The Ragged Edge of Night

by Olivia Hawker

Her companion is quick to answer, quick to defend. “It’s only this: I’ve never seen God. Why should I credit Him for a blessing, or leave Him any blame? Men are quite capable of destroying the world on their own, as we can plainly see. They don’t need any help from above.” Before he can stop himself, before he can think, Anton turns in his seat. “I have never seen Hitler, either—not in the flesh—yet I believe in him.”

We may run out of coal by wintertime, but we’ll never suffer from bitter tea.”

But here, we have cows and goats for milk, and plenty of eggs. Fields full of potatoes and onions. And whatever we can’t raise ourselves, we trade for. Everyone here raises a little more than his family needs, bakes a little more bread, kills an extra hen. We trade our humble excesses to one another. That way, no one suffers.” “I can see what you mean,” he says. Godly. Surely this is the way the Lord intended mankind to live: neighbor loving neighbor, each brother safely kept.

Who can grow strong roots when the very earth is unsafe, when we are starved for light?

Weeping may endure for a night—joy comes with the morning.

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

Music eases every pain we don’t know we carry. It banishes the fear that is so commonplace now, we have grown inured to its shadow and chill.

There are some feelings, some states of mind, that cannot be expressed in words. The transcendent beauty of moonrise over a quiet field, when your soul stills itself for a time, just long enough to remind you that you are still alive, still human, in a world that seems ravaged by inhuman beasts. And the deep, haunting song of loss, with its crossed harmonies and poignant discords, the way it reaches to the inside of you and turns your spirit out, everts the essence of your being through your heart or through your mouth and leaves it to hang there, vulnerable and exposed. There are some refrains that have taken up residence in his heart and mind and become a permanent part of him—and sometimes he likes to imagine that the men and women who composed those works felt exactly what he feels when he listens or plays.

Music is a way of transporting emotion from one breast to another. It is a way of knowing the unknowable, of feeling what we can never allow ourselves to confront in any other way. These agonies and ecstasies—they can break us, use us up, burn us away unless we shield our hearts with music.

But that’s the way of life, isn’t it? You go on. You live. Even when grief turns your insides to lead and a featureless black sea rises.

But in ’31, they used the registry to target and disarm the Jews, and in ’33 the constitution was suspended while the NSDAP scoured every home and business, cracking safes and slicing open mattresses, breaking down pantry doors. They took every firearm they found and revoked the legal license of every man and woman deemed not politically reliable.

If you do what’s easy, instead of what’s right, will you ever hold your head up again when your spouse speaks your name? If you turn your backs while children starve in your fields, can you ever again touch your own child’s face without agony?

And spring will come, you’ll see. The snow will melt away. Winter’s dark can’t last forever.

“Men cry, son. All the time. Never be ashamed of your feelings. Your feelings are your compass. They guide you to what’s right.”

As I watched the US I thought I knew devolve, seemingly overnight, into an unrecognizable landscape—a place where political pundits threw up Nazi salutes in front of news cameras, unafraid—a place where swastikas bloomed like fetid flowers on the walls of synagogues and mosques—I knew the time had come. I called Jodi Warshaw, my first editor at Lake Union Publishing, and told her I’d finally found a World War II subject I wanted to write . . . and I wanted to write it now. Jodi agreed that the time was right for a story of resistance—of an ordinary person taking a stand against hate. Within weeks, my proposal for The Ragged Edge of Night was approved, and I began to research and develop the book in earnest.

It’s frightening—and somehow, strangely beautiful—to think how the best and most important parts of our lives can depend on a quirk of history, a sudden bend in the road. How different my life would be but for the passage of a few days, a few moments, in a tiny German town thirty-five years before my birth. But history is never very far behind us. It’s the familiar ghost we trail in our wake.

I have seen the power of human goodness; I know how courageous the most ordinary person can be. The history of my own family bears testament to the power of resistance. Because I have seen, I believe—I know—that darkness cannot last forever. And beyond night’s edge, there is light.