The Castle in the Forest (19 page)

8

I
f Alois had stood in the dock before himself as judge, he would have found the defendant guilty. How could retirement prove so enfeebling to a strong man? He had bought the farm on impulse and now, to double such a bet, had purchased two beehives in their Langstroth boxes. Why, so suddenly, had he committed himself to apiculture over the winter? Hadn't that also been done on too quick an impulse? Der Alte had had the consummate nerve to say to him, even as Alois left, “You will soon see how much work I have saved you.”

What Alois saved in work, he spent in worry. He was still under sixty, damn it, not yet sixty by a year and more, but he had such a sense of inner weariness before these new responsibilities. His two populated boxes were now set under the oak tree with tarpaper underneath for warmth, and more tarpaper above, all kept in place with stones. Two populations housed in two boxes. Each day he read the temperature in each box, then did a weighing once a week. Part of the problem was that he had more worries than work. Should the colonies look weak when spring came, he would combine the two boxes into one, and, if necessary, buy more bees, undertake more expense, more of Der Alte, who would be smelling up his pants, no doubt, from laughing so hard at the great esteemed High Customs Officer Herr Hitler with his ten thumbs all ready to be stung by what he didn't know about advanced apiary matters. Already, in November, Alois was lecturing Angela and Adi, even Klara, on the need in apiculture for immaculate hygiene once warm weather arrived. No matter how warm the day, they must certainly not leave the hives open. Above all, they must never spill honey outdoors. If they did, they must mop it up instantly, for the bees could be drawn to it and might begin to fight for free honey, easy honey, as it lay in a pool on the ground. If the puddle was deep enough, they could drown en masse.

So his fears were enough for him to harangue his family on what might or might not occur in summer. So much depended on what he read each night on how to keep a winter hive.

He did build one new hive box, which he did not need as yet, but he was proud of the skill demanded, even if his box was not the equal of the Langstroths.

Yet such work eased his worries. His chest puffed up with an old truism. “Good German blood understands,” said Alois to his wife, “that blessings do not come from God, but from hard work.” Still, it was not such a very good remark. Why not speak instead of Austrian blood?

That question soon came to bother him. Did a particular blood possess its own virtues? Why, indeed, praise German blood? Why not Austrian? He had an Emperor who could live with the huge (and often) idiotic problems of keeping Czechs, Hungarians, Italians, Poles, Jews, Serbs, plus Gypsies, living in peace under one Hapsburg Empire. Germans couldn't do that. Germans were always squabbling. Without Bismarck, they would be nothing. Petty principalities. King Ludwig I and Mad King Ludwig II, both crazy Bavarians. And Prussians were worse. Prussians had a ramrod up their ass. Why speak then of good German blood? “Because,” he said to himself, “I know what it means.”

Yet what did it mean to decide you knew something when you didn't. Although in some way you most certainly did. A nice enigma. Alois decided that he was now thinking like a philosopher. Not bad for a boy who was once a peasant. He was tempted to bring up the question at the tavern in Fischlham, but didn't, after all. They were dolts. He resented the time he spent with them. By November, he had even found himself drinking there in the afternoons, a proof, if he needed it, that there was not enough work. For that reason, he had chosen to stay away for a few days, and hang some netting near the hives in order to keep birds away in the spring. He even debated whether to visit Der Alte, but recollections of the high odor put an end to that.

Before long, he was back in the tavern. There was one pleasure he did find there. The dolts now saw him as an expert on apiculture. Every bit of advice Der Alte had offered, plus whatever nuggets he had picked up of late in the literature, could now be presented as his own well-acquired lore. Alois would be the first to say that honesty and modesty were excellent virtues and should be employed when dealing with superiors. An inferior mind, however, always wanted to feel that it was listening to a wise man. Since he was more available to the locals than Der Alte, he stood in, therefore, as the resident expert. A farmer even walked over one Sunday afternoon to seek his advice on how to get started. Alois proceeded to overwhelm him with the details of feeding a hive through the winter.

This discourse allowed him to feel like the fine fellow he had once been before his retirement. “The trick,” he told his visitor, “is to master the technique of your special feeder. Because you not only put in the liquid nourishment, and cover the mouth of the jar, as I just explained, using the fine mesh, but you must then hold the vessel upside down over the bunghole above the brood that is waiting to be fed. Do you follow?” Alois could see that he didn't. Before long, this Sunday visitor, thoroughly disheartened, said goodbye—he was not likely to be competition next winter.

My agents kept providing me with these petty episodes. They were missing the depth of Alois' new anxieties. So soon as his visitor left, Alois felt so alone with his project that he began to wonder whether disease might strike the colonies.

He spent an evening reading his books, but the anxieties remained. He had dreams of living in one of his boxes, himself a bee, no more than part of a cluster living in deepest and darkest obscurity. How could these bees guide themselves in that world, so stygian, so bereft of light?

By the end, Alois had raised this dream to the level of a nightmare—now I could feel more interest in what my agents were transmitting. Alois' hive multiplied in the darkness, then escaped from the box and flew far away. They could not be found.

When spring came, would he lose his hive? In the dark, he felt for Klara, and his hand came across her belly. She was so big now, yet the new one wasn't due until January. Would he be a giant of a fellow?

She came awake with his hand on her, and would have nestled into the embrace of his arm, but in the middle of this darkness, he felt a need to discuss a worrisome matter. She was soon wide awake and unhappy.

“I hope,” Alois said, “that you haven't spoken to Herr Rostenmeier.”

She knew immediately what was coming next. Herr Rostenmeier was the owner of the country store in Fischlham, where once a week, on Saturday, she and Angela would buy a few foodstuffs not raised in their garden. Klara liked Herr Rostenmeier, and had begun to talk to him about the sale of their honey. Alois had told her not to make any deals, not yet, because the possibility was still there that he would do business with Der Alte. Nonetheless, she had taken pleasure in the thought that it might still be Herr Rostenmeier, and in that case she could serve as the person in between, and bring a little money back to the house. Her fingers tingled each time she thought of such a transaction.

But now Alois had decided to go to Der Alte. She knew it. “I thought,” she said in the darkness, even as he patted her belly, “that you didn't like that man at all, yes, I remember you said you would have to smell him.”

“He will be good to consult,” Alois said shortly. The tendrils of the nightmare were still with him.

“Yes, yes,” said Klara, “but you told me you don't trust Der Alte. Yes?” She was close to becoming hysterical. To be torn out of an agreeable sleep for this! “Yes, you say you don't trust him, and yet you are still ready to choose this Der Alte over an honest man like Herr Rostenmeier?”

“Klara, this is all because you feel embarrassed,” he told her. “Maybe you had a little too much conversation with Rostenmeier already. Something you haven't mentioned, could it be? A real commitment. Without speaking to me first.”

“No,” she said, “not at all. I am not embarrassed. I made no commitment.” She was tempted to add, “But this I will say, I must say, I will never understand the thinking that goes on in a person like you.” However, she was silent. He would have ridiculed her for such a stupid remark. She would have been up half the night explaining those few words, “A person like you.”

9

N
o surprise. Alois decided to go back to Der Alte after all. Why not? He was a realist, he told himself, and so was used to bad odors. After all, one had to deal now and again with the Devil. (My devils snickered as they told me this.)

Alois paid his visit on the next Sunday and, once again, took Adi with him. This time the boy paid attention to the route. It was but a mile away, and so he knew he would be able to find the hut again by remembering the forks of the path. All the while, he was filled with uneasy excitement. A woe as large as a loaf of bread had settled in his stomach, yet perched above such heaviness, his heart felt most alive. He knew he would not tell his father that he planned to visit Der Alte on another day and very much on his own.

“Yes,” he kept saying to himself, “I will not be afraid to walk there. But not in the night, maybe not. There are too many spirits in the woods then.”

For Adi, the second meeting between Der Alte and his father turned out to be even better than the first. If, at the start, they spoke about the marketing of honey and Adi could hardly follow, the conversation grew interesting once business was done. That was because the old man could not stop talking about the mysteries within the mysteries of bees. “Yes,” said Der Alte in a most resonant voice, “I never weary of contemplating these tiny creatures, with their immortal honey and their near-to-immortal sting. There are such subtleties to their keeping.”

A rich discourse ensued. If Alois was hardly able to speak, he was nonetheless not too displeased, for he would use it tomorrow night at Fischlham. A gift for the dolts! Adi, in turn, listened with care. The words he could not understand lived in his mind by way of their sounds.

“Can we,” asked Der Alte, “ever pay enough attention to this work of Creation? It is so full of genius. These little devils come to us from the Good Lord's divine and curious aesthetic—nature's wisdom expressing itself in this most bizarre form.”

Der Alte went on. He could go on! References to God's ballet, God's gymnastics, God's investiture in wonder and awe. Der Alte was like many of our clients. We encourage them to praise God. In the highest. Always.

For that matter, he went on for so long that Alois was, once more, repelled. Too much time had elapsed without exercise of his own voice. Moreover, he did not like the look in his son's eye. Those blue eyes, so similar to Klara's, large and alive. There was reverence in them now.

Alois managed finally to interject a word.

“Why don't you take us into the kitchen, and show the boy your viewing box?”

It was obvious that Der Alte would prefer not to—even as Alois had expected—but Adi spoke up. “Oh, please, sir,” he cried out, “I have never seen the inside of a bees' home. They have been with us back at the house for so long”—he tried to count quickly—“for seven, no, I think it is eight weeks, and I have not seen even one of them. Must I wait until summer? Please.”

“Spring,” said Der Alte. “It is necessary to wait until spring.” Then, given the disappointment on the boy's face, he shrugged. “All right,” he said, “but you must be prepared. It is winter. Bees are sluggish during these months.”

Indeed, they were. In the kitchen, bare but for a small stove, a sink, a hand pump above the sink, and a pail beneath for the runoff, was also a table. At one end had been placed a narrow glass box, perhaps two feet long and one foot high, its interior concealed on both sides by black curtains. When the curtains were pulled back, two glass walls were revealed, not three inches apart, and a vertical frame stood in the space between, filled with small wax cells, an uncountable number of them.

Adi was disappointed. A cluster of pullulating things, no larger than dark pills in a bottle, kept climbing over each other, startled by the light, a poor gang, crammed, jam-packed, an assembly of what looked to be squashy little creatures about as ugly as roaches. (Their wings were folded.) Adi had not been so disappointed since he had first seen Edmund's homuncular face squeezed up on Klara's breast.

Now these bees could just as well have been beans bumping around in a heated pot, except, no, beans did not look so nervous. What an awful way to live! They miss the sun, the boy thought. Now they were just shoved up against each other. He sighed in preference to bursting into tears.

“At this moment,” said Der Alte, “they are the poorest of the poor, no better than sodden creatures in a slime of their own making. Yet their lives will span the extremities of existence. Now they do nothing, but in summer, you will see them dance in the air, as wonderful as drops of dew in early morning light. So fearless. How they will strut as they enter into the golden petals of the flower-blooms that are waiting for them.”

“Hear, hear,” said Alois. No matter the drear aspects, Der Alte did have a manner. Give that much to the stinkpot.

And Adi was thinking, “These bees can sting you and then you are dead.” He shivered in the old man's kitchen before the incomprehensibility of dying. Yet, right in the midst of this chill, he felt as close to the old man as to his father, for he could listen all day and all night to the wonderful words that came forth.

“Come and visit me,” the old man managed to whisper before Alois gave the signal to leave.

10

I
do not know how powerful an influence this last murmured message could have had on Adi, but I will say that at no moment up to this point did I feel more regret at being obliged to rely on my Hafeld agents. Not long after (on Christmas Eve, no less!), while the rest of the house was asleep, Adi got up from bed, bundled himself into his warmest clothing, and went out to sit on the bench under the oak tree where the two Langstroth boxes had been placed. There he remained for a considerable time, growing colder by the minute. Yet he stayed, and having placed himself between these two boxes, he kept embracing the back of each. He was praying for the continued life of the bees.

This was of signal interest to me. I queried my agents more than once about what they could glean from the boy's thoughts, and some of it seemed of value. That night, Adi had heard his father complain that the screen protecting the hive entrance had been torn. The entrance was small, but all the same, a mouse might have come into the hive. Alois soon decided that this was unlikely—the hole was simply not large enough—but Adi was not convinced. Since his father had repaired the screen that afternoon, Adi no longer knew as he sat between the boxes which one might be occupied by the mouse. Ergo, he set a hand on each.

What with it being Christmas Eve, the boy was full of his mother's spirit of celebration. “On this night, one thousand eight hundred and ninety-five years ago,” said Klara, “the Son of God was born, and he was the nicest human being ever to walk on earth. The loveliest, the sweetest. If you love Him, He will love you.”

Adi was certain. This was one night when you could feel free to breathe the night air, no matter how cold. For the Son of God was present. Would He grant the power Adi needed to kill the mouse by the force of his thoughts?

To kill the mouse by the force of his thoughts? I knew the limitations of my agents. They could not have conceived of such a notion. This had come from Adi. It was his. His alone. If I had been present, I would have raised the stakes. I might have gotten the boy ready to believe that he could save certain lives by exercising the special power he possessed to destroy others. That is one of the most useful suppositions we can implant in clients, but it does call for a sequence of dream-etchings.

Since I was not present, I did my best not to brood over the lost opportunity. There was more than enough to occupy me in St. Petersburg. In company with my assistants, I was facing considerable opposition to my activities. I had never encountered a group of Cudgels as determined as this Russian crew. Nor as brutal. Over the last few centuries, these Russian angels had developed a powerful ability to contest the many demons we had installed within Russian Orthodox churches and monasteries. In consequence, these Cudgels—fully as rough as the meanest Russian monks—were in command of considerable zeal. During these months, they were wholly ready to defend the Coronation of the young Tsar-to-be, Nicholas II.

When the Maestro consulted me, as would occur now and again, I was bold enough to tell him that I did not like our chances of disrupting the Coronation itself. Too much would be arrayed against us. It should, however, not be difficult to create a mighty disorder a few days after the event.

I had dared to speak my mind, but then, the Maestro does not look kindly upon a lack of opinion among his close subordinates. “Allow me to muse upon the perceptions that some of you are able to offer. That is signally more useful to me than silence. I won't allow your fear of being wrong to leave you mentally inactive.”

Enough. It is easy to see that these Russian matters were temporarily, at least, of more concern to me than the small events of Hafeld.

All the same, whether I was interested or not, Klara gave birth on January 21 to the new infant. That brought minimal joy to Alois. The much-anticipated strongman of the future had not arrived. A little girl was in the maternal bed. Now the ruckus of baby feeding at night and baby yowling in the day would go for naught. He had been counting on a powerhouse of a son to sweeten his old age, yes, offer an improvement over the three boys he could not, at present, boast about—the wild one, the mama's boy, and a crybaby snot. So Alois was unready to celebrate the new birth, yet he did—at the tavern in Fischlham night after night for quite a few nights until the beer began to smell as sour as infant spew. There were now six human beings in his home. Come the end of spring, when Junior returned from Spital, there would be seven. The tumult of voices in the bar was becoming comparable to the childish noise at home.

My agents gained nothing from Alois' visits to the tavern. Let men drink in a crowded room, and solidarity rises among them. They soar on zephyrs of grain spirit, a brotherly defiance against the inroads of angels and demons, a certainty that as men, they are at this moment equal to external forces.

These are not good conditions for our work, but openings do present themselves when the drinkers are staggering home. We are ready then. Sometimes, disgusted at the hours lost, we slam them to the ground. They usually take it personally, their lament most characteristic. “Somebody shoved me,” they often cry out. Nobody believes them, but they know better. Wrath had struck between the shoulder blades, and it was not their own rage, not at all.