The Green Face (21 page)

After they had finished their dinner together, Hauberrisser
stayed with Doctor Sephardi and Baron Pfeill for an hour, but
he was poor company, monosyllabic and absentminded. His
thoughts were constantly with Eva, and he started in surprise
whenever one of the others addressed him. The solitude he had
enjoyed in Amsterdam, and which he had found so refreshing,
now seemed unbearable when he thought of the coming days
and weeks.

Apart from Neill. - and Sephardi, to whom he had felt attracted from the moment he had met him - he had no friends or
acquaintances and he had long since broken off all connections
with the land of his birth. Would he be able to endure the
hermit’s life that he had lived so far, now that he had found Eva?

He thought about moving to Antwerp, so that even if she did
not want them to live together, at least they would be breathing
the same air, perhaps that would also give him the opportunity
of seeing her.

He still felt a stab of pain when he remembered how coolly
she had expressed her decision to leave it to time and chance
whether any kind of permanent union should develop between
them. Then he would spend minutes in joyful intoxication at the
thought of her kisses and that they were already united for ever.
It would be his fault, and his alone, he told himself, if the
separation lasted for more than a few days. What was there to
stop him visiting her during the coming week, to suggest that
they should continue to see each other? As far as he knew, she
was completely independent and did not need to consult anyone
about her decision.

But however clear and smooth the way to Eva appeared to
him, when he took everything into account, he found that his
hopes kept oncoming up against a feeling of fear, an indefinable
fear for Eva, that he had felt for the first time when they had said
farewell. He kept trying to paint a rosy picture of the future, but
never got beyond the first strokes; his forlorn attempts to ignore
the `No’ that rang out in his breast in answer to his question to
fate whenever he forced himself to imagine a happy end brought him to the brink of despair.

He knew from long experience that, once they had been
roused, there was no point in trying to drown out those inner
voices threatening disaster with a certainty that was no whit
diminished by its apparent lack of foundation in reality. Instead,
he tried to lull them by telling himself that his concern was
merely the natural consequence of his love. Nevertheless he
could scarcely wait for the moment when he would hear that Eva
had arrived safely in Antwerp.

He got out of the train together with Sephardi at Muiderpoort
Station, which was nearer to the city centre than Central Station,
accompanied him part of the way to the Herengracht, and then
hurried to the Amstel Hotel to leave the bunch of roses, which
Neill had given him with a smile, as if he had guessed his
thoughts, at the porter’s desk for Eva. There he was told that
Juffrouw van Druysen had just left, but that if he took a taxi he
might well reach the train before it went.

The taxi took him quickly to Central Station.

He waited. The minutes passed, but Eva did not come.

He telephoned the hotel; she had not returned there; perhaps
he should enquire at the luggage counter.

Her cases had not been collected. The ground seemed to
tremble beneath him.

Only now, in his all-consuming fear forEva, did he realise the
intensity of his love for her, and that he could not live without
her. The last barrier between them, that slight feeling of notyet-belonging-together that had come from the unusual way
they had been thrown together, collapsed under the immensity
of his anxiety for her, and he knew that if she were to appear
beforehim now, he would takeherinhis arms and coverherwith
kisses and never let her go again.

Although there was scarcely any prospect of her arriving at
the last minute, he waited at the station until the train set off. It
was obvious that some accident must have happened to her. He
had to force himself to remain calm. What route could she have
taken? Not a minute was to be lost! If the worst had not already
happened, then what was needed was a cool, clear appraisal of
the situation, such as had almost always saved the day in his former profession of engineer and inventor.

Straining his imagination to its limits, he made a desperate
attempt to visualise any mysterious chain of events in which Eva
might have been involved before she left the hotel. He tried to
create within himself the mood of expectancy she had probably
been in before she left. The fact that she had sent her luggage on
ahead, instead of using the Hotel carriage suggested that she
meant to visit someone on the way.

But whom? And at such a late hour?

He suddenly remembered that he had urged Sephardi to see
how Swammerdam was. And Swammerdam lived in the Zeedijk district, a shady part of town if ever there was, as was
obvious from the newspaper report of the murder! That was
where she must have gone!

An icy shudder went down Hauberrisser’s spine at the
thought of the possible horrors she was exposing herself to
amongst the unsavoury denizens of dockland. He had heard of
taverns where strangers to the area were robbed, murdered and
dumped through trapdoors into the canal; his hair stood on end
at the thought that that might be happening to Eva.

Before he could follow this thought any farther, his taxi was
racing across the Openhaven Bridge and screeching to a halt
outside St. Nicholas’. The driver explained that he could not
take him any farther in the narrow streets of the Zeedijk and
suggested Hauberrisser went to the `Prince of Orange’ - he
pointed to where then tavern lights shone across the street - and
asked the landlord for the house he was looking for.

The tavern door was wide open and Hauberrisser rushed
straight in; the place was empty, apart from one man standing
behind the bar who gave him a shifty look. From the distance
came the sound of raucous shouts, as if a street brawl were going
on.

A tip elicited from the landlord the information that Swammerdam lived on the fourth floor, with ill grace he lit the way
up the precipitous stairs.

“No, Juffrouw van Druysen has not been back here”, said the
aged lepidopterist with a shake of his head after Hauberrisser
had given him a breathless account of his worries.

Swammerdam had not been in bed, he was fully dressed even.
The single tallow candle on the empty table that was almost
completely burnt down as well as his grief-stricken face told
Hauberrisser that he had been sitting for hours in his room,
pondering over the terrible death of his friend Klinkherbogk.

Hauberrisser took his hand. “Forgive me, Mijnheer Swammerdam, for descending on you in the middle of the night like
this at a time - at a time when you would want to be alone with
your sorrow. Yes”, he added when he saw the old man’s surprised look, “I know what a loss you have just suffered, I even
know the details; Doctor Sephardi told me about it earlier today.
If you would like, we can talk aboutthat later, but at the moment
I am going out of my mind with anxiety about Eva. What if she
really did intend to visit you and was attacked on the way and
- and - my God! It doesn’t bear thinking about!”

Unable to keep still any longer, he leapt up from his chair and
paced up and down the room.

Swammerdam thought hard for a while and then said with
certainty, “Please don’t think these are empty words, just said
to comfort you, Mijnheer: Juffrouw van Druysen is not dead.”

Hauberrisser swung round, “How do you know?” He could
not have said why, but the old man’s calm, firm voice had taken
a great weight off his mind.

Swammerdam hesitated for a moment before answering.

“Because I would see her”, he finally said softly.

Hauberrisser grabbed him by the arm. “I beg of you, help me
if you can! I know that your whole life you have followed the
path of belief; perhaps you can see more deeply than I. An
uninvolved outsider can often see

“I am not as uninvolved as you imagine, Mijnheer”, interrupted Swammerdam. “I have, it is true, only met Juffrouw van
Druysen once in my life, but when I say I love her as dearly as
if she were my daughter, I am not exaggerating in the least.” He
waved away Hauberrisser’s protestations of gratitude. “Do not
thank me, there is no reason. I will naturally do everything that
is within my power, weak as it is, to help her and you, even if
it means shedding my own, worthless blood. But please, now,
be calm and listen carefully: You are certainly correct in your feeling that some accident must have befallen Juffrouw Eva.
She has not been to see her aunt, I would have heard from my
sister who has just come back from the Beguine Convent. I
cannot say whether we can do anything to help her - that is, to
find her- tonight, but at least we will leave no stone unturned.
But even if we do not find her, you should not worry: as sure as
we are both standing here, I know that there is Another, compared to Whom we are as nothing, keeping watch over her. I
prefer not to talk in riddles; perhaps the time will come when I
cantell you whatit is that makes me so certain thatJuffrouw Eva
followed the advice I gave her. What happened today is probably the first result of it.

Many years ago my friend Klinkherbogk also set off on the
same course as she is on now. For a long time I have been
inwardly aware of what the end would be, although I clung to
the hope that it could be turned aside by fervent prayer. Last
night has proved to me what I always knew, only was too weak
to act upon: that prayers are only a means of forcing awake
powers that sleep within us. To believe that prayers can make
a god change his will, is foolishness. People who have submitted
their destiny to the spirit within them stand under spiritual law.
They have come of age. They are free from the tutelage of earth,
over which one day they shall be lords. Whatever shall still
befall them in their physical being, shall drive them onward;
everything that happens to them is always the best that could
happen.

You must believe, Mijnheer, that that is the case with Juffrouw Eva as well.

The hardest part is calling up the Spirit that is to guide our
destiny. Only a person who has reached spiritual maturity can
make his voice heard, and his cry must come from love and must
be made for the sake of someone else, otherwise we only arouse
the forces of darkness within us. In the Cabbala the Jews put it
like this, `There are beings from the lightless realm of Ov which
catch prayers that have no wings’; by that they do not mean
demons outside us, for our body is a bastion against them, but
magic poisons within us which, when roused, can split the self.”

“But then might not Eva”, Hauberrisser interrupted feve rishly, “just as well be heading for disaster, like your friend
Klinkherbogk?”

“No! Please let me finish. I would never have dared to give
her such dangerous advice if at that moment I had not sensed the
presence of the One of whom I said before, compared to Him
both of us are as nothing. In the course of a long, long life, and
through untold suffering, I have learnt to talk to Him and to
distinguish His voice from the cajolings of human desires. The
only danger was that Juffrouw Eva would call on Him at the
wrong moment, but this moment of danger, the only one, is past,
thank God. Her cry was heard”, Swammerdam smiled happily,
“just a few hours ago. Perhaps - I am not boasting, since I do
such things in a state of complete trance - perhaps I have been
fortunate enough to be of assistance to her already”, he went to
the door and opened it for his visitor, “but now we must follow
the course common sense suggests. Only when we for our part
have done everything within our earthly power, have we the
right to expect help from spiritual influences. Let’s go down to
the tavern; you can give the sailors money to look for her and
promise a reward for the one who finds her and brings her back
safe; you’ll see, they’ll risk their lives for her, if need be. They
are much better men than is generally believed; they arejust lost
in the spiritual jungle and are like wild animals. In each of them
is a heroism many a respectable citizen lacks, only in them it
appears as wildness, because they do not realise what the force
is that drives them on. They are not afraid of death and no brave
person can be really bad. The truest sign that a man bears immortality within him is that he is contemptuous of death.”

They entered the tavern.

The taproom was jam-packed with people, and on the floor
in the middle of them lay the corpse of the Chilean sailor with
the shattered skull, whom the Zulu had knocked on the forehead
with his knee as he fled.

“Only a brawl”, was the landlord’s evasive reply to
Swammerdam’s enquiry; they happened almost every day
around the harbour.

“That bloody nigger yesterday -“, broke in Antje, the waitress, but she did not finish the sentence; the landlord gave her such a dig in the ribs that she swallowed the rest of her words.
He screamed at her, “Shut your gob, you trollop! It was a black
stoker off a Brazilian tramp steamer; get that straight!”

Hauberrisser took one of the ruffians to one side, slipped a
coin into his hand and started to question him. Soon he was
surrounded by a pack of rough figures, all gesticulating wildly
as each tried to outdo the rest in descriptions of how they had
thrashed the negro; there was only one point on which each and
every one of them was agreed: it had been a foreign stoker. The
landlord’s warning looks and the way he cleared his throat made
it clear to them that under no circumstances were they to give
anything away that might lead the others to the Zulu. They knew
that the landlord would not have lifted a forger if they had
decided to knife a customer, even if it had been one of his
free-spending regulars, but they also knew that it was the sacred
law of the harbour tavern that all held together, even enemies,
when the threat came from outside.