Not Just Guns and Crucifixes
I am a connoisseur, if you will, of evil. I have been around a long time, and I know the sort of horrors that man will perpetrate on his fellow man for coin, idea, or simple boredom. But I am not here to tell that it is all a tragedy, or how we could prevent it, or give you some Pollyanna-esque well-wishing; if you’re interested in this sort of discourse, find someone with a hole in their head. I am here to present to you my collection.
You see, in my long and interesting life, I have come across many different artefacts that have been the cause, the instrument or the consequence of evil. Each of them has a different, interesting story behind it, and after I found myself being fascinated with a couple that I had gotten hold of, I decided to store them in tasteful displays and take pride in them, much like one may show off his stamps, or prized petunias, or inbred Pekinese dogs. Naturally I believe my collection to be far more beautiful, as it narrates the progress through history of perhaps the most human of sentiments.
The piece that never fails to impress is the rope with which Judas Iscariot hanged himself with. It is naught but a thin string, frayed and broken, but to think it once held the neck of the greatest traitor, one marvels at how even the most depraved can be brought down by such a commonplace object. I have been asked why I wouldn’t have even one of the coins Judas received, as they seem to make a fitting pair with the rope, but I disagree. The coins are too obvious, as there is the banal association between base lust for gold, or silver in this case, and betrayal. They are just the reward for evil, of which there is no shortage of throughout history, whereas the rope expresses in its desperate knot the agony, suffering and failed bid for redemption of the sinner. In the same display I have two artefacts of perhaps less value, but which literary scholars always notice as being the most appropriate: the knives that Brutus and Cassius used on the Ides of March.
However, the rope is not my favourite item. It is in the centre of the room, true, but that is only because many have come far and wide to see my collection, and they would be disappointed if what is perhaps my most famous piece isn’t given its dues. Visitors, after all, come from far and wide to marvel and gawk at the more renowned objects in my possession: I have here the stool onto which Urban II stood when announcing his crusades; the rock with which the first murder was committed (she wasn’t named Cain, though she did inspire the story); the sword which slew Archimedes; shrapnel from the first bomb to fall on Dresden; infected rags donated to natives in America; the original copy of the Ninety-Five Theses that was affixed on the church door in Wittenberg; and many others. However, none of these are as interesting to me as they are to outsiders. I know that many people go to museums to see the most famous exhibits; but while most people will be at the British Museum trying to get a look of the Rosetta Stone through the crowd, I’ll be contemplating the ‘boring’ pottery, coins and cloths. Who made them? What did they use them for? Did a child have a particular affection for that figurine? Who used that particular sickle? History is made by kings and popes, and their squabbles are well documented, but the most interesting stories, stories of misery, of strife, of struggle, they belong to the peasants and are told by commonplace objects, which is why I hold more dearly my less valuable artefacts.
There is a loaf of bread dating from 1757, now mouldy and hard as rock, which is the first item bought by fifteen year old Catherine Willis after prostituting herself. It is uneaten, however, because it was stolen by a certain Thomas Dicker as soon as she left the shop, who was captured a few minutes later for an unrelated crime. He was hanged, and all his possessions were thrown out and forgotten until I went to retrieve the trophy.
I have a tiny little necklace which was stolen so many times throughout the 16th century that one would think it was the most valuable object in the world, and yet it could be bought by a laughably low sum of money in any market. The most common method of changing hands was by looting it off a corpse on the battlefield, and since the new owner was another soldier, it was likely he’d end up the same way.
I have one of the bullets that an enemy of the Communards had been shot with in 1871. As they realised that their revolution was failing, they began executing all their prisoners, including this old priest that was too weak to even walk outside. They riddled him with 69 bullets, one of which is in my possession now.
In some cases, no object could make justice to the event I would like to remember, so I use one to act as a memento for me. For example, I have an old and faded lunchbox that belonged to a school kid, unremarkable on its own, but which was present in a scene in which the kid in question did not act when a friend of his was being bullied. One thing led to another, and his friend became an outcast, then a drug addict, and finally a semi-prolific serial killer, all (or mostly all) because no one had stood by him on that occasion.
There’s picture which I personally took of a man having fun with his friends, mere hours after he’d raped and murdered his girlfriend. A vagrant would eventually be incriminated for the act, and the man is free to this day. Next to it there is the picture of a young man who purposefully gave wrong directions to a person who ended up getting late to his appointment, which cost him his job. A small, uneaten egg is merely one of the many pieces of food sent by a grocer to the local warlord in order to ingratiate himself to him, despite there being a famine in the area at the time. There is a small room which hosts nothing but tongs, each belonging to one of the few thousands of blacksmiths that, throughout history, never made anything other than a sword, or knife, or other weapon of murder.
I would be hard-pressed to choose a favourite amongst all of these. I guess it would have to be one of the small, unassuming artefacts that history has forgotten, like the deed to a car that had been sold despite the seller’s full knowledge of it being dangerously faulty, or the walking stick stolen to a wanderer by a bunch of rascals on a stormy night; little did they know, the wanderer was the father of a local militiaman, who had them killed by his consenting goons. Yes, perhaps the stick is my favourite: the tale of mutual harm, of petty grudges, of inconsequential theft and evil has repeated many times, but never, in my experience, encapsulated so well in a single object.
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