The Castle in the Forest

by Norman Mailer

  Klara had not only been engrossed by what he told her that night, but now thought it might divert Angela from her woes, and so decided to tell her about the wrenching end of the brave drone who did succeed in reaching the Queen. This time, Klara had company in her laughter. They carried on as if they were both of the same age, and as Klara divulged more and more of what she had learned from Alois, the topic turned not only to odor, but to the exceptional power of the Queen. There she was, this creature, hardly larger than her own nursing bees and certainly smaller than any drone. Nonetheless, she had the power to impregnate the air of the hive and the thousands who dwelt within it. All of them would know their own hive, since they all smelled the same. “It is,” said Klara, full of a new set of giggles, “as if all Russian men and women have one kind of awful aroma, and those Polish oafs another. Maybe there is a good decent smell of tea for the English, and we Austrians, we have to be something special, we are warm like strudel.” Again, she had Angela full of giggles. “And the French, yes, a shameless ugly scent. So harsh! Worse than rotten onions and old gravy. Italians—nothing but garlic.” They were hugging each other by now. “Maybe the very worst, the Bohemians. I shouldn’t describe them. Stinking old cabbage.”

  They wiped their eyes. Adi, hearing their laughter, came to join them. He was annoyed when they explained nothing, merely kept laughing at the sound of each country.

  All this talk of good and bad smells gave a special tingle to Angela’s nose. In school, she was now most aware of Fräulein Werner, with all her talcum powder, and then there was her own little Adi. He was absolutely smelly at times, especially when he ran up and down too many hills. She was always coaxing him to use more soap, or on those nights once a week when Klara boiled enough water for each of them to bathe in the big washtub, Angela would insist on lathering his back and his armpits before returning the bar of soap to him. Then, with a wholly mischievous grin—“You have the soap now, so put it where it can do some work, you careless boy.”

  Adi would scream with anger at such incivility, and made certain to be loud enough for Klara to come running in. Yet he would not repeat a word to his mother. He was in turmoil. Did he smell as bad as Angela kept saying, or was his sister crazy? Who could know? He could barely sniff a thing on himself.

  Angela, however, would begin to brood once again on the death of Rosig. The prize sow had indeed been full of a strong odor, not unlike Adi at his worst, or was it Rosig at her worst?—enough! Angela began to cry for both, the boy and the pig together. Full of remorse for teasing him, she tried to make amends by telling him a few of the wonderful secrets Klara had told her, all of this new knowledge about bees, and on many a morning as the two walked to school, she would take up the topic again—her head was so full of what she had been told that Adi’s imagination was soon inflamed by the mysteries of the Queen.

  Ever since they had come to the farm in April, he had been most aware of the nearness of bees. In May and June, there had been hours in full daylight when the sky was full of tiny lights, glints of light whipping about, flying in so many directions. His mother was always warning him that he must not try to touch any such tiny creature should he see one on a flower. Worse, he must never dare to kill one. That same bee could give him something to remember! Then one fine morning in July, Edmund got stung and couldn’t stop screaming for the longest time. So Adolf, in his turn, had been most respectful of the perils of their presence.

  Now, however, to hear that the Queen shared her odor with every bee in the hive, yes, that did excite his thoughts.

  The night after he heard that his father might be going to talk to a neighbor about purchasing what Alois called “the first materials”—an announcement he made on a Saturday evening at dinner—Adi had a vivid dream. He saw an army of bees flying in circles above the farm. Standing near their house was an old man who was dressed differently from anyone Adi had ever seen. His shirt remained outside his pants and came to his knees, and he wore an old knit wool hat over his white hair, a hat as long as a stocking. It hung half down his back. He was not short, but he still looked like a dwarf because he was bent over. In this dream, Adi knew his name. The man was called Der Alte, and the boy woke up on Sunday morning to learn that his father was actually going to visit a beekeeper named Der Alte.

  How could he not ask his father if he could go along? Alois was surprised, then pleased. Every Sunday until now, Klara was picked up by another farm couple in their wagon to go to Sunday Mass in Fischlham’s small chapel. She would travel with the three children, even as Alois stayed at the farm. “In truth, in good conscience, I cannot go,” he would tell her, and he would be left alone to walk his fields. This morning, therefore, he was all the more pleased that Adi asked to join him.

  I can say that I was directly instrumental in shaping the boy’s dream. It had been my first active participation with the family since the night I entered Alois’ mind just after his beer-soaked sermon in Linz about the beauties and wonders of apiculture.

  Now I feel that I must address the reader again on an unappetizing matter. It does concern Adi’s bad smell.

  9

  It is curious, yet, after all, not so curious that few matters concerning men and women are so uncomfortable to discuss as bad odor. I will add that humans who labor for the Maestro can hardly avoid that libel.

  Enough! Stinks do not make for happy devils. At this time, approaching the end of the nineteenth century, our problems could often be traced to one phenomenon. Many human beings in whom we invested found it necessary to remain exceptionally fastidious in their personal habits. Otherwise, they would at varying times smell rank enough to arouse distrust.

  How this condition began, I cannot say. My recollection of earlier eras is highly imperfect and usually is no more available to me than the stunted instinct a human might have of previous incarnations. It is probably not in the Maestro’s interest to have us know any more than we need to know. Rather, we are asked to deal with problems directly before us. We do not have to call, after all, upon Judas or Bluebeard or Attila the Hun to encourage a drunken client to go for one more tot of booze. In consequence, we can have almost no definitive insight into the beginning of the war between the Dummkopf and the Evil One. Whether they were both gods or, as Milton proposed, the contest was between God and an angel as important as Lucifer, is beyond my province. Nor can we dismiss the possibility that the Dummkopf, in early command (and disarray) of this earth and this solar system, may have been in sufficient difficulty to address Himself to higher powers out in the galaxies. It is possible that the Maestro was sent here by those greater powers because they were dissatisfied with the progress of the D.K. Evolution had already enmeshed itself in numerous cul-de-sacs. Nonetheless, these matters can only remain questions for me.

  Yet, if I must offer some conjecture as to what might have taken place during the aeons of time already consumed, I have to assume that the D.K. is Creator of the world of weather, flora, fauna, and all human beings, and that evolution was His laboratory—the signs of His Folly as well as of His Genius are to be found among the myriad of His creations, and the obstacles He encountered. One needs only to think of the interminable ages that passed before He could induce a few of His creatures to fly. Add to this the breadth and bulk of His earthbound and marine species, or the godly hopes that went, for example, into the brontosaurus (only to discover that this particular overenlarged beast was simply too big to survive—that is one failure). Leave it at that. The Creator had His relative successes and His abysmal failures. While it must be admitted that He never gave up, even if He was not always in firm control of the earth He had fashioned, it is also incontestable that earthquakes and ice ages brought many an interruption to His experiments and savaged many of His pursuits. Why? Because He had incorrectly designed this globe of earth in the first place.

  Of one relatively small matter I am certain: By the time His most ambitious concept, men and women, had entered existence, there came a shift in the imp
ortance of odor. Concerning that, I believe I have some rudiments to offer. It is that in the long-gone era of primitive man, odor must have been one of the Creator’s assets. How could He not have used its signals to aid the development of many species? In large part, humans were often drawn to one another or repelled by the messages that reached the nose. So simple and elegant a solution. Presumably their smells were ready to reveal the depth of each creature’s courage, perseverance, fear, treachery, shame, loyalty, and—not least—their determination to propagate. Odor enabled the D.K. to take creative steps in evolution without having to oversee each and every mating.

  I think by the time our Maestro was ready to contest His progress, the Lord could no longer believe in Himself as All-Good and All-Powerful. The presence of a colleague (probably unwanted in the first place) had to reduce His sense of His own stature. So the D.K. began to search for a method whereby His Cudgels could determine which men, women, and children had gone over to the adversary. Indeed, I would propose that the D.K. was able to mark each of our clients with a touch of condign odor, a process chosen for its simplicity and relative lack of cost. From the Middle Ages on, therefore, our Maestro had contested this obstacle to his intentions by encouraging many of his alchemists to develop perfumes whose subtleties became a means whereby rotten odors could be topped with sweeter, earthier, more untraceable, and finally more appealing fragrances, even exotic in their hint of a bit of reek beneath the bouquet. (It is, for example, impossible to keep track of the promiscuity of court life in France during the reign of Louis XIV without pondering these royal redolences, these carnal aromas so full of camouflage. They proved a boon to all of our clients who were rich enough to afford good perfumes.)

  By the end of the Enlightenment, matters had altered once more. Soaps, developed by us, were able to nullify mephitic aromas. By the twentieth century the increasing erasure of human odor contributed vitally to our progress. Bathtubs, cleansing oils, and the development of plumbing all came into being, due in large part to the support we gave to such entrepreneurs.

  Toward the end of the twentieth century, God’s dependence on unpleasant personal odor as a means of warning His Cudgels that our clients were near had been rendered obsolete. Deodorants dominated the day. By now, in the twenty-first century, it is rare to find a husband or wife who possesses much sense of the odor of their closest partner. (This is certainly true in the more developed nations.) The loss of such cognitive power has not only lessened the dominance of the D.K. but has given impetus to us.

  Back, however, toward the end of the nineteenth century, obliteration of human odor was not nearly so complete, and the meeting between Alois, Adi, and Der Alte was characterized by a curious but immediate intimacy between the boy and the old man. In part, indeed, it was aromatic.

  But I must not ignore the walk to Der Alte’s farm. On the way, Alois had a real conversation with his son for the first time.

  BOOK VII

  DER ALTE AND THE BEES

  1

  I will speak first, however, of the dream I installed in Adi’s sleep. That was on the Saturday night which preceded Alois’ meeting with the beekeeper on Sunday, and the dream was delivered in response to a direct order from the Maestro. I will add that creating a dream, especially one that has no connection to the dreamer’s previous experience, is not routine. While we can, on special occasions, insert whole scenarios into our client’s sleep, it is also true that dream-works produced ex nihilo make serious inroads on our budget. It certainly demands disproportionate outlays of Time!

  Moreover, when the client is young, there is risk involved. Cudgels who might be involved with the client can be more than troublesome if they become aware of what we are attempting. Delicate manipulations calculated to alter future reactions in a subject’s psyche should not be undertaken under battlefield conditions. Few people prosper from a nightmare.

  It has been my experience that the installation of dreams that are as intense as nocturnal visions can deliver many desired effects, but success is best when one can proceed in small steps over many a night in order not to arouse the Cudgels. Count on it, the angels react with fury to any dream we initiate. This has been true from the commencement of human existence. The D.K. feels it is paramount for Him to command all dreams. Looking to control those primates whom He was inspiring to become humans, He inserted hallucinations into their sleep, and these proved essential. They sped up the process.

  Much later, during what the Maestro calls the Jehovah Era (which is—forgive these rough historical estimates—from 1200 B.C. to the advent of Jesus Christ), the D.K. disbursed a host of awards and punishments (occasionally by way of miracles, but more often through dreams). He would succeed in arousing visions in prophets and plebeians alike. Thereby, He could drive His wards on many a chosen route, often, I suspect, on not much more than an imperious whim.

  Our entrance, however, into the developing life of humankind reduced such powers. No longer could Jehovah employ dreams so effectively. Now, given our copious use of such a medium, dreams rarely appear as visions. Rather, they invade sleep as jagged, broken-backed narratives. Intrusions from one side charge into the aims of the other.

  The D.K.’s once-imperious use of dreams has, therefore, been nullified. Rarely can His commands be delivered forthrightly any longer. Instead, the modern nocturnal episode provides the sleeper with a hint of oncoming disturbances. If a trusted friend is likely to prove treacherous in the near future, a dream can alert one to such a possibility. On the other hand, if it is the dreamer who is ready to betray a close friend, the consequences of such an act can be dramatized by way of an imaginary scenario. Thereby, the D.K. has found a means to guide some of His human beings. The mock situations created by the dream may not be wholly comprehensible, but they do test the subject’s ability to withstand intense anxiety. Even when a dream is incompletely interpreted, the subject does retain some clouded awareness of how he or she possesses less courage, less loyalty, less devotion, less love, or less health than previously assumed. The dream can now serve as a species of imperfect protective system to warn a man or woman away from situations they cannot dominate or even tolerate.

  To the degree, however, that we are able to interfere with real impact, the average dream becomes a whirligig, a strew, a chaos left by the melee between the Cudgels and ourselves.

  So the task of creating a clear dream for a child required special attention. As I have remarked, the Maestro did not, for the most part, encourage such ventures with children. It will be recalled that when the Hitler family made their move from Passau, I was instructed to cease paying attention to little Adolf. He and his family would now be monitored via milk runs by my assistants. Except for the sole occasion when I had slipped into Alois’ brain long enough to delve into his fascination with beekeeping, I had been working with other clients in that region of Austria. The information about the Hitlers of Hafeld provided by my assistants had proved adequate.

  Now a direct communication from the Maestro had arrived—I was to implant a particular dream into the head of our six-year-old. Etch was the salient verb. “I want you,” he said, “to etch Adi’s brain with a permanent notion. You can probably gain open entrance. We have been quiescent in that direction for so long that I expect no interference from the Cudgels.”

  2

  The act itself took no more than a few minutes, but the preparation had not been simple. Etch, I will repeat, was the operative word. A fixed notion, once successfully installed, can attach the client closely to us. But etching is not there for any devil to practice. It must be done with incisive strokes. Misapplied, it can unbalance the recipient.

  I will go so far as to say that on this occasion, I was deft. Given the knowledge absorbed from the milk runs, I knew that Alois would soon be visiting this neighboring beekeeper, Der Alte, also known as Der alte Zauberer—“the Old Sorcerer.” Or such was the name given him by neighboring peasants.

  The term was an exaggeration. This o
ld man was a hermit and highly eccentric. Provoked, he could be as mean as a winter wind, but on special occasions he might seem as agreeable as any other purportedly warm old fellow. The peasants in Hafeld, having known him for decades, knew better. Nonetheless, he was the only apiculturist within a day’s walk in any direction and commanded more than a little erudition about beekeeping.

  What was most comfortable about Der Alte was that he had belonged to us for decades. In effect, he was an old pensioner. Moreover, he and Adi would be kin in odor, and so were likely to be unoffended by each other. The magnetic thrust of the dream soon suggested itself. Before they met, I would etch the boy’s mind with a clear image of Der Alte.

  As a matter of style, when it comes to dream-work, I have always been inclined to avoid baroque virtuosities. Modest scenarios are usually more effective. In this case, I satisfied myself by producing as close a presentation of Der Alte’s face and voice as I could manage before placing him in Adi’s dream. For the setting, I used an image of one of the two rooms of the old man’s hut, and made the yard visible through the window. The action of the dream could not have been more direct. As Der Alte led them inside his quarters, he fed Adi a spoonful of honey. I made certain the taste was exquisite on the boy’s tongue. Adi awakened with wet pajamas from navel to knee and a whole sense of happiness. Stripping his wet night-clothing, a not-unusual event, he went back into slumber, replaying the dream with his own small variations, looking to taste the honey again. In his mind, he was certain that he would soon meet Der Alte, and this emboldened him to ask his father to take him along next morning. Alois, as I have remarked, was pleased.