The Ragged Edge of Night

by Olivia Hawker

What passed has passed, and gone is gone. He wears trousers every day now.

Desperate hearts are easy to secure.

When her children are starving, a woman will believe any vile promise you whisper in her ear. When a man is cornered, he will trust you if you tell him he cannot sin.

There is an old, old saying: One man is devil to another.

I cannot help but know it. Against all sense, I believe. Somewhere, beyond the ragged edge of night, light bleeds into this world.

His efforts are misplaced, in searching for the origin of evil. He knows it’s so, yet he can’t stop asking: When? And why? But when and why don’t matter. If not now, then some other date. If not for Hitler’s reasons, then by the will of some other man.

It’s only when they come to your door—when the gray bus arrives—that you know for certain what you will do. When they present you with the choice that is no choice at all—in the moment of truth, when the lives of the people you love hang in the balance, will it be easier to break a vow made before God, or condemn your children to the gas chambers?

Nothing is so unworthy of a civilized nation as allowing itself to be governed, without opposition, by an irresponsible clique that has yielded to base instinct. It is certain that today, every honest German is ashamed of his government. Who among us has any conception of the dimensions of shame that will befall us and our children when one day the veil has fallen from our eyes and the most horrible crimes—crimes that infinitely outdistance every human measure—reach the light of day?

They want you tired and distracted. They plan to burn this world down—our old ways of being. From the ashes they will build the world anew, after a fearful pattern, after their own bleak design.

Nothing feels more futile than hope.

We are fools to think the past remains in the past. History is our guilty conscience; it will not let us rest.