The Green Face (12 page)

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 course, 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.”