The Castle in the Forest (43 page)

^{Alois Junior. Was that because he did feel guilty about the boy’s mother? Yes, he had treated Fanni badly, so badly that he could not be stern with her offspring. That had been a lack of discipline in himself.}

^{It took every hour through the darkness of this night for his rage to subside. It was not until the first light of morning—a dim light that came with shrouds of rain at dawn—that he was able to speak from one part of his mind to the other, and so could issue a few orders on what his future conduct with Adi must become. He was not going to make the same mistake he had allowed with Junior.}

³

^N

^{ow, whenever he wished to bring Adi to his side, Alois would whistle. It was a fine drill of a whistle, sharp enough to hurt the ear. Nor did he reduce the intensity when the boy was within reach. In the tavern, Alois was now fond of saying, “If you are raising a son, do not let go of the whip. I speak from experience.”}

^{More than once, Alois said to Adi, “Time and sacrifice were wasted on your older brother. You, Adolf, will not waste my time.”}

^{Adi was paralyzed with fear. I had to wonder how the final effects of this could serve our purposes. We certainly know how to use humiliation and self-abasement as a tool when working with manic-depressives. If we look to drive a client into a violent act, a series of humiliations can stir the subject into oscillating too fast between the poles of his depression and his mania. Soon enough, there is an eruption.}

^{I did not see why we needed anything so drastic here at so early}

^{an age. The Maestro was, however, not urging me to restrain Alois, and the father was drenching the boy’s spirit with wretchedness. Adi was being given more than a hint of the anguish that attaches itself to the onset of ineradicable melancholia.}

^{These are established means for seeding suicide. So I could not know what ultimate purpose the Maestro had in mind. The boy was delicate enough for it to go wrong. What a disaster, and for so little.}

^{Yet the Maestro often surprised us by such moves. He was often ready to take bold chances with the lives of our clients. There were occasions when the Maestro, entertaining an ambitious future for a young client, would be ready to encourage such parental domination and, at times, incite it. I think he saw it as still another species of inoculation against future emotional crises.}

^{Naturally, these gambles could also make for future instability. Once we implant a deep humiliation in a proud client, we also set ourselves the task of converting such a wound into a future strength. That can prove equal in difficulty to converting a coward into a hero. Yet, when we succeed, when the psychic abyss of a would-be suicide is transmogrified into promontories of ego, an immense gamble has succeeded. The once-humiliated wretch has now acquired the power to humiliate others. That is a demonic power and is not acquired easily. Nonetheless, I would not wish to exaggerate. Adi was, at this point, far from being altogether reduced. He did show some talent for pleading his case before Klara.}

^{“Mother,” he told her, “my father now looks at me as if I am always guilty.”}

^{She was aware of this. The whistle had become a needle into her own ears as well.}

^{“Adi, you must never say that your father is wrong,” she told him.}

^{“But what if he might be wrong?”}

^{“He does not wish to be. Perhaps he makes a mistake.”}

^{“What if he is very wrong?”}

^{“It will not remain that way.” She nodded. She did not know if}

^{she believed what she said next, but she said it nonetheless. “He is a good father. A good father always realizes sooner or later that he may have been going in the wrong direction.” She nodded again, as if to oblige herself to believe such words. “There can be a moment,” she said, “when the father recognizes that he, too, can be in error.” She put her hand to the boy’s face as if to cool the fever in his cheeks. “Yes,” she said, “he hears his own words and realizes that they are not correct. So he changes.”}

^{“He does?”}

^{“Absolutely. The father changes.” She spoke as if this had happened in the past. “He changes,” she repeated for the third time, “and now there is order in what he says. Now it goes in a good direction. Because he is ready to change. Do you know why?”}

^“No.”

^{“Because you were able to tell yourself that you would never cause him confusion. You would not do that, because he is your father.” She held Adi by the waist and looked into his eyes.}

^{Klara had been the first in the family to recognize (and she was still the only one) that Adi could be spoken to as if he were ten or twelve years old. “Yes,” she now said, “it is best when there is no confusion in the house. So you must never accuse your father. That might cause him to feel
weiblich.
And for him to feel weak is very bad. You cannot expect him to admit that he has a weakness.”}

^{At this point, she began to speak of
die Ehrfurcht.
To honor and to fear. Her mother had used the word when speaking of Johann Poelzl. He was, she had all but said to Klara, a hardworking but very unlucky farmer—who in the family did not know that?—and yet she had always treated her husband with
Ehrfurcht,
as if he were an important and successful man. “That is what my mother taught me, and I now tell it to you. The word of the father is the law of the family.”}

^{Klara said this with such solemnity that the boy felt it come into him as holy strength. Yes, someday he would have a family and all who were in it would honor him and they would fear him. At this point, his need to urinate became pressing. (This phenomenon al-}

^{ways afflicted him in these years whenever he was on the point of developing large and happy thoughts about himself.) In the midst of his mother’s peroration, he almost had an accident but did not—not if he was going to believe that in the future he would receive his share of
Ehrfurcht.}

^{“Yes,” she said to her son, “the word of the father must be law. Right or wrong, one cannot argue with his word. You must obey him. For the good of the family. Right or wrong, the father is always right. Otherwise, all is confusion.”}

^{Now she referred to Alois Junior. “He did not have
Ehrfurcht
”
she said. “Promise me that will never be said of you. Because now you are the oldest brother. You are important. That boy who used to be your brother is as good as dead.”}

^{Adi’s body was wet. His perspiration might as well have been illumined by sacred light. Just so complete was the importance of this sentiment. I entered his thoughts long enough to tell him, “Your mother is correct. You are now the oldest brother. The younger ones will honor and respect you.”}

^{Yes, Adi understood, and nightly I worked upon his mind until this concept became a mental certainty equal to one of those well-paved avenues of the mind that are always ready for heavy mental traffic. On many a night I would tell him again and again that Alois Junior was separated forever from the family.}

^{Alois Senior was of no small aid to me. By December, he wrote a new will. It stipulated that in the event of his death, the son named Alois was to receive no more of the estate than the minimum prescribed by law. “The smaller the better,” he added. Since the act of drawing up a will reengaged all of Senior’s long-developed sense of proper official procedure, he also added: “This is stated in the full recognition of the seriousness of such an act by a father. In my years as a Chief Customs Officer for the Crown, I warrant that I became most familiar with the responsibility that must always be seriously attached to such grave decisions.”}

^{Whereupon, having completed the rewriting of his will, he whistled for Adi and read portions aloud to him.}

⁴

^A

^{lois’ decision to write a new will came after he knew that he would be able to sell the farm. The buyer had been referred to him by Herr Rostenmeier, who had even offered good advice to Klara.}

^{“Dear Frau Hitler,” he told her, “your farm will only find a buyer for one reason—because it looks good. Is that not exactly why your husband bought it in the first place?”}

^{“I will not say that has to be untrue,” said Klara. (For her, this remark was equal to flirting with Herr Rostenmeier.)}

^{“Yes,” he said, “it is good you recognize this. I believe you will be able to sell your property to people who are less experienced at farming than yourselves, but”—he held up a finger—”more well-to-do, not so? You must have the patience to wait. Soon enough, one of these comfortable people will come along. And when he does, you must please send him to me. I will be your friend. I will know how to answer all the questions that are asked.”}

^{The wealthy house hunter did arrive, did like the look of the house and the land, knew even less about the pitfalls of husbandry than had Alois, and the sale took place. If the price presented no real profit, neither did Alois suffer the loss he had feared. The finality of the transfer even convinced him that any dream of living out his last days on a farm could be put to rest together with any hopes that the oldest son would yet bring him some reason for pride. No, it was now up to Adi. He was not nearly so lithe nor strong as Alois Junior, nor nearly so good-looking, but as bright, perhaps, and obedient. He was certainly obedient. Whistling for him had become a pleasure. The response was quick.}

^{In his heart, however, Alois Senior did keep the equivalent of an old photograph. There still were nights when he would sit on the oak bench and muse again about the Langstroth box he had built for himself. He would pat the seat as if to recall the sound of the slap he used to give that wooden box in the old days, yes, a nice and solid slap to stir up his bees.}

^{That is far down the road. History (for those who have lived in it for as long as myself) is seldom recalled as all-fascinating. It is such a bed of lies. That is the only reason I could recommend the life of a devil to would-be aspirants. We know so much about how it happens, how it really happens. Who could ever wish to lose such riches? Yet it is not inconceivable that this is exactly what I have done by revealing my relation to the Maestro. Perhaps the perversity of our diabolical natures does bear some relation to that curious human nature, which forces its way into existence between the hazards of urine and excrement yet will later dream each night of a noble life.}

^{BOOK XI}

^{The Abbot}

^{and the}

^Blacksmith

¹

^I

^{n the summer of 1897, after the sale of the Hafeld property, the family moved to the Gasthof Leingartner in Lambach, and there they would live until the end of the year. Having left behind the responsibilities of the farm, Alois began his true retirement, which occasioned a few small but surprising changes. He had, for instance, no interest in the cooks and maids at the Gasthof. Worse, they seemed to have no interest in him. Nor did he mind it.}

^{I would even say that Alois was temporarily content. Since that could affect our purposes in regard to Adolf, I kept a close eye on Senior’s modest activities. To my surprise, he took a proprietary interest in the medieval flavor of Lambach and so enjoyed walking down its streets. The town had a population of no more than 1,700 people, but it could boast of a Benedictine monastery founded in the eleventh century, and a church, Paura, that had been built in the shape of a triangle, with three towers, three gates, and three altars. I must say Paura had the strangest effect on his thoughts.}

^{Alois had begun to wonder whether, hundreds of years ago, he had had a previous life here. Was he feeling some shadowed hint of an earlier existence? He did not dismiss the notion. He could have been a medieval knight. Why not? It would certainly account for his boldest qualities as a man.
Der Ritter Alois von Lambach!}

^{If it be asked once again how I can be aware of such a reaction when Alois is, after all, not my client, I will reiterate that on occasion we can enter the thoughts of humans who are closely related to one of our charges. Alois’ meanderings about reincarnation were available to me, therefore, and he had come to quite a conclu-}

^{sion. Most people, he decided, could not believe that they would ever cease to exist.}

^{I must say that for Alois, this was a stimulating thought. Reincarnation might well be conceivable, and if so, then he, Alois, must have been one hell of a licentious knight. Such a possibility put him into an excellent mood. New ideas were exactly what he needed. They kept you out of the quicksand of growing old, he now decided.}