All the same, he did feel some admiration for his sister-in-law. Johanna was not in the least afraid of God. She would put no trust in Him. “God,” she would declare, “did not have to kill off so many of us in the Poelzl family.” Alois could tip his hat to that. “She’s not like my wife,” he was fond of telling the tavern. “Klara is ready to kiss every cross she meets.”
All the same, Johanna did not run the farm very well. Sooner or later, every hired man who worked there was antagonized by her sharp tongue. Finally, she decided to live again with her father and her mother—also named Johanna. If we recall, this Johanna was the one who had been Alois’ mistress on an unforgettable occasion. (“Sie ist hier!”)
Alois was able, however, to sell that first farm at a modest profit and so was not ill-disposed now to taking on the property in Hafeld. Here was a farm he could work himself. It was called the Rauscher Gut (which can be translated as the Wind-Blown Estate) and it offered nine acres of pasture plus a two-story wooden house under a thatched roof with good views of the mountains of the Salzkammergut. In addition, there were fruit and oak and walnut trees. A hayloft was in the stable, and stalls for two horses and a cow, plus one prize sow.
It seemed perfect. After the purchase (and only after the purchase), neighboring farmers were ready to hint to the new arrival that the land might be beautiful, but it was not necessarily going to be famous for its crops.
He looked upon these comments as exactly the kind of hazing that resident farmers would visit on a newcomer. Oh, he assured them, it did not matter. The land would be given a rest. He was there to raise bees. That was his element. Good honey could become the most prosperous crop of them all.
Indeed, in the last days before his retirement ceremony (which was acceptably eulogistic to Alois and most impressive, even thrilling, to Klara) he did have a series of drinking nights as a closer way of saying farewell to his staff and to the decades of his work. Since he had no desire ever to be seen as a man who would moon over the past, he dwelt on his future, he bullied his junior associates, plus a couple of old cronies and a few respected town officials, to drink more than one stein with him on the merits and mysteries of beekeeping. Indeed, he belabored each table on each night with so much concerning “the mysterious psychology of these little creatures” that the junior officers would warn each other, “Tonight, let’s try to keep the Cloud of Smoke from smoking us out with his bees.”
In truth, Alois did see himself as something of a philosopher on this subject. What an achievement for an untutored peasant from the Waldviertel to be able to give a lecture equal to a university savant!
In these last weeks, then, before retirement, in the same Linz tavern he had frequented each night after his Customs House shift, Alois spoke more and more of the higher concepts of apiculture. Honeybees formed an amazing world, he would inform his drinking cohorts. “With rare exceptions, these tiny creatures offer up their lives to one purpose: It is to build a future for the generations who will follow. The honey they convert from nectar and pollen is not only for their own consumption, but, gentlemen, it is also produced to feed their larvae.” He nodded. “These larvae are installed in the tiniest hexagonal cells, a wonder to behold, because they are constructed symmetrically out of the very beeswax these insect workers make from pollen, which process, gentlemen, is so mysterious that it is not yet wholly understood even by the most modern chemists.”
His company nodded, their spirits glum. This was not lively beer talk. But Alois, on these last nights, had become the kind of lecturer who is always ready to exhibit an incorruptible lack of sensitivity for his audience. “Some bees,” he now remarked, “the heftier ones, become guards to watch over the entrances to the hive. Do you know? They are ready to go into battle at the cost of their lives. They will even fight off such powerful raiders as wasps or spiders or termites. Yes, all the insect world, you see, is looking for a free meal in the honey. But that is only one of the obstacles to a peaceful life for the bee. All through the summer, many of these worker bees are constantly engaged in keeping the interior of the hive cool. How? By means of tireless activity. They never stop fanning their wings. A good many even wear out their wings. After which, they are ready to die. They give up their lives in this hard labor of creating a draft to cool the hive. Why? Because the larvae cannot survive in too much heat. Think of it. Thousands of wings all fanning away, even as others go out to forage and bring back more supplies from the fields of flowers. They collect the pollen in pods on their legs and then, flying back to the hive, they manage to stay aloft under the weight of loads of pollen and nectar that weigh more than their own bodies. I tell you, they create a society that is not unlike ours, but it is certainly more hardworking.”
None of the junior officers were ready to argue. (If they did, he might go on for another hour.) It took one of the older town officials to reply. Taking several portentous sips of smoke from his pipe, he said, “Come, Alois, they are only insects.”
“No, good sir! With all due respect, you are mistaken. There is much more to them than one would think. Some, I believe, live to finer purpose than the average human dolt. Let me say, they are one of the wonders of our universe.”
2
I was not prepared for Alois’ interest in these matters. Here was not the man I knew. While I could see his practical purpose, since the product was eminently salable, apiculture also had its risks, including the peril of receiving a serious number of bee stings. On the other hand, it might be reasonable to engage in such efforts rather than endanger his long-used heart by plowing a field.
I was plagued, all the same, by an uneasy suspicion. Alois was too sincere in this enthusiasm. He was not sufficiently concerned with profit. That was what disturbed my understanding. The desire for money is the taproot that usually drives men like Alois into new activity. So the relative absence of this desire suggested that Alois was ready to undertake this venture because it satisfied something I had not yet perceived in him.
I did recall that he had dabbled at keeping bees in one small town near Braunau, but soon saw a better reason. In these last few months, he had taken the pains to write a short article for a beekeepers’ journal and the piece was published. Alois had acquired a degree of book knowledge on the subject that provided him with a point of view on new modes of cultivation. Beehives made of straw, he declared, would soon be outmoded. Skeps they were called, squat-ribbed domed objects about the size and shape of bigbellied human torsos, and these old skeps had their drawbacks. To harvest the honey, beekeepers had to keep the population of the hive stunned with smoke. That left the hive in a near-comatose condition. It was a harsh and imprecise process. Sometimes, the skep had to be ripped open in order to collect the product. Despite the smoke, some honeybees were still active enough to sting the collector.
A new and much-discussed innovation was, however, being developed in England and in America. That was the point of his article. Even in Austria, there were beekeepers ready to do away with the old skep. For its time, the skep had been an improvement over the more barbaric practice—common through the Middle Ages—of chasing the bees out of their hole in a tree, but advanced beekeepers were speaking these days of hives that could become the equivalent, or so his article proposed, of a metropolis for bees. This new housing, no greater in size than a wooden cabinet you could set on a bench, would be filled with wax trays installed vertically. The worker bees could then build their minuscule wax cells on both sides of each tray. And in a most orderly fashion! Since this cabinet could hold a number of trays, and each tray had room for thousands of cells in a grid of rows and files, some keepers calculated that each hive now bore resemblance to what might yet be giant apartment buildings in the future.
That had been the point of his article—visionary indeed—but to explain this venture to Klara, Alois chose to emphasize the pecuniary promise. Good money would come back from clean work, and Alois Junior and Angela would help, he told her. Adi as well. He convinced her tha
t the new project was eminently practical.
I was more than bothered. Klara might believe him, but I did not. I had decided that Alois was looking to find a way to come nearer to the Dummkopf. That was not a matter I could afford to ignore.
3
Alois had never been one of our clients. He was by our measure an average man, which is to say, sufficiently corrupt to be available for our use should we be in true need of him. The assumption was that he would then be open. The Cudgels would hardly be guarding the fellow. To what end? What was there to protect? Whereas, when it came to Klara, we did not choose to go near. It would have proved punishing, and again—to what end? We did not need her directly—as I have already remarked, evil children can issue nicely from the most loving mothers. Of course, average men and women find the thought repulsive. It rattles their faith in the Dummkopf. How could God allow it? A standard lament.
Alois was directly useful to us. He was so dependable in his strengths and habits, his productive contributions, his built-in cruelties (not to mention his crudities) that one could, if necessary, intensify or reduce the heat of Adolf’s hatred for his father in such a way as to mold the boy. Depend on it—we depended on Alois.
But now, his outsize love for bees seemed out of character. Atheists like Alois, who attempt to go all the way to the grave without being challenged by the intimation that God may have created their universe, are not unlike pious virgins who fear the temptation of unholy heats. Such ladies can only accept their pinched carnality through a variety of counterfeits. So, too, do atheists have their substitutes by way of paganism, service to others, or, by now, technology—usually seen by them as the best possible solution to humankind’s problems. Occasionally, they feel an exceptional allegiance to some phenomenon of nature. In Alois’ case, it happened to be the recognition that a collaboration could be possible between the mighty and the minuscule, himself and the bees.
Sufficiently concerned, I penetrated one night into his mind, a costly move, since he was not a client, but necessary if I was to comprehend his motive, and, indeed, I now knew more. Alois saw bees as living a life with parallels to his own. That gave me cause for apprehension. To Alois, bees in search of new fields of flowers were intimate little creatures he could understand.
On any warm day, such foragers know the heat of the sun and the intimate yearning that the sun can arouse in flower petals. Alois was not about to throw open the door he had bolted to the mystical side of himself, but he did keep picturing the honeybee on its entrance into the caverns of the flower. Under the burgeoning heat of the sun, the flower would surrender its nectar to the bee’s tongue, even as the hairs of the honeybee became covered with pollen. In another moment, the same bee would separate from one passionate lust to dive into another, whichever fine flower of the same species was beckoning in the breeze, the creature ready again to gather more nectar while strewing pollen picked up from the first flower to the second. Hard work and satisfied desire!
He could feel close to that bee staggering back in flight, with its pollen bags heavy, and a stomach full of nectar. Had not Alois given much to women and yet brought back much for himself—much accumulated wisdom on how to deal with his Customs House corner of the world. By the end, he invariably knew what was true and what was false in declarations offered by strangers, particularly women who might wish to deceive him, yet could not, because he was wiser. He possessed the true honey—wisdom. That was the knowledge of what others were up to, all those secrets held by passing travelers and commercial people, secrets as sweet as honey, all those little goods travelers looked to steal and keep for themselves. But he was there to capture their secrets. He could work as hard and long as any honeybee on the hottest and most productive day of summer to protect the glory, centuries old, of the exceptional Empire of the Hapsburgs. Not all of them had been great, he would admit, not all were even very good people, but the best of them had been, like Franz Josef, good, very good. As we know, Alois could find a resemblance to Franz Josef in his own features—the same sideburns, the same dignity. It was said of the Emperor Franz Josef that he could work for endless hours at his necessary and near-to-endless duties. When necessary, he, Alois, was also ready. And yet they knew enough, both of them—the Emperor and himself—to comprehend that it was not enough to amass the honey; one must keep a taste for oneself.
Some people in Linz, he knew, fools for the most part, had been shocked when gossips spoke of the actress, Fräulein Katharina Schratt, whom Franz Josef had taken for a mistress. How could this be? The Emperor’s wife was so beautiful—Empress Elizabeth. The news had spread like a spill of oil. But it had not been shocking to Alois. He understood. Men had to keep some share of the honey for themselves.
Let me not be carried away altogether by the voluptuous swells of Alois’ meditation. In truth, he had some fear of bees. Once, in previous years, he had been stung so ferociously and apocalyptically (if I may put it so) that he never forgot the attack of vertigo it caused. Such power to create pain! That it could exist in creatures so small! It could not have come from the honeybee alone, he decided. Such pain must express the rage of the sun. With that, Alois was familiar. He had worked through many an August afternoon, stuffed into his uniform. Of course he knew the rage of the sun, and honeybees were agents of the sun even as he was an agent of the Hapsburgs, and thereby close to the greatness of ultimate power.
Could these epiphanies be the product of his approaching retirement? I looked forward with my own trepidation to the changes I could not anticipate once he began to live with his family on the farm.
4
On the very night in April when they slept in the house at Hafeld for the first time, Klara became pregnant again. Until then, she had remained with the children in Passau. Edmund had been ailing, and it was winter. Moreover, Alois would not be able to join them permanently at the farm until his retirement at the end of June. By April, however, Klara decided to brave the difficulties and, right after Easter, accompanied by Angela, Adolf, Edmund, and the sum of their possessions, she accomplished the move to Linz. It was made even more difficult since she was without Alois Junior to help her with the luggage—he had had to stay behind and board with a neighbor until the end of his school year. Angela, however, was of great help to her. She had insisted on not finishing her term, but coming along instead to help Klara.
“School is not so important,” she said. “I will make up what is lost in the next year, but for now you need me at the farm. I want to be with you there.”
She was right. Klara knew as much, and was moved. I would say that is the moment when she began to love Angela as a true daughter. Klara was wise enough in her innocence to know that Angela’s feelings were genuine. She liked school well enough but she cared more for Klara’s well-being, and so Klara in turn had become more than a good stepmother, much more.
Whatever the difficulties, they embarked by train from Passau early in the day and her husband was at the station in Linz with a large wagon and two workhorses to carry their trunks, valises, packing crates, and packages over the last thirty miles to Hafeld.
This portion of the trip lasted from noon to dark, but the day had been warm, and Alois, to everyone’s surprise, entertained the children with one song after another—his voice was rich, and Klara, who had a clear if delicate soprano, would join him when she knew the words. Alois was in a rare mood, and proud of his skill with the horses and wagon. It was some years since he had gotten up on a buckboard, and he had almost hired a driver, but given his oncoming responsibilities as a farmer, he took on the project himself.
The previous owner had—as was local custom—stocked each fireplace with logs and kindling, and so the rooms, before long, were warm. What with a jar of potato soup, and bread, and liverwurst, they had enough to eat. They went to bed happily. Alois would spend the next day with his family before driving their rented wagon back to Linz.
By the first night, however, Alois was also ready to establish his investiture
of the premises. By the light of the gas lamp in their bedroom, he could see that Klara looked in fine color, not pale at all, and when he said as much, she laughed in true merriment.
“You, too, Uncle,” she said. “Your nose is very red from the sun.”
“Ach,” he said, “you are still calling me Uncle. It is almost ten years that we are married and still, what am I to you? Uncle Alois? Do you mean Old Uncle Alois?”
“No,” she said, “we are very proud of you. Today, so much. The horses and the wagon. You did it all. And so well. Something you never did before.”
“Well, I can do a lot of things you do not know. I am never so simple as you think.”
“I do not think you are simple,” she said. “No, that I do not think.”
“Yes, you can tell me. What do you think, my little niece?”
It was not often that she was ready to speak to him so directly, but on this night, an exceptional night after all, she said, “I wonder why you never tell me that you love me.”
“Maybe,” he replied, “it is because you still call me Uncle.”
To his astonishment, her answer was the nearest she had ever come to speaking in a manner that most certainly belonged to other kinds of women. “Maybe I call you Uncle,” she said, “because you are such a big, healthy fellow of an uncle.”
This was not about to pass him by. The Hound was straining instantly at the leash. “How would you know what is the size of a healthy fellow?” he asked.
“I do not know. But I am free to guess. You are a very big uncle.”
That was what made her pregnant. He was excited enough to take her by the side of the bed, both of them standing, half-dressed, and then he took her again in bed. He was full of love—for himself, first, and his prowess—such a fine power at his age. Then, he felt a degree of love for her—plus a good deal of love for the farm. It was a beautiful piece of land. He even took pleasure in the notion of coming a little closer to his children, which is to say, he had an image of working along with them in the fields. Then, about to fall asleep, he thought instead of summer bees searching the meadows. He was unusually delighted with how much power had been in his loins. To have it all there on this night, just when he had begun to wonder.
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