“But have you heard…? And have you heard…?”
He did not see any of the ugly things they whispered about. He did not see anyone beaten. He did not see anyone imprisoned, or put to death. He did not see any men in concentration camps. He did not see openly anywhere the physical manifestations of a brutal and compulsive force.
True, there were men in brown uniforms everywhere, and men in black uniforms, and men in uniforms of olive green, and everywhere in the streets there was the solid smack of booted feet, the blare of brass, the tootling of fifes, and the poignant sight of young faces shaded under iron helmets, with folded arms and ramrod backs, precisely seated in great army lorries. But all of this had become so mixed in with his joy over his own success, his feeling for Else, and the genial temper of the people making holiday, as he had seen and known it so many pleasant times before, that even if it did not now seem good, it did not seem sinister or bad.
Then something happened. It didn’t happen suddenly. It just happened as a cloud gathers, as fog settles, as rain begins to fall.
A man George had met was planning to give a party for him and asked him it he wanted to ask any of his friends. George mentioned one. His host was silent for a moment; he looked embarrassed; then he said that the person George had named had formerly been the editorial head of a publication that had been suppressed, and that one of the people who had been instrumental in its suppression had been invited to the party, so would George mind—?
George named another, an old friend named Franz Heilig whom he had first met in Munich years before, and who now lived in Berlin, and of whom he was very fond. Again the anxious pause, the embarrassment, the halting objections. This person was—waswell, George’s host said he knew about this person and knew he did not go to parties—he would not come if he were invited—so would George mind----?
George next spoke the name of Else von Kohler, and the response to this suggestion was of the same kind. How long had he known this woman? Where, and under what circumstances, had he met her? George tried to reassure his host on all these scores. He told the man he need have no fear of any sort about Else. His host was instant, swift, in his apologies: oh, by no means—he was sure the lady was eminently all right—only, nowadays—with a mixed gathering—he had tried to pick a group of people whom George had met and who all knew one another—he had thought it would be much more pleasant that way—strangers at a party were often shy, constrained, and formal—Frau von Kohler would not know anybody there—so would George mind----?
Not long after this baffling experience a friend came to see him. “In a few days,” his friend said, “you will receive a phone call from a certain person. He will try to meet you, to talk to you. Have nothing to do with this man.”
George laughed. His friend was a sober-minded German, rather on the dull and heavy side, and his face was so absurdly serious as he spoke that George thought he was trying to play some lumbering joke upon him. He wanted to know who this mysterious personage might be who was so anxious to make his acquaintance.
To George’s amazement and incredulity, his friend named a high official in the government.
But why, George asked, should this man want to meet him? And why, if he did, should he be afraid of him?
At first his friend would not answer. Finally he muttered circumspectly:
“Listen to me. Stay away from this man. I tell you for your own good.” He paused, not knowing how to say it; then: “You have heard of Captain Roehm? You know about him? You know what happened to him?” George nodded. “Well,” his friend went on in a troubled voice, “there were others who were not shot in the purge. This man I speak of is one of the bad ones. We have a name for him—it is ‘The Prince of Darkness’.”