The Castle in the Forest by Norman Mailer

the present affair with the new cook, Rosalie, at the Pommer Inn.
    She hated him for such acts. But then, she also learned that this kind of hatred was treacherous. It seemed to increase her desire. Whereas on those nights when she felt a moment of love for Alois, all such good life turned to ice below. Alois would grumble when the act was done even as she was kissing him in a fever to set things right.
    â€œYour mouth gives promises you do not keep,” he would tell her.
    It did not feel as if she were married. Anna Glassl and Fanni were always in her mind. If she had begun as a maid, and then become a nurse to Fanni’s children, and then a stepmother, now her own children were dead. Alois Junior and Angela had been sent to Spital when diphtheria assaulted the younger children, and so escaped infection. They were back with her now, but all of their three rooms at the Pommer Inn still reeked of the fumigation that followed each death, and the odor lived on in Klara’s clothes through the three separate days of the three services at the cemetery. She knew how small a coffin could be—she had learned as much from the losses in the Poelzl family—but the miniature coffins of her own children were three slashes upon her heart that awakened the love she had not dared to feel when her children were alive. She had been too terrified of the evil she could bring to these newborn souls. It was only after the death of Gustav that she realized she had loved him.
    Alois, in his turn, had decided he was not about to forgive God. To his friends at the tavern near the Customs House, especially the newcomers, young Customs officials, he would speak with the authority of his three decades in the Finance-Watch. “It is the Emperor who has the power to guide us,” he remarked one hot summer night. “The real power is right there. God does nothing but kill us off.”
    â€œAlois,” said an older friend, “you speak as if you are not afraid of going upstairs.”
    â€œUpstairs or downstairs, the real authority for me is Franz Josef.”
    â€œYou go too far,” said his friend.
    By the time he reached home, Alois was usually in no good mood. The beer wore off in a sour cloud. He would scold Alois Junior, he would upbraid Angela, he would not say a word to Klara. Now no more often than once a week (and he was furious at how much these three deaths had taken from his vitality) he would look at Klara again as he had on their first night and would try to conceive of how to introduce her to certain
spécialités de la maison.
He did not speak French but he knew all he needed to know about those few words. One of the Customs officers would brag that he had been to Paris in his youth. There, in a brothel, he claimed, he had learned more over two nights than in all the rest of his life.
    Alois refused to be impressed. Some of the details were not foreign to him. Fanni, for one, liked to put her mouth into many a place, and Anna Glassl was no lady when you got down to it. And now and again, with one of the maids or cooks, he would receive a nice wet surprise.
    Of course, these days he was with a frightened bird whose torso could scorch him even if her thighs were as cold as a snowbank. She made love, yes, when he could actually get all the way into her—not often—she was as strong as the Hound, yes, so much like bitches he had seen snarling and snapping at a male dog’s genitals. Klara did not snarl or snap, she just jumped up on her altar, alone, always alone, she was so private that he wanted to put his mouth where she was most private, and then he could slip the Hound into her mouth. He would show her where Devotion was located.
Spécialités de la maison!
    Yet, on this hot summer night when he tried to open her closed legs, pushing harder than ever with the force of his arms, there came a moment when his breath overtook him. A startling pang! For one instant, he felt as if he