The Castle in the Forest

by Norman Mailer

  So the weeping, while in full view of everyone in church, did have to live with ongoing inhibitions. His sobbing pinched off each time he had a memory of Alois’ body at the Gasthaus Steifer, and he was able to cry in earnest only by thinking of how awful it had been for Der Alte to die alone and not be found for weeks. Given these impediments, he was often close to hiccups.

  Klara sat close to Adolf on this occasion, but her maternal sensitivities, never wholly removed from telepathy, had her soon thinking of bees. She remembered how she would talk to the Langstroth boxes in Hafeld on evenings when Alois was at the tavern in Fischlham. Now she wondered whether she might even leave a wreath on the empty beehive that still remained at the back of the house in Leonding. Alois’ last little hive had only given them a small return of honey, but back in Hafeld, following the old customs of Spital and Strones, she had made a point of talking to the beehives and would relate to them what was going on in the family. During her childhood she had been told that it was bad luck not to speak to your bees. They expected such attention. But if you ever were so unlucky as to see a swarm alight on a dead plant, why, then, a member of the family was bound to die.

  When Alois had started the new hive in Leonding, she had told him about this practice and asked if he would like her to talk to them. He laughed. “I can see the point if it’s a real bee house of the sort Der Alte had. When there’s a large investment,” said Alois, “one would not wish to endanger it in any manner. So, of course, a few superstitions cannot hurt, and how can one say it will not help? But, if you insist, give a real speech to the bees and tell them all there is to know about us. They will look to pass such gossip on to the newspapers,” and he had laughed heartily at his own joke, enough for her to regret telling him.

  She remembered how, just six months ago, Alois had cursed bitterly when his hive had swarmed away. That had been the end of the venture in Leonding. The unhappy dream he had had in Hafeld six years ago that his hives would desert him had been realized instead in the summer of 1902.

  Now, at the funeral, a half year later, she was convinced that this flight of his bees had helped to bring on his lung hemorrhage. She knew. He had been afraid to climb the tree onto which they had swarmed. Indeed, he knew in which tree they had installed themselves but pretended he didn’t. Yes, she knew. That was because he did not feel able to climb a tree. So, to make up for that, he had chosen to carry the coal all by himself down to the cellar. So foolish an act! His disappointment with Adolf, his heartbreak concerning Paula—no, she must not dwell on any of this, not for a moment. Nor dare to think of Edmund! She blinked back bottomless grief. One must weep properly at a funeral, and she wanted to scream.

  The priest’s eulogy proved acceptable. She had chosen not to tell him how irreligious was her husband, even as she knew he must have heard many a rumor. All the same, this priest now offered a dignified description of Alois’ service to the Empire. That, said the priest, could also be God’s desire.

  Later, after the funeral, as people came to visit at the Garden House, Klara tried to convince herself that Adolf’s grief was real. Once again she chose to decide that he had loved his father. It was just that both of them had lived too much in their pride, and such pride was bound to turn into animosity. They were men. Anger was natural to them. But beneath was love. Such love could not be expressed easily. In years to come, however, wisps of grief were bound to wander through Adolf’s soul, grief possessing all the tenderness of a mist. So she had decided.

  While this funeral took place on an icy day, and the roads were glass, the trees were bare, and the skies dark, virtually everyone they knew in Leonding was there, as well as his colleagues from the Linz Customs office. Karl Wesseley had come all the way from Prague. He spoke to Klara for a little while and said, “Oh, we used to tease each other unmercifully, Frau Hitler, and how we laughed. Alois, as you know, loved his beer, and I had my preference for wine. ‘You are nothing but an Austrian,’ I would tell him, ‘so you drink beer like a German, but we Czechs are cultured enough to enjoy wine.’ We certainly joked. ‘Ach! You Czechs,’ he would then say to me, ‘You are cruel to grapes. You stamp all over them with your dirty feet and then, when the poor things are feeling very sour from such mishandling, you add sugar and pretend to be connoisseurs. You sip your sour juice and sugar and try not to make a face. Beer, at least, comes from grain. Its feelings are not so tender.’” He laughed as he told her. “Your husband knew how to talk. We had fine times together.”

  Mayrhofer mentioned the frightful day when he had had to tell Alois about Junior’s incarceration. “Dear Frau Hitler,” he said, “I wake up at night and upbraid myself for having been such a messenger.”

  The Linzer Tages Post also carried an ad.

  Bowed in deepest grief, we, on our own behalf, and on behalf of all the relatives, announce the passing of our dear and unforgettable husband, father, brother-in-law, uncle, Alois Hitler, High Official of the Royal Imperial Customs, retired, died Saturday, January 3, 1903, at 10 o’clock in the morning in his 65th year, suddenly fell peacefully asleep in the Lord.

  In the cemetery, Alois’ stone carried his photo protected by a glassed frame, and beneath was the following inscription:

  HERE RESTS IN GOD

  ALOIS HITLER

  HIGHER CUSTOMS OFFICER AND HOUSEHOLDER.

  DIED 3RD JANUARY, 1903, IN HIS 65TH YEAR.

  Adolf decided that his mother was a criminal hypocrite. She would honor her husband’s memory, yes, indeed! “Rests in God,” indeed! All that was left of his father was his picture resting in a frame set on the headstone in the cemetery, the glass in the frame ready to protect the photograph from the wrath of the weather, Alois’ hair close-cropped, his small eyes standing out, just as beady as a bird’s, and his Franz Josef sideburns. Yes, here was a man who had served his Emperor, but how could anyone say he was resting in God?

  Klara, however, was warmed by a notice the Linzer Tages Post gave to the funeral:

  We have buried a good man—this might we say of Alois Hitler, Higher Collector, Retired, from the Imperial Customs Service, who was borne here to his final resting place today.

  She was so proud of the notice. It was not an advertisement. The paper had done it on its own, the paper with the largest circulation in Upper Austria. She read this item over and over. The lines brought back each moment of the funeral. She could picture Adolf weeping once again, and felt considerable comfort. To herself she said, “He did love his father, after all,” and she had to keep nodding her head to sustain the thought.

  2

  Each 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

  School 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 cou
ld 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.