Or was he dreaming? Had a miracle taken place and turned the hands on the clock of time back to the days of Louis XV?
The artiste kept his hands pressed firmly over his eyes, like a man summoning up all the power of his imagination to see something as vividly as possible before his inner eye … then after a few minutes he stood up, sketched a bow and left the stage.
Hauberrisser glanced at the ladies at his table and the people in the immediate vicinity; not one of them moved a muscle. Only one Russian princess was uninhibited enough to applaud. As if nothing at all had taken place, the assembly resumed its cheerful chatter.
Hauberrisser felt as if he were surrounded by ghosts; he ran his fingers overthe tablecloth and sucked in the scent of flowers and musk; the only result was that the feeling of unreality intensified and turned into one of abject terror.
Once more the bell rang and the room was darkened. Hauberrisser took the opportunity to leave.
Once outside in the street he almost felt ashamed of the way he had allowed his feelings to get the better of him. What, after all, had happened? Nothing that did not recur again and again, and much worse, at intervals in the course of human history: a mask had been cast aside that had never concealed anything but intentional or unintentional hypocrisy, lack of vitality posing as virtue or ascetic monstrosities conceived in the mind of a monk! For a few centuries a diseased organism, so huge it eventually came to resemble a temple soaring up into the heavens, had been taken for culture; now it had collapsed, laying bare the decay within. Was not the bursting of an ulcer much less terrible than its constant growth? Only children and fools, who do not realise that the bright colours of autumn are the colours of decay, complain when it is followed by the deathly cold of November, instead of the spring they expected.
However hard Hauberrisser tried to regain control over his emotions by subjecting his hasty instinctive reaction to the cold light of reason, the feeling of terror was not assuaged by rational argument, but remained rooted within him, like a rock that cannot be moved by words because its very being is immobility.
Gradually, as if a whispering voice were letting the words drop syllable by syllable into his ear, it became clear to him that this feeling ofterror was none otherthan hisolddull, stifling fear of some shadowy horror, a sudden recognition of mankind’s headlong rush towards the abyss.
What sent icy fingers round his heart was the fact that the audience could accept as perfectly natural a performance which only yesterday they would have rejected out of hand as the height of insolence; the world, which normally plodded along with the gait of a contented carthorse, had suddenly broken into a wild gallop as if frightened by a ghost popping up by the roadside.
Hauberrisser felt he had slipped one more step down towards the eerie realm where the things of this world dissolved more quickly into shadowy insubstantiality the cruder they were.
He entered one of the two narrow alleys running either side ofthe music hall and immediately came upon a sortofglassed-in arcade that seemed familiar. When he turned the comerhe found himself facing the metal rolling shutter over the door to Chidher Green’s shop; the inn or theatre he had just left was merely the rear portion of the strange, flat-roofed, tower-like building in the Jodenbreetstraat that had attracted his attention that afternoon.
He looked up at the two gloomy windows. Here, too, he was struck by the same disconcerting sense of unreality: in the darkness the whole building had the look of a monstrous human skull with the teeth of its upper jaw resting on the pavement.
As he made his way home he was struck by a parallel between the fantastic tangle of rooms, halls and passageways inside this brick skull and the muddle of thoughts and ideas within a person’s mind. He began to feel that behind the dark masonry of the forehead there must be enigmas sleeping such as Amsterdam had never imagined in its wildest dreams, and once more the icy forgers clutched at his heart with a premonition of mortal dangers lurking on the threshold of reality.
Had the vision of the green bronze face in the Hall of Riddles really been only a dream?
Suddenly in his memory it was the motionless figure of the old Jew at his desk which seemed to become shadowy, hazy, as if that were the dream and not the bronze face
Had the Jew really had his feet finely on the ground? The more sharply he tried to focus the image, the more he came to doubt that that had been the case. He was suddenly certain that he had been able to see the drawers of the desk clearly through the caftan.
For a brief moment his mind was illuminated, as if by the sudden glare of a flashlight, with a flickering spurt of distrust of the apparent solidity of the world around and of his own five senses. At the same time he remembered something he had learnt as a child at school and which now seemed to supply an explanation forthese mysteries: the light of those inconceivably distant stars in the Milky Way takes seventy thousand years to reach the earth, if there were a telescope powerful enough to bring the surface of one into view, the events we could observe, however much they appeared to be taking place before our eyes, would be things that had already been past for seventy thousand years. The idea that shook him with its terrifying simplicity was that in the infinite expanse of the universe every event that had ever occurred must be preserved somewhere, as an image embalmed in light. `Therefore’, he reasoned, `there must exist the possibility - even if it is beyond the power of man - of bringing back the past?’
As if it was somehow connected with his newly-discovered law of spectral return, the image of the old Jew at his desk suddenly took on a frightening reality. He could sense the phantom, as if it were moving along beside him only an arm’s length away, invisible to the physical eye and yet more immediate than that distant star shining down from the Milky Way which everyone could see night after night and yet which could well have been extinguished for seventy thousand years.
He had reached the narrow, old-fashioned house with two windows and a tiny front garden. He stopped and unlocked the heavy oak door. So vivid was the feeling that there had been someone walking beside him that he instinctively looked round before he entered. He climbed the stairs, which were scarcely wider than his own chest and which, as in almost all Dutch houses, ran straight up, uninterrupted and as steep as a fireescape, from the ground floor to the attic, and went into his bedroom. It was along, narrow room with apanelled ceiling; the only furniture, a table and four chairs, stood in the middle; all the rest-cupboards, washstand, chests of drawers, even the bed - had been built into the walls which were covered in yellow silk.
He had a bath and went to bed.
As he switched off the light his eye was caught by a green, cube-shaped cardboard box on the table.
‘Aha, the Oracle of Delphi in papier-mache, they’ve sent it from the Hall of Riddles’, was his thought as he subsided into sleep.
A while later he started out of his sleep; he thought he had heard a strange noise, a tapping on the floor, like little sticks.
There must be someone in the room!
But the front door was shut, he could clearly remember locking it.
Cautiously he was feeling along the wall for the light switch when something struck him a swift but gentle blow on the ann; it felt like a small, flat length of wood. At the same time there came a thud from the wall and a soft object rolled down over his face.
The next moment he was blinded by the glare of the lightbulb.
Again he heard the tapping noise; it came from inside the green box on the table.
“There must be some mechanism inside that stupid cardboard skull that has managed to set itself off, that’ll be it”, he muttered to himself in irritation. Then he felt for the object that had rolled over his face and had come to rest on his chest.
It was some sheets of paper tied up in a roll. As far as he could see with his bleary eyes it was covered with cramped and faded writing. He threw it to the ground, turned out the light and went back to sleep.
‘It must have fallen down from somewhere, or
I accidentally opened some kind of little trapdoor in the wall when I was feeling for the switch’, were his last clear thoughts before they drifted off into a labyrinth of images at the centre of which stood a fantastic figure, an amalgam of all that he had experienced that day: a Zulu with a red woollen bobble-hat on his head and green frog’s feet was holding out Count Ciechonski’s visiting card, whilst next to him stood the skull-house from the Jodenbreetstraat, grinning all over its bony face and winking now with one eye, now with the other.
The last manifestation of the outside world that accompanied Hauberrisser’s slide into the abyss of sleep was the distant wail of a ship’s siren.
Baron Pfeill had intended to catch the late afternoon train for Hilversum, where his villa, `Sans Souci’, was, and had set off in the direction of Central Station. He had managed to fight his way through a maze of stalls and booths, already thronged with workers on their way home, and had almost reached the harbour bridge when, as if at a sign from some invisible conductor, all the bells of the hundred church towers broke out together into an earsplitting din, telling him that it was six o’clock and he had missed his train.
On an impulse, he turned and went back to the old part of the town.
He almost felt relieved that he had missed his train because that gave him a few hours to settle a matter that had been on his mind ever since Hauberrisser had left him.
He stopped outside a marvellous old baroque building of red brick with a pattern of white shaded by the gloomy avenue of elms in the Herengracht, looked up for a moment at the huge sash window that took in almost the whole length and breadth of the first floor and then tugged at the heavy bronze knob in the middle of the door that also operated the bell.
It was an eternity before an old servant in a livery of white stockings and mulberry silk knee-britches opened the door.
“Is Doctor Sephardi at home? - You do recognise me, don’t you, Jan?” Baron Neill took out a visiting card. “Take my card up, please, and ask whether -“
“The Master is already expecting you, Mijnheer. Follow me, please.” The old servant led the way up the narrow staircase which was carpeted with Indian rugs, the walls covered with Chinese embroidery; it was so steep that he had to hold on to the curved brass handrail to avoid losing his balance.
The whole house was filled with an overpowering smell of sandalwood.
“Expecting me? How can he be?” asked Baron Neill in astonishment. He had not seen Doctor Sephardi for years, and it was only half an hour ago that he had had the idea of visiting him in order to check his memory of the picture of the Wandering Jew with the olive-green face, in particular certain oddly contradictory details he remembered and which, remarkably enough, did not seem to fit in with what Hauberrisser had told him in the cafe.
“The Master sent you a telegram at den Haag this morning, asking you to visit him, Mijnheer.”
“At den Haag? But I’ve been back in Hilversum for ages. It’s mere chance that brings me here today.”
“I will inform the Master of your arrival immediately, Mijnheer.”
Baron Pfeill sat down and waited.
Everything, right down to the last jot and tittle, was in exactly the same place as it had been when he had last been here: the seats of the heavy carved chairs were draped in glistening Samarkand silk; the pair of roofed chairs - southern Netherlandish work-still stood either side of themagnificent fireplace with its columns and jade tiles with gold inlay; Persian carpets still spread their glowing colours over the black and white squares of the floor, the niches in the panelling above the black marble table still sheltered the delicate pink porcelain statuettes of Japanese princesses, and along the walls were arrayed the ancestors of Ishmael Sephardi, portrayed by Rembrandt and other old masters. His forebears, distinguished Portuguese Jews, had had the house built in the seventeenth century by the celebrated architect, Hendrik de Keyser, and there they had lived and died.
Pfeill compared these people from a past age with his memory of Ishmael Sephardi. They all had the same narrow skull, the same large, dark, almond eyes, the same thin lips and sharp, gently curving noses, the same unworldly, almost arrogantly contemptuous look of the Hispanic Jews with their unnaturally narrow feet and white hands, who had little more in common with the ordinary Jews of the line of Gomer, the so-called Ashkenazim, than their religion. These features had remained the same throughout the centuries with no hint of adaptation to changing times.
Then Pfeill was standing up to greet Doctor Sephardi as he came into the room, accompanied by a strikingly beautiful fair-haired woman of some twenty-six years.
“Did you really send me a telegram?” asked Pfeill. “Jan told me -“
“Baron Pfeill is so sensitive”, Sephardi explained with a smile to his young companion, “that one only has to feel a need and he will respond to it. He has come without having received my missive.” He turned back to Neill, “You see, Juffrouw van Druysen is the daughter of a late friend of my father’s who has come from Antwerp to seek my advice on a particular matter about which you are the only person who can supply the information. It concerns - or, to be more precise, it might be connected with - a picture that you once told me you had seen in the Ouheden Collection in Leyden, a picture of Ahasuerus.”
Pfeill stared at him in astonishment. “That was why you sent me a telegram?”
“Yes. We went to Leyden yesterday to see it, but were told that there had never been such a picture in the collection. Hol- werda, the Director with whom I am well acquainted, assured me that they had no paintings at all since the Museum only housed Egyptian antiquities and -“
“Perhaps you will allow me to tell Baron Pfeill why I am so interested in the matter?” the young lady interrupted. “Don’t worry, I won’t bore you with a long description of my family background. To put it in a nutshell: there was a person, or rather - it does sound a little odd - an `apparition’, that had some influence on my father’s life, that would often occupy his thoughts for months on end.
At the time I was too young, perhaps also too full of life, to understand what went on inside my father’s mind, although I loved him very dearly (my mother had died long before). But recently this has all started to come back to me, and I am filled with a restlessness to find out about things which I should have come to understand long ago.
You will say that I am being hysterical if I tell you that I would like my life to end today rather than tomorrow. The most blase libertine cannot be closer to suicide than I am.” She suddenly stopped, bewildered, confused, and only managed to compose herself when she saw that Pfeill was listening gravely and seemed very quickly to understand her state of mind. “Oh yes, the picture or the `apparition’, what is all that about? I know virtually nothing about it. All I know is that whenever I used to ask my father about God or religion - I was still a child then - he would tell me that a time was near when all that mankind had relied on would be torn apart and that a spiritual gale would sweep away all the works of man.
Only those would be safe from the destruction who - these were his very words - could see within themselves the green bronze face of our forebear, the ancient wanderer who will not taste death.
Whenever I pressed him to tell me what our forebear looked like, whetherhe was a living human being ora ghostorevenGod Himself, and how I might recognise him if I should happen to meet him on the way to school, he would always reply, `Calm down, my child, and do not worry your pretty head about it. He is not a ghost, and even if he should appear to you as a ghost do not be afraid, he is the only person on earth who cannot be a ghost. Over his forehead he has a strip of black cloth concealing the mark of eternal life. For anyone who bears the Mark of Life openly and not concealed deep within himself, is branded with the mark of Cain: and even if he should appear in glory like a flaming torch, he is a prey to ghosts and a ghost himself. Whether he is God I cannot say; you would not understand, anyway. You can meet him anywhere; he is most likely to come when you least expect him. But you c
an only see him when you are ready for him. Saint Hubert, you remember, saw the pale stag amid the turmoil of the hunt, but when he raised his crossbow to shoot it …’ ” Miss van Druysen paused for a while and then went on, “Then, many years later, when the dreadful War came and Christianity, to its everlasting shame
“Do excuse my interrupting”, said Neill with a smile, “but you mean ‘Christendom’; Christianity is the opposite!”
“Of course. That’s what I meant, Christendom; - then I thought my father had had a vision of the future and was referring to the great bloodbath
“I am sure he did not have the War in mind”, now it was Sephardi who broke in. “External events such as a war, however terrible they may be, are as harmless as thunder sounds to the ears of those who have not seen the lightning strike the ground at their feet. Their only response is, ‘Thank God it was nowhere near me.’
The War split mankind into two, and neither half can understand the other. Some have seen Hell open up before them and will bear the image within them for the rest of their lives; for the others it was just so much newsprint. I belong to the latter. I have examined my soul and recognised with horror - I openly admit it - that the suffering of all those millions has made no impression on me whatsoever. Why lie? If others can say the opposite of themselves and tell the truth, I take my hat off to them in all humility. But I find it impossible to believe them; I cannot imagine that I am a thousandfold more despicable than they. But do excuse me for interrupting you, Mejuffrouw.”
`A man who is not afraid to lay bare his own shortcomings is an upright soul’, thought Pfeill, glancing with warm approval at the proud olive-skinned features of his scholarly friend.
The Green Face Page 5