The Castle in the Forest

  This, it can be repeated, is but a first approach to the perversities embedded in existence, a sketch of the true complexity of events.

  For example, I can recover, if necessary, the concealed, even long-buried, memories of a client. Such power, however, consumes Time. (Time is a word I capitalize since for us, as well as for the angels, it is a resource comparable to Money’s power over humans.) We are always calculating the Time we can afford to give each of our clients. My need to acquire more insight in a given situation must always be balanced, then, against the investment required at working our will upon a particular person. For this reason, the average human is not usually of interest to us. Their powers of insight, memory, and ill intent are limited. Rather, we look to find men and women who are ready to transgress a few large laws—whether social or divine.

  Such men and women are, I fear, no longer common. Often we have to be content with mediocrities. In our company, provided we are sufficiently patient, we can improve them. That can produce promotions for oneself. I have had clients whom I was able to develop to the point where they could serve in one or another of our larger projects, and my own situation prospered from that. The average client, however, caught in the back and forth between a guardian angel and a directing devil like myself, often ends by producing little that is useful to either Kingdom, and I can certainly recall a few unhappy situations where the guardian angel who was my opposite number came away with the spoils.

  At one unhappy period in the past, as a result of such losses, my position did suffer. For a time, I was assigned clients of petty origin or modest achievement. I encouraged common soldiers, for instance, to injure the morale of their company by desertion, I encouraged workers and peasants who looked to stir up revolutions but turned corrupt. I knew a few priests in small towns who got into trouble with little boys, and more than a few estate managers who pilfered funds. I indulged petty barons and counts as they gambled away the last of old holdings, and I might as well list petty thieves, drunken louts, and unfaithful husbands and wives of the worst sort. I had a horde of clients, but only a few could stimulate my developed skills. So often, I had to serve as proctor for clients born with little who soon proceeded to have less. While I could rarely know whether the Maestro was safeguarding my talents for some future purpose or continuing to relegate me to various backwaters, I took hope on one occasion when he chose to remark that I might yet be given a post comparable in its challenge to some of the epic encounters of our Kingdom during the first three centuries of the Church in Rome. Yes, that might still be there for me, provided I was ready to pay unremitting attention to my humdrum duties with wretches, thugs, and drunks. I did, and eventually was selected to oversee the work of a number of minor demons who were keeping watch on an Austrian family whose developed potentialities might yet prove astounding. Insignificant at present was this embryo, and his parents equally so, but he had ancestral fault-lines full of the intoxicating stink of our old friend blood-scandal. So I was to stay close to him after his birth.

  I did not dare to ask, but at this point, the Maestro chose to speak directly to my curiosity. He said: “Why have I been so interested in this creature not yet born? Can it be that he will yet possess a mighty ambition? I may propose that you take him on full-time. At present, however, it is no more than a project. It could certainly fail. In time, if he develops the greater part of his promise, he could, as I say, become your only client. Must I say more?”

  All this was uttered by the Maestro with characteristic irony. We never know how serious he might be when he speaks to our mind’s ear. (His voice is a cornucopia of humors.)

  In any case, I dared not ask: What if I fail? Many projects do. On the other hand, I soon learned how he was conceived.

  Some readers may notice that I first spoke of that exceptional event as if I were the one in the connubial bed. Now I state that I was not. Nonetheless, in referring to my participation, I am still telling the truth. For even as physicists presently assume to their scientific confusion that light is both a particle and a wave, so do devils live in both the lie and the truth, side by side, and both can exist with equal force.

  The explanation—provided one is ready to follow—is considerably less difficult than, let us say, Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity.

  4

  Spirits like myself can attend events where they are not present. I was in another place, therefore, on the night Adolf was conceived. Yet I was able to ingest the exact experience by calling upon the devil (of lower rank) who had been in Alois’ bed on the primal occasion. I must say that that is always an option for us—we are able to share a carnal act after the fact. On the other hand, a minor devil can, on the most crucial occasions, implore the Evil One to be present with him during the climax. (The Maestro encourages us to speak of him as the Evil One when he does choose to enter sexual acts, and on that occasion, he was certainly there.)

  Afterward, once I began my assignment to young Adolf Hitler, the moment of impregnation was repeated for me by the devil who had been present. It came into my senses with a completeness of odor and physical impact that can be termed absolute. Thereby, it happened to me. Among us, to be given an exact recollection is equal to being present. So I also knew from the incomparable intensity of the occasion that the Maestro had actually joined with the attendant devil for one instant (even as Jehovah offered His immanence to Gabriel during another exceptional event).

  While I would not be attached exclusively to Adolf Hitler for some years, he was always in my Overview. So I am ready to write about his early life with a confidence no conventional biographer could begin to feel. Indeed, it must be obvious by now that there is no clear classification for this book. It is more than a memoir and certainly has to be most curious as a biography since it is as privileged as a novel. I do possess the freedom to enter many a mind. I could even say that to specify the genre does not really matter since my largest concern is not literary form, but my fear of the consequences. I have to be able to do this work without attracting the attention of the Maestro. And that is possible only because in these latter-day American years, he is more attuned to electronics than to print. The Maestro has followed human progress into cyber-technologies far more closely than the Lord.

  I have chosen, therefore, to write on paper—which can offer a small protection. My words may not be picked up as quickly. (Even processed paper still contains an ineluctable hint of the tenderness God put into His trees.)

  While the Maestro has no desire to use up any part of his resources by monitoring every last one of our acts—there are too many demons and devils for that—he is also not inclined to let us go on ventures he has not selected. Years ago, I would never have dared to embark on this written record. My fear would have been absolute. But now, in the inundations and engulfments of technology, one can try to steal a bit of secrecy, a private zone if you will, for oneself.

  Ergo, I feel ready to continue. The assumption is that I can succeed in concealing my output from the Maestro. Intelligence work can be understood as a contest between code and the obfuscation of code. Since the Maestro is heavily engaged, and his present existence is more arduous than ever—I believe he deems himself closer to eventual victory—I feel free to venture out. I have grown more confident that I will be able to conceal the existence of this manuscript until, at least, it is finished. Then I will feel obliged either to print it or—destroy it. This second option has always offered the safest solution (except for the near-mortal blow to my vanity).

  Of course, if I publish, I will then have to flee from the wrath of the Maestro. There are options open. I could choose to enter the equivalent in our spirit-life of the Federal Witness Protection Program. That is, the Cudgels would hide me. Of course, I would have to cooperate with them. Conversions are their stock-in-trade.

  Ergo, I have a choice—treachery or extinction.

  I do, however, feel less dread. By revealing our procedures, I can enjoy the rarefied pleasure (for a
devil) of being able not only to characterize but to explore the elusive nature of my own existence. And should I be able to finish, I will still have the choice of destroying my work or going over to the other side. I must say, the latter option begins to appeal.

  Since I am unfaithful to the Maestro, I must show no sign. My modest duties in America are being performed impeccably, even as I offer these further details of the work I accomplished in the early upbringing of my most important client.

  BOOK V

  THE FAMILY

  1

  By the time he was a year old, Klara called the boy Adi, rather than Adolf or Dolfi. (Dolfi was much too close to Teufel.) “Look,” she would say to her stepchildren, “look, Alois, look, Angela, isn’t Adi an angel, a little angel, isn’t it so?” Since the baby had a round face, big round eyes as blue as hers, and a small mouth, and therefore looked to them like any other baby, they nodded with easy obedience. She was a good stepmother and that was all right with Alois Junior, and also with Angela, especially since they had been told by their father that Fanni had been crazy.

  Klara did not plan to speak with such open enthusiasm to her stepchildren about the newborn, but she could not help herself. The beatitude was in her eyes. Adi was giving every indication that he would still be there tomorrow.

  Breast-feeding fed this certainty. She was putting her own strength into him, her ready nipple never far from his mouth. Some of our minor devils, who passed over Braunau at night, would report that her prayers were more heartfelt than those of any other young mothers living nearby. Devils, obviously, have minimal attachment to the sentimental, let alone the heartfelt, but one or two were bothered. Klara’s prayer was so pure: “Oh, Lord, take my life if it will help to save his.” Other women, being more practical, complained to God about what was missing in their days. The most greedy were always looking to own a better house. The stupid were looking for a surprisingly good lover, “yes, if you permit it, Lord.” There was rarely a sweet for which they did not pine. Klara’s prayers, by contrast, yearned to give long life to the child.

  While the Maestro was not often sympathetic to breast-feeding since its absence could stimulate ugly energies we could later employ, he was more tolerant in cases of first-degree incest. Then he wanted the mother to be close indeed to the child. All the better for us! (A monster is most effective when it can call on mother-love with which to charm new acquaintances.)

  Excretory dramas also offer advantages. A dirty butt on a baby can send a signal—the mother may be a potential client for us. The opposite is also of use. Klara proves a fine example here. She always kept a clean house. Her rooms at the Pommer Inn were now as spotless as any home tended by several good maids. The furnishings gleamed. So, too, was Adi’s pip-squeak of an anus kept as immaculate as an opal, small and glistening, and of that, too, did I approve—an incestuary must always be kept aware of the importance of his or her excrement, even if it comes down to a little asshole that is forever being polished.

  2

  Not long after Adolf was born, Alois decided to leave the Pommer Inn. This move amounted to his twelfth change of address in Braunau over fourteen years. But Alois had good words for the Pommer: “It has elegance. I don’t know that I would use the word for much else in this little city.” He had a dozen such remarks to enliven a hundred situations of small talk. “Women are like geese,” he was ready to say. “You can recognize them from behind.” Heavy tavern laughter would follow, even if none of them could explain what was so particular about the rear end of a goose. Or, when speaking to fellow professionals: “To pick out a smuggler is easy. Either they look like the wretches they are, or they are too good to be true. They dress too well, they speak too well, and the amateurs always work very hard at looking you in the eye.”

  When asked, however, why he had moved from the Pommer Inn after a residence that had lasted for four years, he would shrug. “I like a change,” he would say. The truth was that he had used up the waitresses, chambermaids, and cooks at the Pommer who were not too old or too ugly, and he could have added (and did to one or two friends), “When a woman goes dry on you, change your house. That can put a little oil in her.”

  On the day when the Hitler family left the Pommer Inn, he had, however, a most uncharacteristic thought. It was that fate could yet choose him for high position. I will remark that his idea of high position was to become Chief Customs Officer for the provincial capital of Linz. Indeed, fate would yet give him exactly that post. Never superstitious (except when he was), Alois decided that the shift from the Pommer Inn to a rented house on Linzerstrasse was a good move. He and Klara both agreed that they needed more room, and now they had it. Of course, there were no females in the attic, but he could manage with that. He had nosed out a woman who lived on his route home from the tavern. He had to pay for the privilege by purchasing a small gift from time to time, but then the rent on Linzerstrasse was low. It was a dreary house.

  All the while, he fought against falling in love with his wife. She infuriated him. If ants were like bees and had a Queen for whom they labored, then Klara was Queen of the ants, for she commanded his skin to crawl, his crotch to itch, and his heart to toll in his chest—all of this coming from no more than Klara keeping to her half of the divided bed. He had to think of how lovingly she had looked at him on the night of her wedding. She had worn a dark silk dress, rose colored with a white collar—that much white she allowed herself as a bride—and on her white forehead, she had teased some charming curls. At her breast was pinned the one piece of jewelry she possessed, a small green cluster of glass grapes looking real enough to mislead a man into reaching for one. And then there were her eyes—no mistake! He had to fight against falling in love with a woman who kept the cleanest house in Braunau just for him and for three kids—two of them not even her own!—a woman always as polite to him in public as to an emperor, a woman who never complained about what she had and didn’t have nor nagged him about finances, a woman who still had only one good dress, the one worn at her wedding party, and yet if he had laid a finger on her, she would have bitten it off. He wondered if the difference in their age was what it was about. Better than marrying her, he should have put her in a convent. Yet his skin itched at the thought of how she would not let him near.

  Drinking at the tavern, he would look to regain some pride. His dislike of the Church had by now become a conversational grist. At home, he would glean further material from an anticlerical volume he had found in an antique bookshop in Braunau. Indeed, the store owner, Hans Lycidias Koerner, would meet him on many an evening for beer. While the bookseller kept himself at a scholarly level above more mundane discussions by offering no more than a nod of his head from time to time, his wise presence, his shaven chin and shaven upper lip, his full muttonchops, his peephole spectacles, his half-bald head of burgeoning white hair offered a slight but legitimizing resemblance to Arthur Schopenhauer and thus gave support to Herr Koerner’s smallest assent, just enough to carry the other Customs officers around the more bruising turns of Alois’ argument. While they were hardly to be counted as churchgoers—“No good man wants to be neutered,” most were ready to admit—still they were officials. So they could hardly feel at ease when a prestigious institution was mocked, let alone the Holy Roman Church.

  Not Alois. He showed no fear in declaring that he had no fear. “If there is a Providence larger than Franz Josef’s power to provide for us, I have not encountered it.”

  “Alois, not everything comes up to a man with a printed sign,” said the officer closest to him in rank.

  “It is all a mystery. Mystery, mystery, mystery, and the Church keeps the keys, they are our caretakers, ja?”

  The others laughed uneasily. But Alois was thinking of Klara and how her piety left a hot rock in his stomach. He would grind this rock to powder. “In the Middle Ages,” he said, “do you know? The whores, they were more respectable than the nuns. They even had a Guild. For themselves alone! I have read about a con
vent in Franconia so stinking bad the Pope had to investigate. Why? Because the Franconia Whores’ Guild complained about the illegal competition they were receiving from the Franconia nuns.”

  “Come now,” said two drinkers at once.

  “True. It is true. Absolutely true. Herr Lycidias Koerner can show you the text.” Hans Lycidias nodded slowly, reflectively. He was a little too drunk to be certain on which side his authority should fall. “Yes,” said Alois, “the Pope says, ‘Send a monsignor to look into it.’ I ask you: What does this good monsignor report? It is that half the nuns are pregnant. This is the sober fact. So the Pope now takes a real look at his monasteries. Orgies. Orgies of homosexuals.” He said it with such force that he had time to take a long swallow from his tankard.

  “That, of course,” said Alois, once fresh breath had also been ingested, “need not surprise us. To this day, half of the priesthood are mama’s boys. We know that.”