Joseph Roth - The Antichrist

I received a message from the Master of a Thousand Tongues that I should return to him as soon as possible.

I had already, he said, visited many nations and cities, so now I was to take a holiday, see my own country and do anything I pleased.

So I visited my own country, that is to say the land of my Master of a Thousand Tongues.

This country lies in the centre of Europe, between east and west, and is a remarkable country, that is to say, many of the people who live there seemed to me remarkable. Many among them boasted that God had chosen them. And when I asked one of them for what purpose God might have chosen them, he said: ‘To place the world in its proper order, to grant it the light of our thoughts, the richness of our language, the truths our scholars discover practically on a daily basis.’

‘Everything that you mention,’ I replied, ‘can also be achieved by all the other people and nations of the entire world. Nobody has ever been chosen by God to perform earthly deeds, unless such deeds are in service of Heaven. He must be a remarkable God.’

‘He is a remarkable God. He is our God. Our own God. The God of our nation. The God whom all others worship is the God of Love, a pitiable creature. But our God is strong. He is the God of vigour. He made the iron grow. He is an iron God.’

‘You worship,’ I said to him, ‘not the golden calf but an iron one.’

‘We don’t worship,’ said he; ‘we fight, and that is our prayer.’

‘So you fight not only against the other peoples but also against the God of the other peoples?’

‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘and we have never yet been defeated.’

‘Then,’ I said, ‘continue your fighting. But you are already defeated even before the fight has begun.’

But he did not understand me so dismissed me abruptly.

And as I left his house I saw a man standing in front of his door with the sign of the Cross on the cap that sat over his forehead and upon his right arm. But it was no ordinary cross, rather, one on which the right and left, top and bottom ends were broken and bent. It looked as if the man had first wantonly broken the holy symbol of the cross and then forgotten the right way to put it together again. It also seemed that the cross itself suffered pain in being so crooked and deformed. And as I felt pity for the man and also for the cross. I said: ‘Kind sir, you’ve got your cross wrong. May I show you what a cross should look like?’

‘No,’ he said, ‘my cross is correct. It is through this symbol that we shall conquer and not by the one that you have in mind.’

‘You’re mistaken,’ I responded.

The man then hit me over the head so that I collapsed on the ground and lay for some time as though dead.

Then charitable people lifted me up and took me to a hospital.

And once I recovered my senses some time later I wrote again to the Master of a Thousand Tongues in the following words:

Mighty Master of a Thousand Tongues

I cannot visit in your country, for people beat me over the head and leave me for dead.

But this alone would not prevent me from seeing the country so long as I could hope to regain my health.

Other things hinder me, namely, the fact that in your country they have other gods than the One God. I was once in a land where it is said God does not exist. And in another land where He is seen as their rich uncle. And among heathen peoples who said there are many gods. But never have I seen a land in which people worship God and revile Him in a single breath. And where they not only do not follow the Son of God but even hate Him; and not only hate Him but even despise Him, His death, His love and His humility. For they have deformed His cross and say that it is the right and true cross and that it is not deformed and bent. Their God is an iron God. I know that it is written in the Revelation of John that the servants of the Antichrist would receive a mark in their right hands and on their foreheads. In this country the people already bear this mark. And they are preparing for the end of the world, but I cannot speak justly of them because they beat me on the head. Where one denies God, He may yet one day be acknowledged. Where He is unrecognized or unacknowledged He may yet reveal Himself. But where He is blasphemed and worshipped in a single breath the Antichrist is revealed. When the Children of Israel worshipped the golden calf the Ten Commandments had not yet been issued. Now, however, the children of your country are bowing before an iron calf five thousand years after the Ten Commandments were handed down and two thousand years after the Cross first shone its light over the world. Release me from your service now, Mighty Master of a Thousand Tongues.

His reply ran:

I dismiss you as of this date (date of postmark) from my service.

You are a refractory tongue. I have already found a new and more willing one.

My time, our time, has dawned.

I no longer need to treat you courteously.

So now I can close with the truth.

Hail the Anticross!

Signed

The Master of a Thousand Tongues

So I left the land of the Master of a Thousand Tongues and crossed the border into other countries.

I took up residence in one of the houses that they call hotels.

And there came all kinds of people who had known me when I was one of the thousand tongues.

There came a rich man, a poor man, a pious man, an unbeliever, a Jew, a Jew-hater, a heathen, a Christian, an agent of the Master of a Thousand Shadows, one who hoped for a world revolution and another who wished to maintain the world just as it is, one who wanted peace and another who desired war.

They had all read the truths that I had written. They came, some to question me, others to listen to me and a third group to corrupt me. And through all of them spoke the Antichrist.

Thus I sat each day — and thus I still sit today — in the hotel.

Many people seek me out, and all of them are convinced that I believe them and their words. However, I am protected by my fear of the Antichrist and am on my guard against the false words of my guests, even of those who are honest.

For sometimes they think they are speaking the truth when, in fact, the words belong to the Antichrist.

They themselves don’t know it. But I can understand. For just as I myself, when I was a soldier, sold my shadow to the Antichrist without realizing it, so have they unwittingly sold their words to the Antichrist, and out of their mouths come not the words themselves but what the Antichrist has transformed into the shadows of words.

Sometimes my visitors arrive together, the strong and the weak, the rich and the poor and so on.

And they offer one another their hands. However, they hate each other.

They would like to kill one another, but they talk with each other. And their words are so full of falsehoods and poison that it is worse than if they actually did kill one another.

They speak on friendly and murderous terms at the same time. It is the tongue of the Antichrist; it is their mother tongue.

The language of the Antichrist has become the mother tongue of mankind.

And instead of dreading the Antichrist they are afraid of one another. The poor fear the rich and vice versa, the Jew fears the anti-Semite and vice versa and so on.

For just as love and justice spring from fearlessness, so comes hatred from fear and injustice from fear.

Fear, however, is the daughter of the Antichrist. By this I mean man’s fear of his own kind.

The lion does not fear the lion, the tiger does not fear the tiger, the lamb does not fear the lamb, the ox does not fear the ox, the raven does not fear the raven, and the carp does not fear the carp — when one does not threaten the other. Fear can only emerge between one and another creature of the same species if there is hostility between them for some reason.