And when we returned to the battlefield, which in the language of war is known as ‘the trenches’, on the night that Jesus Christ was born, many of us died with pockets full of cigarettes and chocolate. These good gifts were taken by the survivors from the pockets of the fallen. And the guns made from bells continued to launch their thunder over our heads and towards those who, in the language of war, were known simply as ‘the enemy’.
While we are speaking about the bells, I must explain how I was reminded of them after the war when I was poor and searching for work. There was employment to be had in the large red-brick building where we had once unloaded the metal and the bells, a place called the arsenal. We went there in search of work. In the great hall lay cannon, some whole, some damaged, some broken in pieces. There stood the gentle, grey-bearded man with the mild golden-brown eyes, and he directed us what to do. We loaded the broken weapons on to iron carts, and some of us smashed the undamaged ones with hammers. Outside, a large covered wagon was waiting. We loaded the cannon remnants on to it, and when it was so full that it could hold no more we drove it to a large factory, and there we unloaded the remains of cannon and guns.
The factory supervisor (who looked like our sergeant) made sure that everything was unloaded.
‘What are you going to make with it?’ I asked the supervisor.
‘All kinds of useful things,’ said the supervisor. ‘The war is finished, my friend! We’re going to make latches, locks, doors, candlesticks, mortars and bells — yes, church bells.’
THE CANNON AND THE BELLS
Since that time, whenever I hear the song of the bells, it seems as if gun barrels are swaying over the roofs and the towers of the churches, as if they are being swung not by worthy sextons or cheerful boys but by the one of whom I am speaking in this book. Has he not already so confused the ears of men that they find the thundering of cannon pleasant, even sweet, but the song of the bells unbearable? And has he not he apparently given these men the right to have perverted hearing and to be proud of it?
Ask the people in that expansive country where fools call themselves ‘godless’ before God has abandoned them (and only because they think they have abandoned Him) — ask them what the bells have done to them that they extract them from the churches.
They will give the following reply: ‘The bells toll and boom and disturb our rest.’
And ask them whether the booming of the bells is more unmelodious than, for example, the howling of sirens or the discordant singing of crowds of people in the streets on various festive occasions or ten gramophones being played simultaneously in a single, thin-walled house.
They will reply: ‘Sirens and gramophones have never been turned into cannon with which to kill us.’
And say further: ‘Then mustn’t you also banish the latches and metal vessels from your houses?’
They will then reply: ‘The latches and vessels were taken from us more or less by force.’
‘But,’ you will then ask, ‘wasn’t violence also used upon the churches when their bells, their golden tongues, were removed?’
And the answer will be: ‘As they began to shoot the cannon, the golden tongues also began to toll to announce that the hour of killing had arrived. And it is entirely correct to say that the bells themselves then began to kill, as they became cannon and guns. Since they have lied once, how can we believe that they now speak the truth? That is why the thunder of cannon, the false and inharmonious singing of the crowd, the bawling of apparatus, and the howling of sirens is more pleasing to our ears than the clanging of bells.’
So you enquire further: ‘But don’t the crowds and the gramophones and the sirens also lie — and don’t the cannon lie and kill at the same time?’
And the people will answer: ‘We don’t believe that.’ They will give this answer because people have faith in new things that they haven’t yet caught in a lie; towards those things that they used to venerate, but which have deceived them, they are quite cruel.
It is easier for the Antichrist to scoff at the venerable and inexplicable by setting up man’s reason as a judge and, in flattering it, flattering man himself. Nothing pleases a man so much. If he is told that he is handsome, strong, brave, affectionate, kind — he is delighted. Tell him he is clever — and he is blissful. And he will believe you merely because you have told him that he is clever, for he assumes that you would never try to lie to someone who is discerning.
I, however, who have always known that the Antichrist finds it easier to pollute the amazing products of our reason with his breath than the consecrated objects of our faith — even though he finds it easier to defame the latter — I am struck with horror at the broad scope of power that he already wields. If the sons of Edison, the Edisons, the sons of Edom, have fallen under his control, what does that matter? But he has swung himself on to the roofs of the churches and sits astride their spires; he takes the bells out of the belfries, and he renders the churches dumb; he rips the clappers from the bells and makes them empty — and have we not seen him with our own eyes leap with a single bound from the church spire where he had been sitting to the cross and bend it crooked, up and down and right and left, with the hateful strength of his arms and legs?
And this terrifies me more than his power over the products of our reason. For this is the first time he has had the profound insolence to bestow upon his name a visible and victorious symbol. Here, for the first time, he has emerged from the anonymity in which he had hidden himself. He has even had the audacity to print a calling card. And he announces himself in his true guise — namely as the Antichrist — through the Anticross.
THE MASTER OF A THOUSAND TONGUES
After we had taken all the pieces of guns that were formerly bells to the factories where they were to be turned into bells once again, we were all without employment, and each of us went in search of the kind of work to which he was best suited.
I went every morning to stand in front of one of the mightiest buildings, one in which newspapers are produced, those thousand-tongued messengers on the backs of which each day are printed enquiries both from men seeking work and employers seeking men under the title ‘Employment Market’; that is to say, where work is offered for sale.
As I couldn’t find any employment, my vanity led me to enter the great building and not to leave as did the others. In my foolishness, I thought that a building whose doors and walls were a market for work must likewise have work for sale within, and that the exterior alone of such a building would not reveal to me what it knew within its depths.