The door to the attic opened and they all trooped in.
Stiff and motionless, Klinkherbogk was sitting at the end of a long table covered in shoe leather and tools, with his head turned away from them; one side of his profile was illuminated by the bright moonlight shining in through the window, so that the white hair of his sparse Dutch sailor’s beard gleamed like threads of metal; the other side was in pitch darkness.
On his bald head he wore a pointed crown cut out of gold paper.
The room was filled with the acrid smell of leather. The cobbler’s globe shone like the malevolent eye of some cyclopean monster, whose body was hidden in the darkness of the room, and glinted on a pile of ten-guilder pieces on the table in front of the prophet.
Eva, Sephardi and the members of the spiritual circle stood close to the wall and waited. No one dared move; it was as if a spell had been cast over them all. The poor shop assistant’s gaze was fixed on the glittering coins.
The minutes crawled past in absolute silence, as if they wanted to stretch themselves out into hours; a moth fluttered in out of the darkness, circled in a white blur around the candle and went up in a crackle of flame.
Motionless, as if carved out of stone, the prophet stared at the globe, his mouth open, his fingers like claws tensed over the coins, and seemed to be listening to words that came to him from a great distance.
Suddenly a dull thud came from the tavern below and as suddenly died away, as if someone had opened the outside door and then slammed it to; the sound seemed to rush into the room and then choke on the congealed air.
Then the deathly hush reigned once more.
Eva wanted to look over to Swammerdam, but was held back by a vague fear that she would read in his face the same foreboding of some approaching catastrophe that was almost choking her. For the length of a heartbeat she thought she remembered hearing a quiet, scarcely audible voice at the table say, “Lord, let this cup pass from me”, then the impression faded as scraps of noise from the distant fairground fluttered past the window.
She looked up and saw that the tension in Klinkherbogk’s features had relaxed, giving way to a look of confusion.
“There is a great cry in the city”, she heard him murmur, “and their sin is very grievous. I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will know.”
“‘T’hose were the words of Jehovah in the Book of Genesis”, said Sister Shulamite with trembling lips, and crossed herself, “before He rained brimstone and fire out of heaven. Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak but yet this once: Peradventure ten righteous shall be found there!”
Immediately the spark kindled in Klinkherbogk a vision of the end of the world. In a monotonous voice, as if he were reading aloud something he was not listening to himself, he spoke to the wall:
“Behold, I see a stormwind arise, that shall rage over the whole world, and all things that stand erect shall be made level and the clouds shall be as flying arrows. The graves shall be torn open and the stones and the skulls of the dead shall fall from the air as a shower of hail; it shall blow the water from the rivers and ditches, yea it shall spew it as from its mouth, and lay low the poplars by the roads and the tall trees shall be as clumps of grass that wave in the wind. And this He will do for the sake of the righteous who have received the living baptism”; his voice resumed its flat monotone, “but the King, on whom ye wait, will not come until the time is fulfilled. First there must come the one who shall go before Him to prepare the way of the Lord, and the harbinger must be within you and a new man. And yet I say, there will be many with new eyes and new ears, that it might not be said of mankind what was said before, `They have ears, but they hear not; eyes have they, but they see not’. But”, and a shadow of deepest sadness passed over his face, “Abram I cannot see among them. For with the same measure that ye mete, withal it shall be measured to you again and he, e’erthe spiritual birth was ready, cast aside the breastplate of poverty and gathered up gold to make a molten calf as a sacrifice for his soul and an idol for his senses. Yet a little while and he shall be gone from you. The King from the Land of the Moors shall bring the myrrh of the life beyond and cast his body into the dark waters that the fish of the deep might feast upon it, for Melchior’s gold has come before the child lay in the manger that could have taken away the curse that lies upon all gold. It has come to wreak its havoc before the darkness shall be past. Balthasar’s Frankincense has come too late.
But thou, Gabriel, hear me: do not stretch thy hand out for the harvest before it is ripe for cutting, that the scythe injure not the servant and take away the corn from the harvester.”
Mademoiselle de Bourignon who, whilst `Abram’ was speaking, kept on emitting rapturous sighs without making any attempt to follow the dark message his words contained, suppressed a cry of joy when her spiritual name, ‘Gabriel’, was mentioned, and swiftly whispered to Mary Faatz, who immediately hurried out of the room.
Swammerdam noticed and tried to stop her, but he was too late, the girl was already on her way down the stairs. With a weary gesture he let his hand drop back to his side and when the `Guardian of the Threshold’ gave him a puzzled look, he just shook his head resignedly.
The shoemaker came to for a moment and called out anxiously to his granddaughter, but immediately fell back into his trance.
In the ‘Prince of Orange’ sat a group of five men who had spent most of the afternoon drinking there. At first they had played cards together but then, as it grew darker and the tavern gradually filled up with the dregs of the Zeedijk until there was scarcely room to bend an elbow, they retired to the adjoining room which the waitress, Antje, inhabited during the day. Known as ‘Port-in-a-storm’ to the regulars, she was a shapeless figure with a red silk dress reaching to her knees, heavy makeup, a flaxen pigtail, podgy neck, sagging breasts and scabby nostrils.
The group consisted of mine host, formerly steersman on a Brazilian steamer transporting tropical hardwoods, a stocky, bull-necked man in shirtsleeves, with blue tattoos on his great paws and gold rings dangling from his earlobes, one of which was half bitten off; beside him sat the Zulu, Usibepu, in a dark-blue cotton overall such as stokers on steamships wear, then a hunch-backed artistes’ agent with repulsively long fingers like spiders’ legs, and Professor Arpad Zitter, who, surprisingly, once more sported a moustache and had adapted his wardrobe to suit the surroundings; the fifth, a sunburnt young man in a white dinner jacket, was a so-called ‘Indian’, a plantation-owner’s son from Batavia or some other tropical colony who, like so many of his kind before him, had come to Europe to see the ‘old country’, only to throw away his money in a few nights in shady dives.
For a week now the young colonial gentleman had been `lodging’ in the `Prince of Orange’ and in those seven days all he had seen of the light of day had been a glimpse of the dawn behind the green curtains before, unwashed and still in his clothes, he fell into a drunken stupor on the sofa, from which he did not rise until late in the evening. Then it was straight back to the dice and the cards, beer, rough wine and rougher spirits, buying rounds for all the riffraff of the docks, Chilean sailors and Belgian whores, until finally a cheque bounced and he had to turn to his watch-chain, rings and cufflinks.
The innkeeper had felt obliged to invite his friend, Arpdd Zitter, to this farewell party and the Professor had duly arrived, bringing with him, as his contribution to the kitty so to speak, the Zulu, who as a leading artiste always had plenty of ready cash on him.
These gentlemen had been playing blackjack for some hours now without one of them being able to get Dame Fortune on his side long enough to clean out the others, for every time the Professor tried to stack the cards the agent grinned, so that Zitter felt compelled to restrain his legerdemain for a while, as it was not part of his plan to share the pickings from his dusky companion with the hunchback.
Their roles in the case of the `Indian’ were, of cou
rse, reversed and thus the two rivals found that they were compelled to play fair for the first time which, to judge by the mournful expressions on their faces, reminded them of their childhood when the stakes were almonds and Brazil nuts.
The innkeeper was also playing fair, but of his own accord, in honour of the occasion. He felt he owed it to his guests, besides which it was clearly understood that they would reimburse him for any losses. The `Indian’ was far too naive for the idea of cheating even to occur to him, and the Zulu still too little au fait with the white man’s magic to risk using witchcraft to conjure up a fifth ace.
Towards midnight, however, the tempting tones of the banjo began to sound an ever more insistent invitation to the young benefactor of the thirsty multitude, who finally sent an ambassador in the enticing form of a young lady with the latest pageboy hairstyle to express her concern that her `admirer’ had not yet appeared. At this juncture the opposing generals decided to join forces so that in no time at all the `Indian’ and the Zulu had been picked clean by Professor Zitter and the theatrical gentleman.
The Professor, however, was of a remarkably liberal disposition and therefore insisted on inviting the fair Antje to dine in the room the other players had now vacated with himself and his friend Usibepu, whose taste for rich cuisine and a concoction named Mogador, a cocktail of industrial-grade alcohol and certain extracts containing nitric acid, was well known to him.
The conversation at table was entirely in a mishmash of pidgin English, Cape Dutch and the Basuto dialect, which both gentlemen spoke fluently; this meant that Antje’s contribution to the conversation consisted of gestures from the international lingua franca such as sticking outhertongue orcasting amorous glances at the two men.
Being a thoroughly companionable type, the Professor had no problem keeping the conversation flowing smoothly, whilst atthe same time never for a momentlosing sight ofhis main aim, namely to wheedle out of the Zulu the secret of how to walk on red-hot coals without burning one’s feet, and he thought up innumerable conversational gambits to achieve this.
Even the most seasoned observer would not have been able to tell that he was racking his brains over another quite different problem, which was the result of the confidential information supplied by Antje, namely that the shoemaker Klinkherbogk from the attic had come into the tavern that afternoon and changed a thousand-guilder note into gold coins.
Under the influence of the fiery drink, the spicy food and the brazen behaviour of the young lady the Zulu was becoming more and more frenzied, so that it seemed advisable to remove all sharp or fragile objects from the room and, above all, to keep him from contact with the sailors in the bar who were just spoiling for a fight and, jealous because of Antje’s attentions, ready to set on the `nigger’ with their knives.
The Professor finally managed to so infuriate the Zulu with his casual sneering gibe that the act with the hot coals was nothing more than a cheap trick, that he threatened to smash up the whole place unless someone immediately provided him with a basin full of red-hot bricks. This was the moment Zitter had been waiting for, he had ordered a bucket of glowing coals to be kept ready, and now he had it brought in and the contents scattered over the concrete floor of the room. Usibepu squatted down and inhaled the choking smoke through his wide-open nostrils. Gradually his eyes went glassy; he seemed to see something and his lips twitched, as if he were talking to a ghost.
Then he suddenly leapt up and let out a bloodcurdling cry, a cry so piercing and terrible that the raucous crowd in the tavern immediately fell silent and rushed to the door of the room where they stood looking in, a crush of deathly pale faces, to see what was going on.
In a second the negro had torn off his clothes and started to dance around the glowing coals: stark naked, with rippling muscles like a black panther, foaming at the mouth and throwing his head backwards and forwards at a furious rate. The sight was so fearsome that even the rough Chilean sailors were breathless with terror and clung to the wall so as not to fall down from the benches onto which they had climbed for a better view.
The dance finished abruptly, as ifhe were responding to some inner command. Usibepu seemed to have regained full consciousness, although his face was an ashen grey, and he walked slowly forward with measured steps onto the burning embers and stood motionless there for several minutes. There was no smell to suggest his skin had been burnt. When he stepped off the pile of coals Zitter found that his soles were completely unharmed and not even hot.
During the last part of the performance a young girl in the navy-blue uniform of the Salvation Army had come in from the alley; she seemed to know the Zulu and nodded a friendly greeting to him.
“Where the hell have you popped up from?” shouted `Portin-a-storm’ in astonishment as she rushed over to embrace her and give her a tender kiss on both cheeks.
“I saw Mister Usibepu sitting here through the window. I know him from the Caf6 Flora; once I tried to explain the Bible to him, but his Dutch wasn’t up to it”, explained Mary Faatz. “There’s this lady - a real lady - from the B6guine Convent has sent me down here to fetch him. There’s another lady and a fine gentleman up there.”
“Up where?”
“At Klinkherbogk’s, the shoemaker’s; where else?”
Zitter’s head shot round when he heard the name, but then he made as if the matter were of no interest to him and continued to pumpthe Zulu, who was muchmore communicative since his triumphant performance.
“Mister Usibepu, my friend, I must congratulate you. I am proud to see that you have been initiated into the magic of Obeah T’changa.”
“Obeah T’changa?” exclaimed the negro; “Obeah T’changa is that!” and he snapped his fingers contemptuously. “Me Usibepu big medicine, me Vidoo T’changa. Me green Vidoo, poison-snake.”
Zitter thought he had found a clue. He had heard Indian performers say that the bite of certain snakes could, in people who were capable of assimilating the poison, greatly increase their susceptibility to certain abnormal states with the most remarkable effects, clairvoyance, for example, somnambulism and physical invulnerability. He began to put two and two together. Why should something that was possible in Asia not also occur in Africa?
“I, too, have been bitten by the great witch-snake”, he boasted, pointing to the first scar he could find on his hand.
The Zulu spat contemptuously. “Vidoo not real snake. Real snake slimy worm. Vidoo-snake green spirit-snake with man’s face. Vidoo-snake souquiant. Name Zombi.”
Zitter was out of his depth. What did these words mean? He had never come across them. Souquiant? It sounded French. And what did Zombi mean? He was careless enough to admit to his ignorance and thus lost the Zulu’s respect for good.
Usibepu pulled himself up to his full height and, with an arrogant look on his face, explained, “Souquiant man can change skin. Live for ever. Spirit. Invisible. Zombi father of all black men. Zulus Zombi’s favourite children. They come from Zombi’s left side.” He thumped his powerful chest and the note echoed round the room. “All King-Zulu know secret name of Zombi. Whenthey call he come, Zombi come, big Vidoo-snake, green poison-snake with man’s face come; on forehead sacred fetish-sign. If Zulu see Zombi first time and Zombi face covered, then Zulu must die. If Zulu see Zombi and fetish-sign covered, green face uncovered, then Zulu live, then Zulu be Vidoo T’changa, big medicine; then Zulu command fire. Me Usibepu, Vidoo T’changa.”
The Professor chewed his lip in annoyance. He realised that the secret was useless to him. He was all the more keen, therefore, to offer his services as an interpreter to Mary Faatz, who was trying to persuade the Zulu, who in the meantime had put his clothes back on, to go with her.
“Without me”, he insisted, “the ladies and gentlemen will not be able to talk to him”, but she ignored him.
Finally Usibepu understood what it was she wanted and went with her up the stairs to Klinkherbogk’s attic.
The shoemaker was still sitting at the table, the pape
r crown on his head. Little Kaatje had run over to him and he had raised his arms, as if he were going to hug her to his chest, but then he let them drop and went back to staring at the globe as the trance came over him again. The little girl tiptoed back to the wall beside Eva and Sephardi
The silence in the room had become deeper and more tormenting than before; Eva felt that noises could not penetrate it any more, whenever a rustle of clothes or a creak of the floorboards ventured out, it just seemed to contract warily; the silence had become permanent, impervious to the vibrations of sound; it was like a black velvet cloth on which colours are reflected back from the surface without being able to penetrate any deeper.
Tentative steps could be heard coming up the stairs toward the attic. To Eva it sounded as if the Angel of Death had risen from beneath the earth and were feeling its way up towards them. She started in terror when the door behind her opened unexpectedly and the gigantic figure of the negro loomed up out of the shadows. The others started violently too, but no one dared change their position; it was as if Death had appeared on the threshold and its searching glance was going from one to the other.
From his expression Usibepu did not seem at all surprised at the strange gathering and the silence in the room. He stood there, motionless, and, althoughhe did notturnhis head, his eyes fixed themselves on Eva and seemed to be burning a hole in her skin. Eventually Mary came to her rescue and placed herself in front of her.
The white of his eyes and his gleaming teeth seemed to hang in the darkness like ghostly points of light. Eva resisted the feeling of terror and forced herself to fix her gaze on the window; outside she could see, glittering in the moonlight, an iron pulley-chain as thick as a man’s arm hanging down into the depths. A soft plashing was carried on the air whenever the waters of the two canals that flowed into one another below the house, impelled by the night breeze, slapped against the walls.
The Green Face Page 8