Sephardi began to understand how it had come to his confession to the police. “And your work? How do you manage to do that?”
Egyolk pointed to his coat-sleeve again. “Your clothes protect you from the wet when it rains and from the heat when the sun shines. Whether you think about it or not, the clothes do it automatically. It’s my body that looks after the store, only I don’t know anything about it anymore. Didn’t Rabbi Simon ben Eleassar say, `Have you ever seen a bird that had learnt a trade? And yet they feed themselves without toil; and why should I not be able to feed myself without toil?’ Of course, if the Makifim within me had not been changed round, I would not be able to leave my body to fend for itself, I would be fixed to it.”
This clear, logical speech made Sephardi sit up and subject the old man to a searching look, and he saw that he appeared no different from a normal Russian Jew: he gesticulated with his hands as he spoke and his voice had taken on a penetrating whine. He seemed to slip without transition from one very different mental state into another.
“Of course, men can’t do that kind of thing on their own”, Egyolk went on pensively. “All your studying, and praying, and the Mikvot - the ritual baths - is no use at all. We can’t do it, not unless one from the other side has changed round the lamps within us.”
“So you think it was one from `the other side’ who did it?”
“Of course; Elijah the Prophet, as I said before. One day he came into our room, and before I saw him I could tell from his footsteps that it was he. When I used to think that one day he might come to visit us - you know that we Hasidim live in constant hope of him - I thought I would tremble all over at the sight of him. But it was all quite natural, just as if it were any Jew coming through the door. My heart didn’t even beat faster. However hard I tried to make myself think I might be wrong, I found it impossible. I couldn’t take my eyes off him, and his face became more and more familiar, until I suddenly realised that not a single night in my life had gone without my seeing him in my dreams. I gradually went back through my memory (I wanted to find out when I had seen him for the first time), and my whole childhood seemedto unroll before my inner eye: I saw myself as a tiny baby, and then before that, as a grown-up in a previous existence that I had never suspected, and then as achild and so on and so on; but every time he was with me, and every time he was the same age and looked the same as the visitor at my table. So ofcourse I kept a sharp eye on his every movement; if I had not known it was Elijah, I would not have noticed anything particular, but because I did, I sensed that every one of his actions had a deep meaning. Then, whilst he was talking, he swapped over the two candlesticks on the table, and I could feel him moving the lights inside me, and from that time on I have been a different man, a meshuggenah, as we Jews say. Why he changed round the lights inside me, I only learnt later, when my family was slaughtered. You wanted to know why Berurje thought his name was Chidher Green? She said he told her.”
“Did you never meet him afterwards?” asked Sephardi. “I thought you mentioned that he instructed you in the Merkabah; by that I mean the secret second law of Moses?”
“Meet him?” repeated Egyolk, and rubbed his forehead, as if he needed time to work out what was being asked of him. “Meet him? Once he was with me, why should he ever leave me? He is always with me.”
“And you see him constantly?”
“I don’t see him at all.”
“But you said he was always with you. What do you mean by that, then?”
Egyolk shrugged his shoulders. “You cannot understand it by reason, Doctor Sephardi.”
“But could you not give me an example? Does Elijah talk to you when he instructs you, or what does he do?”
Egyolk smiled. “When you’re happy, is happiness there with you? Yes, of course it is. But you can’t see or hear your happiness. That is what it’s like.”
Sephardi was silent. He realised there was a gulf in understanding between himself and the old man that could not be bridged. When he thought about it, much of what he had just heard from Egyolk corresponded to his own theory about the spiritual evolution of the human race; he himself had always tended towards the view - and argued it, most recently the previous day in Hilversum - that the way forward lay in religions and in belief in them. But now, confronted with a living example in the person of the old man, he felt surprised and at the same time disappointed by the reality. He had to admit that Egyolk, through the fact that he was no longer subject to fear, was infinitely richer than his fellow creatures; he envied him his state, and yet he would not have wanted to change places with him.
He was struck with doubt as to whether, after all, what he had said the previous day in Hilversum about the path of weakness and of waiting for salvation was right. Surrounded by a luxury of which he did not avail himself, he had spent his life in solitude, pursuing various studies, cut off from his fellows; now it seemed to him that there was much that he had overlooked, and that he had missed the most important part.
Had he truly longed for the coming of Elijah, like this poor Russian Jew? No, he had only imagined he longed for it, and it was through reading that he had learnt that longing was essential for an inner awakening. Now here was a man before him who had experienced the fulfilment of his longing, and he, Sephardi, the master of book-learning, had to admit that he would not like to change places with him.
Humbled, he resolved that he would take the first opportunity to tell Hauberrisser, Eva and Baron Pfeill that in reality he knew as good as nothing, that he now subscribed to what a halfdemented Jewish liquor merchant had said about spiritual experiences: “You cannot understand them by reason.”
“It is like crossing over into the realm of abundance”, Egyolk went on after a pause, which he had spent smiling blissfully to himself. “It is not a coming home, which is what I had always believed, but then everything apersonbelieves is wrong, as long as the lights inside him have not been changed round, so completely wrong that we cannot comprehend it. We hope that Elijah will come and then, when he does come, when he’s there, we see that he has not come at all, but that we have gone to him. We think we are taking, whereas instead we are giving. We think we are standing still and waiting, whereas instead we are searching. Man travels, God stands still. Elijah came into our house; did Berurje recognise him? She did not go to him, so he did not come to her, she thought he was another Jew who was called Chidher Green.”
Deeply moved, Sephardi looked into the old man’s radiant, childlike eyes. “Now I can understand very well, what you mean, even if I cannot feel it as you do, and I thank you. I wish I could do something for you. I can certainly promise to have you set free, it should not be difficult to convince Dr. de Brouwer that your confession has nothing to do with the murder. However”, he went on, more to himself, “I’m not quite sure yet how I’m going to explain it to him.”
“Could I ask you a favour, Doctor Sephardi?” interrupted Egyolk.
“Certainly. Of course.”
“Don’t tell the man out there anything. Let him believe I did it, just as I believed it myself. I would not like to be responsible for the murderer being found. I know now who it was. This is just for your ears, mind: it was a black man.”
“A negro? What makes you suddenly say that?” said Sephardi in astonishment and momentarily filled with suspicion.
“It is like this”, explained Egyolk calmly: “Whenever I have been completely united with Elijah in dreamless sleep and then come partly back into life in my liquor store, and something has happened in the meantime, I often think I was there and did it myself. If, for example, someone has beaten a child, I think I beat it and have to go and comfort it; if someone has forgotten to feed the dog, I think it was I who forgot and I have to take it its food. Later on, if by chance I learn somehow that I was wrong, I only need to be fully united with Elijah again for a moment and then come straight back again, and I know straightaway what really happened. I don’t do that very often, because there’s no point,
and because even partial separation from Elijah makes me feel as if I were blind; but just now, while you were thinking, I did it, and I saw that it was a black man who killed my friend Klinkherbogk.”
“How … how could you see that it was a negro?”
“Well, in my mind I just climbed up the chain again, only this time I watched myself and I saw it from outside: I was a black man with a red leather thong around my neck, no shoes and a blue linen suit. And looking at myself in my mind’s eye, I knew that I was a savage.”
“But Dr. de Brouwer really ought to be told”, exclaimed Sephardi, standing up.
Egyolk grabbed him by the sleeve, “You promised not to say a word, Dr. Sephardi. For Elijah’s sake, blood must not be spilt. Revenge is mine. And then -“, the old man’s friendly face suddenly took on a threatening, fanatical look, as of an Old Testament prophet, “and then, the murderer is one of our people! Not a Jew, as you might be thinking”, he explained when he saw the bewildered look on Sephardi’s face, “but still one of our people. I realised it when I saw him just now in my mind’s eye. He’s a murderer? Who is to judge? You and I? Revenge is mine. He is a savage and has his own faith. God forbid that many men should have such a cruel faith as he has, but it is a true, a living faith. That’s what I mean by our people, those who have a faith which does not melt in God’s furnace, Swammerdam, Klink herbogk and the savage too. Jew, Christian, heathen - what is the difference, they are all names for people who have a religion instead of a faith. And that is why I forbid you to tell them what you know about the black man. If I am to suffer death for his sake, who are you to take such a gift away from me?”
It was a much affected Sephardi who made his way home from the prison. He could not get over how strange it was that, within his own lights, Dr. de Brouwer had not been so far wrong with his silly remark that Egyolk was involved in a plot and had confessed in order to gain time for the real murderer. Each individual assertion was correct and represented the naked truth, and yet de Brouwer could not have been more wrong in his assumption.
It was only now that Sephardi fully understood Egyolk’s words, “As long as the lights within him have not been changed round, everything a man believes is wrong, however correct it might be, so completely wrong that it is beyond comprehension. You think you are giving, and instead you are taking; you think you are standing still and waiting, whereas instead you are travelling, searching.”
Weeks passed, but nothing was heard of Eva. Mill and Sephardi heard the terrible news from Hauberrisser and did everything humanly possible to find her, soon every available wall was covered with descriptions of the missing woman and appeals for information, so that the case quickly became common gossip among both locals and tourists.
In Hauberrisser’s flat there was a constant coming and going, people crowded outside the house and foreach one that left, two more entered; everyone claimed to have found something which could well have belonged to the missing woman, for there was a large reward offered for the least bit of news of her.
Rumours that she had been seen here or there spread like wildfire, anonymous letters, written by malicious or deranged citizens, accused innocent people of having abducted Eva, of holding her captive; mediums offered their services by the dozen; clairvoyants that no one had ever heard of popped up claiming powers they did not possess: the soul of the teeming city which, until then, had seemed harmless enough, revealed itself in all its baseness, with its lust for gossip and gold, its self-importance and petty vengeance.
Some of the reports had a ring of truth, and Hauberrisser, tossed between hope and despair, spent hours chasing round with the police, checking houses where someone had said Eva was being kept. Soon there was no street, alley or square in which, misled by false information, he had not turned one or more houses upside down in his search for Eva. It was as if the city were taking its revenge on him for his earlier indifference.
In his dreams at night he saw the faces of the hundreds of people he had spoken to during the day, all screaming at him that they had news of Eva, until they dissolved into an amoeba-like grimace, as if a mass of transparent photographs were piled on top of each other.
His only comfort during these dreary weeks and months was the fact that Swammerdam came to see him early each morning. Even though he brought nothing new, even though he shook his head every time Hauberrisser asked him whether he had heard anything about Eva, the old man’s unshakeable confidence gave him the strength to face the trials of each new day. No mention was made of the roll ofpapers, and yet Hauberrisser felt that that was the main reason why Swammerdam came to visit him. One morning, however, the old man could restrain himself no longer. He did not look at Hauberrisser as he spoke,
“Do you still not realise that a horde of hostile, alien thoughts is attacking you, is trying to make it impossible for you to reflect calmly on matters. If it were a swarm of angry wasps defending their nest against you, you would know what it was straight away and take action; why do you not defend yourself against the cloud of hornets destiny has sent buzzing round your soul?”
He stopped abruptly and went out.
Ashamed of his inaction, Hauberrisser pulled himself together. He wrote a note for the housekeeper to fix to the door, saying that he had gone away and that any communications concerning the case of Eva van Druysen should from now on be sent to the police. That was not enough, however, to restore his inner calm; every five minutes he had to repress the desire to go and tear the note down.
He took out the roll and tried to compel himself to read, but after every line his thoughts wandered off to Eva and when he tried to force them to concentrate on the paper, they whispered to him that it was foolish to waste his time poring over musty parchments full of abstruse theories when every minute was screaming for action.
He was about to put the document back in his desk when he was so overcome with a sudden and strong feeling that he was being duped by some invisible power, that he stopped a moment for reflection. Actually, it was more listening than reflection:
`What is this strange, enigmatic power’, he wondered, `that seems so innocent and conceals its separate existence from me by behaving as if it were my own inner self, and makes my will choose the opposite of what I decided to do a moment earlier? I want to read and yet am not allowed to?’ He leafed through the pages, and every time he came across a difficulty in making sense of their contents, the insistent thought returned, `Leave it alone; you don’t know where to start; it’s a waste of time’, but he set a sentinel outside his will and barred the entry to the thought. His old habit of observing himself slowly started to reassert itself.
`If I only knew where to start!’ Self-deception reared its head once more, giving a hypocritical sigh as he mechanically turned the pages, but this time the sheaf of papers itself provided the right answer. He started reading a sentence at random and gave a gasp of surprise at the coincidence that he should light on precisely these words:
“The beginning is what men lack. It is not that it is so difficult to find it; the great obstacle is the delusion that we must seek it. Life is merciful; every moment it grants us a beginning. Every second brings the question, `Who am IT, but we do not ask it, and that is the reason why we cannot find the beginning.
But when we once ask it in earnest, then the day will dawn which by evening will see the death of those thoughts that have broken into the command centre and suck the blood of our souls.
Like a colony of industrious polyps, they have, over the millennia, built up a reef where they live and move and have their being: we call it `our body’; first of all we must make a breach in this reef of flesh and bone and then dissolve it back into the spiritual essence it was at the very beginning, if we want to escape out into the open sea. Later I will teach you how to make a new shell from the remains of the reef.”
Hauberrisser put the page down for a moment to reflect. He was not in the least interested in whether this page was the copy or draft of a letter that the auth
or had sent to someone; he was gripped by it as if it were directed at him alone and that was the spirit in which he intended to read it.
One thing in particular struck him: what was written down here sounded almost like a speech, sometimes from the lips of Pfeill or Sephardi, sometimes from Swammerdam’s. He realised now that all three of them breathed the same spirit as this roll of papers exuded, and that, in order to make a true man of the tiny, helpless, worldweary Hauberrisser, the stream of time was making them almost into double figures.
“But now hear what I have to say to you:
Arm yourself for the time that is to come!
Soon the world’s clock will strike twelve; the number on its dial is red, is dipped in blood, and by that you will recognise it.
And a stormwind shall precede the new first hour.
Be watchful, that you are not sleeping when it comes, for those that cross over into the new dawn with their eyes closed will for ever be the animals they were before; never more can they be wakened.
There is a spiritual equinox and the new dawn of which I speak is the turning point when the Light shall be equal to the Darkness.
For a thousand years and more men have learnt to understand the laws of nature and put it to their service. Happy are they that have understood the meaning of this labour, namely that the spiritual laws are the same as the physical laws, only an octave higher, for they shall enjoy the fruits of their labour whilst the others continue to toil, their faces turned towards the earth.
The key to power over spiritual nature has been rusting since the flood. It is: wakefulness.
Wakefulness is all.
Man thinks himself secure in his belief that he is watchful and yet, in truth, he is caught in a net he has woven himself from sleep and dreams. The more closely meshed the net, the stronger the power of sleep; those that are caught in it are they that sleep, that go through life like the lamb to the slaughterhouse, unknowing, uncaring, unthinking.
The Green Face Page 17