Joseph Roth - The Antichrist

‘The ambassadors kneeled, the Holy Father was perched high upon his throne, and all around stood the cardinals, all in their prescribed ornament.

‘And they all took that Holy Father for the real Holy Father. I alone knew that he, the Holy Father, had fallen asleep.

‘I wondered how he could sit upon the throne of Peter and converse in such an amicable fashion with the ambassadors of the heathen.

‘The first of the ambassadors said: “We wish to conquer only half of the world, Holy Father, not all of it! This half of the world once belonged to mighty Rome, so why not us? We are the heirs.

‘“We only want to shoot, Holy Father, only to shoot a bit.

‘“We want no more, Holy Father, than to stab, to stab just a little, and to wear the daggers that are required in order to stab.

‘“But we also promise to pray, Holy Father. We will also pray.

‘“We will honour you, Holy Father! You shall have an auto-mobile from the best manufacturer in our country. And an apparatus called a telephone, fashioned of gold and ivory. And all the Edisons, all the Edisons, all the sons of Edom, will dedicate their inventions to you. We will take you to see the world, Holy Father, in special trains and in special automobiles. We shall keep all the holy days and have our children taught the precepts of the Saviour twice weekly; but seven times a week, only seven times, we will teach them to shoot and stab.”

‘And then the ambassador of the second country spoke. “Holy Father, in all Christian humility, we want not half the world but all of it.

‘“But this also only in the name of God the Just.

‘“Rome once ruled half the world. But we have conquered Rome. Therefore, the whole world belongs to us.

‘“Allow us, Holy Father, to vanquish the entire world.

‘“In return for this we shall pray and guarantee that we won’t torture any more priests, for we are of the Germanic race and don’t willingly torture when we are promised that which we demand.

‘“We also wish to shoot and stab and wear daggers, and twice a week we will have our children learn the precepts of the Saviour.

‘“But only seven times, only seven times in a week, will we stab and shoot, Holy Father.

‘“But even this we shall do in the name of the Saviour.

‘“We will acknowledge not just one Cross but two.

‘“One on which the Saviour died. And the other to which we have made a few modern adjustments. We call it the crooked cross.

‘“Let us, Holy Father, have four hooks on our cross!

‘“In return, we shall destroy the godless, demolish the Jews, sanctify Sundays with shooting practice and offer up a prayer before each shot.”

‘And the Holy Father nodded.

‘Then the representatives of the third country came forward. They said: “We come from Hollywood, what some call Unholywood, but you shouldn’t believe them, Holy Father.

‘“We no longer wish to conquer the world, for we have already conquered it.

‘“We are the Land of Shadows.

‘“Goldwein-Mutro-Mayer sent us.

‘“Goldwein-Mutro-Mayer and its associates bind themselves to disseminate the shadow of the Saviour on to all the screens of the world.

‘“We shall make up your genuine cardinals and your genuine priests using the techniques of our art, so that they may become genuine shadows.

‘“In this way we will be able to spread the genuine faith across the world, through use of genuine shadows.

‘“For this we desire your blessing, Holy Father, and also your own holy shadow

‘“And Goldwein-Mutro-Mayer, mightier than the powers with whose ambassadors you have just spoken, wishes also that we might bring back a concordat.

‘“For the purposes of propaganda.

‘“For Goldwein-Mutro-Mayer doesn’t see why we, the Holy Trinity and rulers over the shadows, should have less than the rulers over the bodies, who in reality only desire to kill.

‘“Whereas Goldwein-Mutro-Mayer kills nothing but shadows.”

‘At this point, the Holy Father nodded.

‘And he concluded a concordat with Goldwein-Mutro-Mayer and its associates.’

This is what the monk related to me.

‘I don’t believe you, Brother!’ I said.

‘You’re wrong! The Holy Father has not fallen asleep! The Antichrist is not yet sitting on the throne of Peter!’

At this, the monk grew uncertain and said: ‘I am truly only a humble servant in the palace of the Lord. To err is human!’

Whereupon I said to him: ‘Get out! The end of days hasn’t yet arrived.’

He went obediently and fearfully. And it seemed possible to me that even he was the Antichrist or a messenger of the Antichrist.

But before long I became certain that he really was a messenger of the Antichrist.

For in the evening, in one of the theatres that they call cinemas, I saw my own shadow.

The Antichrist had filmed me while he was speaking with me, the enemy of the Antichrist.

Amid the shadows of skiers, rowers, tennis players, boxers, actors, politicians and criminals he also showed my shadow.

He had robbed me of my shadow.

So I left the theatre.

Richard Panchyk is the author, editor or translator of eighteen books, including World War II for Kids, German New York City, Forgotten Tales of Long Island and Keys to American History, as well as a study on Jewish assimilation and name change in the Austrian Empire during the nineteenth century. He is distantly related to Joseph Roth.