The Antichrist (7 page)

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.

And instead of thanking God for creating man in His image, and truly with the divine magnanimity that we praise in Him, in all possible colours, people deny Him by the very fact that they say He did not create everyone in His image. We do not know the colour of Adam, the first human. Since, however, in the history of creation not only does every word have its obvious meaning but also every omission, we must assume that Adam's skin colour would have been mentioned if God had intended to give a preference to any particular one. But we do not speak of the colour of the first man from whom we are all descended any more than we speak of his mother tongue, his race or his nationality. Rather, we assume that he, who was the founder of mankind, contained within himself the source of all languages, all races, all peoples and all the variations of skin colour. And Adam was the crown of creation. God Himself took a full five long days to make him, and these were not our short human days, from sun-up to sun-down, but vast in extent, according to the time reckoning of eternity not of the calendar. It is a hardly comprehensible honour that God bestowed upon us in devoting such a long period of thought to us. Many differences distinguish we humans from the animals. But the most important is that God gave Himself five days to create man and that He breathed His breath into him alone – just humans, not humans of one or another colour. This is the only permissible pride we may feel that cannot be called a sin. But it is a double sin that we commit when we pervert our just pride at being people into a vile pride at being white, black, brown or red people. And as it is already deemed as disgraceful in our everyday world when an unworthy fellow denies his grandfather, so should it be a mortal sin and branded as such when a man denies Adam, the ancestor of us all. Thus one denies God Himself with whom our first bond is that He animated Adam with His divine breath.

God created man in his own image. We therefore blaspheme Him when we mock or disparage the hooked nose of the Jew, the slanted eyes of the Mongol or the large lips of the African. Since they are all human beings, each particular feature and each particular colour of every human race is to be found in the sublime and unfathomable countenance of God. Whoever insults the Jew's nose or the African's lips or the Mongol's eyes or the white man's pallor therefore insults the nose, the lips, the eyes and the colour of God. He also defames His breath, which was breathed into the first man. For in this breath were contained all the virtues of all future people. Within it were the wondrous singing voice of the African, the subtlety and also the fervour of the Mongol, the nobility of the Indian, the intelligence of the Jew – and so forth.

In the Commission on Colours I saw, however, that not only were the powerful arrogant towards the powerless but that the latter defended themselves with an equal arrogance towards the powerful. And because at this time white men happen to be more powerful than men of other colours, those among them who were still conscientious were striving for the emancipation of the coloured peoples. The Antichrist, however, was already living among both. And he led the coloured peoples, who were not yet freed, who were still enslaved by the whites, to mimic their morals and vices and pretensions. And so the brown and black and yellow men all lived apart, ate and drank apart. The brown men were proud of their brownness, the black of their blackness and the yellow of their yellowness. It was obvious that they did not regard themselves first and foremost as people, but rather as
coloured
people. They also demanded in all their speeches and uprisings not so much the liberties that truly characterize human dignity as the unworthy ones that power usurps as its prerogative. What they demanded, and what they ever repeated, was ‘We want to be masters in our own country.' Yes, they wanted
to be masters, nothing else. And in their own country. Instead of saying ‘We want to be people in all the countries of the world,' they said that they wanted to be masters in their own countries. And I thereby recognized that the Antichrist was in control among them also.

I said this to one of them, a man with kind eyes and an agreeable voice. He came from India. He replied: ‘Since you came to us with violence and trickery and brought us your alcohol and syphilis, but we didn't come to you with trickery and violence, to defend ourselves we must speak with the words that you have taught us and fight with the weapons that you use.'

To which I answered that he had spoken much foolishness in two phrases but that that he had revealed his great folly mainly through the use of a couple of little words – namely ‘your' and ‘you'. Since I had unfortunately not seen his country I couldn't object to his regarding mine as he regarded his own. I also looked upon his country as I looked upon mine. If, perhaps, I were to bring some disease or other evil into his country I could no doubt assume that there were other diseases and evils that were common and native to that place. For we are all a mixture of virtue and sin. And it was precisely because all men were comprised in the same way of virtue and sin, strength and weakness, goodness and malice, disease and health, that I couldn't comprehend why every country should be jealous of exactly those frailties, evils and diseases that it imagined were special and peculiar to itself. As far as I was concerned, at that moment, as we conversed one man to another, was he, I asked him, speaking with me or with my skin colour? For he used the plural pronoun when speaking to me, although I was only one person.

At this, he replied that he had become used to it because it was the people of my colour who had begun by addressing people of his colour in this way, saying ‘you' and ‘your' to them.

‘Let us assume,' I said to him, ‘that there was a certain town, and in this town lived a great many murderers. Would you therefore address each citizen of the town as “you murderers” or say “among you murderers”? And,' said I further, ‘I have read that in your country live many wise men. Am I to address everyone in your country as “you wise men”?'

‘I have seldom met anyone of your type,' he said, thinking to compliment me.

With this I recognized him and told him that he seemed to be the twin brother of my employer – the wise Master of a Thousand Tongues. And then I said bluntly: ‘The Antichrist walks in your country also. And that is worse than syphilis.'

He seemed not to understand. He said nothing. As, however, he was concerned to reconcile me he searched, very much as the Antichrist would, not for a subject that we might both like but for one that he thought I would hate. And he said: ‘The worst are the half-breeds.'

‘No,' I said, ‘the worst are those who would think and say such a thing. For we are all people, and when people come together with each other it is natural and the will of God that everything should happen between them that can occur between human beings. They can speak to one another, they can hate one another, they can love one another and they can sleep with one another. Love between a red man and a yellow woman is natural. For if nature didn't wish this love to exist it would prevent them from bearing fruit. Since children spring from such a love these children are neither better nor worse than any others. When, however, two women or two men of the same colour love each other, this process goes against nature, even though people must obey the particular ways of their own bodies. There certainly exist within creation many phenomena that are subject not to the general laws of creation but
to others of a special and remarkable kind. We have no right to condemn them. Neither do we have the right to see them as natural. That would be as if those who were born blind were considered to have the same sight as those who are not blind, merely because it is Nature itself that made them blind and not an accident. In this world, however, where the Antichrist blinds even those who can see, it comes to pass that people say: “An unnatural love between two white men is better and nobler than a natural love between a white man and a yellow woman.” And this is a twofold sin. For the infirm must bear their infirmities humbly, and a cripple cannot direct how the healthy should run. I know a man who has sexual intercourse with goats, but won't give his hand to a Chinese man.' Another person who heard me speak thusly came to me and said he could understand everything that I was thinking. For, although he came from a distant land, namely Japan, he was also in the service of a Master of a Thousand Tongues. And, like myself, he went everywhere that there was unrest in the world.

‘I'm older than you,' said he. ‘I offer you this advice: never again speak as you did just now. In reality, there are other cares in your country, in mine, in all the countries where people live. There is a great outcry of the tormented of all races and within each race. To those who are poor and downtrodden, the colour of people's skin is immaterial. He who has nothing to eat feels hungry. He who is beaten bleeds. The educated folk who say “We want to be masters in our own country” are actually already masters in their own countries. All they want to do is drive out of their countries those people who share the mastery with them. It is only the masters who come to these conferences; and we, who are sent here by the masters. There's no point in getting too excited. Look at what happened to me. I was a soothsayer. I was never able to tell
a lie. Only since I have been hired and paid to report the truth do I lie. And one day you also will act just as I do. Even if you refuse to lie, you will find your truths so disfigured that you would rather have lied yourself. Fare thee well!' This he said and left me.

Erasmus loved many of the things that we love; literature and philosophy, books and artworks, languages and peoples, and without distinction among them all, the whole of mankind … And there was only one thing on earth that he truly … hated -fanaticism. – Stefan Zweig,
Erasmus of Rotterdam

Then I went to the country where, so I had been told, there was no longer an outcry from the poor and downtrodden; people were concerned to let truth, justice and reason shine forth; gold, the metal of the Antichrist, had been conquered; and people had a natural respect for every single human life, and each was sacred.

So I came to the capital city of this land. It is an old town, a pretty, expansive city with many hundreds of old churches. If one looks down upon this city from a high vantage point one sees the green arches and cupolas scattered like giant jewels between flat and pointed roofs. Each century seems to have contributed to the making of this city's jewels.

I visited many of these cupolas and the churches over which they vault their arches, and I saw that in many of the churches people no longer prayed and that the bells had been removed from the belfries and the crosses from the cupolas and from the walls inside.