The Castle in the Forest

by Norman Mailer

  “No, we don’t,” muttered one of the younger officers. “My brother is a priest.”

  “In that case, I tip my hat to him,” said Alois. “If he is your brother, he is different. But that was then. And I assure you: The priests who were real men did worse. You ever hear this saying by the Pope? From the same Pope. He said, ‘No priest needs to marry so long as the peasant has a wife.’”

  The unspoken demand of his voice was that the junior officers be ready to applaud with laughter. So they laughed. “It was exactly like that,” he said. “The poor merchant has one wife, the priest has ten, and the bishop cannot enter heaven—too many wives to bring along.”

  “Which bishop?”

  “The Bishop of Linz, don’t you know?”

  Alois had not forgotten the Bishop of Linz, who, six years ago, had refused his application to marry Klara. He certainly recalled how, in order to defray the expenses of translating his letter into Latin, he had been forced to declare himself a pauper. That still rankled.

  On the walk home he came, however, to an unhappy conclusion: His tirades against the Church might have to cease. He was fifty-four years old, and for many years had not worried about his position in life. He knew that he would rise in the ranks open to him, but no higher.

  Now, however, a well-placed friend up in the Finance-Watch had told him that there was talk of a promotion for Alois Hitler up to Chief Customs Officer at Passau. Given his lack of formal education, this would be a true rise in rank. “However, you must now watch yourself, Alois,” the friend said. “All this is still a year away. Keep a good name if you want to be moved to Passau.”

  He had always seen himself as exceptional, afraid of no one (except for certain superiors in uniform), and possessed of a genuine magnetism for women. (How many men could say that much for themselves?) Moreover, he had never been timid about public opinion. Nobody he knew could say as much. In that department, he was no coward.

  But now this respected friend (by way of his confidant in the upper councils of the Finance-Watch) was saying, “Watch out for the townspeople in Braunau.”

  This caution traveled into his digestion. Because Alois could not decide whether to trust his friend. The man was a practical joker. In fact, he was the same one who had once told him: “The townspeople of Braunau are nothing. You can put your thumb to your nose at them.” Alois had indeed put together a good many habits around that remark, but the truth was he had certainly said too much tonight if there was any ground to the rumor concerning Passau. Of a sudden, he was learning how much ambition he had, a real ambition which he had never admitted to himself. He couldn’t. It would have been like a river breaking through a levee. But now he knew this much: He had to stop pissing on the Church.

  Yes, his wife might be a cold tit to him and a jug of warm milk to the baby—what a guzzler! never off the tit. Yet he must get by all that—she was a useful wife. Good for the children, good cook, very good with the Church.

  Now, he, personally, was not going to be caught at a High Mass except for State occasions, holidays. He did not wish to live with a new itching attack, no, he did not see the confessional box for himself. His skin prickled. A serious official of the Crown like himself should not have to bare his soul to a priest.

  Women, however, should be seen in church. So, yes, he admitted to himself, Klara was an asset concerning his new professional goals.

  3

  In our ranks, we look upon excessive ambition as a force at our disposal. We are ready to attach ourselves to any urge that mounts out of control. Of no passion is this more true than outsized ambition. Yet ambition is also related to the Lord’s purposes. After all, God designed ambition for humans. (He wanted them to strive to fulfill His Vision.)

  Of course, the Lord’s supposition was a folly. As the Maestro is never loath to tell us, a human who suffers from too much ambition succeeds only in exemplifying the Creator’s own lack of anticipation. The D.K., wishing His Vision to be innovative, had created the human will as an instinct all but free of Him. Once again, God had miscalculated. Ambition is not only the most powerful of the emotions but the most unstable. So many of the most ambitious choose to blame God for a run of bad luck.

  Large appetite for success has, therefore, to awaken our interest. The D.K., a prodigious optimist, had not foreseen that the men and women who intended to promulgate His Vision had better possess the selfless ambitions of saints. In contrast, the Maestro has always been alert to the lodes of perversity to be found in human flesh.

  Consider the case with Alois. Many people guard their ambition as the most sequestered part of their emotions (guarded even from their own awareness). For so soon as ambition becomes excessive, it is ready, if necessary, to shred a good many long-held convictions about the inviolability of one’s honor. Or one’s loyalty to friends. All too often ambition can become as blind as a scythe.

  No surprise then if Alois was not the only one in the Hitler family to suffer such a disruption. Ambition, being a true germ, is infectious. If Klara now had a child who was actually giving signs of staying alive, her breasts, in consequence, were suffused with joy, the most generous joy she had ever known, and now she wanted everything for Adi. To such a degree, indeed, that she was ready to allow her husband to cross the middle of their bed.

  A second courtship began. She was still breast-feeding Adolf. So there was no question of a pregnancy. What inspired the return of some carnal interest was her growing appreciation of Alois. He had built strong foundations, after all, for the good future of Adolf. Even as her husband had risen from the mud of Strones and Spital to the honor of an officer’s service to Franz Josef, she, in turn, was ready to dream of the heights to which little Adolf could ascend should his ability prove equal to the vigor of his father.

  For that, however, he would need this same father to love him. Once, in her gentlest voice, she said to Alois, “Sometimes I wonder why you never hold Adi.”

  “It will just make the other two jealous,” he answered. “Jealous kids are not to be trusted with babies.”

  “Alois and Angela hold him all the time,” she said. “They are not jealous. They like him. Sometimes you could say they love him.”

  “Let us keep it that way. Maybe they are happy because I do not hold him.”

  “Sometimes I am afraid he is not very important to you,” she dared to say.

  She had gone one step beyond where she had thought to go. Bad enough for him that he had only half a bed, but now she was looking to scold him? “Important to me?” he said. “That I can answer. He is not important to me. Not yet. I want to see if he will live.”

  She did not weep often, but here she burst into tears. The worst had happened, and once again she felt weak before her husband. She was not free of loving him.

  At that moment, the dog began to bark. Alois had bought a mongrel for a few kronen from a farmer he knew. Since they were living in a house, rather than at an inn, the purchase could be considered protection worth the cost. But the dog, whom he named Luther, proved disappointing. While Luther worshipped Alois and quivered before his master at every shift of tone, he did not seem otherwise alert. Moreover, he had nervous habits. On this night, as Alois shouted at him to stop howling, poor Luther watered the floor.

  Afterward, Alois had his regrets. The dog, after all, did adore him. First, however, he whipped him. Even as Luther tried to crawl away, the poor bottom of the beast became soaked in his own outpourings. All the while, he was yelping in full terror. The uproar woke the children. Alois Junior came out first, then Angela, and Adi at the last, not yet two years old, but agile enough to get out of his low bed and walk into the midst of this. Klara leaped up to seize him. She was ready for the worst, she hardly knew what—that the child would step into the urine, that he would cry for her breast, that Alois might strike them both—she had seen the look in her husband’s eye when Adi became too greedy with her nipple. None of this happened, however. To the contrary, the child looked with sole
mn interest at the whimpering dog, then at the flailing hand of the father, and the boy’s blue eyes had a gleam, a look of remarkable intensity for one so small. She had seen it on his face when suckling him. He would stare at her with the tender expression of 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

  While 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 remain 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.F.—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

  The 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 thorough-going 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 di
d.

  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.