The Green Face (13 page)

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 paper 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.

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.

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.