The Green Face (28 page)

The desire to call up her image kept on rising unbidden from
his subconscious, and each time he had to call on all his strength
of will to resist the temptation.

The night was well advanced, but he could still not make up
his mind to go to bed; he could not get rid of the feeling thatthere
must be some magic means of calling up Eva so that she would
come to him not as a ghostly vampire, brought to life by the
breath of his own soul, but in her own true form.

He sent out his thoughts, so that they would return to him
laden with new intuition as to how to set about it. He knew from
the progress he had made during the last few weeks that this
method of sending out questions and patiently awaiting the
answer, this conscious change from an active to a passive state,
could even be successful when it concerned matters which
could not be determined by logical thought.

Insight upon insight buzzed through his mind, the one more
grotesque and fantastic than the last; he weighed them in the
balance of his feeling: each one was found wanting

Again `wakefulness’ was the key that helped him to open the
hidden lock. This time, however - it came to him instinctively
- it was his body, and not just his mind alone, that had to be
aroused to higher activity; the magic powers were asleep within
his body, and it was they he had to waken if he wanted to affect
the material world.

He found an instructive example in the whirling of the Arabian dervishes, the purpose of which, he assumed, was nothing
other than to whip the body up into a state of higher ‘wakefulness’.

Following an intuition, he laid his hands on his knees and sat
upright in the position of Egyptian idols - with their impassive
expressions they suddenly seemed to him like symbols of magic
power - forcing his body to maintain a corpse-like stillness,
whilst at the same time sending a fiery current of will power
blazing through every fibre of his body.

After only a few minutes a storm of unprecedented fury was
raging inside him. A demented cacophony of voices-were they
animals or humans? - the angry barking of dogs and the shrill
crowing of numerous cocks all echoed in his mind; in the room
an uproar broke out as if the house was about to burst; the
metallic thunder of a gong reverberated through his bones, as if
hell were ringing in the Day of Judgment; he felt he was about
to disintegrate and his skin burnt as if he were wearing the shirt
of Nessus, but he gritted his teeth and did not allow his body the
slightest movement.

Unceasingly, with every heartbeat, he called for Eva.

A voice, the softest of whispers that yet pierced the racket like a sharp needle, warned him not to play with forces whose
strength he did not know, that he was not yet ready to master
them, that at any moment he might be plunged into incurable
madness - he ignored it.

The voice grew louder and louder, so loud that the hubbub
around seemed to fade into the distance; it screamed at him to
turn back: Eva would indeed come if he did not stop unleashing
the dark forces of the underworld in his effort to call her, but if
she should come before her time of spiritual development was
finished, her life would be snuffed out like a candle flame the
very moment she appeared, and that would burden him with a
greater sorrow than he could bear. He gritted his teeth and
ignored it. The voice then tried to reason with him: Eva would
have long since come to him or sent news of where she was, if
it had been allowed; and did he not have proof that she was alive
and hourly sent her passionate thoughts out to him, in the certainty of her presence which he felt every day? He ignored it and
called and called.

He was so consumed with longing to clasp Eva in his arms,
even if it were only for a brief moment, that all other considerations had vanished.

Suddenly the pandaemonium died down and he saw that the
room was as bright as day. In the middle there rose, as if it had
sprouted from the floorboards, a post of rotten wood with a
cross-beam at the top, like a truncated cross.

A bright-green, shimmering snake as thick as a man’s arm
was wrapped round the cross-beam; its head hung down and its
lidless stare was fixed on him. Its face-there was a strip ofblack
material wrapped round its forehead - resembled that of a
mummified human being; the skin of its lips, dry and thin as
parchment, was stretched over the decayed, yellowish teeth.

In spite of the corpse-like distortion of the features, Hauberrisser could see a distant resemblance to the face of Chidher
Green, as he had stood before him in the shop in the Jodenbreetstraat.

His hair stood on end and the blood froze in his veins as he
listened to the words that slowly, syllable by syllable and in a
soft, whistling voice that seemed to break at each vowel, dribb led from the decomposing lips, “Wh-aat do-o you wa-ant froom meee?”

For a moment terror paralysed him; he could feel Death
lurking behind him and thought he saw an obscene black spider
scuttle across the gleaming table-top; then his heart screamed
the name: Eva.

Immediately the room went dark again and when, dripping
with sweat, he groped his way to the door and switched on the
electric light, the wooden cross with the snake had disappeared.

He felt as if the air were poisoned, he could hardly breathe and
the room was spinning.

He tried to persuade himself that the vision must have been
the result of a feverish delirium, but in vain; he could not rid
himself of the terror that was clutching at his throat and that was
telling him that everything he had just seen had been an actual,
physical presence here in the room.

Icy shivers ran down his spine when he remembered the
warning voice; the mere thought that it might reawaken, to
scream at him that his crazy magical experiments had really
called Eva and had plunged her into mortal danger, was enough
to scorch his brain.

He thought he was about to suffocate and bit his own hand,
blocked up his ears with his fingers, grasped the chairs and
shook them, to try and calm his mind; he flung open the window
and sucked in the cool night air, but it was all in vain, he remained convinced that he had done some damage in the spiritual
world of first causes that could not be put right again.

Like rabid beasts, the thoughts, which in his pride he believed
he had conquered once and for all, fell upon him; `sitting still’
was no use against them any more, and `awakening’ failed him
as well.

`It’s madness, madness, madness’, he repeated to himself
desperately, rushing up and down in the room, his teeth clenched together. `Nothing happened! It was a phantom, nothing
more! I’m going mad! Delusions, delusions! The voice was
lying, the apparition was not real. Where could the wood and the
snake have come from … and … the spider?!’

He forced himself to laugh out loud, but his lips were twisted into a distorted grin. `The spider! Why isn’t thathere anymore?’
he tried to mock himself he lit a match to light under the table,
but the vague fear that the spider might really be there, as a kind
of left-over from the ghostly apparition, was too strong; he did
not have the courage to look.

He breathed a sigh of relief when he heard three o’clock strike
from the towers. `Thank God, the night is almost over.’

He went over to the window, leant out and gazed at the misty
darkness, looking - or so he thought - for the first signs of the
approach of dawn; then he suddenly realised what the real
reason for doing it was: every fibre of his being was straining
to see whether Eva might still not come.

`My longing for her has become so overpowering, that, even
when I am wide awake, my imagination conjures up nightmare
images.’ He was pacing up and down the room again, trying to
soothe the torment that was still racking him, when suddenly his
eye was caught by a dark patch on the floor that he could not
remember having seen before. He bent down and saw that on the
spot where, as far as he could recall, the truncated cross with the
snake had stood, the wood of the floorboards was rotten.

He gasped. It was impossible that the patch should have
always been there!

A loud blow, like a single knock, jolted him out of his trance.

Eva?

There it was again.

No, that could not be Eva; a solid fist was hammering violently on the door of the house.

He ran to the window and called out into the darkness, asking
who it was.

No answer.

Then again, after a while, the same rapid, impatient knocking.

He grasped the red silk tassel on the end of the cord that went
through the wall and down the steep stairs to the latch on the
door, and pulled it.

The bolts creaked.

Deathly silence.

He listened: no one.

Not the faintest creak from the stairs.

At last: a rustling, almost inaudible, as if outside a hand were
feeling for the doorknob.

Immediately the door was opened and Usibepu entered,
barefoot and with the bowl of hair on his head damp from the
fog. He did not say a word.

Instinctively Hauberrisser looked round for a weapon, but the
Zulu did not take the slightest notice of him, did not seem to see
him, but prowled round the table with silent, hesitant steps, his
eyes fixed to the floor and his trembling nostrils flared like a dog
on the scent.

“What are you doing here?” Hauberrisser shouted at him; he
gave no answer, scarcely even turned his head. His deep, stertorous breaths showed that he was sleep-walking and completely unconscious.

Suddenly he seemed to have found what he was looking for,
for he changed direction and, his face bent low over the floor,
went to the rotten patch of wood and stood there looking at it.

Then his eye moved slowly up, seeming to follow an invisible
line, until it stopped in mid-air. The movement was so convincing, so pregnant, that fora moment Hauberrisser thought he
could see the truncated cross growing out of the floor again.

He felt there was no longer any doubt that it was the snake that
the negro was watching; he was gazing upwards, his eyes fixed
on one single point, and his thick lips muttered, as if he were
talking to it. The expression on his face was constantly changing, from burning desire to corpse-like fatigue, from wild joy to
blazing jealousy and uncontrollable fury.

The inaudible conversation seemed to have finished; he turned to face the door and squatted on the ground.

He appeared to be in the grip of a convulsive fit. Hauberrisser
watched as he opened his mouth wide, stuck out his tongue as
far as possible then jerked it back in and, to judge by the gulping
and gurgling, swallowed it. His pupils began to flutter and gradually disappeared up under the wide-open lids whilst his face
turned a deathly ashen grey.

Hauberrisser wanted to rush over to him and shake him back
to consciousness, but an inexplicable leaden weariness kept him
paralysed in his chair. He could scarcely even lift his arm: he seemed to have been infected by the Zulu’s catalepsy.

The picture of the room with the dark, motionless figure in
it hovered in front of his gaze, like a tormenting dream-image
that had slipped out of time to remain forever unchanged; the
only sign of life he felt was the monotonous throb of his heartbeat, even his anxiety about Eva had vanished.

Once more he heard the bells resound from the towers, but he
was incapable of counting the strokes; in his dazed stupor, there
seemed to be an eternity between each one.

Hours might have passed when finally the Zulu began to
move. As if through a veil, Hauberrisser saw him stand up and,
still in a deep trance, leave the room. Hauberrisser called up all
his reserves of strength to break out of the state of lethargy, and
ran down the stairs after him. But Usibepu had already disappeared: the door of the house was wide open and the thick,
impenetrable fog had swallowed up any trace of him.

He was about to go back into the house, when suddenly he
heard a soft footstep, and the next moment Eva was coming out
of the white mist towards him.

With an exclamation of joy, he took her in his anus, but she
seemed in a state of total exhaustion and only began to come to
after he had carried her into the house and laid her gently in a
chair. Then they held each other in a long, long embrace, unable
to grasp the fullness of their joy. He was on his knees before her,
mute, speechless, and she was holding his face between her
hands and covering it over and over with burning kisses.

The past was like a long-forgotten dream; to ask where she
had been all those long months and how it had all come about,
seemed like a waste of the present. A cascade of sound streamed
into the room: the church bells had woken-but they did not hear
it; the pale half-light of morning crept through the windows -
they did not see it, they only saw each other. He caressed her
cheeks, kissed her hands, eyes, mouth, breathed in the scent of
her hair: he still could not believe it was actually happening, that
it was her heart he could feel beating next to his.

“Eva! Eva! Never leave me again.” The words were stifled
in a flood of kisses. “Tell me that you will neverleave me again,
Eva.”

She put her arms around his neck and pressed her cheek up
against his, “No, no, I’ll stay with you for ever. Even in death.
I am so happy, so unspeakably happy that I was allowed to come
to you.”

“Eva, Eva, do not talk of death”, he exclaimed; her hands had
suddenly gone cold.

“Eva!”

“Do not be afraid, I cannot leave you ever again, my love.
Love is stronger than death. He said it. He cannot lie. I lay dead
and he brought me back to life. He will keep on bringing me back
to life, even if I should die.” She was talking as if in a fever, he
picked her up and carried her to his bed. “He nursed me when
I lay ill; for weeks I was mad, I was hanging by the hands from
the red strap that death wears round his neck, hanging in the air
between heaven and earth. He tore death’s neckthong, since
then I have been free. Did you not feel that I was with you every
hour? Why - why - do the hours rush past so quickly?” Her
voice faltered, “Let me - let me be - your wife. I want to be a
mother the next time I come to you.”