The Castle in the Forest (58 page)

^{“Your certificate is here. It has been torn into four pieces. You will soon see its condition.” Now the Rector stared at him. “It is one thing for a student to celebrate his graduation when he is pleased that he passed a makeup examination. At last he can allow himself to think that perhaps he has taken a valuable step toward his future. It is, however, another matter, Herr Hitler, to enter into a bout of intoxication that ends in despicable acts.” He shook his head. “I can see by the absence of recognition in your face that you do not even have a recollection of the low act you chose to indulge.”}

^{This was now becoming equal to standing before the long-nosed priest who had caught him smoking. “Sir, what have I done?” he managed to say. “Be so good as to tell me.”}

^{“My dear Herr Hitler, I will be exactly so good as to tell you. You took this document and left your filth on it!” His hands shaking with disgust, he passed the bag over to Adolf. Then he said, “I cannot bring myself to believe that any student in our school could have committed such a bestiality. You would do well to fear that you will go through life never learning to govern perverse impulses. Shall I write to your mother? No, I will not. She is probably a good woman who does not deserve such a stinking embarrassment. Instead, you are to swear to me that from the moment you leave this office, I will never have to see your face again. Just be certain that you do not open the bag while you remain within the walls of this school.”}

^{Adolf nodded. By now, he could remember. Yes, he had taken the certificate and wiped his ass with it. The moment came back. He had been feeling so endowed with inner grandeur! How his drinking mates had applauded. His ass was now superior to all that scholarly nonsense.}

^{What made it worse was that he had to wonder how the Rector had found out. There was only one explanation. One of the four students with whom he had been drinking must have turned it over to him. But who would that be? He did not want to find out. Such a confrontation could add to his shame. What if the perpetrator}

^{was one of the two fellows bigger than himself? That was most likely.}

^{Back at Frau Sekira’s, he spent a long time at the washbasin cleaning the certificate, and drying it. Then he pasted the pieces onto another piece of paper. Now he would have evidence that he had passed his exam. For Klara, he would come up with some explanation.}

^{“Oh, Mother, the more I looked at it, the more did I realize how much you sacrificed for me, and how little I had understood. I tore it up to keep from crying like a baby.” Yes, thought Adolf, that will take care of that.}

^{He had to keep wondering, however, which of the students had been the traitor. It could have been all four! He decided that he would never drink again. “Liquor is for traitors,” he told himself. He kept sniffing the document to make certain that it now smelled of talcum powder.}

^{I have to remark that no event since Alois’ death had come so near to breaching Adolf’s sense of personal importance. I had built, however, such a protective palisade around his vision of himself that even this episode did not become a disaster.}

⁵

^K

^{lara wept with love when she heard why the certificate had come back to her in four pieces. “It is even more valuable to me this way,” she said. “I will be proud to put it into a frame.”}

^{That was the hour when he decided that the ability to lie with art was a skill to be esteemed and, indeed, they had a lovely even-ing, mother and son. With Paula soon asleep, they sat side by side}

^{on the sofa and reminisced over old times, when he had been two and three.}

^{That was a special occasion. Over the previous year, coming back from Steyr each weekend, he had certainly grown weary of listening to Klara speak of Alois. In her mind, the old man was now to be remembered as a pillar of their Empire, a profoundly dedicated Civil Servant. His long-stemmed clay pipes were set up on the mantelpiece, each installed in a special holder. The family gospel took it for granted that Alois had given a blessing to Adolf. It was a blessing to have a father who, in his career, had climbed the equal of a mountain.}

^{I was ready to tell him as much myself. These days, I looked to implant one notion into his thoughts. It was that Alois had given Adolf the opportunity to start from a higher place than his father, and so he could become a most prestigious individual. I cannot say whether Klara or myself had the larger influence concerning this matter, but these thoughts became so embedded in Adolf’s brain, that by the time he wrote
Mein Kampf
nineteen years later, in 1924, he would speak of Alois in eulogy:}

^{Not yet thirteen years old, the little boy he then was, buttoned up his things and ran away from his homeland, Waldviertel. A bitter resolve it must have been to take to the road into the unknown with only three Guilders for traveling money. By the time the thirteen-year-old was seventeen he had a long time of hardship. Endless poverty and misery strengthened his resolve with all the tenacity of one who
’
d grown
“
old
”
through wanton sorrow. While still half a child, this seventeen-year-old youth clung to his decision and became a Civil Servant. Now there has been realized the promise of the vow to which the poor boy once had sworn, not to return to his native village until he
’
d become something.}

⁶

^T

^{o improve her economic situation further, Klara sold the house in Leonding, and the family moved to an apartment in Urfahr, just across the river from Linz. During the day, Adolf rarely left these new premises. He did not see any profitable way to enter the ranks of the employed. For that matter, he had no desire to work for others. Besides, he did feel a touch consumptive—enough to keep Klara in a whole state of in-held terror. Would he, like Alois, die of a lung hemorrhage? It was not difficult to persuade her that at this point it would be unwise to look for a career. As he presented it to her, he would be seen one day as a great painter, a great architect, or quite possibly both. Staying at home for the present, he could still amplify his education: He would read and he would draw. He did not need to say more. After five years of suffering the rigors of the Realschule, he was certainly able to enjoy his new life on Humboldtstrasse in Urfahr. His mother paid the bills and Paula cleaned the bathroom. He grew a mustache. He rarely stepped out into the sun. Only in the evening did he take a stroll across the Danube from Urfahr to Linz in order to walk by the opera house. Klara had bought him new clothes, and he ventured out in a good dark suit, wearing a dark overcoat and a black fedora while sporting a silver-handled cane, his most treasured possession. He would be seen, he believed, as one of the young gentry of Linz. Every glimpse he caught of his reflection in store windows confirmed this effect.}

^{His need to stay in the house during the day was matched only by his love of the dark. Not all of the clichés concerning the Devil}

^{are false. Most humans do not begin to appreciate the depth of the general assumption that what is commonly condemned as Evil does indeed seek the dark. For good cause. The night is more open to evocation.}

^{Klara was, of course, taking great pride in his appearance. She knew that once he was feeling ready, opportunities would open. He was not only a most unusual boy, but probably needed this kind of leisure for the present.}

^{Adolf’s style of masturbation had also altered. His practice in the forest had been to spew all over the nearest leaves. (He loved leaves and he loved spewing on them.) Now, locked behind the door to his room, he kept a handkerchief at the ready. Yet, before he would allow his thoughts to lift beyond his control, he would practice holding his arm in the air at a forty-five-degree angle for a long time. He would think of the times in the Realschule bathroom when he had demonstrated this prowess to other students. They might have their two testicles and he only one, but he could keep his arm erect on high, and they could not. Of course, there were all too many other occasions when the general interest had been in another direction. The boys had collected around the urinals in order to compare the size of their genitals. It had been a curious occasion. They were always afraid a teacher might barge in. Erections were lost, therefore, with great speed before the smallest sound, and so Adi’s ability to hold his arm high was no more than another distraction. Now, in his room, he found, however, that he could maintain his erection even while his arm was raised. Thoughts of the great variety of personal equipment he had seen among the students were enough to keep him full of hearty remembrance.}

^{One flaw remained, however, in his present life. That was Angela’s husband, Leo Raubal. He could not speak to Adolf without droning into his ear, “Fellow, you have to start earning your living. You will keep feeling unwell until you do. I think that is because you are depressed by the thought that all your relatives in Spital think you are a good-for-nothing. We know that is not true, but}

^{you have to give up your present occupation, which consists of doing nothing.”}

^{Adolf would walk out of the room. Angela would be full of dismay. How rude he was to her husband! Klara, hearing it all, would be silent, but that was only out of respect for Angela. This oaf, Leo Raubal, was, after all, her dear stepdaughter’s husband. Therefore, she would not cause trouble. She would not be a mother-in-law to create trouble for a young married couple. That might be even worse than having to listen to your son being scolded by this new son-in-law, who had much too exaggerated an opinion of the worth of his advice. To herself, Klara declared, “Adolf is not a loafer. He does sit at home, but he works so hard when he draws. Besides, he has no need to drink, and he doesn’t smoke. That is not a loafer. He does not waste his time. There are no bad girls he likes to see. No girls I must worry about. Maybe he will yet become a great artist. Who is to know? Who is to say? He is so serious. When he is alone and working, he is so strong and so proud of himself. He is full of the knowledge that he, too, will amount to something. To that degree, he is just like Alois. Or, maybe more so. Alois wanted too many things at once.” And again, she repeated, “Adolf does not waste time with girls. There are no bad girls in his life.”}

^{Nor would there be. Not for a long time. She would have done better to worry about love affairs yet to come with men and boys, some of them even with bad men.}

^{Since Klara saw Adolf by now with all the love of her heart, she was hardly the sort to ponder what might be in his head when he masturbated. Indeed, how could she guess? There was no evidence. He was careful to rinse out his handkerchiefs. No, she did not know that while stroking himself, coming closer and closer to being shot out of his own cannon, he would wonder whether there was any connection between his refusal to work at Customs and his father’s last hemorrhage. If so, that would make two people he had scalped in real life: Edmund and Alois. And this thought, in concert with thoughts of the Realschule students at the urinals, so excited}

^{his fast-increasing compressions that he could hold them no longer and presto! it was over. It was over, and he was happy, and he was exhausted by how much had been churning within.}

⁷

^Y

^{ears later, a girl who went to Paula’s school often saw her walking with Klara. Until recently, this girl had lived on a farm, but now almost every weekday she would watch Klara take Paula all the way to school before saying goodbye with a kiss. Nothing like that ever happened to the farm girl. Her mother had always been too busy. So it did not matter to the girl that Paula was backward in class and had been left behind—the farm girl envied her all the same. A mother’s love, she decided, must be as sweet as honey.}

^{Indeed, we are there to enjoy it as well.}

^{AN EPILOGUE}

^The

^Castle

^{in the}

^Forest

^I

^{n the beginning, I said that my name was D.T., and that was not wholly inaccurate. It had been a nickname for Dieter while I was occupying the body and person of an SS man, an installation that did not terminate until the end of the Second World War. (At which time Dieter did have to get out of Berlin in a hurry.) That, in brief, is how I came to be at the edge of an uproar on a field where a celebration was continuing through the night. A concentration camp had just been liberated by American soldiers on the very last day of April 1945.}

^{Installed in a small cubicle, I was being interrogated by a psychiatrist, Captain in rank, assigned to the U.S. division that had captured the camp. Given the tumult of the last few days, he had been issued a .45 and it now lay on the table near his hand. I could see that he was not comfortable with the weapon, but then he was a doctor and not practiced in sidearms.}

^{The name tag on his lapel was Jewish and, needless to say, he was unhappy with what he saw.}

^{A pacifist by temperament, this Jewish officer had done his best to withdraw from the worst of these surroundings—which is equal to saying that he was looking to flee from some most offensive human odors. Rank effluvia certainly accompanied the former prisoners’ cries of joy. Indeed, it was sufficiently pestilential for the American to order me, his only available opposite number, to remain with him in this office. There, after midnight, I gave answers to his inquiries.}

^{As alone with each other as two souls out in the ocean on a rock}