The Castle in the Forest (12 page)

^{a lover overwhelmed for a moment by the implicit equality of flesh to flesh, soul upon soul. At such instants, she felt as if this child was closer to her and knew more about her than anyone.}

^{Now, as Adolf stared at the wet dog and then at the overflushed face of his father, there was no tenderness in this look, but much comprehension.}

^{Klara felt an odd panic, as if she must now startle the little boy into weeping so that she could give him her breast and thereby remove him from the room. And she succeeded. Adi burst into a rage as she took him up, bore him away, and force-fed him. Indeed, he nipped her enough with his young teeth for Klara to cry out, whereupon he stopped bawling long enough to give a deep and hearty chuckle.}

^{From the room she had just quit, she could hear Alois bellowing.}

^{“That dog can’t learn to control himself!” he cried out of his own pain at the awful turn the evening had taken. Luther was bleeding at the mouth from blows he had received full-face on his muzzle, but in turn, Alois’ palm had a small but ugly laceration from raking one fierce slap across a broken incisor in the middle of Luther’s sad front teeth.}

⁴

^W

^{hile I delight in writing about these people like any good novelist, and so am ready by turns to observe them sardonically, objectively, ironically, sympathetically, judgmentally, even compassionately, still I must remind the reader that though I do not present myself as sinister (since I have no desire to gratify a casual reader’s notion of how a devil is supposed to behave), I re-}

^{main a devil, not a novelist. My interest in character is, however, genuine. From the onset of our service, the Maestro instructed us to make humankind an ongoing study. He even encourages us to feel close to what is godly in people. If one is to be alert to the spoils that may be there later, it helps to comprehend the subtle differences between genuine and counterfeit nobility. If we had religious orders in our muster, I might be the equivalent of a Jesuit. I share with them a fundamental understanding. I am always ready to acquire a sympathetic comprehension of an opponent—I see it as my duty to be ready, indeed, to know more about godly sentiments than all but the most gifted of the angels.}

^{That may be why the Maestro encourages us to speak of God as the D.K. (At least those of us who work in German-speaking lands. In America, it is the D.A.—dumb ass! In England, the B.E—bloody fool! For France, A.S.—
l
’
âme simple.
In Italy, G.C.—
gran cornuto.
Among the Spanish, G.P.—
grande payaso.
)
So D.K. stands for
Dummkopf.
It is not that we look upon God as stupid—never so! Moreover, we know from experience (and lost battles) that the Cudgels can, on occasion, be as bright and incisive as ourselves. Our use of the word Dummkopf comes, I expect, from the Maestro ‘s determination to wean us from our greatest weakness—the unwilling admiration we feel for the Almighty. As the Maestro never allows us to forget, God may be powerful, but He is not All-Powerful. Hardly so. We, after all, are also here. If the D.K. is the Creator, we are His most profound and successful critics.}

^{All the same, we have to recognize that the angels have succeeded in convincing most of humankind that our leader is the Evil One. So our best recourse, the Maestro suggests, is to take pride in the term. When I write E.O., or speak of the Evil One, it is with full knowledge of the irony of the concept. The Maestro has given us so much, our subtle master. “Leave excessive reverence to the God-worshippers,” he tells us. “They need it. They are always on their knees. But we have work to do, and it is tricky. I recommend that you keep thinking of Him as the Dummkopf. For, indeed, given what He could have achieved, this is what He is. Remember:}

^{It is our universe to gain. It is His to lose. Keep calling Him the Dummkopf. He has not accomplished as much with his men and women as He intended.”}

⁵

^T

^{he reek of the urine, the shit, and the blood of Luther became the first in a series of episodes remarkable for their powers of
transmogrification
—that is to say, dramatic and thoroughgoing metamorphosis.}

^{So, for example, Adolf’s bowel movements now began to dominate Klara’s life in the house on Linzerstrasse. Before the episode with Luther took place, she had certainly been alert, no matter how often Adi soiled his wrapping cloths, to keep the child clean; indeed, the act, as I have remarked, became a dalliance between mother and boy. She wiped him so carefully that his eyes gleamed. He discovered heaven. There it was, right up in his anus next to the gas and the cramps. All the while, his mother subtly, tenderly, delicately expunged the soil, wet or dry, from his
rosebud
(which was, of course, Klara’s secret name for her dear baby’s incomparably dear little hole—
die Rosenknospe
)
.
She was so proud of its pink sheen that she could not even suppress her joy when her stepchildren were watching. Indeed, unlike other good mothers in Braunau, she barely bothered to teach Angela how to substitute for her. She was, after all, wholly superior to the unhappy elements in the procedure. His stool (which could be as rank as any other colicky child’s) did not occasion her disgust. If the voiding had been outrageous in smell, or what was worse, gave a hint of the empty cavern that lurks in the odor of grave illness, her breath remained calm. In truth, she preferred the stink to be rich. The stronger, the better. A sign of health. Such was her love for Adi.}

^{Yes, love sparkled between them. His eyes danced as she dredged his cheeks with feather-smooth wipes of the rag, and her eyes—whether she knew it or not—were so full of admiration that his little penis stood up. She, in turn, would giggle and coax it back (most properly) as they both laughed. For, of course, it jumped up again. Whereupon she wished to kiss the tip, and then blushed. Be assured! She did not. Such innocent joy.}

^{All this had to change after the episode with Luther.}

^{She lived again in high fear of Alois. Now she was always in fear that Adi’s swaddling cloths might bag open. What if Alois came upon a plop on the floor? Once, stepping out of the parlor to start a dish in the kitchen, she returned in the next minute to see the child playing with his spoil, and shuddered at the thought of Alois coming through the door.}

^{So, training began. It was like trying to teach a bright but willful dog. In the beginning, Adi might even tug at her skirt, or take her to the closet that held the chamber pot and cry out for her to remove his cloth. After which, as she complimented him for his prowess, they would go, two spirits in one, through the wiping. For such intelligence, she offered full praise. His eyes would glow.}

^{She became, however, too hopeful—which is to say—too ambitious. She wanted Adi to learn how to unsnap the safety pins that held his cloth. Indeed, he was able to. Day by day, success followed success, until one morning, he pricked his finger. After that, he would not go near the pins again. She lost patience. He had come so near and now he refused to continue. Finally, she scolded him, and that was certainly the first time he had heard such a tone issue from his mother. He rebelled. Knowing how important he was to her, his response was keen—he felt the same clarity of mind with which he had watched Alois beat Luther. At that moment, the boy had been illumined by new knowledge. He did not measure the difference between a dog and a man, for Luther was still as much a person to him as his father, but he could see the instant result: Luther had collapsed into abject terror, and yet the dog still loved his master.}

^{So would Klara love him, he decided, even when he would not}

^{obey her. Taken out of his cloth and allowed to run naked from the waist down, he began (never when his father was at home) to leave his product right next to the chamber pot. Which brought Klara so close to screaming that Adi could hear every sound she did not make. In consequence, he felt masterful.}

^{He went too far. One day when she was in the midst of waxing her kitchen floor, he spread his spoil over the upholstered arm of the parlor couch, studied it, knew by a new tumult in his chest—so curious in sensation—that this was different. Risk was present. All the same, he would show it to her. He did.}

^{This time she stood stock-still. She sensed that he had done it on purpose, and so did not say a word, merely cleaned the sofa, by which time he had an attack of diarrhea and began to laugh and to bawl, but she did no more than sigh and clean him soundlessly in listless loveless fashion. This made such an impression on him that he awoke in the middle of the night and went to her bedroom. Alois had been called to Passau for preliminary interviews and the house had not seen him for a week, but just before midnight he had come home. Since the boy enjoyed going to his mother’s bed whenever she was alone, he was surprised, even as he cracked the door, to hear a little gasping, and wheezing, and then the bull-roar of Alois’ voice. Beneath were his mother’s cries, soft, and full of the oddest torture, cries that spoke of joy soon to come, so soon to come, yet still, beyond reach, yes, now, almost! No, not yet! Through the half-open door (kept open particularly for her to hear him should he cry) he saw a sight his mind could not take in. Something looked like four arms and four legs and two people, but one of them was upside-down. He could make out Alois’ bald head and side-whiskers pressed between his mother’s legs. Then, without a word his father sat up. He was now sitting on her face!}

^{Adolf walked away as silently as he had entered, but he had no doubt. His mother was betraying him. Just then he heard a final set of cries intense enough to turn him back toward the room. From what he could see by moonlight coming through the window, his father had begun to belabor Klara with all of his body, his big belly}

^{slapping on her belly. And she was grunting like a dog. So full of contentment! “You beast, you are an ugly man, you are an animal, you!” and then again, “You, yes,
you, ja, ja, ja.
”
There was no question. She was happy.
Ja!}

^{He would never forgive her. That much the two-year-old knew.}

^{This time Adolf went all the way back to his room. He could, however, hear them still. In the bed next to him, Alois Junior and Angela were giggling. “Goosey, goosey,” they kept saying back and forth.}

⁶

^H

^{e began to bawl for his milk not thirty minutes after Klara had sunk into the best sleep she had known for years.}

^{Must one suppose that because a child’s deepest reactions seem to have a half-life of no more than thirty minutes, they cannot be profound? Because of that betrayal, he might never love his mother as much again. Yet his feelings were heightened. There was pain in his love now, and an anger which revealed itself by nipping at her breast with his teeth. Indeed, for a few days, he felt close to Luther, and when drowsy, would sleep beside the dog through an afternoon. Truth, he saw the hound as a sibling, and this brotherly affair went on until Adolf began to take too much advantage, punching Luther in the belly, trying to poke his eyes, and sometimes trying to kick him in the ribs. When the dog began to growl at his approach, Adolf would whine and run to Klara. There was a period when her delight in breast-feeding was gone. The nipping at her breast had done it. The days of weaning were at hand.}

^{In those private councils of her mind that would never be available to her child, her stepchildren, her husband, nor even to the}

^{confessional box, she had come to the conclusion that she must have another child. If this came in part from the old fear, even now, that Adolf might not live, she also feared that she would never love him as much again, no, not as once she had, and so maybe there should be another child.}

^{Besides, she was entering a new time in her marriage. She looked forward to being with Alois in their bed. For on such evenings—after all these years—desire came alive again, desire was there!—down in the marrow, deep!}

^{We may remember that the last time we saw Alois, he was burying his nose and lips in Klara’s vulva, his tongue as long and demonic as a devil’s phallus. (Be it said: we are not without our contributions to these arts.) Alois was certainly being aided by us. Never before had he given himself so completely to this exercise, and quickly he had become good at it, and so quickly that no explanation is possible unless we are given credit as well. (Which is why we speak of the Evil One when joining in the act—we do have the power to pass these lubricious gifts to men and women even when we are not attempting to convert them into clients.)}

^{By morning, Alois could not believe he had done it. To lower himself to such an extent! To make her pay for such bottoming on his part, he had, we must recall, clumped his buttocks once more over her nose and mouth—precisely the frightful sight that drove Adolf back to his bed and caused him to bawl for milk not a half hour later.}

^{Yet, by morning, Alois also felt tender toward Klara. This unexpected gentleness in concert with the astonishing pleasure he had given her by way of his tongue, a joy whose unexpected preciosities had conducted her up to, yes, all-but-occult regions, had also left her ready enough to forgive the rotten part. (Indeed, his heavy behind smelled better than Adi’s.)}

^{As a devil, I am obliged to live intimately with excrement in all its forms, physical and mental. I know the emotional waste of ugly and disappointing events, the sour indwelling poison of unjust punishment, the corrosion of impotent thoughts, and, of course, I}