The Castle in the Forest

  Yet even the worst marriage allowed one species of magic. The fierce upbraidings one would have liked to present to the world (but did not dare) could now be delivered through critical judgments on one’s mate. All that spiritual excrement! In marriage, it is there to be traded back and forth, a practice which mediocre participants find much more to their need than trying to contain it fecklessly inside.

  Ergo, marriage is a workable institution—especially for dreadful people. Of course, it can also serve men and women who may be seen as average, or slightly better than average. Like our Klara and Alois. And strange shifts into love do occur. Few of these reversals are permanent, but while they last, aeration is offered to what has been an airless union.

  So we are always alert for signs of a fresh breath in the exudations of married people. We can use these turns to shore up the worst of marriages for a period—should that suit our purpose.

  This was not the occasion here. The change in attitude was of their choice, and it caught me by surprise. Intoxicated by the full moon and the June air that came up at night from the fields, Alois lay beside her in a state of trust—he knew her fingers would make no painful mistake as she took care of removing each stinger. There were so many more of them these days, given this lush late spring, but she was deft, she was purposeful, and he was at peace beside her. For this little while, Klara became a presence he had never been able to know—a mother hovering over him.

  Night after night, the ritual took place. He even grew so careless on occasion as to work without the veil. He was not seeking to be stung; he had, after all, acquired the skill to make fewer mistakes. Still, it is fair to say he did suffer a few needless attacks, but they enabled her fingers to play their delicate movements on his brow, the cheeks of his face, the meat of his hands.

  Sometimes, Alois felt as if his brains were creaking. He was entertaining ideas he did not believe could belong to him. He actually began to consider whether the pain from these bites was a means of paying for one’s sins. Just supposing—for in no other way was he ready to assume that he believed in sinning—but could it be that these little wounds were a way of accounting for bad things a man had done?

  What a notion! Until the night that he had this thought, he had been enjoying decent sleep. It came from the knowledge that full-chested Spartaner was out there below occupying a new doghouse built for him on the day after Luther’s death. That had been no small task, but necessary. Not only was a guard dog entitled to his own sense of shelter, especially in a new habitat, but Alois’ handiwork had established close feelings between the hound and himself.

  New ideas, however, can be full of paradox. Alois twisted in the discomfort of considering that guilt might be real. It gave too much dignity to all the weaklings who huddled in churches. They traveled around with a stone in their stomachs and a bigger one up their ass. But now, he did not know if he could scorn them any longer. For he had committed incest. If he had made love to all three of his stepsisters, that was not incest, no, not unless their father was his father. But had he not known that Johann Nepomuk was his father? Of course, he had always known it, although he had chosen not to. It had been the sort of thought he had always swept to the rear of his mind. Now it was in the forefront. Worse. If Klara was not the daughter of Johann Poelzl, then she had to be his child (“Sie ist hier!”) That was a fact as sharp as the knife that had gone into Luther. God Almighty, what if there was a God who knew about things like this?

  In common with most humans, however, he had the mental force to send such thoughts away again. He was not ready to relinquish the soulful pleasures that arrived each night in the wake of the needles removed from his flesh.

  On such June evenings, his pains would resonate within. He did not look to divert these modest agonies by searching for happy thoughts. Instead, he was there, ready to accept the message that came to him from this mysterious province of pain. To Alois, it was a species of music, replete with new sensations for the mind and heart, full of its own clarity even as it spoke sharply, even with some cruelty to his flesh. He laid himself open to the soaring voice of each pain, as rich in amplitude as a choral group. In truth, he was exhibiting the saintliness of a sinner.

  12

  Too little is understood about these matters. Saintliness is present in everyone, even among the worst of the worst. While I would not characterize Alois in this manner, he was looking, nonetheless, to pick up a morsel of beatitude at small cost to himself. He did not know that offering one’s skin to the rhapsodies of small torture is but another means of avoiding one’s fears of divine retribution. Since he had come much too near, however, to a full acknowledgment of incest, his upsurge of saintly sentiments soon had to be altered. By morning, he was thinking like a policeman again. When an officer of the law detects a vice in himself, he knows enough to start looking for its presence in others. Soon enough, he began to worry about Alois Junior and Angela. Was there something unworthy going on in that quarter? He did not like the tone of the conflict that was developing between the boy and the girl over who could or should ride Ulan.

  To the father’s surprise, young Alois was not trying to keep total possession of the horse. To the contrary, he was offering to teach Angela how to ride. A danger sign. At the tavern, Senior had already picked up a few rumors about a girl named Greta Marie Schmidt—nothing to insult him or his son personally, but Junior had been teaching Greta Marie to ride bareback.

  Now it was Angela’s turn. She kept refusing. Junior kept teasing her.

  “You are afraid to get on Ulan’s back,” he would say.

  “I am not.”

  “You are. Admit it.”

  “No. It is simple,” she said. “I do not want to get up on Ulan. What for? If I learn, and am good at it, what then? You will still keep the horse to yourself. I will have to beg for rides.”

  “I will let you go on him as often as you wish. All day, if it comes to it.”

  “No. You will drive me crazy. I know you.”

  “This is an excuse. What you fear is obvious. You are afraid of being thrown.”

  “I am not.”

  “Yes, that is it.”

  Finally, she said, “Have it your way. I am afraid. So, why not? That horse will throw me, and I will break my neck.” She was ready to start crying out of annoyance itself. “You are so very sure of yourself. You ride around wherever you want, but I know what will happen. I will get up on him and he will gallop. I will die of a broken neck.”

  “Never. Your neck is just as stubborn as you are.”

  “Oh, yes, you are very funny. But if I die, what will you care? You have girls all over the place. I hear about them. You are always kissing them, and then they kiss you back. But I am thirteen years old this week and I have never been kissed. So I don’t want to die before I even know what that is like.” Now she did burst into tears.

  Alois Senior overheard this conversation. As he approached the barn, he was in time to witness young Alois’ reaction. The boy was unable to stop laughing.

  At this moment, Alois told himself that maybe it was for the best if the boy did spend all that time out there riding the hills, yes, better for all if he carried on with some farm girl, rather than fooling about with Angela.

  Now Alois Senior began to wonder if the two had ever been together. Was it not likely that they had seen him approaching the barn? If so, this conversation—had it all been for him? Were they capable of such subterfuge? Why not? Their mother had been. Of course.

  Over the next few days, Alois Senior tried to observe Angela closely. But he had spent too many years getting people to feel ill at ease through the intensity of his gaze. No surprise, then, if Angela was unsettled by her father’s attention. She began to wonder why he was interested in her. At school, she had heard such stories. One girl had even been doing things with her father. Or so it was whispered. Ugh, disgusting, thought Angela, so very disgusting.

  Now, whenever Alois Senior was near, Angela would slide around h
im, drawing her hips in toward her belly as if to make certain nothing brushed.

  This upset Alois. She was too artful at keeping her distance. He certainly did not approve of female sophistication in girls as young as Angela. The manner, indeed, by which she drew in her hips. Where had she learned to do that?

  Klara had no such concerns about Angela. It was Alois Junior who bothered her most. Since they could not send the boy back to the Poelzl farm, they must do something with him. After all, she had learned one simple lesson from life. It was that permanent situations were often not comfortable. A poor solution to a problem could sometimes prove better, therefore, than no solution. She had learned as much from her father and mother. If the Poelzl children kept dying, her parents had managed at least to love the few who were left.

  While she could not even bring herself to like Alois Junior, and no solution was in sight, still she must decide upon one. Her husband was not going to plant potatoes again next summer. That was obvious. And putting in beets might prove just as unsuccessful. His bees, however, had been acceptable. Perhaps they could do something in that direction.

  Klara fixed on this. An imperfect solution—to repeat her wisdom—was better than no solution. Idleness was equal to the boy riding horses up and down the hills and getting into trouble.

  So she suggested to Alois that perhaps they should build a bee house where they could install ten or fifteen hives. A real business. That would keep them busy. And, she added, it would be good for Junior. Alois could make him a young partner. A small share of the profits could even go to him.

  “Take him on as a partner? You don’t even trust him. So you have told me again and again.”

  “I said all that, yes,” she had to agree, “but I do understand your son.”

  “You do? I would say you make a lot of remarks. And they are contradictory.”

  “I understand him,” she said. “He is ambitious. And he doesn’t know what to do with himself. But I can see. He wants to make money. I will admit—for now, he is a little wild.”

  “He will always be wild,” said Alois.

  “Maybe so,” she admitted. “But boys change. If we do nothing…”

  “I must think about this.”

  The notion did appeal to him. Hitler and Son, Apiarian Products. If that crybaby, Adolf, and the snot-nose Edmund ever developed, it could be Hitler and Sons.

  That would be down the road. But Klara was correct. They must do something to put the boy’s ambition into focus. At present, he looked upon work as ignoble.

  Alois went back to his books. Over the next couple of afternoons, he dredged up from his several tomes some of the history, culture, and ancient traditions of apiculture as a way of preparing to give a small lecture to the family. It would be designed for Junior, of course, yet not as elementary as his discourses in the taverns of Linz and Fischlham, but better, worthy of Der Alte.

  He would tell about the endless strife between bees and bears in the Middle Ages. That, decided Alois, would make a good beginning. Give the family a taste of how even as recently as one hundred years ago, beekeepers would climb high trees to get to hives that bears could not reach. Then insert a little culture. “This was a common practice in northern Spain and southern France,” he would tell Junior. “One has to know which trees to choose. I can tell you. They were alder and ash, beech and birch, and most certainly, honorable elm trees, maples as well, oak, and willows. Lime trees,” he could hear himself declaring, “lime trees have always been great favorites for the bees and for us as well, even to this day. Such honey retains the finest aromatic traces of the skin of the lime. Yes,” said Alois, addressing Alois Junior in his thoughts, “this love of the bee for the lime tree goes back to the very end of the Neolithic period, close to five thousand years ago. And the bees certainly knew how to build honeycombs in those days. North of here, up in Germany, they found one honeycomb recently, a fossil, that may have been larger than any man who ever lived. Unbelievable. An eight-foot-long honeycomb. They found it, yes.”

  He was prepared to give whole funds of new information at the midday Sunday dinner. Get into the Greeks and the Romans. Since he rarely spoke at such times, as if to rebuke Klara for spending the morning in church, the meal was generally consumed under the overarching profundity of his silences, but now it was his sense that a full exposition would impress Alois Junior, and a recital of the number of countries involved might be enough to stimulate his respect. He would have stories to tell about the Bassari in Senegal, the Mbuti of the Ituri forest, and the honey hunters in southern Sudan.

  Yet, when it came to deploying such new erudition at the table, he decided to give the lecture up not too long after he embarked on it. Perhaps he had crammed too much knowledge into himself. Klara kept nodding with approval, but whether it was for his words or the apple strudel she had made, he could not really say, and Angela kept nodding with an expression that spoke of schoolhouse miseries. The three younger children were half-asleep, and Alois Junior, who had shown a bit of interest, began to wilt.

  Alois Senior had to contain his temper. It had gone wrong. He simply did not have the eloquence of Der Alte. “You,” he said at last to Alois Junior, with an address as direct to the youth as a poke in the ribs. “You and me—let us go for a walk.”

  What a mistake to have given that lecture at a midday meal. It was obvious. When the boy was eating, he did not like to think. Could he be just like his father?

  Alois did not take him far from the house, but sat him down on a bench near the hives and spoke instead about the money that they could make by working together. “It is even possible that we could bring in Der Alte. He has made hints. He would be happy to work with us. That leads me to believe we would have much the better of the bargain. In a few years, you could be a prosperous young man, yes, most prosperous. And let me say to you, good-looking young fellows like you are able to marry to advantage when it is seen that they are also able to make a fine living. We give it three years of hard work, and you will be sitting on top of a pretty good heap. Especially since you have a sharp sense of what is what. Believe me, you will be able to take your choice of some very good matches.”

  The afternoon sun was hot, and the boy was dispirited. Greta Marie had been unavailable that morning—she, too, had been in church with her parents, and so he had visited Der Alte, who on this occasion had been so greedy that Junior felt stripped of vigor. Der Alte’s body odor was still in his nostrils. What a joy to work every day over the next three years with these two old men! Der Alte would be full of secret signals that his father might pick up, and it could be guaranteed that Alois Senior would find something to frown about every day.

  This sweet talk was so full of fraud. Work for his father? Be a slave for three years? Too many good things were waiting. The moment he was ready, he would leave them and go to Vienna. The more abruptly, the better. He had not forgiven Klara for being so rude to him last week. No, he would never forgive that.

  “Good and honored father,” he said, “I appreciate your concern for my future. I, too, think about it, and often. I have come to certain conclusions.”

  “Yes,” said Alois, “that is the first step to making a life for oneself.”

  “So true. You speak with the knowledge of your gifts. I can say that I am full of respect for them.”

  He had now arrived at the obstacle that stood between them like a fence. Yesterday, for the first time, he had taken a jump with Ulan. It had been a hedge, and could have thrown both of them. But he had known. He had to take the jump. And he did. This was not the same, and yet in one way it was. He would have to do it again right now, by speaking up.

  “Everything you say is so correct, Father, but…” He hesitated just long enough to repeat, “What you say is true for a person like yourself, who is not exactly like myself. I have other gifts. So I believe.”

  Alois nodded profoundly in order not to show his annoyance. “Perhaps you will disclose what these gifts might be.”

/>   “I would say I have a gift for dealing with people.” His father nodded again. “When I think of what I will do in years to come, it will be to make my living that way. By dealing with people.”

  At this point, he chose to stare into his father’s eyes. It was no mean feat, but he held the glance.

  “Do you wish to say that farming is without appeal to you?” said Alois Senior.

  “I must tell the truth. It is.”

  “But you wouldn’t go so far as to say our little apiary has no appeal.”

  “I like the taste of honey. That is true. But I think I enjoy talking to people more than listening to our bees.”

  Now Alois dipped into his best reserve of wisdom. “Son, I am prepared to let you in on a secret that will save you a few years. Maybe more. One cannot charm people for long. Especially if you have nothing else to offer. People must respect you. If they do not, they will laugh with you, yes, they will sing with you, oh, yes, and then, poor boy, they will laugh behind your back. Hard work is the only basis for a solid continuing exchange between two serious people. A man who tries to get by on good talk is nothing but a fiddler.”

  “I respect hard work,” said Alois Junior, “but not the kind that calls for being a farmer. A young man who works on the land all his life becomes, in my opinion, as dumb as the earth. That is not for me.”

  “I do not think you understood what I have said. It is not the earth I am asking us to use but the air. I am thinking of the little creatures who fly through the air. Plus Der Alte. Let me put him into our discussion. I see the most profitable use we can make of him.”

  “Father, with all respect, I cannot agree. You have said it yourself. He knows more on this subject than we do.” The illumination that had come from vaulting the hedge with Ulan was with him once more. A direct sense of exultation. It was as if his blood not only insisted that he speak, but that he be ready to insult his father. That would be equal to taking your horse over a much bigger jump. “You must face it,” he said, “we are not ready for Der Alte. He would rob us blind.”