The Castle in the Forest (57 page)

^{recognize “a sober side in you, young Hitler,” and stopped before he began to stammer.}

^{“I apologize most abjectly for my actions yesterday, Herr Schwamm,” Adolf replied, and was not in the least abject.}

^{Herr Schwamm felt himself close to tears once more. He maintained his composure by making a modest gesture of dismissal.}

^{Once on the other side of the door, Adolf was in a fury. These hypocrites should be dragged to see the wax vagina at the Anatomical Museum.}

^{Indeed, he was preparing the speech he would give to his fellow students when they surrounded him at recess to find out what transpired.}

^{“Well,” he would say, “I certainly held my own with poor old Schwamm.”}

^{It was a late afternoon in March when he came out of school, but he initiated a snowball fight with a few of his new friends and they kept at it until twilight. He kept repeating a phrase, “Optimism, fire, blood, and steel,” and was immensely pleased that the three students on his side in this impromptu and ice-cold test of battle repeated it. So far as he knew, the phrase had not come from a book but had sprung from his throat: “Optimism, fire, blood, and steel!” (Was he repeating words I had given him? I cannot always remember every inspiration I have offered to each client.)}

^{Leave it that Adolf did pick up his volume of Treitschke when he reached home and soon proceeded to memorize the following words:}

^{God has given all Germans the earth for a potential home, and this assumes that there will come a time when there will be a leader of all the world, a leader to serve as the embodiment, the incarnation, the essence of a most mysterious power which will tie the people to the invisible majesty of the nation.}

^{He thought of this passage often in months to come. Could he believe it? Was it true? There were all kinds of Germans, and}

^{some, he decided, were as spineless as Schwamm. Still, he used this long sentence as a rallying cry to himself when in the rigors of one more battle in the woods. He hardly knew what it meant, and yet he kept repeating the words to himself. Nothing that he would read over the next four decades would live for him with such certainty. We devils have known for a long time that a mediocre mind, once devoted entirely to one mystical idea, can obtain a mental confidence well beyond its normal potential.}

^{By late spring of 1903, his war games took on other complexities. Sometimes, on Saturday afternoons, there were as many as fifty boys to a side, and Adolf was introduced, willy-nilly, to logistics. Each army now had to deal with its wounded and its prisoners. Even as Adolf had been seen (until recently) as a minor presence in his school, so was he now, by full contrast, a generalissimo in the forest. Indeed, he was forever pronouncing new battle codes, then changing his own rules. On a given Saturday he would decide that once a man was captured, the only choice was to put him in prison or kill him.}

^{Then he had to recognize that the latter could end many battles too quickly. Where could the dead soldier go but back to his house? So now, serious discussions arose about the length of time required for incarceration. Should it be for thirty minutes, or an hour? And who could keep track? It had to be a separate timekeeper, loyal to neither side. (They ended by choosing the one boy who owned a pocket watch.) Then Adolf had an inspiration. A prisoner could gain his freedom more quickly by becoming a spy. Or he could refuse all offers and stay in prison, but that choice was not often taken. Adolf was aware that captured men soon get bored.}

³

^S

^{chool ended in June. The previous summer, spent at the Garden House, had ended with Alois’ first hemorrhage. Now, in the summer of 1903, the family put all that might be needed into two huge trunks, and Klara, Angela, Adolf, and Paula traveled to Spital, where Klara’s sister Theresa lived. There they spent the summer. When Alois was alive there had been no question of returning. He could never bear to go back. It reminded him of the cattle trough in which his mother used to sleep. By now, however, the farmer Schmidt, married to Theresa, had a holding large enough to put up all who were in the Hiedler-Poelzl clan. The farm came to no more than the land, the house, the sheds, the outbuildings, and the animals, but Schmidt was a hard worker, and he had managed, by the measure of Spital, to make it profitable. With several fields to work, and woodlands to harvest for nuts, he was ready to use all the labor Klara could offer. “It’ll be good for her sorrow that she’s here to work it off,” he said.}

^{That summer, unlike other members of the family, Adolf did not work. He played with the younger farm children once their afternoon chores were done, and he tried to teach a few war games, even if his recruits were tired enough to fall asleep at their stations.}

^{For most of the day, protected by Klara, he spent his morning and early afternoon reading or drawing, after which he would wander into the woods to search for new military positions. On one occasion he was asked to join in the field work, but Klara declared that he must do no labor at all, considering the ongoing trouble}

^{with his lungs. She even told her sister Theresa that since she did not wish him to do any labor, she would pay for his food. That proved acceptable.}

^{After the summer, Angela was going to marry a man named Leo Raubal, who worked as a notary in a bank. Adolf did not enjoy the sight of him. Whenever Raubal would visit, he would tell his future brother-in-law, “Your lungs are not as bad as you claim, isn’t that the truth?” and this was enough to leave Adolf in a cold fury. Where could Raubal have picked up such an idea if not from Angela?}

^{Nonetheless, Adolf could see one positive element in this marriage—his own financial condition would improve. There would be a larger share of pension money for him once his big sister was gone from the household. Of course, Angela was hardly bewitched by her situation. She was entering into marriage with a man she didn’t adore, but a man, nonetheless, who was available. So Klara’s grand plans for Angela’s future had come to little. If Angela was ready to accept such a marriage, Klara was not only disappointed but surprised. She was also furious with herself. She could not forgive herself. She had created no social life for Angela. The family lived in the Garden House, a fine place for a young girl to receive company, but Klara had not known how to make the right kind of friends for that. When it came to meeting strangers and impressing them with your charm, and the possible size of a dowry, well, she and Angela had both been much too shy. Raubal turned out to be the best that was available.}

^{As far as Klara was concerned, this man was lucky to steal her stepdaughter. It was virtually a crime. Angela was entitled to much more. Raubal wasn’t even healthy in appearance.}

^{What Klara did not know was that Angela had been living with a guilty secret. She had never stopped pining for Alois Junior. She knew that Junior would never come back, but in the course of these seven years of absence, she had transmuted him into a perfect young man. She remembered how handsome he had been on Ulan. She was certain, of course, that if she and Alois Junior were still}

^{together, she would never take one improper step, but all the same she might now allow her brother to dismount from his horse and kiss her. Even after the family moved to the Garden House and Angela had a room to herself, she still kept, carefully hidden, a photograph of her brother taken by an itinerant photographer on a fine warm day in Hafeld. Alois Junior had been proud to obtain a picture of himself standing by his horse. Indeed, he had taken Ulan out of the stable and led him up to the view camera.}

^{Angela had stolen that picture. It had been her way of paying Alois back for the times he had teased her when she refused to mount Ulan. When the photo disappeared, she had to swear to Alois Junior that she had no idea where it might be. “I say this on a stack of Bibles,” she had said.}

^{“Where are these Bibles?” Alois Junior asked.}

^{“In my mind. They are there. You can trust me.”}

^{She did not mind that he was suffering just as much as if he had lost a gold watch. He deserved to suffer for the way he had teased her. So cruel!}

^{Angela still kept this photo hidden, but, as the date of her marriage neared, she became more concerned about the carnal redolence that remained in her heart for this innocent—yet maybe not so innocent—attachment to a fading sepia portrait. Finally, she came to the cruel recognition that the picture had to be destroyed. (Otherwise, Leo Raubal was bound to find it sooner or later.) So, on a night when she was unable to sleep, in a small but most private ceremony, she tore up this small piece of her past and in the dark of early morning put the scraps in a small bowl, set a kitchen match to them, and wept silently as bits of the photograph turned to black.}

^{After the wedding, Adolf was bothered by thoughts of how ugly must be the acts that Angela and Leo were performing in bed. Adolf had seen the groom’s phallus one time when they urinated side by side in a field, and thought it was nothing agreeable to look at. Now Leo was rubbing it in and out of this supposedly sacred passage between Angela’s two unmentionable holes}

^{—how disgusting! His thoughts came to a halt when he recognized that his father and mother were no different from the newlyweds. How awful was this secret that all men and women had to keep silent about.}

⁴

^B

^{y May of that next year, 1904, in addition to earning another mediocre set of marks, Adolf failed French. A make-up exam would await him in the fall. He did receive a passing mark, but the principal remained unforgiving about the episode with Herr Schwamm. If Adolf Hitler wanted to enter his last year in a Realschule, the principal declared that it would not be at Linz. In retaliation, Adolf said to himself, “I will never allow this school to insult my intelligence again.”}

^{Klara solved the problem by sending Adolf to a town called Steyr, fifteen miles from Leonding. It was there that he could finish his Realschule studies. Given the pension, Klara could afford to rent a room for Adolf rather than be obliged to pay for his travel back and forth every day by train. So, from Sunday night to Friday afternoon, Adolf stayed with a woman who was also boarding four other students. It was Frau Sekira’s duty to see that her boarders were reasonably well fed and did their homework. Indeed, she was motherly. Adolf always addressed her in a formal manner and then was off to his own small room, where he would spend his time reading and drawing. His marks in the Steyr Realschule were no better, however, than in Linz, and by the end he even failed French once more. In the fall of 1905 he would have to face a makeup exam in order to graduate.}

^{Over the next summer, Klara took Paula and Adolf back to Spiral, but in September he traveled to Steyr again for his French test.}

^{This time he passed and so received his graduation certificate. In celebration, he and some of the new roomers at Frau Sekira’s house decided to have a party. One of the boys had brought four bottles of wine from home and was generous enough to share them. “My father said that it is good to make a pig of yourself once a year. That is just what my father said. Do it once, not twice.” They all applauded the absent father.}

^{The students stayed up late that night and by the end, Adolf declared, “I am as drunk as my father ever was,” and fell asleep on the floor. In the morning, he could not find his certificate of graduation. It had been in his pocket but now it was gone. Since he would be going home later in the day, he had to have something to show to his mother. She would never believe that he earned his degree if he could not present the certificate. Trying to put together an explanation, he wondered whether he could tell her that on the train he had unfolded this precious piece of paper in order to enjoy looking at it, but since it was a warm day, he had also opened the train window. With no warning, a gust of wind carried it off! Yet, now as he stepped outside to clear his mind, he recognized that such a story would not suffice. It happened to be a cold day.}

^{Preparing to say farewell to Frau Sekira, he did mention his troubles. Frau Sekira suggested he not attempt to deceive his mother. “That is so inadvisable,” she said. “If your story is accepted by her, you will then feel so very guilty. And if your mother does find out, it will be worse.”}

^{Over the previous school year, she had been no more than a woman who served him food every day and changed the sheets once a week. Now she had become a rare and thoughtful human being. In misery, he asked, “What should I do?”}

^{“Oh,” she said, “tell them the truth at school. They might be unhappy but they will certainly give you a copy.”}

^{So Adolf went back to a school he thought he would never see again, and the Rector kept him waiting. It was, after all, a day of registration. Yet, when the Rector did let him in, it was to open a locked closet and take out a heavy paper bag. After which he said,}