled with these tales of his heroism. By then, being much more aged than his actual years—fifty-five—Adolf was ready to enjoy the advantages of old age. He delighted in receiving the admiration of women without having to pass through the anxiety of deciding whether he should consider copulating with them. His sexual spirit, so wholly unlike Alois’, had never committed itself to seeking the glories or perils of new fornication. (The fear of embarrassment was prodigious in Adolf, and we looked to keep it that way.) An earthly companion was by now not in the least necessary to our aims.

  Of course, the story he told the secretaries was a shameless exaggeration. On occasion he would even speak of two hundred blows delivered to his bottom by his father’s arm.

  Once, in the late 1930s, talking to Hans Frank, he said, “When I was ten or twelve I had to go late at night into this stinking smoke-filled tavern. I made no attempt to spare my father’s feelings. I went right up to the table where he sat staring at me doltishly and I shook him. ‘Father,’ I would say, ‘it’s time for you to come home. Up you get.’ And often I would have to wait for a quarter of an hour or more, pleading and scolding before I could get him to his legs. Then I supported him home. I never felt so horribly ashamed. Hans Frank, I tell you, I know what a demon alcohol can be. Because of my father, it was the bane of my youth.” Indeed, he told the story so well that Herr Frank even repeated it in the course of the Nuremberg trials.

  2

  Actually, Alois happened to be drinking less. He did not dare to take too much. The fact that Edmund would not be there to greet him in the morning was unendurable. He felt as if he had consumed a bowl of ashes in his sleep.

  On many an evening, he also needed to be alert because he was going to the Buergerabends. The gentry might be more cultivated than he was, but their company was able to lift him for a little while out of his worst moods. Without such elegant diversion, he would have had to spend his night brooding on the young one’s death. And so he became a regular and was often present all four nights a week no matter which inn had been chosen. If, in the beginning, he had been stiff in his entrances and departures, the condition was eased by the quiet compassion he was receiving. A general courtesy met him when he entered. Many offered their warmth when he left. “This is the good side of the gentry,” he told himself. At Customs, he had always seen them as chilly in their manner except when they had something to hide.

  What also impressed him was that one of the members often present at these Buergerabends was a rabbi named Moriz Friedmann, who had been a member of the Austrian District School for eighteen years. Alois could see that most of the members were respectful of Friedmann, and this certainly helped to reinforce his notion that humankind could be divided into those who were cultured and those who were not. If a Jew could be acceptable to a Buergerabend, he told himself, then so could a peasant born into the lowest circumstances, yes, a child born illegitimately to a woman who slept on straw in an abandoned cattle trough. No, he was not about to drink too much on these evenings. Adolf never had to bring him home drunk. Given the decent welcome the Buergerabends gave him now, he concluded that he had a right to belong in their society because he, too, like Rabbi Moriz Friedmann, was a special individual. Something like six hundred Jews were living in Linz at this time, which, given a population of sixty thousand, meant that there was one such man or woman in one hundred. Most of these Jews came from Bohemia and were actually not as crude as one would expect—so he would have told Klara if she had not supposed he was Jewish. Indeed, many of them were assimilated. They didn’t walk around in old caftans smelling of stale places. Many were professionals or manufacturers, and many, like Moriz Friedmann, had honorary federal posts. So, yes, they had come from the outside and so had he.

  By now, Alois felt (just like Mayrhofer) that the town tavern was too raw. Given his grief, the loud voices could bring him close to tears whenever he thought of Edmund. Besides, he’d drink more at the tavern. What an unmanly sight it would be if he broke down there.

  3

  Adolf entered middle school in September of 1900, close to eight months after Edmund’s death. Provided he was able to pass all his grades over the next four years, he would be out by his fifteenth birthday. His preference, he declared, was to attend the Gymnasium, with its curriculum focused on the classics and art, rather than the Realschule, where emphasis would be given to practical disciplines.

  Alois and Adolf had discussions concerning this. Sometimes Klara would sit in the room, sometimes not, but the point at issue was the Gymnasium. Adi felt he could work there to good effect. His talent, he declared, was for art. Looking to put Alois in a compliant mood, he added that he was also ready to study the classics. Alois was scornful. “The classics? Are you serious?”

  Klara spoke. “Our boy is upset. Naturally, that affects other things.”

  “I can appreciate some of his unhappy thoughts,” said Alois, “But what you say is neither here nor there. I see no use in trying to enter the Gymnasium. He is not going to prove acceptable.” He chose to look into Adolf’s eyes. “Since you seem unable these days to spell German correctly, how, in the name of what your mother calls the Good God, will you do anything with Latin or Greek?”

  At this point, Alois chose to speak to him in Latin. Not to test him, but to mock him. “Absque labore nihil,” said Alois.

  “And what does that mean?” asked Klara sharply. How cruel of Alois! He made a show of lighting his pipe, pulling smoke in slowly, then releasing it at leisure before he said, “‘Without labor, there is nothing.’” He nodded. “That is what it means.” He exhaled the smoke with small cultivated puffs. “I would say that certainly applies to schooling. In the Gymnasium, students must master their grammar. In Latin and in Greek. Both! Those are fine knowledges to acquire. It would give you superiority over others for the rest of your life. But there is nothing without proper labor, and that school, Adolf, is not for you. Nor do you require courses in Ancient History or Philosophy or Art. In very few of them do I believe you would excel. It is better for you, in my opinion, to go to the Realschule. Not only is their practical teaching what you need, but I can help you to get in.” (He was thinking of Mayrhofer’s assistance.) “The other one is out, no matter what efforts I put forth. One look at your spelling will be all it takes.”

&nbs
p; Alois knew that he could ask members of the Buergerabends for recommendations to the Gymnasium, but to what end? Doubtless, that would not suffice. He would lose so much more than he could gain, and to no point or purpose. He sighed.

  4

  Adolf’s life would now change for the worse. Linz was five miles away and twenty times larger than Leonding. A trolley car was available once an hour, but Klara expected him to walk, and it was a long hike across fields and forest before reaching the Realschule.

  Each morning, he would be reminded in one or another manner by his father, his mother, or even Angela that he was the only son left, and the family must be able to count on him. Before long, he loathed the Realschule. It was a forbidding edifice on dark days. Gone was the pleasure he had taken at school in Hafeld, in Lambach, and in Leonding, where he would excel. Now the halls were ready to share his gloom. He thought often of the day when Alois, weeping over Edmund’s death, had nearly suffocated him with the force of his embrace, all the while repeating, “You are my only hope.” Such hope was reeking of tobacco. Would the atmosphere even listen to such a lie? This recollection, so full of misery and mistruth, was now attached to the portals of the Realschule.

  His classmates, for the most part, came from prosperous families. They carried themselves differently from the farm boys and town boys he had known for the last few years. So he did not believe his mother when she told him: “Your father is the second-most-important man in Leonding. And the first, the Mayor, Mayrhofer, is his good friend.”

  He doubted that their importance reached to the outskirts of Linz. Why, the Mayor, who, according to his mother, was the most important man in Leonding, also sold vegetables in his store—a most elevated Mayor! Adolf had not been in the school for a day before he felt uncultivated. In recess, he overheard two students speaking of the merits of the opera they had been taken to by their parents the night before. That was enough to give him pause, and he had to wonder what they might say about him. “This Hitler, he has to walk all the way here from Leonding.” Yes, on rainy days, he could take the trolley, but only if his parents gave him the pfennigs to afford it. An outlander! So many of these boys from Linz had never even seen Leonding. They assumed it was mud-ridden. And then he could hardly stay after class and make friends when he had to plod back to the Garden House. His mock wars in the forest had become possible now only on Saturday. There was no time to train troops.

  Before long he was overcome again with the old question. Was he responsible for Edmund’s death? Once more, he chose to talk to the trees. But the conversations had become orations. He inveighed against the stupidity of his teachers and the stale aroma of their clothing. “They are earning a pittance,” he said to a stately oak. “It is obvious. They cannot afford to change their linens. Angela should smell these teachers. Then she would respect her brother!” He had other topics. To an old elm, he declared, “It is supposed to be an advanced school, but I can say that it is a stupid place. It is uncouth.” He could hear the leaves murmuring in assent. “I have decided to devote myself to drawing. I know that I am excellent at capturing every detail of the most interesting buildings in Leonding and in Linz. When I show these drawings to my parents, even my father approves. He says, ‘You are an excellent draftsman.’ But then, he must spoil it. He also says, ‘You have to learn more about perspective. You have not found the right size for the people who walk in front of your buildings. Some could be eight feet tall, others are pygmies. You must learn to draw bodies to scale. The people must be in proportion to the size of the building and to their distance from it. Pity, Adolf, that you cannot get this right, because your drawing of the edifice, taken by itself, would be an excellent sketch.’”

  Of course, half praise from his father was worth more than all of Klara’s loving approvals. It proved his point. Art was worth pursuing, not scholarship. “Scholarly work,” he told the next grove of trees, “is pretentious. That may be why my teachers show a lack of interest in my possibilities. They are snobs. They dance disgustingly over boys who come from rich families. The air of this school, therefore, has become intolerable to me.” What he did not tell the trees is that the only students who would have anything to do with him during recess happened to be the ugliest kids in class, or the stupidest, or the poorest.

  He believed in the wisdom of these old trees. They seemed as wise to him as full-grown elephants.

  Some mornings he would dawdle and so be obliged to take the train from Leonding to Linz. That bothered Klara. It was not a large expense but it was unnecessary when the sun was out. She had a gnawing sense of loss whenever money was disbursed heedlessly. Coins spent in such a manner fell into a well that was dry at the bottom and so made an awful clatter.

  Still, on those many mornings when he did have to walk, his route would take him across fine old meadows and he soon became interested in the forts on the way, particularly after he learned that these crumbling towers were left over from the earliest years of the nineteenth century, when the Austrians had lived in fear that before long, Napoleon was bound to march his armies across the Danube. So they had built these watchtowers. One morning, thinking of the workers who had put them up, and the soldiers who had inhabited them, he became so excited that he had an ejaculation. Afterward, he was languid, but joyous. He was, of course, very late for school and was sent home with a note for Klara to sign. She did not know whether to believe him that he had missed the train.

  5

  There 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 th
emselves.

  “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

  On 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.