You need to take a long, hard look at yourself in the mirror when you’re as stupid as I am, but when you’ve given your business to a company like Ismeier’s for over twenty years, you don’t for a second think that the people who work there are all just a bunch of thieves! Mobsters, every last one of them. I’ve bought a car at Ismeier’s every five years and I’ve always paid in cash. And did I ever imagine that the company was full of criminals, Al Capones, the lot of them? But it wasn’t my idea to sign a leasing agreement with Ismeier’s, it wasn’t my idea, and yet – ass that I am – I go and sign the leasing agreement. Ever since, I’ve been shoving four hundred and twenty marks and thirty pfennigs up this company’s butt every month. Obviously, I went back there in person and said, »Look, Winfried…» (fool that I am, I’d ended up on a first-name basis with him), »We’ve made a mistake with this leasing agreement.» And do you know what that guy said to me, smooth as you like? »What do you mean, we?» A response like that leaves you winded. But then I answered him, »Oh, I see. Well, if you’re going to speak to me like that, Mr. Ismeier, I know where I stand now.»
But then I get a lawyer, the best lawyer for miles around, and I file a lawsuit that makes sparks fly, and I filed it immediately, and I won, too –morally speaking. I said to the judge, »Your honor, surely it’s not acceptable that a person who’s always tried to live a decent life, who’s always paid his taxes, who’s never even had a parking ticket – well, hardly ever – surely it’s not acceptable for that person to have his throat cut by a leasing agreement?» And the judge said, »No, it’s fine.» My God, what a world we are living in, what a cesspool, where there’s no honesty, no decency, where people have no religion – if they were religious, they’d know that there’s only one direction they’re headed in if they’re setting up leasing agreements: toward eternal darkness. They’d know that someone was waiting for them down there with horns on his head and that they’d end up in a cooking pot, they’d be roasted like potatoes. Their intestines would be ripped out, their toenails pulled out with pliers, they’d get a trident rammed up their ass. But do you think these creatures would still have faith? I don’t. When they hear the word »Hell» all they think of are traffic jams. And they certainly don’t pay their church taxes either. I applaud those Muslims: say what you like against them, and there’s a lot you can say against them, but at least they still have faith. At least they know what Hell is. If a Muslim swipes something, if they nick something, that’s it, it’s damnation for them. If they drink alcohol – they know they mustn’t – bam, down they go, into the pits of Hell, where they have to sit at a bar and drink one Jägermeister after another for eternity, amen, because they still know what purgatory is.
But us, we don’t know what goes on down there anymore. My own son doesn’t even know that the Devil has horns and that he stinks of sulfur or that he’s got cloven hooves – he doesn’t know that. When I say to my son, »Right, lad, Beelzebub’s coming for you,» he thinks I’m talking about some Japanese computer game. What do young people learn about religion nowadays? These modern priests – I can’t be bothered with them anymore, what with their constant peace, peace, ecumenism, peace, I just can’t hear it anymore. Instead of the usual Sunday worship program, they should broadcast a report from Hell, a reality show, so that we’d get to see what things are really like down there. There’d be leasing agreements blowing out their asses. Why is it that young people watch these horror films? Why? Because the sermons they hold in church these days are so lame-ass, they’re a dead loss. But let me just fetch the New Testament, because it’s all in there. That John, he was a clever man, he wrote about the Apocalypse, you can read it all in there, word for word. One day the archangel will come with a flaming sword, he’ll come to destroy the vermin, do away with the riffraff, do away with the Antichrist and those car salesmen. And now I’m going to photocopy this and fax it over to Ismeier’s.
