The day laborer was stupid, but proved capable of putting a number of those potatoes aside for himself. Alois could not even be certain there had been a theft. Feeling not too well one afternoon, he had let the laborer take the produce to market, and the man returned with fewer kronen than Alois had estimated. A little fingering at the edges. Doubtless.
Then there was a miserable end to the prize sow. It died. Angela was disconsolate. Alois was amazed at how long and how hard a twelve-year-old female could cry.
It started with that big and pretty pig feeling grumpy. Then, day to day, it grew worse. Angela was so upset that Alois broke into his own reservoirs of pride and actually turned to his three nearest neighbors for advice. It was then he had to recognize that he had forgotten one of the laws of his childhood received from Johann Nepomuk before he was even ten years old. When it came to farming, there were no rules you could count on, no, not if you had the bad luck to meet an unexpected problem. Even your wisest friends could disagree on the solution. Of course. Every farmer, he now learned, had his own idea of how to cure a sick pig. Of course.
The three neighbors suggested, in turn, an emetic, a binder, and a diuretic. All were wrong. The sow stopped breathing, began to hemorrhage, and was gone. All three had assumed the trouble could only be in the stomach or the bowels. Where else in a pig? Who had ever heard of consumption in so big a pig? Perhaps it was something else. Even the veterinarian he called in after the demise was unsure. Probably the lungs, but he would not say.
Nothing could have aggravated Alois more. To pay good money after the animal had died! Why? Because he had to know the cause. What an idiocy! He wasn’t going to raise any more pigs, not now, but still he had to know. And then he found out that the veterinarian—if you could call him that—remained no more sure of the cause than his neighbors. It would take, he told Alois, the expense of laboratory tests they could do in Linz. To hell with that! Such an expenditure would be obscene. On top of it, he had to bury the animal whole. He was tempted, but he did not dare to carve away at the beast looking for good meat. Left to himself, Alois would have searched for some choice cuts—how much did the hams have to do, after all, with the lungs? But, no, the vet was definite. “Do not take a chance, Herr Hitler, on any part of this animal.”
Yes, that is what the vet told him, but only after he had been paid! And there was Angela going on and on with her hiccups and her sobs, “Ach, ach, ach!” Not to mention his own labor of digging a hole for the carcass.
Yes, these were losses to calculate. What kind of profits could he point to from his mediocre potato crop? When he added the cost of the seed potatoes, the compost he had bought for the three acres, and then subtracted the wages of the hired hand, the loss of the sow, and the fee of the vet as well, how could he claim to have made any respectable sum? If not for the walnuts, which had, as promised, been easy money right off the ground, he would have had no profit at all.
He could reassure himself. It wasn’t that he was in real financial trouble. His pension alone was six times the income of any day laborer like the poor fellow he had hired. All the same, that hardly extracted the real thorn from his gut. One of his strengths had always been the confidence that he could know when people were cheating him. And now he had discovered that the land he bought was nothing to brag about. Once upon a time, he might have been a peasant. Now he might just as well call himself a town idiot, fooled on a deal involving land. Could he feel any worse if Klara took up with a farm boy? That was impossible, but then, how had it been so possible for himself, Alois Hitler, to be gulled on this deal?
By October, he was well settled into gloom. Even the Hound was a doleful puppy. How was he to look at himself—a man in his late middle age who dangled a wizened pup between his legs?
Klara, seven and a half months pregnant, tried to explain it to him. Now that the potato crop was in, and so much hard work was finished, it was not unnatural to feel a little unhappy. Women, she could tell him, were that way after a child was born. So much had gone into the womb, so much hope and effort, but now one was empty again. The baby might be there and beautiful, but for a time the woman had to feel empty. For a little while. It was natural.
She had never waxed so philosophical before, not to him, but he was ready to take her head off. “What am I, a woman?” he wanted to shout.
7
Changes occurred, however. Alois’ depression lessened. Junior was no longer around. Klara had taken it upon herself to suggest that he should be sent to Spital, where he could work with her father, Johann Poelzl, who by now had certainly become old enough to need a family hand. It developed that Alois Junior was also in favor of the move. His father’s depression, with all its muted threat of more despotism, lived like a fist in the midst of the son’s thoughts.
So it was settled. Alois’ cart, driven by the hired man, would take the fourteen-year-old to Linz. Then he would travel by train to Weitra, where he could get on another cart that passed through Spital. The boy was gone, and a cloud of dark presentiment could lift.
In September, Adi and Angela began school in Fischlham, Angela in the fourth and most advanced grade for twelve-year-olds, Adi, at six, going to first grade.
His first school days proceeded through a bright and mellow September, a fine walk with his sister over hills and meadows. There was only one peril—a full-grown bull grazing in a fenced-in pasture. Depending on the bull’s mood, they could choose to go around, or dare to cross the field. On most days, they did not dare.
Soon enough, Adi learned that it was unwise to shame Angela when she was afraid. She knew how to pay him back. She could always inform him that he smelled awful. Sometimes it was his breath; as often, his body odor.
Probably she did not know to what depth down in his quick-beating chest these accusations entered, but deep they went, and for good cause. They were true. He did have an odor—a touch of sulphur and an unmistakable hint of something rotten—and of that I may soon choose to speak. Such off-odor is one of the constant problems besetting our clients. The Cudgels are quick to pick up such a clue.
From Angela’s point of view, it was simple. Whenever Adi was teasing her, she would tell him he smelled. She did not really mind. Bad smells did not bother her. She was accustomed to sour milk and horse manure. A passing wind reeking of pig wallow from a neighboring farm even brought real sorrow to her heart—poor dead Rosig!
“What are you crying about now?” asked Adi. “You tell me how I am bad-smelling and I am the one who should cry.”
“Oh, shut up. It’s not you I cry for.”
That meant she was thinking of Rosig, and he did feel sad for her. This was not because he had liked the sow so much (in fact, he had been jealous of Angela’s affection for the beast) but because he did like his older sister. She was good most of the time. Besides, she was the brightest girl inside the four walls of the one-room schoolhouse, just as he was the smartest boy.
Depending on weather and the immediate needs of the neighboring farms for additional labor, there were sometimes fewer than forty boys and girls, sometimes it was down to thirty, even twenty-five, but the schoolroom contained seating divisions for these four grades; and each child, first to fourth, six to twelve in age, was able to listen to all that took place in every other class. This was a routine matter since there was only one teacher, a middle-aged lady, Fräulein Werner, who had a large nose and wore spectacles.
Adi was soon able to follow the lessons for all four classes. His introduction to German history came by way of the senior grade, the fourth, where Angela and the others were studying the exceptional deeds of Charlemagne. An hour later, in first, Adi would be asked in company with the other beginners to decide which pictures of animals should be connected to printed words on a big card that Fräulein Werner would hold up. In the beginning, it was wondrous—all those wiggling letters that made a word. At first, the drawing vibrated in his eyes, but before long, it turned into no more than a puzzle. By the time he had reduced it
to a solvable problem, he took care not to make the same mistake twice. Indeed, he soon grew bored waiting for others in his class to catch up. Then, he could barely wait for the lessons of the third, who were studying the geography of the Hapsburg domain, the Great Hapsburg Empire, as Fräulein Werner would always say. If permitted, he would have been ready to speak out to those students who were simpletons and could not find any of the places on the map that he had already noticed, Braunau and Linz being the first to catch his eye. Plus Passau, just across the Danube.
So, by the age of six, he was absorbing the lessons of the eight-and ten- and twelve-year-olds, and it pleased him that Angela was the brightest in her class. He could see the approval in Fräulein Werner’s eyes each time they entered the room, but then, they were also the neatest brother and sister. That was Klara’s doing, and that helped to put them up high in Fräulein Werner’s favor.
His neat clothing did oblige him, however, to keep away from the other boys during recess. Soon enough he had to deal with a bully who kept daring him to wrestle.
“Are you crazy?” he would answer. “I am in my good clothes. My mother will kill me if I get them dirty.” The daily wars of Passau had enriched his voice with just enough assurance to deter the other. But then that boy was nothing. If Adi could manage to live with Alois Junior, how much had he to fear from a fool like this, also named Klaus? It was big sister who bothered him with all this teasing.
8
These days Angela had come into her first period, and Klara was doing her best to allay the girl’s distress. She could see that it was connected in Angela’s mind with Rosig, who hemorrhaged blood all over her hams before she died.
To bring some calm to such outraged feelings, Klara spoke for the first time of intimate matters. She adored her stepdaughter. The twelve-year-old was by now the equal of a close friend, and so Klara spoke not only of this new condition, but went on at good length about odor in general, and its peculiar subtleties in nature. Odor was part of nature. Casting about for happy examples, she presented a piece of information Alois had provided her in passing. Once, Klara had asked how he could be sure his own bees (once he started his hives) would know how to find their home. As she understood it, he planned to acquire a couple of hive boxes, each a full colony in itself. There they would be, sitting side by side in the shade of the big oak near the house. “How will these thousands of bees know to which box they belong?” she asked.
He was sufficiently pleased by her curiosity to explain that he would paint each of his boxes a different color, green for one, sky blue for another, even pink, possibly, for a third. Bees, he explained, liked to return to dwellings that could be close to the color of the flowers whose nectar they brought back.
“But you tell me that each day these little creatures go to a different kind of flower. They are faithful only for this one day at a time to each variety of flower. Is that not so?”
“Yes.” He wasn’t certain he liked the conversation. Would he be able to answer all her questions without slipping and sliding into other matters?
“So it could be a flower of one color on one day, and another color is what they like tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
“How do these bees not get mixed up?”
Yes, he was reluctant to tell her. It was not something to talk about. Not necessarily. Still, he chose to proceed. For Klara to be interested in apiculture might, on balance, be better for him than if she showed indifference. “Each Queen has her own odor,” he informed Klara. “Since she will fertilize every cell in every comb and so puts tens of thousands of eggs into separate wax cells for their beginning in life, so she is certain to pass her own odor into each of her thousands of larvae, yes, her eggs, her future children.”
“That is remarkable,” said Klara. “How do you know this, Alois? So much you know.”
“I have read about these discoveries in books,” he said grudgingly.
“You have never smelled it yourself?”
“Do I look so stupid as to put my head into a hive in order to give a dozen bees the opportunity to fly up my nose?”
She began to laugh. In certain ways, she knew him well. He might read his books on the subject, but, at bottom, he did not like to admit that he had not learned the subject by way of his hands, his feet, his strength, his five good peasant senses.
Indeed, Alois had told her a little too much. Now she had to know more.
Before the conversation was over for the night, she actually prodded him into explaining how the Queen was fertilized. She was, after all, curious about any Queen who could give birth to so many thousands of children and still remain a Queen. There was such admiration in Alois’ eye when he spoke of this. Everything depended on the Queen—the success of the hive, you could say.
So Alois did choose to lead Klara through a few descriptive steps. Given her evident excitement, he could sense it would be to his advantage on this night. She was clearly full of ardor at the thought of so female a creature, so tiny, so extraordinary.
He explained then that this young Queen, very much a virgin, not twenty days out of her own wax cell (which was no larger in width and depth than the eraser tip on the end of a new pencil), would, so soon as she emerged from that cell, be fed by Queen-bee nurses and Queen-bee attendants. Yet just three weeks from that first day, she would be ready to take her virgin flight out of the hive. Usually this would happen on the first warm day in May. Up she would lift into the heavens, flying higher than all but a few male bees who would attempt to follow.
“The ones who are called drones?” asked Klara.
“Yes, fat spoiled fellows. They jam their corner of the hive. They live to eat, and on a good day they fly around like fools. For the fun of it. They do not even bother to bring back pollen. It is only when this virgin Queen—who you might say is still a Princess—comes out for her first flight that they are able to justify their existence. On this day, they have been flying around waiting for her. They know she is coming. This Queen who flies so high, who is so beautiful compared to all her sisters, those thousands of worker bees, yes, workhorse females always looking for more nectar to bring back—those poor girls do not have full ovaries, so they go out and forage, except when they are attached to other duties for the hive. Clean-up duties. Chores. But this Queen, she is different, still a virgin, she is not yet really a Queen, more, as I say, a Princess. Then, she chooses to fly so high that only a few of these drones can follow. It comes down to two drones, to one, but, oh, this last strong one, he reaches her, he puts what he has, yes, you know what I mean, his very own organ which he has kept inside himself until now but suddenly it comes out, springs up, you could say, into, yes, yes, springs into—call it her vagina—why not? It is so, and she takes it all in even as they are up in the air so high, just the two of them.”
“It is a wonder,” said Klara. Her eyes had begun to shine. She actually said, “A miracle of love.”
“No, not exactly,” said Alois. At this moment, he did not know how to continue. If he said too much, he could spoil what he was looking for on this night. Still, his shrewd side was ready to speak, and he knew, yes, the best was most likely to come from telling it all.
“This drone,” he said, “this one good brave drone, sticks it in so far, which is exactly what nature demands, we must suppose, that then he cannot get it back.”
“What?”
“No! Donnerwetter, he can’t pull out! The Queen has hooks, or something of the kind, very sharp hooks, and that keeps him there. She likes him there. He is stuck. When he does insist, when he has to pull away, you won’t believe it, his good organ is ripped right out of him. He is obliged to leave it behind. His manhood! Gone. All gone.”
“And him? What happens then? To him?”
“Oh, he dies. He is gone. He falls to earth.”
“The poor creature,” she said. But she could not help it. Against her will, Klara’s mouth pulled into a smirk, then slipped over to a smile. Once begun, she had to
laugh. Then she could not stop. Never before had Alois heard her laugh so long.
“What a life,” she finally said, and Alois had been right to tell her. She was over six months into her pregnancy, but they made love that night. Alois had known more than one woman who could even give you a good piece of the real business in that very last week before she would pop out someone else’s baby. But that had hardly been the case with Klara. On this night, however, she was different. It was equal to her best.
Of course, he certainly did not go on to tell her of two other things. The first was that the Queen was perfectly capable of having other lovers after that first fabulous flight. Over the next few weeks and into June, she could have five or six more lovers. That would store more semen in her ovaries, enough to lay thousands, then tens of thousands of eggs, one each for every cell among those thousands of cells, and she would continue to do so until cold weather came. Then this cycle could be repeated each spring for the next three years to come. All that wealth of impregnation derived from no more than five or six copulations! This meant that for the rest of her life, the Queen would have no more to do with drones but would be feeding honey and pollen to the pupae she had created while her court, her worker females, followed her with devotion, capping the cells of larvae with a mysterious wax substance they were able to make from the pollen of the May flowers, a wax that no chemist could duplicate in the laboratory. No, he did not describe how devotedly the Queen would have to work for the rest of her life, and he certainly did not tell Klara that when mating season was done, these female worker bees would evict the drones from the hive. When it came to dealing with the laziest bums who would not stir, the worker bees would sting the drones to death. (Nor did the worker bees lose their stinger on such occasions. The belly of a drone was softer than human skin.) After the slaughter, these same worker bees would sweep the carcasses out of the hive. Nor did he speak of other complications. There was always a tendency, once real warm weather began, for as much as half of the colony to be ready to swarm, that is, to fly away, desert the hive, go back to the way they used to live in the hole of a tree. You could lose your profit in a hurry. Nor did he tell her of Princesses who were often extinguished by the court of bees who surrounded the Queen. He left such details alone. It was better that Klara should remain sympathetic to what would be his oncoming enterprise.
The Castle in the Forest Page 14
