A cry from the table made them all start. Klinkherbogk had stood up and held his finger stretched out rigid in front of him, pointing at the spot of light in the globe.
“There it is again”, he gasped, “the figure of dread with the green mask over his face who gave me the name of Abram and ordered me to take the book and eat it.” As if blinded by the radiance, he closed his eyes and sank heavily back into his chair.
The rest all stood motionless, hardly daring to breathe; only the Zulu had leant forward, staring at a point in the darkness above Klinkherbogk’s head, and murmured, “Souquiant behind man.”
No one knew what he was talking about. Once more there was deathly silence, a long, seemingly endless time in which no one dared to speak. Eva felt her knees begin to tremble with some inexplicable excitement; it was as if an invisible being were gradually filling the room with its presence, slowly, oh, so terribly slowly. She clutched the hand of little Kaatje, who was standing next to her.
Suddenly there was a startled, fluttering noise in the darkness and a voice called out rapidly. “Abram! Abram!”
Eva’s heart missed a beat and she could see that all the others started too.
“Behold, here I am”, answered the shoemaker without moving a muscle, as if he were in a deep sleep.
Eva wanted to scream, but mortal terror clutched atherthroat.
For another moment deathly silence laid its icy hand over them, then a black bird with white patches on its wings flew wildly round the room, crashed its head against the windowpane and fell in a flutter of feathers to the floor.
“It’s Jacob, our magpie”, whispered Kaatje to Eva; “he’s woken up.”
It sounded to Eva as if the words were coming to her through a wall; they brought no comfort, but only increased the petrifying sense of a demonic presence.
Another voice, as unexpected as that of the bird was heard. It came from the lips of the shoemaker and sounded like a strangled cry, “Isaac! Isaac!”
“Behold, here I am”, replied Kaatje, just as her grandfather had replied to the cry of the bird, as if from a deep sleep.
Her hand in Eva’s felt ice-cold.
From the floor below the window the magpie gave a loud cackle, like the laugh of some fiendish goblin.
With ghostly but greedy lips the silence had swallowed up each word, each syllable, even the fiendish laughter, as it was uttered. They were heard then died away, like the spectral echo of events from Biblical times in the wretched attic of the poor shoemaker.
The boom of the bells of St Nicholas’ suddenly reverberated through the room, finally breaking the spell. Eva turned to Sephardi, “I want to go, it’s too much for me”, she said, going to the door.
She was surprised that the whole time she had not heard the clock from the tower strike; it must have struck midnight while they were in the room.
“Is it safe to leave the old man like that, with no one to help?” She glanced across at the shoemaker as she put her question to Swammerdam, who was silently encouraging the others to leave as quickly as possible. “He seems still to be in a trance, and the little girl is sleeping, too.”
“He’ll soon wake up when we are gone”, Swammerdam assured her, though his voice had an undertone of disquiet, “I’ll come back up to see that he’s all right later.”
They almost had to drag the Zulu away, his eyes were fixed greedily on the pile of gold coins on the table. Eva noticed that Swammerdam did not let him out of his sight for a moment and, once they were all going down the stairs, hurried back and locked the door to Klinkherbogk’s attic, slipping the key into his pocket.
Mary Faatz had gone on ahead to bring the visitors’ coats and hats from the room on the fourth floor and then to call a cab.
“I just hope the King from the Land of the Moors will come back; we did not even bid him farewell. Oh God! Why was the rite of rebirth so sad?” wailed Mademoiselle de Bourignon to Swammerdam who, silent and with a disturbed expression on his face, was standing next to her in the doorway waiting for the cab that was to take her to the Beguine Convent, Eva to her hotel and Doctor Sephardi to his house in the Herengracht. No one replied; her attempt to strike up a con versation trailed off into silence.
The sound of the fair had died away, only from behind the curtained windows of the tavern came the wild twanging of a banjo.
The wall of the house facing the Church of St. Nicholas was in deep shadow; on the other side, where the mansard window of the old shoemaker’s attic looked out across the canal to the sea of mist over the port, the wet walls glistened white in the dazzling moonlight. Eva went over to the railing between the street and the canal and looked down at the black, mysterious water. A few yards in front of her the end of the iron chain of the hoist which hung down outside Klinkherbogk’s window rested on a narrow ledge scarcely a foot wide. A man was standing in a boat, fiddling with the chain; when he caught sight of the shimmering figure of the woman, he quickly bent down and turned his face away.
Eva heard the cab coming round the comer and hurried, shivering, back to Sephardi. For the length of a heartbeat, she had no idea how or why, the memory of the white eyes of the negro stirred within her.
Klinkherbogk was dreaming he was riding on a donkey through the desert, little Kaatje at his side; before them strode their guide, the man with the veiled face who had given him the name of Abram. Day and night he rode on until he saw a mirage in the sky, and a land, more rich and abundant than he had ever seen, descended to the earth, and the man told him it was called Moriah.
And Klinkherbogk went up the mountain and built an altar of wood and laid Kaatje upon it. And he stretched forth his hand and took the knife to slay the child. His heart was cold and without pity, and he knew according to the Scripture that he was to slay a ram as a burnt offering in the stead of the child. And when he had sacrificed her, the man took the veil from his face and the glowing sign on his forehead vanished, and he said, “I have shown you my countenance, Abram, that from this time forth thou mightst have eternal life. But I have removed the Sign of Life from my brow, that the sight of it shall never more bum itself into thy brain. For my brow is thy brow, and my countenance thy countenance. And by this shouldst thou know that this is the `second birth’: that thou art one with me and I, who am thy guide who have led thee to the tree of life, am none other than thine own self.
There are many who have seen my face, but they do not know that it signifies the second birth, thus it is that they cannot partake of eternal life now.
Once more Death shall come to thee before thou goest through the strait gate; and before shall come the baptism of fire in a cauldron of pain and despair.
Even so hast thou desired it.
Then shall thy soul enter into the kingdom that I have prepared for thee, just as a bird flies out of its cage into the eternal glow of dawn.”
And Klinkherbogk saw that the face of the man was of green gold and filled the whole sky, and he remembered the days of his youth when, to help smooth the way of those who might come after him, he had prayed and made a vow that he would not take one step forward on the spiritual path unless the Lord of Destiny should lay the burden of a whole world upon him.
The man disappeared.
Klinkherbogk was standing in deepest darkness and heard a thunderous rumbling that slowly paled into the distant clatter of a cart on bumpy cobblestones. Gradually consciousness returned, the dream vision faded from his mind and he saw that he was in his attic and holding in his hand a bloody awl.
The wick in the lamp had burnt down and was struggling to stay alight. Its flickering rays played over the pale face of little Kaatje lying on the threadbare sofa, stabbed to the heart.
Klinkherbogk was seized with a frenzy of despair, he tried to thrust the awl into his own breast - his hand would not obey; he tried to roar like an animal - his jaw was locked in a cramp and he could not open his mouth; he tried to smash his skull against the wall - his feet stumbled as if his ankles were broken.
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The God to whom he had prayed all his life awoke in his heart, transformed into a grinning demon.
He staggered to the door to fetch help and rattled it until he fell to the ground: it was locked. He dragged himself over to the window, thrust it open and was about to call to Swammerdam when he saw, suspended between heaven and earth, a black face staring at him. The Zulu, who had clambered up the chain, jumped into the room. For a moment there was a narrow strip of red below the clouds in the east; the memory of his dream vision flashed back into Klinkherbogk’s mind and he turned, arms widespread, towards Usibepu as if he were his saviour.
The negro started back in horror when he saw the radiant smile transfiguring Klinkherbogk’s face, then he leapt on him, grabbed him and broke his neck.
One minute later he had filled his pockets with the gold coins and flung the body of the shoemaker out of the window. As it splashed into the murky, stinking water the magpie flew out overthe murderer’s head and into the dawn with an exultant cry of “Abraham! Abraham!”
In spite of the fact that he had slept until noon, Hauberrisser felt weary and heavy-limbed when he opened his eyes. All night he had tossed and turned, disturbed by a subconscious curiosity about what was in the roll of paper that had dropped onto his head and where it had come from.
He stood up and investigated the walls of the little alcove where the bed was. Almost the first thing he saw was the open flap and the hole in the panelling where it must have been hidden. Apart from a pair of broken spectacles and a couple of quills, it was empty; to judge by the ink-stains, the previous tenant must have used it as a miniature escritoire.
Hauberrisser smoothed outthe sheets ofpaperand tried to see if he could decipher them. The writing was faded, illegible in some places and because of the damp a number of the pages had stuck together into akindofmildewed cardboard. There seemed to be little hope of ever being able to reconstruct the contents.
The beginning and the end were missing and to judge by the frequent crossings-out the document seemed to be the rough copy of some kind of literary work, or perhaps a diary. There was nothing to suggest who the author was, nor was there a date to suggest how old the manuscript might be.
Tired and irritable from lack of sleep, Hauberrisser flicked through the sheets that were not stuck together for one last time before going back to bed. Suddenly his eye caught sight of a name which so surprised him that he at first thought he must have misread it. The page where he thought he had seen it had already passed and his impatient efforts to find it again did not improve the state of the paper. And yet he could have sworn that the name that had leapt out at him from the document was `Chidher Green’. If he closed his eyes and imagined the page, he could see it clearly.
The warm sun was streaming in through the wide, uncurtained window; the room, with its walls covered in yellow silk, was filled with a golden glow. And yet, in spite of its midday brightness, Hauberrisser felt a shudder of horror. It was a feeling ofa kind he had not known before, a sudden feeling ofdread that came without any good reason, as if a twilight creature from the dark side of the soul had suddenly appeared and, dazzled by the light of the sun, immediately crawled back into its lair.
He was sure it was not something that was connected with the manuscript, nor with the reappearance of the name Chidher Green; it was an abrupt and profound feeling of mistrust towards himself that, in spite of the bright daylight around, seemed to open up a chasm beneath his feet.
He washed and dressed quickly and rang for the old housekeeper, who looked after his bachelor establishment. “Tell me, Mevrouw Ohms”, he asked as she set his breakfast down on the table, “do you happen to know who lived here before me?”
The old woman thought for a while. “A long time ago, as far as I can remember, it belonged to an old gentleman who, if I remember rightly, was very rich and was said to be an eccentric. After that it stood empty for a long time before it was taken over by the Royal Orphans’ Society, sir.”
“And have you any idea what the old gentleman was called, or whether he’s still alive?”
“I’m afraid not, sir.”
“Oh well, thank you anyway.”
Hauberrisser set about trying to decipher the manuscript again. He soon managed to work out that in the first part, written in short, disjointed sentences, the author was looking back on the life of a man who, pursued by misfortune, had tried everything imaginable to give himself a decent life. Every time, his efforts foundered at the last moment. Later on he appeared to have become rich overnight, but how he did so was unclear, as several sheets were missing.
Then came several pages that were so yellowed that there was nothing legible left on them; the following section must have been written some years later, since the ink was a little fresher and the writing unsteady, suggesting it was that of an old man. One passage that seemed to reflect a mood similar to his own Hauberrisser reread to see what the context was:
“Whoever believes he is living forthe sake of his children and his children’s children is deceiving himself. It is not true; mankind has not advanced one inch; it only seems to have. There are merely occasional individuals who are more advanced than the rest. To go round in a circle means not making progress. We must break out of the circle or we will achieve nothing. All they who think that life begins with birth and ends with death cannot even see the circle, how should they break out of it!”
Hauberrisser turned the page.
The very first words he read, right at the top of the page, were like a whip-lash across his face: “Chidher Green”!
He had been right, after all.
Tense and breathless, he sent his eye racing over the next lines. They told him nothing. “Chidher Green” was the end of a sentence, but the rest was missing, the previous page did not seem to belong with the one with the name. There was nothing in the material that suggested with any certainty what the author associated with the name, or even that he might have been personally acquainted with a certain “Chidher Green”.
Hauberrisser shook his head in disbelief. Whatever it was that had come into his life, it looked as if an invisible hand were toying with him. Although the manuscript seemed to be interesting, he could not summon up the patience to continue poring through it. The letters were beginning to swim before his eyes. And he refused to be made to look foolish by some silly coincidence.
‘I’ll sort this thing out once and for all!’ He shouted for his housekeeper and ordered her to call him a cab. ‘I will go straight round to the Hall of Riddles and confront this Chidher Green’, he decided. He immediately realised it would be a waste of time and breath -‘What fault of the old Jew’s is it if his name keeps on pursuing me like a demon?’ - but Mevrouw Ohms had already gone to fetch the cab.
He paced up and down the room in his agitation.
‘I’m behaving like a madman’, he reasoned; ‘what has it all to do with me, anyway? Instead of enjoying a quiet life -‘ like a nice, respectable family man, added a sarcastic voice from within, with the result that he immediately abandoned the train of thought. ‘Has life itself not taught me often enough that to live as the majority of mankind do is so stupid, it’s a disgrace. Even if what I was going to do were the most hare-brained thing imaginable, it would still be more sensible than to slip back into the old groove, which only leads to a pointless death.’
World-weariness crept over him again, and he felt he had no other choice, if he were to avoid the inevitable suicide from ennui, than to drift along in the wake of events, for a time at least, until fate should cast him an anchor or call out in ringing tones, `there is nothing new under the sun; the goal of life is death.’
He took the roll of papers into his study and locked it in his desk. But by now he was so wary of mysterious influences that he took out the sheet with the name Chidher Green at the top, folded it and put it into his wallet. He did this not because he thought it might vanish by magic, but so as to have the paper to hand and not be forced to rely on his me
mory alone. It was an instinctive reaction, a kind of defence mechanism to protect himself from the confusion to which the human mind is subject, by having the evidence of his senses to rely on should further bewildering coincidences threaten to disrupt normality once more.
“The cab is waiting below”, said his housekeeper, “and this telegram has just been delivered.”
“Please be sure to come to tea today. Quite a large gathering, including your friend Cienchonski and, unfortunately, Madame Rukstinat.
My curse be upon you if you abandon me.
Weill.”
Hauberrisser read it and muttered irritably to himself. He had no doubt that the brazen ‘Polish Count’ had made free with his name in order to become acquainted with Pfeill. Then he told the cabbie to take him to the Jodenbreetstraat. When the latter asked him, with a worried look on his face, whether he should take the most direst route through the `Jordan’, by which he meant the ghetto, he smiled and said, “Mat’s right, straight through the Jewish quarter.”
Soon they were in the middle of what was the strangest district of any European city. The inhabitants seemed to do everything out on the street. There was cooking, washing and ironing going on; a line across the street with dirty stockings hung on it to dry was so low that the cabbie had to bend down so as not to become entangled in it. Clockmakers sitting at tiny tables stared up at the cab, looking like startled deep-sea fish with their lenses still wedged in their eyes; children were being suckled or held over the drains to relieve themselves.
One crippled old man had been carried out in his bed - and the chamber pot placed underneath it - so that he could get some `fresh air’, and on the street comer next to him a Jew with a bloated face and dolls climbing all overhim like the Lilliputians on Gulliver was selling toys; without appearing to breathe and in a voice which sounded as if he had a silver breathing-tube in his throat, he kept up a constant cry of “dollidollidollidollidol- lidolli”.
The Green Face Page 9