This, and the
stubborn naivet? of the illusioned, which told her this instinctive
fear was a flaw of perception: that true, malignant evil did not exist,
and that things could not possibly come to the ends envisioned by
nightmare imagination. It was the same voice that told the world the
Holocaust could not happen, was not happening, even as six million Jews,
Russians, intellectuals, homosexuals and other defenseless minorities,
were led to the fire. She listened to that voice, and made it her
island of hope, the one that made the twisted dream of murder and
healing, kindness through cruelty, destruction and rebuilding, still
possible. Like one who had stared too long at the sun, insisting there
was no danger, she was completely blind.
She turned back to him, more composed, and wondered only why he made no
attempt to aid her: to dim the cutting laser of his eyes.
But he was through with hiding, and playing the part of the weak and
worshipful lover. LET HER SEE! rang the twisted chime of his thoughts,
distorted and horrible. Let her walk into the jaws of death with eyes
wide open. And this choice also was correct: that his eyes and
intentions were obvious, only made them the more impossible to believe.
She merely said, 'Shall we go?' And she couldn't understand why
at that moment she should think of the black widow that her father had
found in her bedroom as a child, killing it as she cried at his cruelty.
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