The Antichrist (6 page)

Shortly before Christmas a black automobile came and stopped just behind the battlefield where dead soldiers lay, and several gentlemen stepped out of the car. Among them was one who seemed especially kind and dignified. We all liked him immediately, mainly because of his reassuring grey beard. We had halted, that is to say, in the parlance of war, that we could rest before beginning once again to shoot and to die. We were marched not far from the black automobile. The kind-looking gentleman spoke to us. And what he said pleased us because of his gentle and agreeable voice.
He ordered a number of large leather sacks to be fetched, and it took twenty of us to lug these sacks, from which chocolate and cigarettes were distributed to the soldiers. At this time an aviator began to circle over our heads. And since the aviator was one of the enemy (called in the language of war ‘an enemy pilot') he dropped a bomb. And then the black automobile vanished, smoke and stench rising from the place where it had stood. The kind gentleman turned around and left, accompanied by the others, who were somewhat more rigid-looking. Then a large grey car owned by the general pulled up and took away these gentlemen, whom we never saw again.

And when we returned to the battlefield, which in the language of war is known as ‘the trenches', on the night that Jesus Christ was born, many of us died with pockets full of cigarettes and chocolate. These good gifts were taken by the survivors from the pockets of the fallen. And the guns made from bells continued to launch their thunder over our heads and towards those who, in the language of war, were known simply as ‘the enemy'.

While we are speaking about the bells, I must explain how I was reminded of them after the war when I was poor and searching for work. There was employment to be had in the large red-brick building where we had once unloaded the metal and the bells, a place called the arsenal. We went there in search of work. In the great hall lay cannon, some whole, some damaged, some broken in pieces. There stood the gentle, grey-bearded man with the mild golden-brown eyes, and he directed us what to do. We loaded the broken weapons on to iron carts, and some of us smashed the undamaged ones with hammers. Outside, a large covered wagon was waiting. We loaded the cannon remnants on to it, and when it
was so full that it could hold no more we drove it to a large factory, and there we unloaded the remains of cannon and guns.

The factory supervisor (who looked like our sergeant) made sure that everything was unloaded.

‘What are you going to make with it?' I asked the supervisor.

‘All kinds of useful things,' said the supervisor. ‘The war is finished, my friend! We're going to make latches, locks, doors, candlesticks, mortars and bells – yes, church bells.'

Since that time, whenever I hear the song of the bells, it seems as if gun barrels are swaying over the roofs and the towers of the churches, as if they are being swung not by worthy sextons or cheerful boys but by the one of whom I am speaking in this book. Has he not already so confused the ears of men that they find the thundering of cannon pleasant, even sweet, but the song of the bells unbearable? And has he not he apparently given these men the right to have perverted hearing and to be proud of it?

Ask the people in that expansive country where fools call themselves ‘godless' before God has abandoned them (and only because they think they have abandoned Him) – ask them what the bells have done to them that they extract them from the churches.

They will give the following reply: ‘The bells toll and boom and disturb our rest.'

And ask them whether the booming of the bells is more unmelodious than, for example, the howling of sirens or the discordant singing of crowds of people in the streets on various festive occasions or ten gramophones being played simultaneously in a single, thin-walled house.

They will reply: ‘Sirens and gramophones have never been turned into cannon with which to kill us.'

And say further: ‘Then mustn't you also banish the latches and metal vessels from your houses?'

They will then reply: ‘The latches and vessels were taken from us more or less by force.'

‘But,' you will then ask, ‘wasn't violence also used upon the churches when their bells, their golden tongues, were removed?'

And the answer will be: ‘As they began to shoot the cannon, the golden tongues also began to toll to announce that the hour of killing had arrived. And it is entirely correct to say that the bells themselves then began to kill, as they became cannon and guns. Since they have lied once, how can we believe that they now speak the truth? That is why the thunder of cannon, the false and inharmonious singing of the crowd, the bawling of apparatus, and the howling of sirens is more pleasing to our ears than the clanging of bells.'

So you enquire further: ‘But don't the crowds and the gramophones and the sirens also lie – and don't the cannon lie and kill at the same time?'

And the people will answer: ‘We don't believe that.' They will give this answer because people have faith in new things that they haven't yet caught in a lie; towards those things that they used to venerate, but which have deceived them, they are quite cruel.

It is easier for the Antichrist to scoff at the venerable and inexplicable by setting up man's reason as a judge and, in flattering it, flattering man himself. Nothing pleases a man so much. If he is told that he is handsome, strong, brave, affectionate, kind – he is delighted. Tell him he is clever – and he is blissful. And he will believe you merely because you have told him that he is clever, for he assumes that you would never try to lie to someone who is discerning.

I, however, who have always known that the Antichrist finds it easier to pollute the amazing products of our reason with his breath than the consecrated objects of our faith – even though he finds it
easier to defame the latter – I am struck with horror at the broad scope of power that he already wields. If the sons of Edison, the Edisons, the sons of Edom, have fallen under his control, what does that matter? But he has swung himself on to the roofs of the churches and sits astride their spires; he takes the bells out of the belfries, and he renders the churches dumb; he rips the clappers from the bells and makes them empty – and have we not seen him with our own eyes leap with a single bound from the church spire where he had been sitting to the cross and bend it crooked, up and down and right and left, with the hateful strength of his arms and legs?

And this terrifies me more than his power over the products of our reason. For this is the first time he has had the profound insolence to bestow upon his name a visible and victorious symbol. Here, for the first time, he has emerged from the anonymity in which he had hidden himself. He has even had the audacity to print a calling card. And he announces himself in his true guise – namely as the Antichrist –
through the Anticross.

After we had taken all the pieces of guns that were formerly bells to the factories where they were to be turned into bells once again, we were all without employment, and each of us went in search of the kind of work to which he was best suited.

I went every morning to stand in front of one of the mightiest buildings, one in which newspapers are produced, those thousand-tongued messengers on the backs of which each day are printed enquiries both from men seeking work and employers seeking men under the title ‘Employment Market'; that is to say, where work is offered for sale.

As I couldn't find any employment, my vanity led me to enter the great building and not to leave as did the others. In my foolishness, I thought that a building whose doors and walls were a market for work must likewise have work for sale within, and that the exterior alone of such a building would not reveal to me what it knew within its depths.

So I went to the master of this great house and asked him if he had any work for me.

At first glance I thought that I knew him. But I couldn't remember where I had seen him before. He was a gentle master, without a beard, and I thought that I had met him when he had worn a beard, but I couldn't recall the occasion.

He had a pleasant voice and a kindly glance. When he looked
at me I immediately believed that he wished me well, and as his face seemed so familiar to me I felt that he must have also been well acquainted with me.

When he asked whether I would be willing to serve him, I said: ‘Yes, I will, with pleasure.'

Thus I began to serve him and so became one of the thousand tongues with which the newspapers meddle in the world every morning. I soon saw, however, that what my own tongue said was not only different from what the other tongues said but that all our thousand tongues were contradicting one another and that even this contradiction was no immutable law, as at one moment our tongues agreed, while at another they accused one another of lying, and this changed from moment to moment.

Many tongues repeated what mine had said but repeated it differently and in such a way that we were both wrong. I no longer knew if I had spoken truth or falsehood or whether the others were right or wrong, and when I realized that the world hears all our thousand tongues at the same time then I understood that it is entirely impossible for the world to recognize the voice of truth even if it should one day be heard.

But if I was one of the thousand confusing tongues that made the voice of truth unrecognizable then I was also guilty of confusing the world. And I realized that I had entered into the service of the Antichrist, who sat in this great publishing house as a gentle Master of a Thousand Tongues and smiled with kind eyes. And sometimes, so that his very gentleness might not betray him, he pretended to be furious. This, too, brought him profit, for when he let his anger subside and began to smile again, so that those who were under his command could once more exhale, their fears quieted, he appeared to them to be even more gentle, agreeable, good and honourable than before – and so they praised and
esteemed him beyond measure, regarding themselves lucky that they came to be in his service and not in anyone else's.

When I grew to suspect that I was serving the Antichrist I decided one day to leave his employment. I went to him and told him that I'd had enough of his job and that he must likewise have had enough of my services.

He smiled and took from his pocket a gold cigarette case, asked me to take a seat and told me to have a smoke.

Then I remembered him – I did know him. How often he had already given me cigarettes!

And to make sure that I was not mistaken, I said to him: ‘Sir, I've often thought that we've met before, and it seems to me that this isn't the first time that you've offered me a cigarette!'

‘I wish,' he replied, ‘that we really had known each other for a long time, because I like you. I have no intention of releasing you from my service. I have chosen you for a number of important assignments. You are to get to know the world and describe it for me. I am sending you to a foreign land. A revolution is going on. A true hell seems to have broken out there, and because you have an eye for this hell, you will go there.'

‘You have a better eye yourself!' I said.

‘No,' said he, ‘I will first learn of hell only after my death. However, let us forget the various departments of the next world so long as I live. I shall give you money and you will go, and you will report to me everything that you have seen.'

Since I was now driven by curiosity as I had previously been driven by vanity, I took the money and went to the country in which hell had broken out.

I wrote from there about everything that I saw. And I saw much.

I lived in one of the great houses that are called hotels. The
Hotel Excelsior was its name, so clearly it was a greatly important hotel. I had money.

Across from my windows stood an old, venerable church, and from my elevated vantage point I could see directly into the belfry of this church.

At a time when cannon were being fired in the town against those of its inhabitants who were deemed rebels, I heard the bells tolling loudly, and I watched from my window as the heavy bells swung.

So I went into the church and asked the sexton, who was pulling the ropes, why and for what purpose he was ringing the bells.

‘The minister gave me the order,' said the sexton.

I went to the minister, who was sitting in his room reading the Bible.

It was already night-time. On the priest's table a lamp was burning under a green shade. I heard the booming of the bells near by and the cannon thundering in the distance.

He was a gentle man, the minister. He had a smooth face, kindly eyes and a pleasant voice.

‘I can't hear the sound of the cannon,' he told me. ‘I've ordered that the bells are to be rung whenever they begin to fire the cannon.'

‘Your Reverence,' said I, ‘are you perhaps the brother of my master, who has sent me here? For I believe that he would have acted the same way as you!'

‘No,' said the minister, ‘I don't know your master.'

And he began once more to read the Bible.

I remained in the service of the master who ruled over the thousand-tongued messengers, whose tongues themselves manufactured the
news. And he sent me here and there in many directions wherever anything happened and there was unrest. There was unrest everywhere in the world.

From now on, his love is to be found wherever culture and books rule; no longer does he divide the cosmos by countries, rivers, and seas, no longer according to race and class; he recognizes only two classes now: the aristocracy of learning and the mind as the upper world and the plebs and barbarism as the lower. – Stefan Zweig,
Erasmus of Rotterdam

But I also came to a peaceful place in a peaceful town. Here delegates from all the restless nations in all the restless parts of the world had convened to consider in what way the tranquillity of the world might be restored. That is to say, they did not mean the actual tranquillity of the world but the state of unrest that ruled the world, which seemed to them to be a state of peace and tranquillity. These delegates of the various peoples did not wish to bring real peace into the world but, rather, to make the conflict that dominated the world feel so natural that the world would begin to believe it was actual peace. This demonstrated to me that their minds were truly confused. The Antichrist had so confused their minds that they mistook conflict for peace and strove to consolidate it. They resembled doctors who cannot let a terminally ill man die because law and conscience forbid them to do so, and they persuade the sick man that, because he hasn't died, he must therefore be healthy. The world, however, is like a sick man who imagines he
must be healthy because he is being kept alive. And the place of which I am speaking, peaceful although it was, none the less resembled a battlefield, namely one on which doctors are battling death, and I could smell the same odour that arises at medical consultations, for I was actually standing at the sickbed of a terminally ill world that could not be allowed to die. There was a stench of camphor and iodoform, and just as real doctors speak in Latin so did these doctors of the world, and the sick patient could understand only every tenth word of what they said.