The Green Face (17 page)

The words tumbling out ofhis mouth, Hauberrissertold Pfeill
what he had experienced.

They were so engrossed in their conversation on these
strange events that they scarcely noticed when a servant came
in to announce the arrival of Juffrouw van Druysen and
Doctor Ishmael Sephardi, handing Baron Pfeill a tray with
two visiting cards and the evening edition of the Amsterdam
News.

Soon they were all immersed in a discussion on the green
face.

Hauberrisser left it to Pfeill to recount his experiences in the
Hall of Riddles and Eva, too, only put in a word here and there
as Doctor Sephardi told them of their visit to Swammerdam.
Hauberrisser and Eva were not embarrassed, but they were both
in the grip of a mood in which they found it difficult to speak.
They had to force themselves not to avoid looking at each other,
yet each could sense the effort the other had to make to keep their
remarks to banalities. Hauberrisser found Eva’s complete lack
of feminine coquetry almost confusing. He could see how careful she was to avoid anything that might suggest a desire to
please or that she took more than a passing interest in him; and
yet at the same time he felt ashamed, as if he were being tactless
in his inability to conceal the fact that he was well aware of how
far her apparent inner calm was the result of iron self-control.
He guessed that his thoughts were equally apparent to her, he
saw it in the pretence of boredom with which she played with
a bouquet of roses, in the way she smoked her cigarette and in
a thousand other tiny details. But he could find no way of helping her.

A single pompous remark on his part would have been
enough to give her the confidence she was feigning, but it would
also have been enough either to wound her deeply or to have made him appear a prig, both of which he naturally wanted to
avoid.

When she entered he had for a moment been struck speechless in amazement at her beauty and she had accepted it as a kind
of admiration to which she was accustomed; but then, when she
realised that his confusion had not solely been caused by her but
was also the result of the interruption of his interesting conversation with Baron Pfeill, she became convinced that the
impression she had made on him was one of a crude self-confidence in her female charms, and this filled her with an embarrassment which she found impossible to rid herself of

Hers was a beauty that any woman would have borne with
pride, but Hauberrisser instinctively sensed that for the moment
Eva’s virginal sensitivity felt it as an embarrassment. What he
wanted most of all was to tell her openly how much he admired
her, but was afraid he would not be able to strike the right,
natural tone.

He had loved too many beautiful women in his life to lose his
head at the first sight of even such loveliness as Eva’s. In spite
of that he was already more in thrall to her than he realised.
Initially he assumed she was engaged to Sephardi, and when he
saw that that was not the case he felt a thrill of delight. He
immediately rejected it. The vague fear of losing his freedom
again and being carried away by the old torrent of emotions
made him wary. Very soon, however, he felt growing inside him
such an intimate sense of belonging together, that any comparison with what he had until then called love paled into insignificance.

The silent communication between the two set the air tingling, and Neill, was too sharp-sensed for it to remain hidden
from him for long. What particularly moved him was the
expression of deep sorrow which, however much Sephardi tried
to conceal it, clouded his eyes and vibrated in every word of the
normally reserved scholar’s hasty, forced conversation. Pfeill
could feel this lonely man relinquishing a silent but perhaps all
the more ardent hope.

“But where do you think it will lead”, he asked, when
Sephardi had finished his account, “this bizarre path that Swammerdam’s - or Klinkherbogk’s - `spiritual circle’ imagine they are following? I fear it is leading them to a boundless
ocean of visions and -“

“and expectations that will never be fulfilled.” Sephardi
gave a melancholy shrug of the shoulders, “It is the old story of
the pilgrims who entrust themselves to the desert without a
guide on their journey to the Promised Land, only to march
towards a mirage or a painful death from thirst. It always ends
with a cry of ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ “

Now Eva’s serious voice joined in the discussion. “You may
well be right about all the others who believe Klinkherbogk is
a prophet, but not about Swammerdam. I am certain of that.
Remember what Baron Mill told us about him. He did find the
green beetle. I am convinced it will be granted him to find the
greater goal he seeks.”

Sephardi gave a gloomy smile. “I wish him every success, but
the greatest insight he will achieve, if he does not destroy
himself in the attempt, is `Lord, into thy hands I commend my
spirit.’ Believe me, Eva, I have spent more time pondering the
hereafter than you probably give me credit for. I have spent a
lifetime racking my brains - and my heart - over whether there
is any escape from this earthly prison: there is none! The purpose of life is to wait for death.”

“But then”, objected Hauberrisser, “the most sensible people
would be those who live for pleasure.”

“Certainly. If you can. But some are incapable of that.”

“What should they do?”

“Love one another and keep the Commandments, as it says
in the Bible.”

“And you say that?!” cried Pfeill in astonishment. “You who
have studied all systems of philosophy from Lao Tse to
Nietzsche! Who was it who invented these `Commandments’?
Some mythical prophet, some supposed miracle-worker. How
do you know he wasn’t just a madman? Don’t you think that in
five thousand years our good shoemaker Klinkherbogk will be
surrounded by the same legendary nimbus, providing his name
has not been long forgotten by then?”

“Certainly, providing his name has not been long forgotten by then”, was Sephardi’s simple reply.

“So you assume there is a God enthroned in majesty above
mankind and guiding our destinies? Can you demonstrate that
with any kind of logic?”

“No, I can’t. Nor do I want to. Don’t forget, I’m a Jew; I mean
not just a Jew by religion, but also a Jew by race, and as such I
keep on returning to the old God of my fathers. It is in the blood
and the blood is stronger than any logic. My reason, it is true,
tells me that my belief is leading me astray, but then my belief
tells me that my reason is leading me astray.”

“And what would you do if, as has happened to Klinkherbogk, a being should appear and dictate to you what you were
to do?” Eva wanted to know.

“Try to cast doubt on his message. If I managed to do that,
then I would not follow his counsel.”

“And if you did not succeed?”

“There would be only one logical conclusion: to obey.”

“I would not do that, even then”, said Pfeill.

“A cast of mind such as yours would merely have the effect
of ensuring that a being from the world beyond such as
Klinkherbogk’s - let us call it his ‘angel’- would never appear
to you; but he would give silent commands that you would
nevertheless obey, in the firm conviction, however, that you
were acting completely on your own initiative.”

“It might be the opposite”, Pfeill objected. “You might imagine God was speaking to you through the mouth of a phantom
with a green face while in fact it was you yourself.”

“Where is the real difference?” replied Sephardi. “What is a
message, after all, but a thought dressed in spoken words? And
what is a thought? A word unexpressed. At bottom no different
from a message. Are you quite certain that an idea that you have
was indeed born within you and is not a message from
somewhere else? I for my part consider it just as likely that
mankind does not father ideas; we are merely more or less sensitive receivers for all the ideas that, for argument’s sake, let us
say the earth generates. The fact that one and the same idea so
frequently occurs to different people at the same time speaks
volumes for my theory. If that should happen to you, of course, you would just say you had the idea first of all and the others had
just ‘caught’ it from you. But I would say that you were merely
the first to receive this thought, that was in the airlike a wireless
message, because you possess a more sensitive mind; the others
received it in just the same way, only later. The more vigorous
and self-assured a person is, the more they will tend to think they
themselves created any great idea they have; the weaker and
more pliable, the more likely they are to believe it was the result
ofoutside inspiration. Basically both are right. Please, don’t ask
me how that can be; I do not want to have to start on a complex
explanation of a central psyche, common to all mankind. As far
as Klinkherbogk’s vision of the green face is concerned -
whether it is a message or an idea is, as I have explained, the
same thing - I would refer you to the scientifically-proven fact
that there are two kinds of person: those who think in words and
those who think in images. Let us assume Klinkherbogk has
spent his whole life thinking in words and suddenly a completely new idea, for which there is as yet no word, wants to
force its way into his mind, to `occur’ to him, so to speak; how
else could this idea reveal itself than through the vision of a
speaking image that is trying to find a bridge to him; in
Klinkherbogk’s case, as in yours and that of Mijnheer Hauberrisser, as a man or a portrait with a green face?”

“Would you allow me to interrupt for a moment?” asked
Hauberrisser. “As you mentioned just after you came in while
you were telling us about your visit to Klinkherbogk, Juffrouw
van Druysen’s father called the man with the green bronze face
the `ancient wanderer who will not taste death’; the vision I had
in the Hall of Riddles said something similar and Pfeill believed
he had seen the portrait of the Wandering Jew, that is, of a
similar being whose origin lies deep in the past. How do you
explain this remarkable agreement, Doctor Sephardi? Is it a
`new’ idea which we cannot formulate in words but only
understand through an image that appears to our inner eye? My
belief, however childish it may sound to you, is that it is one and
the same ghostly creature that has entered our lives.”

“That is what I believe as well”, said Eva quietly.

Sephardi thought for a moment. “The agreement which I am supposed to `explain’ seems to me to prove that it is the same
`new’ idea which tried to force itself on all three of you, to
explain itself to you or, perhaps, is still trying. The fact that the
phantom appeared in the mask of an ancient wanderer through
the years means, I think, nothing less than that some knowledge,
some insight, perhaps even some exceptional spiritual gift,
which existed in a long-departed age of the human race, was
known and then forgotten, wishes to renew itself and is revealing its arrival in the world in a vision granted to a few chosen
ones. Do not misunderstand me, I am not saying that the phantom could not be some independently-existing being; on the
contrary, I maintain that every idea is such a being. And Eva’s
father also said, ‘He - our forebear - is the only person who
cannot be a ghost’.”

“Perhaps by that my father meant that the forebear was a
being that had already achieved immortality. Don’t you think
so?”

Sephardi rocked his head from side to side. “When people
become immortal, my dear, they remain as an everlasting
thought, and it is immaterial whether they enter our minds as an
image or a word. If those who are alive on the earth at the time
are incapable of grasping - or `thinking’ - them, that doesn’t
mean they die; they just move far away from us. And to return
to my argument with Baron Pfeill: I repeat, as a Jew I cannot get
away from the God of my fathers. At bottom the religion of the
Jews is a religion of deliberately-chosen weakness; it puts its
hope in God and the coming of the Messiah. I know there is also
a path of strength Baron Pfeill indicated it. The goal remains the
same and in both cases it cannot be recognised until the end is
reached. Neither the one nor the other path is wrong in itself; it
only becomes disastrous when a weak person or one who, like
myself, is full of longing, chooses the path of strength, or a
strong person the path of weakness. In the past, at the time of
Moses, when there were only ten Commandments, it was relatively simple to become a Tsadik Tomin, a just and perfect man;
today it is impossible, as every Jew knows who attempts to keep
all the ritual laws. Today we need God’s help, or we Jews cannot
follow the path. Those who bemoan the fact are foolish; the path of weakness has simply become easier and more complete, and
that means that the path of strength is clearer, for no one who
knows himself, will stray onto the way where he does not
belong. The strong do not need a religion any more, they can
walk upright, without the support of a stick; those who only
think of food and drink similarly have no need of religion - not
yet. They do not need the stick for support because they are not
walking, they are fixed to the spot.”

“Have you never heard of the possibility of controlling
thought, Doctor Sephardi?” asked Hauberrisser. “I do not mean
it in the everyday sense of so-called self-control, that would be
better described as the repression of an upsurge of feeling and
so on. I have in mind the papers that I found and thatPfeill talked
about a while ago.”

Sephardi gave a start, even though he seemed to have expected, or even feared, the question; he glanced quickly at Eva. He
pulled himself together, but it was noticeable that he was having
to force himself to speak.

“Mastery over thought is an ancient heathen path to truly
transcending humanity. Not to become the Ubermensch the
German Philosopher Nietzsche spoke of, 1 know little about that
and what little I do know horrifies me. Overthe last few decades
a certain amount of information about the `Bridge to Life’ - that
is the real name for this dangerous path - has reached Europe
from the East, but fortunately it is still so little that no one who
does not possess the basic keys could make anything of it. But
that little has been enough to send many thousands, especially
in England and America, wild with curiosity to learn this magic
path, for that is what it is. An extensive literature has grown up,
or been exhumed, there are dozens of swindlers of all races
going round pretending to be initiates, but fortunately there’s
not one of them who really knows what he’s talking about.
People have set off in droves for India and Tibet without realising that the secret has long since been lost there. Even today
people refuse to accept it. They find something there that has a
similar name, but it is something else that ends up by taking
them back to the path of weakness, that I mentioned before, or
to Klinkherbogk’s delusions. The few original manuscripts on it that are still extant sound very straightforward but in fact they
lack the key, which is the surest kind of fence to protect the
mystery. There was at one time a `Bridge to Life’ among the
Jews as well, the fragments concerning it that I know of date
from the eleventh century. One of my ancestors, a certain Solomon Gebirol Sephardi, whose life is missing from our family
chronicle, recorded them in veiled comments in the margin of
his book, Mekor Hayim, and was murdered because of them by
an Arab. The complete secret is said to be preserved by a small
sect in the East whose members wear blue coats and, surprisingly, derive their origin from Europeans who emigrated there,
disciples of the old fraternities of the golden and the rosy
crosses. They call themselves Parada, that is, `One who has
swum over to the other side’.”