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.’
If they had been capable of hearing Death’s answer, it would have been something like the following: ‘Your threat is childish and your pride is foolish. It is my purpose to take from this earth not his face but his life and what you loved — his breath. He is extinguished, like a lamp. I have taken wick and oil. You may keep the vessel. I am not concerned with it. It was his flame that you loved and his light! Why are you now flaunting the miserable vessel that held them? I have already extinguished many great lights, and monuments were built to them. And that is wiser than what you do! For a monument does not deny but rather confirms the law according to which I act. And since it confirms me it conquers me as well. Because a monument, however insignificant, is the sign that the living remember the dead, and it is a terrestrial, inadequate but reverent form of resurrection. However, you don’t cause the dead man to be resurrected; you only make his corpse last. You prevent it from decaying. Why shouldn’t a corpse turn into dust and ashes? Did men come from paraffin and wax to become paraffin and wax once again? If you have as much respect for the dead man as you say, don’t you understand that he should not be exhibited the way a barber displays wax busts with wigs? Why do you so proudly show off for me — for Death? You have snatched nothing from me. Instead, you have detracted from your own dignity — your own dignity as well as the dignity of your dead.’
But, as I said, the sweepers were unable to hear the voice of Death.
Neither was he speaking to them. He was talking to himself with a compassion-filled voice.
In the vicinity of the city lived a righteous man, and I was advised to seek him out. He was surely one of the thirty-six righteous men — of whom it was written that on their account, and on their account alone, the world will continue to exist-who live scattered around the earth, their significance and influence unrecognized by mankind, expert in interpreting the language of animals, the song of the birds and the silence of the fish.
So I went to this righteous man.
He lived meagrely but so alone that the confinement of his room was no longer confinement but rather a wide expanse. He was surrounded with the regal splendour of solitude in which all earthly misery was lost like a speck of dust in a strong, sweeping wind.
They had treated him unjustly, for it is written that the righteous must suffer.
In this, however, the righteous man is like God, and this grace was granted him that he might serve not only as an image of God, as we all are but as an exalted image of our Creator. The righteous man is never unjust, and he treats you and I the same as he treats the unjust. It is only because we are, in truth, incapable of recognizing a righteous man that we say he forgives his enemies.
The righteous man who is the topic of this discourse had been thrown into prison. And it was claimed that he had wanted to eliminate the liberty of the people; he, who hated slavery and loved liberty, and who lived only to ensure that there would exist only free men and no more slaves.
It only became evident that he was one of the thirty-six righteous when his righteousness was not recognized and he was thrown into prison under the accusation of being unrighteous.
Accordingly, he bore imprisonment, hunger and beatings with the dignity of the righteous. He was lonely in prison. He was surrounded always by the strong armour of solitude, which is stronger even than iron.
This armour of solitude came between him and the violence that struck him, so that sometimes he almost wished that the blows were truly painful.
I spoke with this man. I told him that I could see the signs of the Antichrist in his great, vast and beautiful country; that I feared the Antichrist alone had triumphed.
‘He hasn’t triumphed,’ said the righteous man. ‘He has only left here, there and everywhere so strong an imprint of his evil fingers that we are tempted to believe that all new creations are the work of his hands. But it isn’t true. They bear the impression of his fingers only where he touched them.
‘But there is something else that you cannot see,’ the righteous man went on, ‘because you are a new guest to our country. The Antichrist didn’t emerge with the new era in this country but many years ago under the old regime. Clever as he was, he first tempted the standard-bearers, not the rebels. Not those who sought reforms but those whose jobs were to preserve the status quo. First he took up residence in the churches and then in the houses of the masters. For that is the method by which you may unmistakably know him, and it is an error, a mistake of the world, when it believes he can be recognized because he provokes and incites the humiliated and enslaved. That would be foolish — and the Antichrist is cunning. He doesn’t inspire the oppressed to rebel but inspires the masters to oppress. He doesn’t make rebels, rather he makes tyrants. He knows that if first he introduces tyranny, rebellion will soon come on its own. Thus his gain is twofold. For he forces the just, who would otherwise resist him, into his service. He doesn’t persuade the slaves that they should be masters, rather he first makes the masters his slaves. Then, when they have entered into his service he forces them to debase the powerless, the poor, the hardworking, the humble and the righteous into slavery. The wretched and the humble then revolt against the powerful, and the reasonable and the just rise up against stupidity and injustice. The just put weapons into the hands of the wretched. They must do it, for they are the righteous ones.