Joseph Roth - The Antichrist

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.

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.

I came to this peaceful place upon the instruction of my employer, the Master of a Thousand Tongues, and as I could understand Latin I knew what the doctors were talking about. I was prepared to report everything I had heard and understood, and so I wrote it down and sent it to my employer. But he then took one of the numerous red, blue and green pencils that lay on his desk not so he might write with them but only that he could strike with them, and he thus struck out all the truths from my reports so that the world didn’t learn it was terminally ill and was simply not being allowed to die. And thus he acted like the anxious relative of a deathly ill patient. The terminally ill patient is not told that he is dying. He might in that case die sooner, and it would be claimed that the doctors were incompetent.

Among these doctors of the world I found some whose appearance was such that I was tempted to believe I had seen them before. Sometimes, when one or another of them gave me a cigarette, I got the feeling that at the next moment he would also offer me chocolate. He did not do this, however, for he believed I would then recognize him. And these were the most gentle of the convened doctors. And they were so affable and they knew their patient so well that they understood exactly in which of its limbs and body parts the world was weakest. And it was towards the weakest limbs and organs that they were the most gentle, almost gentler than they were by nature.

So, for example, they discussed in a special commission, although here also they spoke Latin, in what way one might assist the coloured races.

The coloured races — that is to say, in the language of this world, those people whose skin colour is not white but brown, black, yellow or reddish. And, although it should be clear and obvious to everyone that the colour of the human skin is as much intended by God as is the human face or the human form, people still believe that whatever their own colour might be, it is just through this colour that God has distinguished them from people of other colours. Whereas it is clearly written that God created man in His image: man, not his colour. He created grey, black, greenish and reddish trees and plants, and they are all trees and plants. He created grey, brown, red and yellow animals; silvery and golden fish; greenish, reddish and bluish waters; blue, green, silver and gold stars; clouds in all colours that our human eye can recognize and distinguish — yet they are all clouds, stars, waters, animals, fish and birds. And if the black raven could speak with reason and not only with its tongue it would not deny that the reddish-green parrot, although it is not black, is a bird like he, the black raven. This is because the animals, waters, clouds and plants are not delivered up to the Serpent, the First Serpent, the Antichrist. We humans, however, are delivered up to him, and thus a white man says he is superior to a black man and vice versa; whereas anyone of any colour would think it insanity if he heard someone say that a green room is better than a red one — is better and not that one person or another likes it more. Or if someone were to say the red leaves of autumn are better than the green ones of spring — and not that he likes them more.