The Triumph of Evil Read Free

sure. I talked to him on the phone. Just last night, as a matter of fact. He went right into the heavy father number, but I think that may have been just a reflex. Der gross Vater. It doesn’t translate, does it? It just means grandfather. Both of my grandfathers are dead. I have one grandmother living. I’m sure I told you that.”
    She had told him many things about herself—age, family background, childhood experiences. He told her about different places he had been without disclosing much about the person he had been while in those places. It was a special sort of conversation, the information serving primarily as vehicle for the words and phrases themselves. One could not pass hours chatting about an aunt’s pen on an uncle’s table. She spoke of classes and boyfriends and movies and things she had done as a child. She lived in Connecticut. Her father manufactured beads for dress manufacturers. Her mother was secretary-treasurer of the local chapter of the League of Women Voters, and had collected funds for Biafran relief. She had a brother in high school. A sister two years older than she had drowned seven years ago at Cape Cod. She had had a dog for several years in Connecticut. Now she had a cat named Vertigo. She often talked about the cat and had several times said she might bring it to Dorn’s house. She had never done so.
    On one occasion Dorn told her of a town in Slovenia where he had spent a day and two nights twenty-five years ago. He described the town and talked about the Slovene language and the local architecture. He told her of the meals he had eaten there, and of the wine, which was good but extremely tart. He did not tell her that he and two other men had gone to the burgomaster’s house in the middle of the second night. They searched the house but could not find the man. They knew he was there. Dorn held the wife’s arms while a man named Gotter hit her in the breasts and belly with his fists. She wept but insisted her husband was not home. Dorn went into one of the bedrooms where a child had been sleeping. He brought the little boy out and told the woman he would put out the boy’s eyes. It wasn’t necessary to do this. The burgomaster was in a steamer trunk in the cellar. They had seen the trunk earlier but had not thought to open it—it looked too small to hold a man and the lock was rusted. They smashed the lock and took the burgomaster out of the trunk. He was a small plump man who wept soundlessly until Dorn shot him in the center of the forehead. They left immediately. Gotter wanted to rape the wife—the widow. Violent death acted as a sexual stimulant upon him. Dorn was never able to understand this. But on that occasion there was simply no time, and Gotter was disciplined enough to repress his lust.
    Now Jocelyn was saying that she might go to Washington for the weekend. “There’s a demonstration,” she said in German, not having to hesitate for the noun. “Friends of mine are driving up, and I might go with them.”
    “A peace demonstration?”
    “A memorial for Landon Waring.”
    “He was killed?”
    “It was all over yesterday’s paper, and on the radio all the time.”
    “I haven’t seen a paper in several days. He was what? A Black Panther?”
    “I’m not sure whether he was a Panther or just worked with them. He was in Jacksonville for a rally. Why would he come to the South? It seems so suicidal. The Gestapo killed him. Isn’t that funny—we call them that, the police, but in the middle of a conversation in German.”
    “The police killed him?”
    “The official lie is that he was trying to escape, and that he grabbed a pig’s gun.” Back to English. “I can’t see how that could possibly go down with anyone. Even the Silent Majority has to know better than to believe it. He was a beautiful man, you know. I saw him speak once. Everybody’s being killed. The kids I know, we were talking, and there’s all this paranoia. Like it’s a conspiracy. I