The Green Face (14 page)

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 memory 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”.

“Olecloes, olecloes, o-l-ecloes”, roared a kind of Isaiah in a
caftan and with snow-white sidelocks whose chosen career was
buying and selling old clothes; he waved a pair of trousers with
one leg above his head like a victory banner and loudly suggested that Hauberrisser should honour his establishment with
a visit, “Come on sir, don’t be shy, see what I give you for that
lovely coat.”

From the next side-street came a polyphonic chorus with the
most remarkable modulations, “Herrings, lovely fresh he-eerrings”; “Strawberries, sweet strawberries, the best in the
town”; “Gherkins, crisp and cheap, ghe-e-erkins”, such appetising music that the cabbie listened with a reverent look on his
face, even though he was a captive audience: he could not drive
on until the street in front had been cleared of a mountain of
stinking rags. Hordes of Jewish rag-and-bone men were piling
them up and were still bringing along more bundles; they
scorned the usual sacks, rolling the filthy scraps of material into
large balls, which they pushed up under their half-opened caftans, clutching them to their bare skins under their armpits. It
was a bizarre sight to see them all arrive as roly-poly dumplings
and then scamper off, skinny as sewer-rats.

Eventually the street broadened out and Hauberrisser saw the
glass veranda of the Hall of Riddles gleaming in the sun.

It was quite some time before the window in the partition was lowered - much less noisily than yesterday, without the same
entrepreneurial clatter- to reveal the upper half of the salesgirl.

“Yes?” asked the young lady in strikingly cool tones and with
her mind clearly on other things, “What can I do for you, Mijnheer?”

“I would very much like to speak to your boss.”

“I’m afraid Professor Zitter left yesterday on business. He
didn’t say when he would be back.” The girl pressed her lips
together in a saucy pout and shot Hauberrisser a challenging
look.

“You needn’t worry, I didn’t mean the Professor. Iwould just
like to have a word with the old gentleman I saw at the desk in
there yesterday.”

“Oh, him”, relief appeared on the girl’s face. “That is Herr
Pedersen from Hamburg. The one who was looking at the
peep-show, you mean?”

“No, I mean the old … Israelite in the office. I thought the
business belonged to him.”

“Our business? Our business never belonged to no old Jew,
sir. We’re a Christian business, completely Christian.”

“Well that’s your business. But I would still like to speak with
the old Jew who was standing at the desk yesterday. You could
arrange that for me, couldn’t you?”

“By the Holy Mother of God”, the girl assured him, falling
quickly into her most sincere dialect as a sign that she was
speaking the truth, “there’s never a Jew allowed in our office,
nor was there ever a one in there, as sure as I’m standing here.
And specially not yesterday.”

This merely exasperated Hauberrisser, who did not believe
one word of it. He searched around for some way to allay her
suspicion of him.

“Very well, Miss. But perhaps you could at least tell me who
this Chidher Green is on the sign outside?”

“Which sign would that be?”

“But for goodness sake! Your own shop sign outside!”

The salesgirl looked at him, wide-eyed with astonishment.
“But our sign says Arpad Zitter”, she said in bewilderment.

In fury Hauberrisser grabbed his hat and rushed outside to make sure. Mirrored in the glass of the door he could see the
astonished salesgirl tapping the side of her head. In the street he
turned round and looked up at the sign; it said -his heart missed
a beat as he read it - Arpad Zitter’s Hall of Riddles.

No mention of Chidher Green at all.

He was so confused and felt so embarrassed that he abandoned his walking stick in the shop and hurried off downthe first
alleyway he came to, just to get away from the area as quickly
as possible.

He must have wandered round in a daze for a good hour. He
drifted through alleys silent as the grave and narrow courtyards
where churches dreaming in the hot sunshine suddenly rose up
before him; he passed through dark entrances, cool as a cellar,
where his footsteps echoed as in a deserted cloister. The houses
seemed empty of life, as if no one had lived there for hundreds
of years. The only sign of life was an occasional Angora cat on
a baroque window-ledge amid pots of gaudy flowers blinking
lazily in the golden midday sun; there was not a sound to be
heard. Tall elms, theirleaves and branches motionless, towered
up from tiny green gardens, surrounded by an admiring crowd
of ancient gabled buildings which, with their black facades and
bright latticed windows all in their Sunday best, looked like a
huddle of kindly old women.

He sauntered beneath flying buttresses where the cobbles had
been worn smooth by the passing years, and into winding, twilit
passageways, blind alleys hemmed in on either side by high
walls with polished heavy oaken doors which were locked and
had probably never been opened as long as they had been there.
Moss was growing in the cracks between the cobbles, and slabs
of reddish marble with weathered inscriptions set in niches in
the wall told of a graveyard that might once have occupied the
ground.

Then he was following a narrow pavement past plain, whitewashed houses with a stream shooting out from underneath
them. From inside came an eerie pounding, booming sound, like
the thump of huge stone hearts. The air smelt damp and a clear
rivulet flowed quickly along a zigzag course of wooden gutters
to fall into a labyrinth of rotting, splintered planks.