The Green Face (24 page)

“You have been to the Vatican”, Sephardi exclaimed in astonishment.

The old man ignored him.

“… and then my hand withered.” He raised his right arm: gout
had turned the fingers into gnarled roots. “In Odessa the Greek
Orthodox thought I was a spy and in league with the Roman goyim, and suddenly there was a fire in our house, but Elijah,
his name be praised, preserved us; we were not killed, we just
lost the roof over our heads, my wife Berurje and me and the
little ones. Later Elijah came and sat at my table, after the Feast
of the Tabernacles. And I knew it was Elijah, though my wife
said it was Chidher Green.”

Sephardi started. The name had been mentioned in Hilversum the previous day, when Baron Pfeill had recounted
Hauberrisser’s story!

“People always laughed at me, and when my name cropped
up, they would say, ‘Egyolk? He’s just a nebbich; he’s weak in
the head.’ They didn’t know that Elijah was teaching me the
double law that Moses handed down by word of mouth to
Joshua” - his face was transfigured by a rapturous glow - “or
that he changed round the two obscuring lamps of the Makifim
within me. Then there was a pogrom in Odessa. I tried to take
the blows, but they struck Benuje, so that her blood flowed over
the ground while she was trying to protect the children as they
were cut down one after the other.”

Sephardi leapt up, holding his hands over his ears and staring
in horror at Egyolk, whose smiling face showed not the least
trace of emotion.

“My eldest daughter, Ribke, screamed to me for help when
they attacked her, but they held me down. Then they poured
kerosene over my child and set her alight.”

Egyolk stopped and examined his caftan reflectively, pulling
threads from the fraying seams. He seemed to be in his right
mind and yet not to feel any pain, for after a while he went on
in a steady voice. “Later on, when I tried to study the Cabbala
again, I couldn’t any more because the lamps of the Makifim
had been changed round inside me.”

“What do you mean by that?” asked Sephardi, his voice
trembling. “Did your terrible grief unhinge your mind?”

“Not the grief. And my mind is not unhinged. It is just as they
say about the Egyptians, that they have a potion which makes
you forget. How else could I have survived it. For a long time
I didn’t know who I was, and when that came back to me I had
lost whatever it is that makes men cry and some other things as well, that we need forthinking. The Makifim have been changed
round. Since then I have - how shall I put it? - I have my heart
in my head and my brain in my breast. Some times more than
others.”

“Could you tell me more about that?” Sephardi asked in a
gentle voice. “But, please: only if you want to. I don’t want you
to think I’m asking out of idle curiosity.”

Egyolk took hold of his coat-sleeve. “See, sir, if I pinch the
cloth, you don’t feel any pain, do you? Whether it hurts the
sleeve, who can tell? That’s how it is with me. I know that
something has happened that should hurt me, I know that quite
well, but I feel nothing. Because my feeling is in my head. And
now, whenever anyone tells me anything, I can’t question it any
more, as I could when I was younger in Odessa; I must believe
it because my thought is in my heart now. I can’t work things
out any more, either. Either something occurs to me, or nothing
does; if something occurs to me, then it really is so, and it is all
so clear that I cannot say whether I was there or not. So I don’t
even try to think about it.”

Sephardi began to understand how it had come to his confession to the police. “And your work? How do you manage to
do that?”

Egyolk pointed to his coat-sleeve again. “Your clothes protect you from the wet when it rains and from the heat when the
sun shines. Whether you think about it or not, the clothes do it
automatically. It’s my body that looks after the store, only I
don’t know anything about it anymore. Didn’t Rabbi Simon ben
Eleassar say, `Have you ever seen a bird that had learnt a trade?
And yet they feed themselves without toil; and why should I not
be able to feed myself without toil?’ Of course, if the Makifim
within me had not been changed round, I would not be able to
leave my body to fend for itself, I would be fixed to it.”

This clear, logical speech made Sephardi sit up and subject
the old man to a searching look, and he saw that he appeared no
different from a normal Russian Jew: he gesticulated with his
hands as he spoke and his voice had taken on a penetrating
whine. He seemed to slip without transition from one very different mental state into another.

“Of course, men can’t do that kind of thing on their own”,
Egyolk went on pensively. “All your studying, and praying, and
the Mikvot - the ritual baths - is no use at all. We can’t do it, not
unless one from the other side has changed round the lamps
within us.”

“So you think it was one from `the other side’ who did it?”

“Of course; Elijah the Prophet, as I said before. One day he
came into our room, and before I saw him I could tell from his
footsteps that it was he. When I used to think that one day he
might come to visit us - you know that we Hasidim live in
constant hope of him - I thought I would tremble all over at the
sight of him. But it was all quite natural, just as if it were any Jew
coming through the door. My heart didn’t even beat faster.
However hard I tried to make myself think I might be wrong, I
found it impossible. I couldn’t take my eyes off him, and his
face became more and more familiar, until I suddenly realised
that not a single night in my life had gone without my seeing him
in my dreams. I gradually went back through my memory (I
wanted to find out when I had seen him for the first time), and
my whole childhood seemedto unroll before my inner eye: I saw
myself as a tiny baby, and then before that, as a grown-up in a
previous existence that I had never suspected, and then as achild
and so on and so on; but every time he was with me, and every
time he was the same age and looked the same as the visitor at
my table. So ofcourse I kept a sharp eye on his every movement;
if I had not known it was Elijah, I would not have noticed anything particular, but because I did, I sensed that every one of his
actions had a deep meaning. Then, whilst he was talking, he
swapped over the two candlesticks on the table, and I could feel
him moving the lights inside me, and from that time on I have
been a different man, a meshuggenah, as we Jews say. Why he
changed round the lights inside me, I only learnt later, when my
family was slaughtered. You wanted to know why Berurje
thought his name was Chidher Green? She said he told her.”

“Did you never meet him afterwards?” asked Sephardi. “I
thought you mentioned that he instructed you in the Merkabah;
by that I mean the secret second law of Moses?”

“Meet him?” repeated Egyolk, and rubbed his forehead, as if he needed time to work out what was being asked of him. “Meet
him? Once he was with me, why should he ever leave me? He
is always with me.”

“And you see him constantly?”

“I don’t see him at all.”

“But you said he was always with you. What do you mean by
that, then?”

Egyolk shrugged his shoulders. “You cannot understand it by
reason, Doctor Sephardi.”

“But could you not give me an example? Does Elijah talk to
you when he instructs you, or what does he do?”

Egyolk smiled. “When you’re happy, is happiness there with
you? Yes, of course it is. But you can’t see or hear your happiness. That is what it’s like.”

Sephardi was silent. He realised there was a gulf in understanding between himself and the old man that could not be
bridged. When he thought about it, much of what he had just
heard from Egyolk corresponded to his own theory about the
spiritual evolution of the human race; he himself had always
tended towards the view - and argued it, most recently the previous day in Hilversum - that the way forward lay in religions
and in belief in them. But now, confronted with a living example
in the person of the old man, he felt surprised and at the same
time disappointed by the reality. He had to admit that Egyolk,
through the fact that he was no longer subject to fear, was infinitely richer than his fellow creatures; he envied him his state,
and yet he would not have wanted to change places with him.

He was struck with doubt as to whether, after all, what he had
said the previous day in Hilversum about the path of weakness
and of waiting for salvation was right. Surrounded by a luxury
of which he did not avail himself, he had spent his life in solitude, pursuing various studies, cut off from his fellows; now it
seemed to him that there was much that he had overlooked, and
that he had missed the most important part.

Had he truly longed for the coming of Elijah, like this poor
Russian Jew? No, he had only imagined he longed for it, and it
was through reading that he had learnt that longing was essential for an inner awakening. Now here was a man before him who had experienced the fulfilment of his longing, and he,
Sephardi, the master of book-learning, had to admit that he
would not like to change places with him.

Humbled, he resolved that he would take the first opportunity
to tell Hauberrisser, Eva and Baron Pfeill that in reality he knew
as good as nothing, that he now subscribed to what a halfdemented Jewish liquor merchant had said about spiritual experiences: “You cannot understand them by reason.”

“It is like crossing over into the realm of abundance”, Egyolk
went on after a pause, which he had spent smiling blissfully to
himself. “It is not a coming home, which is what I had always
believed, but then everything apersonbelieves is wrong, as long
as the lights inside him have not been changed round, so completely wrong that we cannot comprehend it. We hope that Elijah will come and then, when he does come, when he’s there,
we see that he has not come at all, but that we have gone to him.
We think we are taking, whereas instead we are giving. We think
we are standing still and waiting, whereas instead we are
searching. Man travels, God stands still. Elijah came into our
house; did Berurje recognise him? She did not go to him, so he
did not come to her, she thought he was another Jew who was
called Chidher Green.”

Deeply moved, Sephardi looked into the old man’s radiant,
childlike eyes. “Now I can understand very well, what you
mean, even if I cannot feel it as you do, and I thank you. I wish
I could do something for you. I can certainly promise to have
you set free, it should not be difficult to convince Dr. de Brouwer
that your confession has nothing to do with the murder. However”, he went on, more to himself, “I’m not quite sure yet how
I’m going to explain it to him.”

“Could I ask you a favour, Doctor Sephardi?” interrupted
Egyolk.

“Certainly. Of course.”

“Don’t tell the man out there anything. Let him believe I did
it, just as I believed it myself. I would not like to be responsible
for the murderer being found. I know now who it was. This is
just for your ears, mind: it was a black man.”

“A negro? What makes you suddenly say that?” said Sephardi in astonishment and momentarily filled with suspicion.

“It is like this”, explained Egyolk calmly: “Whenever I have
been completely united with Elijah in dreamless sleep and then
come partly back into life in my liquor store, and something has
happened in the meantime, I often think I was there and did it
myself. If, for example, someone has beaten a child, I think I
beat it and have to go and comfort it; if someone has forgotten
to feed the dog, I think it was I who forgot and I have to take it
its food. Later on, if by chance I learn somehow that I was
wrong, I only need to be fully united with Elijah again for a
moment and then come straight back again, and I know
straightaway what really happened. I don’t do that very often,
because there’s no point, and because even partial separation
from Elijah makes me feel as if I were blind; but just now, while
you were thinking, I did it, and I saw that it was a black man who
killed my friend Klinkherbogk.”

“How … how could you see that it was a negro?”

“Well, in my mind I just climbed up the chain again, only this
time I watched myself and I saw it from outside: I was a black
man with a red leather thong around my neck, no shoes and a
blue linen suit. And looking at myself in my mind’s eye, I knew
that I was a savage.”

“But Dr. de Brouwer really ought to be told”, exclaimed
Sephardi, standing up.

Egyolk grabbed him by the sleeve, “You promised not to say
a word, Dr. Sephardi. For Elijah’s sake, blood must not be spilt.
Revenge is mine. And then -“, the old man’s friendly face suddenly took on a threatening, fanatical look, as of an Old Testament prophet, “and then, the murderer is one of our people!
Not a Jew, as you might be thinking”, he explained when he saw
the bewildered look on Sephardi’s face, “but still one of our
people. I realised it when I saw him just now in my mind’s eye.
He’s a murderer? Who is to judge? You and I? Revenge is mine.
He is a savage and has his own faith. God forbid that many men
should have such a cruel faith as he has, but it is a true, a living
faith. That’s what I mean by our people, those who have a faith
which does not melt in God’s furnace, Swammerdam, Klink herbogk and the savage too. Jew, Christian, heathen - what is
the difference, they are all names for people who have a religion
instead of a faith. And that is why I forbid you to tell them what
you know about the black man. If I am to suffer death for his
sake, who are you to take such a gift away from me?”

It was a much affected Sephardi who made his way home
from the prison. He could not get over how strange it was that,
within his own lights, Dr. de Brouwer had not been so far wrong
with his silly remark that Egyolk was involved in a plot and had
confessed in order to gain time for the real murderer. Each
individual assertion was correct and represented the naked
truth, and yet de Brouwer could not have been more wrong in
his assumption.