Joseph Roth - The Antichrist

They were all poor. And since, for one must be fair, in this country, everything possible was done for the people under the given circumstances, I asked myself why these poor people still prayed. Just what made them drift towards an unknown force, although they could see that the known powers were eager to help them? They must have been so distressed that they could not speak of it to the known and visible powers. One mother’s son was dying, and the doctors in the hospital were powerless against death. The doctors gave him real opium so that he would not suffer, and this was all they could do. A woman wanted to have a child, but enigmatic Nature gave her nothing. Another woman had not wanted to have the child she was carrying, and it pained her that she did not wish to bring it into the world. And there was a man who was weeping over his dead brother, whom the improved conditions of this world could not bring back. Still others were praying simply because their hearts were full. Without any reason. For even though the sweepers had cleared the earth of all kinds of garbage, people’s hearts could not be emptied of the inexplicable sorrow that often filled them. If the sweepers had been able, as was certainly their intention, to quench hunger and thirst, to provide shelter for all who had to sleep under the sky, to supply beds and medicine to the sick, crutches to the lame and guide dogs to the blind, there would still remain hearts that needed more, needed something that could never be provided by earthly powers. There are many who prefer unjust love to loveless justice. And they are not happy unless they are both loved and hurt.

For between that which constitutes man’s predictable happiness and that which constitutes his unpredictable happiness there is a wide gap that we cannot fill with our logical reasoning. We are made of flesh and spirit. A cat is contented simply with milk and butter, but a man is not satisfied for long after having eaten and drunk. And even if he is given books, taken to the theatre and his curiosity about earthly knowledge satisfied, there will always be a moment in which he asks, like the child he has never ceased to be: ‘Why? Why?’

There can be no answer to all of his questions. Not even when he asks: ‘Father, why hast Thou forsaken me?’

The people had previously been kept in blinkers. In this country, however, everyone thought that these questions would stop if only satisfactory replies were given to those questions that could be answered for the time being.

Those questions for which an answer could be found began to be placed before the citizens of the country, even when they had no wish to pose such questions themselves.

So the people were taught to pose questions but only those questions for which there was an answer at the ready.

Those questions that could not be answered, even when they were put into words, were left without an answer.

Because the people of this country were believers by nature, and because they had been forcibly kept in ignorance and blindness for many long years before the Revolution, the equally forceful attempt to grant them knowledge and education succeeded in surpassing through so-called natural wonders the supernatural wonders in which they were accustomed to believing.

The people there were kindly people. One could persuade them that the saints in Heaven concerned themselves about a sick cow and a lame calf.

When veterinarians came to treat the sick cattle, it was proved that an ordinary animal doctor could do more than a saint.

In the villages in the southern portion of this great country the people believe, for example, that the prophet Elijah makes thunder, lightning and rain. And when the fields needed a storm, the people prayed to St Elijah.

On the day of this holy one’s feast the authorities who had swept Heaven empty decided to prove to the peasants in the villages that storms are not caused by saints. They sent experts to the villages on that very day, equipped with a number of scientific apparatus. These experts showed the people the scientific laws of thunder, lightning and storms.

When the poor people now saw that men could produce storms using machines they stopped (although not all at once) believing in the power of St Elijah.

However, they did begin to believe in the power of the apparatus and the supernatural power of the men who used it. Since it was a dry summer, and the fields could have used a storm, they asked these educated men to create a proper storm.

‘This apparatus is too small for all the vast fields,’ said the learned men. The people would have to wait until someone built a bigger machine.

This answer, or excuse, was so crafty that I was seized by the desire to speak with such clever men.

I told them that they must have realized that they had lied.

‘Naturally we lied!’ they replied. ‘Because we had to drive Elijah out of the peasants even at the price of a lie. From St Elijah to the Tsar is only one step.’ I asked them what then did they believe — that the Tsar had supported the saint or vice versa? And why wasn’t it possible to understand an apparatus and also venerate the holy? And were the saints the foes of science? And weren’t they aware that it is human nature to replace each saint that has been taken away with a new one? And does the so-called blind faith in a saint have less value than blind faith in a man?

‘They don’t want a blind faith,’ said the learned ones in reply

‘But there is something worse,’ I said to them, ‘and that is blind knowledge. We have only two eyes to see with. Alas, there is so much to see in the world that we would require a thousand eyes. With our two poor eyes we cannot perceive all these things. And therefore we cannot say that we know all and can teach all. It is just as false to think that our eyes can see everything as it is to close them intentionally so that they can’t see anymore. None of us has seen St Elijah. But we don’t know whether we haven’t seen him because he isn’t there or because we are simply unable to see him.’

The gentlemen laughed and said that they had worries other than mine. They would speak with me again later after they had eliminated these other worries from the world.

Because, however, my worries were at their root the same as those of the peasants, I know that these gentlemen were not thinking logically. It is, in any case, easier to persuade the credulous through a scientific apparatus than to argue with believers.

The founder of their world was named Lenin, and after his death they put him into a glass coffin. His body was embalmed and paraffin was injected into his cheeks so that for decades after he will still look as though he is sleeping peacefully, not like a dead man. They set the transparent coffin in the middle of the square behind whose walls is the place where the inheritance of the deceased is administered. Thus any of the citizens and any visitor to the country can look at this dead man who seems only to be asleep.

Many childlike people believe that he really is asleep, and is only resting temporarily.

If one enquires why and on what basis was the dead man embalmed and displayed in a kind of solemn shop window, one soon comes to the conclusion that there were many reasons and a variety of purposes. The sweepers wanted to snatch from eternity at least a part of what belongs to it. And since it is impossible to conquer Death, they wanted at least to conquer the corpse, whose law is decay and not permanence. Thus it is like an ostentatious — but, naturally, at the same time childish — threat to Death, who is shown that his victim can none the less be preserved, like a piece of jewellery that is no longer worn.

To provide visual proof of this was one of the most important goals.

‘You have taken him from us,’ said the sweepers to Death. ‘We will show you, however, that we can keep him. And we will display him to all the world just as he looked during his lifetime.’