9

Following young Adolf’s first war games, I was instructed to take a more direct interest in his development.

Be it understood that further investiture is never routine. Each case is unique. The average man or woman assumes that one can lose one’s soul to the Devil on an instant, and permanently, but the premise is so false that the sermon is repeated in church every Sunday as an active threat. The real situation, however, is that we do not appropriate people by way of a lightning flash. Nor does Satanic entrapment brand a man or woman forever as our vassal. Rather, it is an ongoing tug-of-war. So soon as we seek to invest our powers in a client, the Cudgels are likely to appear. Complete possession rarely occurs. Indeed, after a series of such battles, the odd soul actually captured by the Cudgels or ourselves can bear more resemblance to a throwaway than a prize. (Schizophrenic people can be the victims of such contests.)

Entrapment, then, is not free of paradox. The clients that we find most difficult to approach are those with the greatest potential. Conversely, individuals who are easy to pick up rarely offer real skills. It takes so little to traduce a drunk. We do, however, polish what is left of their charm. That helps to consume a little more of the compassion of their families, especially if the mother, father, or any of the siblings are obsessed with not losing the last of their charity. In effect, we injure that family’s God-loving hearts. But such is simple work. Gains are small. Ultimate ends are not served. Our final aim, after all, is to draw the majority of humans away from allegiance to the D.K.

There is, however, another factor in every contest—an economic factor. It concerns the separate resources of Divine energy and of Satanic energy. They differ.

I can allow that even in the higher cadres of devils and angels, we hardly know who has more Time to allot to a contest once we vie for possession of a particular man or woman. Of course, this does not involve immense happenings. The D.K. can, for example, disburse whole bonanzas of Divine substance into His sunsets, which, it must be admitted, bolster human morale. There, I would call Him a spendthrift, but then, we devils devote our attention to the expenditures of Time involved in securing a new client. To give years to a promising varlet who eventually goes over to the Cudgels leaves a budgetary blemish on one’s record. When choosing a target, we try, therefore, to exhibit more acumen than our opponents.

For example, we rarely fail to attend the couplings of rich and powerful people (so full of infidelity!). As has been noted, we do not ignore incest, whether among the rich or the poor. Sex acts, however, particularly those illumined by angels, present a more demanding task—it is not routine to slip through their blockade. But we try. It seems—I dare to speak here only for myself—as if the E.O. has never been able to accept his failure to be present in the hour when Jesus Christ was conceived.

Fortunately for us, Jesus proved to be a not untypical Son. The record we are furnished informs us that He was often at odds with His Father.

I stray from my point. The prevailing fact of our existence is that we are obliged to live within a limited budget, and so, our projects are chosen with discretion. Except in special instances, we do not take large interest in the early development of children. “Over the first few years,” our Maestro will remark, “a child is caught between the need for love and the development of its will. These inclinations are so naturally at odds with each other that an early approach is rarely necessary.”

Except for unusual cases like Adi’s, we exercise no intervention until the age of seven. Well into the nineteenth century, a very young child was always in danger of being carried off by one disease or another.

Past the seventh birthday, it becomes easier for us to assess the prospective health of young clients. On the other hand, our Maestro terms the next five years the Age of Clods. “They are now encountering the world in its basic form—their school years. Nearly all of them rush toward habit, routine, and stupidity as the most immediate forms of protective insulation.” More often, then, our selections commence with adolescence. Now the energies invested by the D.K. are there at last for us to mine.

I have spoken at this length of our cautious process of selection because I wish to emphasize how uncommon was the special attention given to Adi for his early years. That his name was Adolf Hitler was, after all, of no importance then.

All the same, I had lived (by proxy) in the demonic instant of his conception, and then had been assigned to review the work of the devils who would oversee his family’s activities. It was light surveillance. Our jargon for this kind of action was milk runs, an expression we employed long before it was adopted by Army Air Force pilots in the Second World War. Any one of our devils might pass by a house in the hours before dawn, and by way of the small and large family storms that had transpired since the last visit, new information was acquired. It required no large expenditure unless the abode was guarded by a Cudgel. Normally, however, one could make a quick pass by the house and sweep up the findings. While humans slept, we did our work.

I had been able then to keep up with a close history of the Hitler family over all the years since Adolf had been born. (Be it understood that my devils also kept track of numerous other projects in that region of Austria.) If what my agents had offered up to now was modest, it had, nonetheless, sufficed. Reviewing Adolf’s early years, I confess that I saw no vast promise in the boy. He was outrageously in need of love and damnably vulnerable. The odds were that he would creep through life with a self-protective ego. At least, so I would have judged if the Evil One had not been present at his conception. That event, however, had to enter my judgment, and so even during the busiest nights the Hitler family was included on every milk run.

This routine of careful but passive observation was overturned altogether for me on the day that Alois Junior dragged Adi off to the boys’ afternoon game of war. The Maestro intervened. I received a direct message: “Take closer care of him now. Stiffen his spine. We can lose much of his potential if we don’t take steps.”