by Daniel Quinn
“These days are still those days. Do you understand what these words mean?”
“To be honest, I’m not sure.”
“You’ve asked why my superior is interested in what’s happening here in Radenau. I’m explaining: He’s interested because these days are still those days. Nothing has changed. The foundation is solid. The pillars are still standing.”
Shirin struggled with it for a moment, then appealed to B for help.
“I think Fr. Osborne is on the verge of clearing it up now,” B said.
“I’d appreciate it if you’d drop the title,” I told him, looking around to include everyone in the room. “By calling me Fr. Osborne, you continually insist on my status as an outsider, a probationer.”
“What would you prefer?” B asked blandly.
“If you generally go by first names, as you seem to, then I’d prefer to be called Jared.”
“Jared’s all right with me,” B said, “but the others will follow their own inclinations.”
“Fine,” I replied, and turned back to Shirin. “Four hundred years ago, when our order was founded to defend the Church against the forces of Reformation, it took on an additional, exceptional mission, little talked about in recent centuries. That mission was to maintain a special vigilance, a special watch. We were to be the first to recognize the Antichrist.”
A dead stillness fell over the room. It was finally broken by Frau Hartmann, who croaked, “Surely you are joking.”
“If you think that,” I told her, “then you haven’t been listening. These days are still those days.”
“You mean the watch is still being maintained by the Laurentians?” This was from Shirin.
“It is, though I didn’t know it until recently, to be honest with you. I thought it had been forgotten centuries ago. Even I had begun to forget that these days are still those days.”
“But this is nonsense,” Frau Hartmann said. “This is what the rabble say in the streets.”
“For them too, these days are still those days.”
“You must deny it,” she told B firmly. “When next you speak, you must deny it.”
“Deny it how? Do you think I should pass round my birth certificate, which indicates that I’m a perfectly ordinary person?”
“You must attack the idea itself.”
“On what grounds? If it’s thinkable to posit the existence of a Christ (as it obviously is), then why shouldn’t it be thinkable to posit his antithesis?”
“But you are not his antithesis.”
“So you say. Others say that I am, as you know.”
“They have no grounds. No grounds that are … verniinftig.”
“Rational,” Michael supplied.
“Perhaps Jared will tell us how the Laurentians view the grounds.”
I said, “I’m like Frau Doktor Hartmann—I see no rational grounds for associating you with the Antichrist. I told you this twenty minutes ago, and you said I hadn’t heard enough to decide.”
“That’s not exactly responsive,” B said. “Shirin’s original question seems more relevant than ever: What does your superior want with your transcripts?”
“I thought that was clear by now. He wants to know what you’re saying, because people are calling you the Antichrist.”
“But what does he make of what he reads? And, by the way, does this person have a name you can share with us?”
“His name is Bernard Lulfre.”
B looked momentarily stunned. “Do you mean the archaeologist?”
“Yes. Do you know him?”
“I know his work. I didn’t know he was a Laurentian.”
“What work of his do you know?”
B produced a smile that made him look as if he was remembering something pleasant. “He allied himself a bit too inflexibly with the theory that the Dead Sea Scrolls were produced by an Essene community that was resident at Qumran.”
“I didn’t realize the theory was in doubt.”
“It’s very much in doubt, despite Fr. Lulfre and other old hardline supporters.”
“Obviously I don’t read the right journals anymore.”
B shrugged. “How has he reacted to your transcripts?”
“He hasn’t, as yet.”
“How will he react?”
“I honestly don’t know. Certainly not in any crude or obvious way.”
“Oh no,” B said, with a small, private smile. “I’m sure Fr. Lulfre wouldn’t react in any crude or obvious way. Fr. Lulfre is nothing if not subtle.”
Sunday, May 19 (cont.)
The Antichrist over coffee
Heinz and Monika Teitel had disappeared without my noticing it. They now reappeared wheeling a coffee cart down a dim corridor that opened up behind B’s chair. Incongruously, I thought, it was time for a little kaffeeklatsch. I accepted a cup, along with a small, flavorless pastry dusted with powdered sugar, and retreated to my seat while the others engaged in low, apparently inconsequential conversation around the cart. Shirin alone ignored the whole thing, staying where she was in order to think her own thoughts.
I closed my eyes and found the interior rooms of my head quite thoroughly deserted.
When, after ten or fifteen minutes, everything was cleared away and everyone was seated again, B began to speak in his normal, unhurried way.
“In light of what we’ve heard here tonight,” he said, “I’ve decided to alter my plans for the next few weeks.” Except for Shirin, who reacted to his words as blandly as if she’d spoken them herself, his listeners were clearly astonished.
“Everyone here, except, I believe, Albrecht, has been with me through at least one full series of lectures. This means you know what Jared doesn’t know. You know why there are pickets out there denouncing me as the Devil’s Spawn, Beelzebub, the Beast, and indeed the Antichrist himself.”
“They picket because they do not understand,” Frau Hartmann grumbled.
“What do you think, Shirin?”
“They picket because they do understand,” Shirin replied grimly.
B said, “I’m afraid Shirin is right, Frau Hartmann. But whether she’s right or you’re right is beside the point. Fr. Lulfre and probably others of his rank have made themselves our judges, and these men won’t be polling the masses for their views. Don’t you agree?”
This question was for me, and I told him he was absolutely right.
Heinz Teitel raised his hand. This awkward young man, along with his wife, Monika, seemed the least at home of anyone in this oddly assorted group. With apologies for wasting the others’ time with a question they probably didn’t need answered, he asked if I would explain briefly the meaning of the term under discussion. “Neither of us was brought up in a religious household,” he said. “I think we have always assumed that the Antichrist is more a symbolic person than a real one, like Mammon or Pandora.”
“That’s not at all an easy or obvious question,” I told him, “and I’m not an expert by any means, but I’ll do my best. The Antichrist is a central figure in the mythological history of the cosmos as it was widely understood in ancient times—in our culture, as B would say. The culture of the Great Forgetting perceived the universe and humankind to be the products of a single creative effort that had occurred just a few thousand years ago. It perceived the events of human history to be the central events of the universe itself, unfolding over a fairly brief period of time. Only a couple hundred generations of humans had lived from the beginning of time, and it was imagined that only a couple hundred more would live before the end of time—perhaps even less than that. It’s important to realize that the people of this time had no conception of a universe billions of years old and with more billions of years ahead of it. As they imagined it, the cosmic drama was only a few thousand years old—and was not far from being over. The central issue of this cosmic drama was a struggle between good and evil being waged on this planet. Among the Jews, who were probably the most potent religious mythologists of the age, the is
sue would be settled by two champions. God’s champion, the Messiah, was expected momentarily, and his appearance would mark the beginning of the final days. An adversary would also appear—Satan’s champion, a Man of Sin. The two champions would battle, the forces of evil would be vanquished, and history and the universe would come to an end.
“Early Christian authors had the same vision of history, but for them, of course, the Messiah had already come, and all that remained was for the Man of Sin to come. Now that the Messiah had been named as the Christ, his adversary could be named as the Antichrist. Now that the Messiah’s mission was plain, his adversary’s mission was plain. Since Christ came to lead all humanity to God, Antichrist will come to lead all humanity to Satan. And Antichrist will not fail, any more than Christ failed. Antichrist will be loved and followed as fervently as Christ—but only for a time, of course. Ultimately, after a cataclysmic battle, the forces of God will triumph, bringing history to its conclusion.
“This clear vision of the Antichrist became muddled and trivialized in succeeding centuries as one generation after another found someone to lambaste with the name. Anyone widely feared or hated could expect to be called the Antichrist, and eventually both sides of the Reformation had to bear the label. After this period, from the seventeenth century on, people were sick of the whole idea. Every generation continues to nominate a candidate of its own—Napoleon or Hitler or Saddam Hussein—but no one takes it very seriously.”
A restless silence greeted this summary. Everyone seemed to wander off mentally for about a minute and a half, then Heinz was ready to go on.
“I can understand why no one takes it seriously,” he said. “What I cannot understand is why you take it seriously. You and your order and your Fr. Lulfre.”
I admitted it was a good question. In fact, I admitted it in several different ways as I tried to figure out how to explain why it was possible to continue to take the Antichrist seriously. Finally, I said, “This situation was foreseen by the early Christian theologian Origen. I don’t mean this exact situation. I mean that what he foresaw is applicable to this situation. He said, in effect, that every generation will produce forerunners and prefigurements of the Antichrist, and these will deserve the name insofar as they embody the spirit of the Antichrist. It’s from among this number that at last one will come who deserves the name in its proper sense. It is for this one that we maintain our vigilance.”
“What does that mean—one who deserves the name in its proper sense?”
“This is precisely what can’t be known in advance. It can only be known in the event itself. That is, when we see the real Antichrist, then we’ll know what the name means. Then we’ll say to ourselves, ‘How could we have imagined that Nero was the Antichrist—or the pope or Luther or Hitler?’ The real Antichrist will reveal to us the meaning of the prophesy itself. Indeed, that’s how we’ll know him. He’ll be the one who shows us what it means to be the Antichrist.”
The condemned is sentenced
The silence that followed this speech was a deadly one. At last young Albrecht broke his silence to ask B why he would change his plans for my sake. I was surprised when he spoke not with a German accent but with an English one.
“To get rid of him the sooner,” B said simply.
“If you want to get rid of him, let us do it—Heinz and Michael and me. We could take him out and dump him in a lake or something.”
“I doubt if that would do much good. What do you think, Jared?”
“I agree, it wouldn’t do much good. I’m infinitely replaceable, and if I went missing, suspicion would fall on you almost immediately.”
“I’m afraid Jared is right,” B told the boy.
“I still don’t see what’s to be gained by helping him.”
“Show me how hindering him will gain more, and I’ll hinder him.”
Albrecht gave it some serious thought but evidently couldn’t come up with anything.
B stood up and said, “I think we’ll stop here. Shirin or I will be in touch with you.” Then, turning to me: “Shirin will walk you to your hotel. Come back tomorrow at six or seven.”
I opened my mouth to say that it was hardly necessary to provide me with an escort for a four-block walk, then realized that B knew this as well as I did.
The prisoner is released
I was surprised to find that it was still dark night when we emerged from the theater. Although I could see the time on my wrist, I had the feeling dawn should be well advanced after that prolonged Sturm und Drang.
We walked in silence for a few moments, then I remarked that they seemed very much at home at the Schauspielhaus Wahnfried.
“The director of the board is a supporter,” Shirin said without elaboration.
“You actually live there, then?”
“It’s our home base, yes.”
“But why in Radenau?”
As soon as I said it, I remembered that I knew why. The “mysterious caller” had explained it to me over the phone in Munich. For a second I was in an icy panic, then I realized it was a perfectly natural question. To avoid asking it might well have seemed more suspicious than asking it.
She said, “There’s a medical center here devoted to the study and treatment of mixed connective-tissue diseases.”
I said, “B has a mixed connective-tissue disease?”
“I have a mixed connective-tissue disease. Scleroderma, in fact.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “My medical education is pretty spotty. Is that connected to this?” I waved a finger over my nose and cheeks.
“The lupus butterfly,” Shirin said.
“Lupus. I’m sorry: What’s lupus?”
“Another mixed connective-tissue disease. I have symptoms of both.”
“I hope it’s not serious.”
“Do you?”
“Yes, I do. Believe it or not, priests are occasionally capable of normal human feelings.” Aiming for a light touch in my welter of lies.
“It all depends,” she said, “on how involved other organs are—heart, lungs, kidneys. Unfortunately, in my case, it’s very serious indeed. No one expects me to see the new century. On the bright side, in my case, the end will probably come suddenly, and I should be quite active until then. It’s not a pretty disease to linger with.”
Clergy are trained to have plenty of good, solid things to say at moments like this, but I didn’t reach for any of them. I didn’t even want to say—for the third or fourth time—that I was sorry. We walked on for a bit in silence.
Finally she asked me if I knew why B had told her to walk me home. I said I didn’t.
“I didn’t either, at the time,” she said. “Now I do. He knew I’d be able to think about the unthinkable and to ask the unaskable. People in my position have practice at that.”
“You have an unthinkable question for me?”
“That’s right.”
“Go ahead.”
“What will your Fr. Lulfre do if he decides that B is the Antichrist?”
I laughed, sort of. “I see what you mean. That’s completely unthinkable.”
“It would be unthinkable for him to decide that B is the Antichrist?”
“Yes.”
“Then what’s the point of sending you here?”
It took me a minute or two to work that out. Incredible as it may seem, I hadn’t seen any reason to work it out before then. I said, “If a stain that looks like a weeping Madonna one day appears on Mr. Smith’s living-room wall, and everyone swears they see tears flowing down her face every Friday at three o’clock, and thousands of pilgrims are streaming past day and night, week after week, and people are claiming that the sick are being miraculously healed at this shrine, then eventually somebody from the Church is going to be sent to look into it. This will be some unlucky priest like me, sent from afar, because it would be too painful for the local priest to point out to his neighbors that this stain appeared right after that big rainstorm last spring, and the Smiths had
in a local handyman to fix their leaky roof the same week, and no one is allowed to get near the Madonna on Friday afternoons but Mr. Smith, and the vial he uses to collect the teardrops could just as easily be used to put the teardrops in place, and even though Mr. Smith doesn’t actually charge anyone to go through his house, there’s a bushel basket by the door and it’s always full of money, and though one or two have claimed to be healed of something, they never stick around long enough to be checked by any doctor.”
“So this priest isn’t sent to see if there’s been a miracle.”
“Of course not. He’s sent there to make sure there hasn’t been a miracle.”
“I’ve afraid that’s too devious for me. If everyone assumes there was no miracle, why send a priest?”
“Because someone has to be sent. No matter how unlikely, no matter how improbable, someone has to be sent.”
“And someone has to read his report.”
“Absolutely. It will be read, scrutinized, confirmed, notarized, and sworn to, and eventually copies of it will find their way into diocesan files and probably even Vatican files, where they’ll sit until the end of time.”
We walked on through the deserted streets of Radenau. As my hotel came into view, I felt one last question brewing in Shirin.
“I’m not quite sure how to ask this,” she said.
“Ask it any way you like.”
“Did you come here thinking of B as a stain on the wall?”
“No, not at all. When you’re sent, you have to take the investigation seriously.”
“Even though the conclusion is foregone.”
“Virtually foregone. Ninety-nine-point-ninety-nine percent foregone. There is always the remote possibility—almost infinitely remote, but there all the same—that the stain is a miraculous apparition that weeps real tears every Friday afternoon.”
“Or that B is the Antichrist.”
“That’s right.”
“Then the question still needs to be answered: What would Fr. Lulfre do if he decided that B is the Antichrist?”
