The Green Face

by Gustav Meyrink

  Unable to keep still any longer, he leapt up from his chair and paced up and down the room.

  Swammerdam thought hard for a while and then said with certainty, “Please don’t think these are empty words, just said to comfort you, Mijnheer: Juffrouw van Druysen is not dead.”

  Hauberrisser swung round, “How do you know?” He could not have said why, but the old man’s calm, firm voice had taken a great weight off his mind.

  Swammerdam hesitated for a moment before answering.

  “Because I would see her”, he finally said softly.

  Hauberrisser grabbed him by the arm. “I beg of you, help me if you can! I know that your whole life you have followed the path of belief; perhaps you can see more deeply than I. An uninvolved outsider can often see

  “I am not as uninvolved as you imagine, Mijnheer”, interrupted Swammerdam. “I have, it is true, only met Juffrouw van Druysen once in my life, but when I say I love her as dearly as if she were my daughter, I am not exaggerating in the least.” He waved away Hauberrisser’s protestations of gratitude. “Do not thank me, there is no reason. I will naturally do everything that is within my power, weak as it is, to help her and you, even if it means shedding my own, worthless blood. But please, now, be calm and listen carefully: You are certainly correct in your feeling that some accident must have befallen Juffrouw Eva. She has not been to see her aunt, I would have heard from my sister who has just come back from the Beguine Convent. I cannot say whether we can do anything to help her - that is, to find her- tonight, but at least we will leave no stone unturned. But even if we do not find her, you should not worry: as sure as we are both standing here, I know that there is Another, compared to Whom we are as nothing, keeping watch over her. I prefer not to talk in riddles; perhaps the time will come when I cantell you whatit is that makes me so certain thatJuffrouw Eva followed the advice I gave her. What happened today is probably the first result of it.

  Many years ago my friend Klinkherbogk also set off on the same course as she is on now. For a long time I have been inwardly aware of what the end would be, although I clung to the hope that it could be turned aside by fervent prayer. Last night has proved to me what I always knew, only was too weak to act upon: that prayers are only a means of forcing awake powers that sleep within us. To believe that prayers can make a god change his will, is foolishness. People who have submitted their destiny to the spirit within them stand under spiritual law. They have come of age. They are free from the tutelage of earth, over which one day they shall be lords. Whatever shall still befall them in their physical being, shall drive them onward; everything that happens to them is always the best that could happen.

  You must believe, Mijnheer, that that is the case with Juffrouw Eva as well.

  The hardest part is calling up the Spirit that is to guide our destiny. Only a person who has reached spiritual maturity can make his voice heard, and his cry must come from love and must be made for the sake of someone else, otherwise we only arouse the forces of darkness within us. In the Cabbala the Jews put it like this, `There are beings from the lightless realm of Ov which catch prayers that have no wings’; by that they do not mean demons outside us, for our body is a bastion against them, but magic poisons within us which, when roused, can split the self.”

  “But then might not Eva”, Hauberrisser interrupted feve rishly, “just as well be heading for disaster, like your friend Klinkherbogk?”

  “No! Please let me finish. I would never have dared to give her such dangerous advice if at that moment I had not sensed the presence of the One of whom I said before, compared to Him both of us are as nothing. In the course of a long, long life, and through untold suffering, I have learnt to talk to Him and to distinguish His voice from the cajolings of human desires. The only danger was that Juffrouw Eva would call on Him at the wrong moment, but this moment of danger, the only one, is past, thank God. Her cry was heard”, Swammerdam smiled happily, “just a few hours ago. Perhaps - I am not boasting, since I do such things in a state of complete trance - perhaps I have been fortunate enough to be of assistance to her already”, he went to the door and opened it for his visitor, “but now we must follow the course common sense suggests. Only when we for our part have done everything within our earthly power, have we the right to expect help from spiritual influences. Let’s go down to the tavern; you can give the sailors money to look for her and promise a reward for the one who finds her and brings her back safe; you’ll see, they’ll risk their lives for her, if need be. They are much better men than is generally believed; they arejust lost in the spiritual jungle and are like wild animals. In each of them is a heroism many a respectable citizen lacks, only in them it appears as wildness, because they do not realise what the force is that drives them on. They are not afraid of death and no brave person can be really bad. The truest sign that a man bears immortality within him is that he is contemptuous of death.”

  They entered the tavern.

  The taproom was jam-packed with people, and on the floor in the middle of them lay the corpse of the Chilean sailor with the shattered skull, whom the Zulu had knocked on the forehead with his knee as he fled.

  “Only a brawl”, was the landlord’s evasive reply to Swammerdam’s enquiry; they happened almost every day around the harbour.

  “That bloody nigger yesterday -“, broke in Antje, the waitress, but she did not finish the sentence; the landlord gave her such a dig in the ribs that she swallowed the rest of her words. He screamed at her, “Shut your gob, you trollop! It was a black stoker off a Brazilian tramp steamer; get that straight!”

  Hauberrisser took one of the ruffians to one side, slipped a coin into his hand and started to question him. Soon he was surrounded by a pack of rough figures, all gesticulating wildly as each tried to outdo the rest in descriptions of how they had thrashed the negro; there was only one point on which each and every one of them was agreed: it had been a foreign stoker. The landlord’s warning looks and the way he cleared his throat made it clear to them that under no circumstances were they to give anything away that might lead the others to the Zulu. They knew that the landlord would not have lifted a forger if they had decided to knife a customer, even if it had been one of his free-spending regulars, but they also knew that it was the sacred law of the harbour tavern that all held together, even enemies, when the threat came from outside.

  Impatiently Hauberrisser listened to their boasting until something was let slip that made his heart race; Antje mentioned that the negro had attacked a young lady - “very respectable she was.”

  He had to hold on to Swammerdam for a second, to stop himself collapsing on the spot, then he emptied the contents of his purse into the waitress’ hand and, incapable of uttering a word, gestured to her to tell him what had happened.

  They had heard a woman’s voice screaming, they had run out - everyone started talking at once. “I ‘eld ‘er in my lap, she was out for the count’, yelled Antje over the commotion.

  “But where is she? Where is she?” exclaimed Hauberrisser.

  The sailors fell silent and looked at each other in bewilderment, as if they had just become aware of what had happened: no one knew where Eva had disappeared to.

  “She was on my lap”, Antje kept on insisting, but it was clear from her face that she had no idea what might have happened to Eva.

  Then they all rushed outside, Hauberrisser and Swammerdam among them, hunted through the alleys screaming “Eva! Eva!” and shone their torches in every comer of the churchyard.

  “That’s where the nigger went, up there”, explained the waitress pointing to the green, glistening roof, “and I laid ‘er down on the cobbles when I tried to follow ‘im, then we took the corpse back inside and I clean forgot about ‘er.”

  They knocked on the doors of the adjoining houses to see if Eva had perhaps taken refuge in one of them. Windows were pushed up, voices shouted down to see what it was all about - but of Eva there was no trace.

  Weary and distrau
ght, Hauberrisser promised everyone within earshot they could name their reward if they brought him any news at all of her. Swammerdam tried to calm him down, but in vain: the idea that in her despair at what she had been through - or possibly driven out of her mind and not knowing what she was doing - Eva might have committed suicide by throwing herself into the canal was more than he could bear.

  The sailors ranged over the whole area, beyond the Prince Henrik Quay and all along the New Cut, and returned emptyhanded. Soon the whole harbour area was on its feet; fishermen, still only half-dressed, rowed around with boats’ lanterns, checking the wharfs and piers; they promised to drag all the canal outlets when it was light.

  All the while Hauberrisser was afraid that Antje, who kept on recounting her story in a thousand variations, would tell him that the negro had raped Eva. The question burnt within him, but he could not bring himself to put it; finally he overcame his reluctance and, haltingly, indicated what was on his mind. The rabble around him, who had never stopped trying to comfort him with their descriptions, accompanied by the vilest oaths, of how they would chop up the nigger alive as soon as he was caught, were immediately silent, avoided his eye or spat vigorously on the pavement.

  Antje was sobbing quietly to herself. In spite of a life spent amongst the most horrible filth, she was still woman enough to know how his heart was being torn to shreds.

  Swammerdam alone remained calm and untroubled. The expression of unshakeable confidence on his face, and his gentle smile as he kept patiently shaking his head whenever anyone suggested Eva might have been drowned, gradually restored Hauberrisser’s hope, so that eventually he followed the old man’s advice and let him take him home.

  “You must lie down”, Swammerdam told him when they reached his door, “and do not take your troubles to sleep with you. Our souls can do more than we imagine, when they are not disturbed by the worries of the flesh. Leave it to me to take any practical steps that are still necessary; I will report your fiancee’s disappearance to the police, so that they can set up a search for her. I don’t think anything will come of it, but we should do everything that common sense dictates.”

  On the way back home he had gently tried to divert Hauberrisser’s thoughts, and the young man had told him of the roll of papers and the plans he had made to start studying it which would presumably be interrupted now for some time, if not for good. Swammerdam returned to the papers when he saw the old despair begin to reappear in Hauberrisser’s face. He grasped his hand and held it fora long time. “I wish l could make you feel the same certainty that I have regarding Juffrouw Eva. Even if you had only a small portion of it, you would know what destiny requires of you. As things are, however, I can only give you some advice; will you follow it?”

  “You can rely on that”, promised Hauberrisser, suddenly moved at the memory of Eva’s words in Hilversum, that Swammerdam with his living faith was capable of heights beyond any man. “You can rely on that. You radiate such strength that I sometimes feel as if a thousand-year-old tree were giving me shelter from the storm. Every word you utter helps me.”

  “I will tell you of a little incident”, Swammerdam went on, “that once served as a signpost in my life, although it was apparently insignificant. I was still fairly young at the time and had just suffered such a bitter disappointment that the world seemed dark, seemed like hell. It was in this mood of bitterness at the way fate seemed to torment me pitilessly without, as I thought, any point or purpose, that one day I witnessed a horse being trained.

  They had it on a long rein and were driving it round and round in a circle, without giving it a moment’s rest. Every time it came to a hurdle, which it was supposed to jump, it refused or swerved. For hours the lashes rained down on its hide, but still it would not jump. And yet the man who was tormenting it so was not a vicious person, indeed he was himself visibly distressed by the task he had to perform. He had an open, genial face, and when I protested, he said, ‘I would willingly spend a day’s pay on sugar-lumps for the nag, if it would only understand what I want it to do. But I’ve tried that method before, and it doesn’t work. It’s as if these animals had a demon in their brain that stops it working. And what I want the beast to do is so simple!’ Every time the horse came to the hurdle I could see the glint of fear appear in its wild eyes and I knew what was going through its mind, “The whip, the whip.’ I racked my brains to see if I could not find some other way of making the animal understand. I tried to tell it, first by telepathy, later by shouting out loud, that it only had to jump and it would all be over. But my efforts were futile; to my sorrow, I had to acknowledge that it was only the terrible pain that would finally teach it its lesson. And as I came to that realisation, I saw in a flash that my situation was just like that of the horse: fate was lashing me with its whip, and all I was aware of was my suffering. I hated the invisible power that was tormenting me, but I had not understood that it was all being done so that I should learn to perform some task, take some spiritual hurdle, so to speak.

  That little incident was a milestone onmy road. I learnt to love the invisible forces that were whipping me onward, for I sensed that they would have given me `sugar-lumps’, if it were possible by that to lift me from the lower stage of mortality into a new state.

  The analogy has, of course, a flaw”, Swammerdam went on with a smile. “It is by no means certain that for the horse to learn to jump could really be called progress; it might have been better to leave it in its wild state. But I don’t need to tell you that. The important thing for me was that until then I had lived under the delusion that my suffering was a punishment and had racked my brains trying to work out how I had earned it; now the blows of fate had meaning forme and, even though I could often not work out what the `hurdle’ was that I was supposed to `jump’, I was a willing horse from that time on.

  In that experience I suddenly understood the hidden meaning behind the verse in the Bible about the forgiveness of sins: when the idea of punishment disappeared, so did that of sin and the distorted image of God as a vengeful God was transformed into the concept of a beneficent power that wanted to teach me, as the man did the horse.

  How often have I told others of this apparently insignificant incident, but how seldom has the seed fallen on good ground. Whenever they followed my advice, people always thought they could easily guess what the invisible `trainer’ expected of them, and if the blows of fate did not stop immediately, they slipped back into their old ways and bore their cross, either grumbling or, for those who took refuge in the self-deception of so-called humility, submissively. I tell you, anyone who has reached the stage when he can occasionally work out what those above - the name I prefer for them is `The Great Inwardness’ - want from him, is more than half-way to completing the task. The willingness itself means a complete revolution in our attitude to life; the ability to work out what is required is the fruit of that seed. But how hard it is to learn to work out what we should do.

  At the beginning, when we make our first, hesitant attempts, it is like a mindless groping in the dark, and sometimes we do things that resemble the actions of a madman and for along time seem to lack all consistency. It is only gradually that the chaos forms into a countenance, in whose varying expressions we can read the will of destiny. At first they are grimaces, but that is the way it is with all great matters. Every new invention, every new idea to appear in the world puts on a grotesque face as it develops. For a long time the first models for a flying machine were dragon-like gargoyles, before they became real faces.”

  “You were about to tell me what you thought I should do”, said Hauberrisser, almost shyly. He surmised that the old man had only embarked on such a long digression because he was afraid that if he put his advice, which he obviously saw as of extreme importance, forward too soon, it might not be fully appreciated and be wasted.

  “I was indeed, Mijnheer, and I shall. But Ineeded to lay a firm foundation first of all, so that you would find it less offputting when I adv
ised you to do something which looks more like a breaking-off than a continuation of your present concerns. I know that at the moment you are filled with one desire alone: to search for Eva; that is very natural and understandable, and yet what you must do is to search for the magic power that will make it impossible for any misfortune ever to strike your bride again. Otherwise you might well find her, only to lose her for ever, just as people come together on earth, only to be tom apart by death.

  When you find her, it must not be like finding something you have lost, but in a new way, and in a double sense. You told me yourself on our way here that your life has gradually become like a stream that is petering out in the sand. Everyone comes to this point at some time or other, although not always in each single existence. I know what it is like. It is like a death of the soul that spares the physical body. But precisely this moment is one of the most precious and can lead to victory over death. The earth spirit knows well that it is at such moments that it is in danger of being overcome by men and so that is when it sets its most cunning traps. Just ask yourself: what would happen if you were to find Eva at this very moment? If you have the strength to look the truth in the face, you must reply that the river of your life and of your bride would run in the same bed fora while, only to dry up for good in the sands of everyday routine. Did you not tell me that Eva was afraid of marriage? And it is because destiny wants to keep you from that that it brought you together and tore you apart within such a short time. In any other age than the present, when almost the whole of humanity faces an immense void, what has happened to you could have been merely one of life’s grimaces, but today that seems out of the question.