The Castle in the Forest (37 page)

^{on an empty stomach. So Adi made a point of giving sticky kisses to Klara and Angela, delighting in their cries and the panic with which they wiped his kisses off their mouths. Klara, particularly. To scrub her mouth was a reflex, but when she saw a hitch in Adi’s laughter, as if he had been surprised enough by the detestation on her face to allow a tear to pop up in his eye, she caught the boy and kissed him with all the muscular intensity of a mother doing her duty, and Adi, not knowing whether he had been rewarded or further rebuked, crept up on Angela with a small gob of honey on his index finger.}

^{Angela bellowed when it was entwined in her hair, and there was hatred in the sound. He had ripped her away from the sensations cavorting through her. But even as Angela was catching enough breath to scold him, Adi was prancing toward Alois Junior—who stopped him with a look.}

^{Edmund remained. Adi left Edmund with so much honey on his head that the two-year-old dropped more caca into his pants, whereupon Adi went up to Klara, pointed at Edmund, and said, “Mother, I did not make messes like that when I was two years old. This Edmund, he is always dirty.”}

^{Thereby, he handed Angela her quick revenge. She was there on the spot to tell Klara what had happened, and proved so precise in her description that Klara began to scold Adi with words she had not used before, not to him. “This is a disgrace. Do you understand? It is a sin to be cruel to those who are smaller than you. How can you be so bad? God will punish you. He will punish all of us.” She spoke with woe. She did not wish to spoil this splendid family occasion but must do it for the sake of the others, for Angela, and for poor little Edmund, dirty again. “How can you play such a trick?” she said to Adi. “Edmund loves you so much.”}

^{This time she actually did want to make Adi cry. Instead, she was the one with tears in her eyes. He—perhaps it was the honey—felt as important to himself as he had ever been in his six and a half years. He was enraged at these criticisms. He glared at Angela. He whispered to his thoughts, “I will never forgive her. That is a fact!}

^{I will see her into hell!” And with it all, he was proud of himself. He had brought his mother to tears. “Let her cry for once. Not me. It is time for her to learn.”}

⁶

^I

^{must now describe the carnal act of Alois Junior and Der Alte. This is with some distaste. Be it understood, I am without moral judgments on these matters. Devils are supposed to be interested in every form of the bodily embrace, dedicated, casual, perverse, or, as the Americans say,
missionary
—”I got on top and whaled away.” We are, of course, much more interested in sexual deeds that fall into no established fold. Routine practices are inimical to our purposes. First sexual encounters, however, are rarely to be ignored. We speak of them as
primes.
The stakes are larger. Few primes take place without some representative of the Maestro and the D.K. in attendance. Fucking—to employ that most useful, all-but-cosmopolitan, and near-onomatopoeic word, so close to the meats, body slaps, and fats of the occasion—is of real interest to both sides. Much can happen, and quickly. Old habits, whose presence in the psyche have become as heavy as old sandbags standing in place to bolster the trenches, can now be listed.}

^{Small surprise, then, if we are free of moral judgment, and alert to fresh estimates. Will this particular joining weaken our position or enhance it?}

^{I was repelled this time, however, by what took place. Der Alte, after a few habitual courtesies and social commonplaces designed to shield his excessive pleasure (and instant alarm) on seeing Alois Junior at his door—what if it all turned out a disaster?—soon came to recognize (given his decades of experience in these matters) that}

^{Alois Junior had arrived for the precise gift Der Alte had dreamed of offering him ever since they met. “I am so glad you wished to visit,” he repeated several times in the first few minutes, to which Alois finally replied, “Yes, here I am.”}

^{The hitching post was some fifty feet away outside, but Der Alte could hear Ulan swishing his tail. He knew enough not to spend one second more in conversation, but moved over to Alois Junior, knelt before him, laid his hand upon the boy’s crotch. Whereupon—fierce jack-in-the-box—Alois Junior was on his feet, pants unbuttoned, and full of a happy, blood-filled organ, which he thrust at once into Der Alte’s mouth—those yearning, long-unused lips.}

^{It was during the next moments that I became displeased. If I am free of moral judgment, I am hardly void of good taste, and Der Alte demeaned himself. To say it straight, he slobbered over the boy, and spluttered raucously when Junior thrust a full discharge down his throat. Like a baby, Der Alte also peed in his pants. It was, in turn, his discharge—the best urination he’d had in months. Then he was all over Alois Junior with kisses, plus a variety of verbal endearments I will not repeat here. “You taste sweet, your heart is good” is perhaps the most manageable example to offer, and, of course, the most absurd, for Alois Junior did not have to be a client for me to perceive that his heart was cold. His first concern was loyalty to himself. Like all such very young men, he was filled with disgust for this quondam partner, and left as soon as he could.}

^{That took a few minutes. He had no wish to be entangled for the best part of an hour with endearments that sat on his skin like spiderwebs. On the other hand, his practical nature kept him present long enough not to insult Der Alte directly. That could interfere with a return visit. Who knew? If he did not succeed in the next few days in convincing one particular farm girl he had in mind, then back he would come to this old pot. Alois Junior was the stuff out of which our best clients are made—at the age of fourteen, he already understood sex in a manner that was ideal for us. He would soon be adept at acquiring many a dominance by way of}

^{his priapic gifts. That, we can appreciate. So many of our clients have nondescript equipment. We never know when an erection will be there, ready to salute. That creates problems for us, although we can also manipulate whole or partial impotence into its own kind of effective instrument. For example, Adolf was to suffer from such a condition through adolescence, war, and his early political manhood.}

^{Alois Junior was the opposite. Full of his father’s blood, his natural interest was in women, except for what he considered their built-in trap. Girls, like women, were too attached to family responsibility. Boys, to the contrary, were right there—good for getting rid of the constrictions of the groin. And very nice to command a boy, or, better, a grown man.}

^{Yes, he would have been perfect as a client. We would have enhanced his powers. He could have served us in so many ways. My instructions, however, were to leave him alone. The Maestro’s eyes were for Adolf. I understood. It is disruptive to work with two clients in one family, and this is particularly true if they are apart in character. One devil, trying to tend to both, may be left at odds by their conflicting needs. But two separate devils overseeing two clients in one home can be worse. Envy might stir.}

^{So I stayed away from Alois Junior. Soon enough, he did succeed in charming Greta Marie Schmidt, a strapping farm girl to whom he gave rides on Ulan. Before long, he had something like the same set of keys to her private parts that Alois Senior had had with Fanni when she was still a virgin. To use again one of my American vulgarisms (I confess to an unseemly pleasure uttering them), Junior knew Greta Marie from “asshole to appetite.” He had no desire to steal her virginity—that was her well-cocked trap. Moreover, he did not really like her. She was a touch too crude. So he went back to Der Alte. Despite the full-grown odors of the hut, some of those occasions were full of libidinous novelty. Now that things had settled down, Der Alte offered languorous slides and inspired flutters of his tongue—all to the good for Junior, the pleasure lover, but, of course, once done, Junior could barely look at}

^{him. The youth was just as repulsed as I was by all that collaborative sobbing and gurgling. The sad truth was that Der Alte’s tongue was preternaturally excited by the back door. Alois’ buttocks began to feel like the portals to a bounteously endowed temple. He would wait until his pleasure rose high enough to be ready to explode, and then he would turn and give it all to the old boy’s gullet. Afterward he stood still as a statue again, doubly disgusted by the recognition that his father, Alois, was hopelessly in awe of Der Alte. “How well he can speak,” his father had said.}

^{But Der Alte was so ready to serve himself up. So how was he, Junior, to respect Senior? All that awful, endless nervousness about his bees? Always seeking advice from Der Alte. Now that the family had had its feast of honey, here was his father worrying already about when to extract the rest of the product from the remaining two hives.}

^{A near disaster was the upshot. I was not at all surprised. Alois Junior managed to leave one of those cherished hives out in the sun. For no good reason. Distaste for his father so deep he had hardly been aware of it.}

⁷

^H

^{is father came upon the hive, touched the box, felt the heat of the wood, but also recognized that the bees were not yet whipping about in too great a frenzy. He had come in time, and he carried the hive back to the shade.}

^{“
What were you thinking, idiot?
”
he shouted at Alois Junior. The boy felt as if he had been pulled inside out by the power of his father’s voice. The sound came with a thud, heavy as a blow. Adolescents can lose all sense of themselves when an unfamiliar}

^{punishment suddenly assaults them. That is because they are not only full of airs, poses, and witless shows of temperament, but, worse—at bottom, they do not possess a real age. In that instant, Junior ceased to be a youth of fourteen. Till then, he had seen himself as “Fourteen,” a clear concept, stark in its outlines. But, like many another adolescent, he possessed the calculations of a twenty-year-old, while other corners of himself were as prone to self-betrayal as an eight-year-old caught in some foolishness. Like leaving a hive in the sun. At this moment, he actually felt full of tears.}

^{He pleaded with his father. To his shame, he pleaded. “You have given me so much good information,” he said. “So new and so stimulating, dear respected father.” He slapped himself on the forehead. “I confess it may have been too much for my ignorant head. I made a mistake. I know that now. But I believed I was supposed to leave the hive in the sun, yes, for a few minutes—no more, I admit—so as to warm the honeycombs. It was so cold last night. For spring—so cold! I hope I did not make a terrible error.”}

^{He could hear the sound of his voice, sliding off every grip that he might keep on some semblance of manhood. So shrill! “You must forgive me, Father. My mistake is an outrage. I cannot apologize sufficiently.”}

^{He knew it was not enough. A massive weather front had come over Alois Senior, dark as the depths of suspicion. “Think of this, Alois,” his father said quietly. “Our bees, all these bees, do their work by obeying the rules.” Then he glared at Junior until the boy looked away. “They do not have patience with those who are weak or lazy. Or too selfish to remember their duties.”}

^{He took hold of Junior’s chin. His eyes would not let go of the boy’s eyes. He pinched him on the chin, his thumb and forefinger as direct as the claws of a pliers. But the pain rallied the boy. Der Alte had more respect for him, Alois Junior, than for this man, Alois Senior, who happened to be pinching him on the chin. The thought came into his eyes and remained in his expression. By the time it was over, Alois Senior had to recognize that the altercation}

^{had taken a good deal from him. Alois Junior had even dared to glare back.}

^{If this bothered his sense of himself as a father, more was soon to come. Now it was Klara. She had received a letter from her mother that devastated all the uncertain confidence Klara had given earlier to her father’s letter. So soon as she read her mother’s words, she wondered how she could have thought for an instant that Junior had changed.}

^{Of course, writing a letter was agony for Johanna. Klara knew that. From the age of nine, she had been the one to reply to the few letters that came to their house in Spital. Yet now, as if to emphasize the importance of this particular epistolary act, Johanna went on for a full page of the most painful halts and bumps. First she insisted on listing Alois Junior’s virtues. He was so bright, very bright, she could say that to anyone. Good to look at, she would say that too. Junior even brought back old memories of his father, your husband, Uncle Alois, back then when your Uncle was so young, so attractive, a good young man, so responsible. All those years ago.}

^{“Klara, I tell you,” she now wrote, “I have to worry. What have we sent to you? Junior is wild. So wild, Klara, and we send him back to you. Had to, yes. Now Johann must hire another man for help. The new one is a drunk fool. We pay wages to this drunk. That is how much we lose by sending Junior back, but, Klara, this no-good drunk is better than Junior. We are not so afraid anymore.”}

^{Klara went to her sewing basket and took out the letter Johann Poelzl had written. Alois Junior had handed it to her on the day he arrived. She searched the top shelf of a cupboard to retrieve an old letter from her father, one she had taken the pains to wrap in a ribbon. It had carried his blessing on the birth of Edmund. Now, so soon as she looked at it, she knew the piece of paper Alois Junior had given her might be close to her father’s handwriting but was not the same.}

^{Klara did not say anything to Alois Senior. Not until well after dinner. There in bed, he had begun to complain about Alois Junior.}

^{“I don’t get good work from him,” said Alois. “I speak to him, and he does not react to my satisfaction. He is off with the horse. I don’t want to worry, but I do. He can get into trouble. He sees girls on the other side of the hill. In part, that can be my fault because of my conclusion not to raise potatoes this spring. Now there is not enough real work for him.”}

^{It was then that she told him about her mother’s letter. He nodded. He merely nodded.}

^{“What are you going to say?” she asked.}

^{“I will think about it,” he told her. “I must take my time. The next step could be of consequence.”}

^{She was infuriated. She could not sleep. There might as well have been a bug wandering in the bedclothes. If Alois was not ready to scold his son, she would have to. But she could hardly be ready for this. It was his son, after all.}

^{On the following evening, not long before supper, Alois Junior began to act as if he now knew that there had been another letter. It is the best explanation I can offer for why he chose to break an egg on Adi’s head.}

^{The reason was simple. His girl, Greta Marie, had shown him a little more that afternoon of what she was at bottom—a dull cow. So the need for a new endeavor was in his fingertips. Something new. Having felt like smacking Greta Marie around, he now moved close to Angela. His sister was clucking again over her chickens, collecting each
egg
from each hen as if it were a gold ingot—plain, dirty, hen-stained eggs. So he took one out of her basket. Just to hear her scream. But when she did, he was ready to break the
egg
on her head. Only, he could not. She was his full sister—who else did he have? So he put the
egg
back. Nonetheless, this act cost too much. Yet here now was Adi, beside him, slunk up within reach, smelly little hyena. Right after coming back from his gallop with Ulan, he had seen Adi lying on the floor of their barn, screeching away, one more temper tantrum.}

^{Junior lifted him off the barn floor, then forced him into a standing position. “Keep quiet,” said Alois Junior.}

^{“Try and make me,” said Adi.}

^{Alois Junior knew that the kid would go yowling to his mother. He always did. Adi had a mother—whereas he didn’t. Therefore, he had to put up with the brat. It was a truce.}

^{On this late afternoon, however, Angela was offering baby talk to her chickens, and Adi was leering at him. So safe on his side of the truce. “Try and make me.”}

^{Junior took an
egg
out of Angela’s basket, smashed it on Adi’s head, and took his time rubbing in the yolk and fragments of shell.}

^{Adolf yowled. It was as if he had anticipated just this species of showdown. Now, all on his own, he proceeded immediately to squeeze his gummed-up hair long enough to coat his palm with some of the spattered yolk. Which he wiped on his shirt. When it did not leave a large enough stain, Adolf lifted another
egg
from Angela’s basket—out came a yip from her!—and broke that all over his own head, face, and shirt, after which he caterwauled as loudly as if Alois Junior had kicked him in the shins. Then he ran from the barn to his mother. Vast screams, loud as catastrophe itself, could be heard.}

^{Klara came running back, holding Adolf by the hand, her tirade begun before she reached them. She was trying to tell Alois Junior about the letter, but it spewed forth in no consecutive order. His lies, she told him, were worse than the filth left by pigs in a sty. “They have an excuse. They are pigs. You have nothing. You are a brute. You are a pig. You are nothing but filth.” She could not believe her words. They were so strong. To her surprise, Alois Junior actually began to sob. In all of this, he had not had until now any real idea of how ready he had been to love her, and how ready she was to dislike him right down to the depths. Yes, secretly, he had thought she really did like him, yes, more than she did his father. Now he felt filthy. To his ego, this was equal to a bereavement. He could not bear it. Just as suddenly, his sobs were choked. By his will. He stopped crying on the instant, nodded formally, and strode away. He did not know where the world would take him, nor when, but he understood that he would not remain in Hafeld. He could}