The Castle in the Forest by Norman Mailer Page B

understanding of Adolf Hitler’s personality. Detestation, yes, but understanding of him, no—he is, after all, the most mysterious human being of the century. Nonetheless, I would say that I can comprehend his psyche. He was my client. I followed his life from infancy a long way into his development as the wild beast of the century, this all-too-modest-looking politician with his snippet of a mustache.

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    A s a newborn, he was a most typical Klara Poelzl product. He was not healthy. Indeed, he terrified Klara every time a drop of mucus oozed out of his nose or a bubble of sputum popped from his infant lips.
    It is probably true that she was ready to die if he did not live. The attention she gave to Adolf’s early days would have been seen as hysteria in any woman who had less cause for concern, but then, Klara was living at the edge of the abyss. Recollections of her nights with Alois were pervaded now by the penetratingly corrupt smell of the sickroom as Gustav, Ida, and Otto had been lost one by one in the same few months of the same year. She had prayed devoutly to God to save each of her three babies, but the prayers were unavailing. As she saw it, God’s rebuke could only confirm the sin of her condition.
    After Adolf was conceived, she formed the habit of washing her mouth every morning with laundry soap. (Alois was now full of a predilection—especially in late pregnancy—to force Klara’s mouth onto the Hound and keep it there, one big hand on her neck.)
    No surprise then if her love was for the baby. So soon as Adolf gave some real indication of living—he would soon smile with delight at the approach of her face—she began to believe that God might be kind to her this time, that He could even be ready to forgive. Would He be ready to spare this child? Might she think His Wrath had lessened? Had He even given her an angel? Such is the nature of pious hope. Then she had a dream that told her to have nothing to do with her husband. Such is the nature of pious obligation.
    Alois soon had to face the possibility that a will of iron, when forged by prayer, can be quite as powerful in a wife as a highly developed biceps on her mate. At first, Alois could not believe that her refusal to let him touch her was more than a whim, a new species of enticement. “You women go back and forth like a kitten chasing its tail,” he told her. Then, deciding that rebellion such as this was to be mercilessly crushed, he seized her buttocks in one hand and her breast with the other.
    She bit him on the wrist hard enough to draw blood. Whereupon he cuffed her, leaving Klara with a bruised eye.
Gott im Himmel!
He was obliged next morning to beg her not to go out until her eye was no longer discolored. For a week, his hand bandaged, he shopped for food after work—no tavern on those nights. Then, with her bruise gone at last, he still had to give up what he considered irrevocable rights, and was obliged to sleep in a huddle on his side of the bed.
    Since this state would be maintained over quite a period, I choose for the present to stay closer to Klara. An intensity of emotion is always attractive to demons and devils, even as farmers dream of black soil for future crops.
    It need hardly be underlined that the death of Otto, Gustav, and Ida proved useful to us even if death is still in God’s domain, not ours. Their loss intensified Klara’s adoration of Adolf past any usual measure of large maternal love. When he began to scream every time she kissed his lips, she came to recognize that it was the odor of lye on her mouth. But since Alois had been driven to his side of the bed, there was no longer a need each morning to use the disinfectant. So she could kiss Adolf again even as he gurgled obligingly.
    We expected that this would prove useful. Excessive mother-love is almost as promising to us as a void of mother-love. We are keyed to look for excess of every kind, good or bad, loving