“That,” he told her, “is because most of my associates go to church. You did not have good luck this morning.”
She laughed. He was tempted to let her off. Let her avoid the cost of the fine by smuggling him into her thighs. But he hadn’t allowed himself. Serious rules he would not disregard.
All the same, the recollection kept him brooding about the nature of subterfuge. Back in the days when he could still enjoy a ride on a horse, there had usually been one or another steed who could rob some of his confidence, something in their gait—as if, should they choose, you would find what might as well be five legs under you rather than four. You wouldn’t know a damned thing about how to control that kind of animal.
Yes, that was like Alois Junior.
On the other hand, he might be making too severe a judgment on his oldest son. Klara kept saying that Junior did not seem to be the same boy who had gone away to work for Johann Poelzl. Her parents must have been good for him. His manners were nice. He did not look to be judging you all the time. Before he had gone away, Klara said, he was like a friend who was warm to your face but would say something ugly so soon as you left. She had no proof, but she would swear that was how he used to be. Now there was something better about him. Maybe. He still spent too much time riding Ulan. Yet, as Klara also announced to Alois, she was ready to put up with that. Better to ride over the hill than to start flirting with his own sister.
“What would you ever know about such matters?” Alois asked.
“I don’t,” said Klara. “But when I was young, I saw things. In certain families. It is not something to talk about.”
That she and Alois might have something larger and more private to talk about was not evident in her voice. She flushed only a little as she spoke.
This ability to wall up the most unpalatable facts about oneself will always elicit my unwilling admiration. I do not know if the inner construction of such a barrier is equal in difficulty, let us say, to scaling the Alps, but in any event, credit must go to the Dummkopf. He created the ban against incest—we certainly didn’t—and then it became His secondary task to protect humans, should they ever do it, from remembering what they had done.
We lose certain advantages thereby. Most men and women are incapable of facing unpleasant truths. They have what can only be a God-given ability to conceal themselves from themselves. So I could appreciate how Klara was full of unadmitted worry over Alois Junior and Angela and never spent a moment pondering whether her husband was not her uncle but her father.
2
I, too, had been pondering the changes in Alois Junior. On the face of it, he had improved. If manners were a guide, he had become a reasonable imitation of a trustworthy and pleasant youth.
The devils I had left behind were now pleased to tell me that they had made a copy of a short letter Johann Poelzl had sent back with Alois Junior. It gave a definite and most decent opinion of the lad.
I could hardly trust the validity of the letter. For one thing, it was not the original but a copy made by the agent. That voided one of my talents—I can obtain a good deal of insight by no more than a glance at a person’s handwriting. Many an undisclosed corner of the soul is revealed. Falsities stand out like acne.
As I have already indicated, the devils I had left in Hafeld had not been skilled. So they did no more than study Johann’s letter (left in Klara’s sewing basket) and make a copy. Possessed of more technique, they could have forged a facsimile and kept the original.
Bereft of the calligraphy, I had to content myself with the words.
Esteemed daughter,
This I give to the boy. He will give to you. Your mother says he is good boy. She will cry for missing him. That is what she says.
Tell your esteemed husband. Alois Junior is good. Hard worker. Very good.
Your father,
Johann Poelzl
I could have put in a request for one of our nocturnals in Spital to pass through Johann’s thoughts on a milk run, but I decided to wait. He was a stubborn old man ready to repel any entrance into his mind, and I could learn as much as I needed to know about Alois Junior in Hafeld. The minor devils left here had, to my surprise, improved to some degree. Even without my surveillance, they were picking up our trade. One of them might soon be ready for lessons in dream-etching.
I will not, however, bother to describe them closely. At present, more than a century has passed, and former devils offer even less pleasure to memory than mediocre songs. While a man or woman’s presence is closely related to their body, and so offers a multitude of insights, we devils are without salient personality except when it is necessary to dwell within some man or woman’s body for the length of a project. Then we do have a presence and it is near to indistinguishable from the person we inhabit. I would say it bears no more relation to ourselves than a change of garment.
We enjoy a happier existence in the land of the dream. There—if we are ready to afford the expenditure—we can be anyone we wish. Some improvisations are brilliant. Indeed, if dreams dictated as much of human history as we desired, the Dummkopf would soon be the Maestro’s retainer.
But we were nowhere near to such a point. Certainly not back in 1896. God was still the Lord of our immediate universe. Humans, animals, and plants were still His Creation. Nature, imperfect as it was and, on occasion, cataclysmic (due, I must repeat, to imperfections in His design), remained nonetheless in His command, that far-from-faultless command. Only the night belonged in good part to us.
Being most aware of this, the Maestro frowned upon self-approbation. He let us know that devils were not to congratulate themselves on the terrors they had initiated by nightmare. “Dreams are evanescent,” he told us. “Control of events belongs to the day.”
Control of events? The Maestro was certainly keeping alive his interest in the Hitlers of Hafeld, but when I looked to comprehend why, his avowed high hopes for young Adolf Hitler made me wonder whether I could discern the Maestro’s real interests. Our special six-year-old might be no more than one of a hundred or a thousand prospects whom the Maestro was overseeing with no more than the remote likelihood that they might yet become important to our serious intentions. Any estimate that my task might be of major magnitude was obliged, then, to rise and fall more than once in the immediate seasons ahead.
3
I have not described, and do not intend to list, the numerous other activities, undertakings, and small explorations that the devils under my authority were engaged in through those parts of the province of Upper Austria (which includes Linz and the Waldviertel). By now, they are of no interest.
History has, however, underlined the perspicacity of the Maestro’s projections into the future, and so if I return in my understanding to the summer of 1896, it is with the strength of knowing that one’s work has been of significance: many a detail that is now recalled was worthy of our attention.
I can assert, therefore, that Alois Junior was demonstrating his considerable talent to charm whoever was in his immediate surroundings. For a time, he even succeeded in leavening the heavy suspicion that emanated from Alois Senior’s person, who, when he was in an ugly mood, could come upon others like a wall of oncoming bad weather—an unsettling affect he had often used at Customs while confronting a dubious tourist. Yet, such was the boy’s charm—a nice combination of youth, health, a touch of wit, and apparent goodwill—that his father could not maintain this massive psychic front for more than a few days. Moreover, Alois Junior was showing some interest in the bees. He had many good questions to ask.
Before long, Alois Senior was beginning to feel a rare happiness—he so seldom liked his children. Now he did. One of them, at any rate. He even began to give Alois a few of his best lectures on beekeeping, and before long repeated all of his earlier speeches to Klara and Angela and Adi, plus his monologues at the Linz taverns, to which he could now add the newer ones at Fischlham, where he played the resident expert from Hafeld. The boy picked it up so quickly th
at Alois had to dip into more advanced knowledge of the sort he had ingested from reading apicultural journals. Finally, he was even presenting a few of Der Alte’s finer insights as his own, as, for example, the near humanity of the bee, or the delicacy and high inspiration of their lives. The boy kept taking it in, and he was deft when working with the hives. Senior began to dream of a future where father and son might add colony to colony. This could become a true business.
One day he was feeling so proud of Alois Junior that he brought him along on a visit to Der Alte. He had hesitated before deciding on such a move—he certainly did not wish to be replaced as the local expert in Junior’s estimation. On the other hand, he was proud of his association with Der Alte, so learned a man, yet ready to treat him as an equal—that, too, might impress the boy.
The truth is that he was no longer uneasy over the beekeeper’s superiority. He had been fortified by the hour when Der Alte all but wept in his arms. Moreover, he had again a practical need for advice. His hives were full of honey. He had studied his manuals on the technique of honey gathering, but he did not feel ready. In the old days, back at Passau and Linz, he used to make a botch of it. The honey he gathered was ridden with small chunks of wax, and—no matter his veil and gloves—he had received a few too many nasty bites where the cloth gaped on his neck and wrists.
Now it would be closer to a major effort. He could hardly sell the better part of this harvest if his product was not free of detritus. One dead fly was enough to spoil a sale if the customer saw it first!
So here he was seeking advice once more from the old goat. Yet now he felt more tolerant. It was amazing to Alois how little he was offended on this occasion by the aroma of the hut. Der Alte might know more about bees, but he, Alois, knew enough not to burst into tears just because something went all wrong.
He took Alois Junior with him, therefore, and Der Alte responded to the visit with warmth. He was happy not to be alone. His convalescence had dragged along and was sometimes as painful as a sharp light in the eye. His pride had drooped under the weight of all that was missing in his life. Hermits are not often ready to undergo intense self-examination. It hardly matters whether they are hermits protected by the Cudgels, or in service to us, or, very occasionally, unaffiliated—although this last is a feat, considering the loneliness, but in any event, such clients usually have to be taken at least once a year through a cleansing of their moods. For this last week, I had had to spend time on Der Alte. His spirit had fallen before the knowledge that he could not see himself in any way as a social leader—which had been the most intense of his early ambitions. He had no mate, no heirs, no real money. And his memory kept reminding him of men or women who had done him injuries which he had failed to pay back. Under it all was the heavy disappointment that he had not arrived at any of the powers and distinctions to which his intelligence should have entitled him. As is so often true of the depression that follows an unexpected accident, he saw this affliction as a judgment on himself.
I made a point of being present, then, during Alois’ visit, for I wanted to improve Der Alte’s mood. If a client’s thoughts can be darkened when we wish to drive them down a bit, so too do we have the skill to lift a man out of a black mood for an hour or two, even—if it comes to it—provide a moment of joy. We do not want them to expire emptily. (Much better for us if they die young and in a rage.) Most of our old clients either cease to exist—no soul is left!—or are reincarnated by the Dummkopf, who does not like to give up on any of His creatures, large or small, wise or foolish—which may be one reason the world becomes more and more overrun by mediocrity.
The situation is, of course, never simple, since we, too, have to look to take what profit we can still extract from worn-out clients.
I was looking, therefore, to improve Der Alte’s mood. Indeed, I was able to give him relief from his unhappiest thoughts so soon as Junior and Senior came to visit. I even connected him again to the notion that he was an attractive man. Vanity is always the human sentiment most available to us. Der Alte, therefore, felt powerfully attracted to Alois Junior. It was the first time in many years that he had felt the desire to make love to an adolescent.
After the introductions and the formal query about his health, they began to discuss the procedure. “Honey gathering! Of course! I can tell you about that.”
In full form, intensely aware of the boy, Der Alte felt more than ready to launch into an exposition on the lesser-known aspects of the process.
“Yes,” said my rejuvenated old fellow, “honey gathering is an art in itself. I am glad you have come to me on this day because, truly, able as your father has become in his short period here at Hafeld—a brilliant man, your father—nonetheless, the best of beekeepers have to learn what is virtually a new vocation when, after the long winter and a kindly, warm spring that fulfills our hopes, the larvae in our brood combs are now ready to hatch. That, if I may say, is a most pregnant moment for our vocation. The hives are teeming. The old bees are out on flights, and the youngsters are assigned to the innumerable tasks of housekeeping, one of which, for example, is to fill empty wax combs with honey and cap them with a fine, thin layer of wax. Specialists among the bees are given that assignment. Young Alois, it is equal to a miracle. Such workers are young, some are just ten days old, but already we may think of them as craftsmen. The layer of wax that covers each tiny comb has no more thickness than good stout paper.”
Alois restrained himself from saying, “I know that already,” and winked instead at Junior. He had told the boy to be prepared to listen. “When it comes to his bees, Der Alte can speak in full paragraphs. Sometimes it is full pages. All you need do is nod. I already know nine parts in ten of what he will say, but it is like fishing. Be patient, and you will get what you came for.”
“So, yes,” Der Alte now said, “the honey gathering, if not done properly and at the right time, can be a rude interruption of the work of the bees. The first question to ask oneself, therefore, is what will be the best hour to remove your honey from the hives?” He held up a hand as if to police his own exposition. “It is the late morning,” said Der Alte. “That is definitely the best time. The hives are warm but not yet too hot. The worker bees are somnolent. I would go so far as to say that your little creatures might be taking a siesta at this time. They are, after all”—and he laughed—“Italian bees.”
To be courteous, Alois smiled. So did Junior.
“Well, then,” said Der Alte, “we take the great step. For that, I will have to lend you an empty hive body.”
“Is it because we will have to transfer the bees who are in the honey chamber?” asked Alois Junior.
“Exactly,” said Der Alte. “Your sense of anticipation is excellent. Your imagination is closely focused, I can see, on the particularities of this situation.”
“Yes,” said Alois Senior, “he is a bright boy, but if I may venture my opinion, there is no way to separate those honey-chamber bees from the honey unless one brings up a separator board.”
“Of course,” said Der Alte, “and so the first move, then…?”
“Locate the Queen,” said Senior. “That’s one thing you taught me.” He turned to Junior. “Yes, bees will panic when they do not know where their Queen is. To move them from one box to another, you also have to transfer her.”
“Exactly,” said Der Alte. “I have shown your father how to locate the lady. Then you must introduce a queen cage”—he took a little box from his pocket the size of a deck of cards. “With this, you will use a catching glass.”
“Yes, my father has shown this to me. He even let me blow one of the Queens from the catching glass into the cage.”
“That is a nice procedure,” said Der Alte. “In a year or so, however, when you become as highly accomplished as I expect, you will dispense with the cage. You will be able to pick up the Queen with your fingers.”
“Yes,” said Alois Senior, “but don’t try it in a hurry,” and he made a gesture of slapping
frantically at invisible bees, as if to remind Der Alte how this bold procedure could invite a disaster.
“Just yesterday,” said Der Alte, “I moved three of my Queens into three separate hives. With my fingers. I could have used the catching glass. Undeniably, it is as your father suggests, a more cautious procedure. But I am like an acrobat who has taken a serious fall. There is no solution but to get up on that verdammten tightrope again.”
Actually, Der Alte had gone back to the catching glass for these transfers, but as an experienced client, he was able to lie with whole assurance on any subject. His desire to elicit Junior’s admiration was all the impetus he needed. First, however, Alois had to be neutralized.
“Your father,” he now said to Junior, “has, as usual, gone to the heart of the matter. The Queen once removed, your bees will use the separator board to escape from the honey chamber into the brood chamber, for that is where you have relocated the Queen. How they will struggle with one another in their haste to use the exit and so be able to reunite themselves with their lady.”
He smiled at Alois Junior. “Ah, to be young again and on the hunt for a young woman. In the old days, nothing could stop me. Would you say there is anything that might stop you?”
“Yes,” said Alois Junior, “my father.” All three laughed.
“You must listen to your father.”
The Castle in the Forest Page 26
