The Green Face (29 page)

They embraced each other in ecstatic, boundless love as they
sank, oblivious to the world, beneath waves of happiness.

“Eva!”

“Eva!”

Not a sound.

“Eva! Can’t you hear me?” - he tore open the curtains of the
bed - “Eva! -Eva!” He grasped her hand - she fell back lifeless
onto the pillow. He felt for her heart - it had stopped beating.
Her eyes were blank.

“Eva, Eva, Eva!” With a fearful cry he leapt up and staggered
to the table - “Water! Bring water!”- and collapsed as if struck
on the forehead-“Eva!”-the glass splintered and cut his finger,
he leapt up, tore his hair and ran to the bed - “Eva!”- tried to
clasp her to him, saw the set smile of death on her rigid features
and sank gibbering to his knees, his head on her shoulder.

“There - out in the street - someone clattering tin buckets -
the milkwoman! - Yes, yes, of course - clattering - the milkwoman - clattering.” He felt that his mind had suddenly gone blank. He could hear a heart beating somewhere quite near, he
could count the calm, regular pulse and did not know that the
heart was his own. Mechanically he caressed the long silky
locks in front of his eyes on the white pillow. “How beautiful
they are! - Why is the clock not ticking?” He looked up. “Time
is standing still. - Of course. It’s not yet light. - And over there
on the desk are some scissors and - and the two candlesticks
beside them are lit. - Why did I light them? -I forgot to put them
out when the negro left. - Of course, and afterwards there was
no time to do it because - because Eva - came. - Eva?? - But
- but she is - dead! Dead!” the whimper bubbled up from his
breast. He was engulfed in a blaze of terrible, unbearable pain.

“Finish it all! Finish it all! - Eva! I must follow her. - Eva!
Eva! Wait for me!” Gasping for breath, he flung himself at the
table, seized the scissors and was about to plunge them into his
breast when he stopped, “No, death is not enough. Blind I will
be, before I go from this accursed world!” Mad with despair, he
opened the points of the scissors to thrust them into his eyes,
when a hand hit his arm with such force that the scissors clattered onto the floor.

“Do you mean to go and seek the living in the realm of the
dead?” Chidher Green was standing before him, as he had so
many months ago in the shop in the Jodenbreetstraat: in a black
caftan with white ringlets. “Do you believe the real world is
`over there’? It is only the land of transient joys for blind
ghosts, just as the earth is the land of transient sorrows for
blind dreamers. Anyone who has not learnt to `see’ here on
earth, will certainly not learn to see over there. Do you think
that because her body is lying as if dead”, he pointed to Eva,
“she cannot rise again? She is alive, it is you who are still
dead. Anyone who has come alive as she has, can never die;
but one who is dead, as you are, can still come alive:’ He
picked up the two candlesticks and changed them round, the
left-hand one to the right and the right-hand one to the left, and
Hauberrisser could not feel his heart beating any more, it was
as if it had vanished from his breast. “As truly as you can put
your hand into my side now, just so will you be united with
Eva, when you have come into your new spiritual life. What should it matter to you that people will believe that she has
died? You cannot expect sleepers to see those who are
awake.

You called for transitory love”, he pointed to the place
where the truncated cross had stood, passed his hand over the
rotten patch in the floorboards and it disappeared, “and transitory love I brought to you, for I have not remained upon
earth to take, but to give, to give to each what he longs for.
But men do not know what their souls long for; if they knew,
they would be able to see.

You went into the shop where the world sells magic and
asked for new eyes to see the things of this earth in a new
light. Remember: did I not tell you that you would first of
all have to cry your old eyes out of your head before you
could have new ones?

You asked for knowledge, and I gave you the papers of
one of my disciples, who lived in this house when he was still
in his corruptible body.

Eva longed for everlasting love; I gave it to her, just as for
her sake I now give it to you. Transitory love is a phantom
love.

Wherever on earth I see a love put forth its shoots and
grow beyond the love that is between phantoms, I hold my
hands over it like protective branches, to shield it against
Death, the Harvester; for I am not only the phantom with
the green face, I am also Chidher, the Ever Green Tree:’

When Vrouw Ohms, his housekeeper, came into the room in
the morning with his breakfast, she saw to her horror the body
of a beautiful young girl lying on the bed and Hauberrisser
kneeling before it, pressing the dead girl’s hand to his face.

She sent a message to his friends; when Pfeill and Sephardi
came and, assuming he was unconscious, tried to lift him up,
they started back in horror at the smiling expression on his face
and the radiance in his eyes.

Dr. Sephardi had asked Baron Mill and Swammerdam to
come to his house. They had already been sitting together in the
library for over an hour, and night had fallen. They talked of
mysticism and philosophy, of the Cabbala, of the strange Lazarus Egyolk, who had long since been released from medical
custody and started running his liquor business again, but the
conversation kept on returning to Hauberrisser.

Tomorrow was Eva’s burial.

“It is terrible. The poor, poor man!” exclaimed Pfeill as he
rose and paced restlessly up and down. “I shudder whenever I
try to imagine how he must feel.” He stopped and looked at
Sephardi. “Should we not go and keep him company? What do
you think, Swammerdam? Do you really think there is no possibility of him waking from his incomprehensible languor.
What if he should suddenly come to and, finding himself alone
with his sorrow,… ?”

Swammerdam shook his head. “You do not need to worry
about him, Baron. Despair cannot touch him ever again; Egyolk
would say the lights have been changed round inside him.”

“I find something fearful in your belief’, said Sephardi.
“Whenever I hear you talk like that I am gripped by - by fear.”
He hesitated for a while, uncertain whether he might not open
up an old wound. “When your friend Klinkherbogk was murdered, we were all very concerned for you. We thought it might
be too much for you to bear. Eva particularly asked me to go and
visit you, to try to calm you down.

Where on earth did you find the courage to bear such a
dreadful occurrence, that must have shaken your faith to its very
foundations?”

Swammerdam interrupted, “Can you still remember
Klinkherbogk’s words before his death?”

“Yes. Every single one. Later I came to understand their
meaning, as well. There can be no doubt that he foresaw his end,
even before Usibepu entered his room. What he said about the
`King from the Land of the Moors’ bringing him the `myrrh of
the life beyond’ proves that.”

“You see, then, Doctor Sephardi, it was precisely the fact that
his prophecy was fulfilled that healed my sorrow. At first, of
course, I was overwhelmed by it, but then I saw it in all its
greatness, and I asked myself this question: what is more worthwhile, that words spoken in a state of spiritual rapture should
become reality, or that a sick, consumptive child and a frail old
shoemaker should remain in this world a little while longer?
Would it have been better if the spiritual voices had lied?

Since then, the memory of that night has been a source of
pure, unalloyed joy for me.

What does it matter that the two of them had to die? Believe
me, they feel much better now.”

“So you are convinced that there is life after death?” asked
Neill. “Though to tell the truth”, he added, “I believe in it myself
now.

“Certainly I am convinced of it. Of course, paradise is not a
place, but a state of being; life on earth is just a state of being,
too.”

“And - and you long to be there?”

“N-no.” Swammerdam hesitated, as if it was something he
did not want to talk about.

The old servant in his mulberry livery announced that his
master was wanted on the telephone. Sephardi stood up and left
the room. Immediately Swammerdam continued. Neill realised
that what he had to say was not meant for Sephardi’s ears.

“The question ofparadise is a two-edged sword. Some people
can be harmed beyond cure by being told that ‘over there’ there
is nothing but images.”

“Images? How do you mean?”

“I willgive you anexample. My wife-you know that she died
years ago - had an immense love for me, and I for her, now she
is ‘over there’, and dreaming that I am with her. She does not
know that it is not really I who am with her, but only my image.
If she did know, paradise would be hell for her.

Everyone who dies fords, when he crosses over, the images
of those he has been longing for, and takes them for real, even
the images of the objects his soul was attached to”, he pointed
to the rows of books on the library shelves. “My wife believed in the Mother of God; now, `over there’, she is dreaming in her
arms.

The rationalists, who want to turn the people away from
religion, do not know what they are doing. Truth is only for the
few and should be kept secret from the masses; anyone who has
only half understood it will find himself in a paradise devoid of
colour when he dies.

Klinkherbogk’s longing on earth was to see God; now he is
on the other side and can see `God’. He was a man without
knowledge or learning, and yet, so consumed was he with his
thirst for God, that his lips spoke words of truth; and fate was
merciful enough to keep their inner meaning hidden from him.

For a long time I could not understand why that was so; today
I know the reason. He had only half understood the truth, and
his desire to see God could not have been fulfilled, neither in
reality, nor in the dreams of the world beyond.” He stopped
abruptly as he heard Sephardi returning.

Pfeill guessed intuitively why he did so: he obviously knew
about Sephardi’s love for the dead Eva, and also that, for all his
scholarship, deep down inside Sephardi was a religious, even a
pious person; Swammerdam did not want to disturb his ‘paradise’, the illusion he would have in the life beyond that he was
united with Eva.

“As I said”, Swammerdam went on, “it was my realisation
that the fulfilment of Klinkherbogk’s prophecy far outweighed
his horrible death that turned my grief to joy. Such a ‘changing-round of the lights’ does exist; it is a transformation of bitter
into sweet that can be brought about by the power of truth
alone.”

“In spite of that”, Sephardi joined in the conversation again,
“what still puzzles me is what gives you the strength to master
your sorrow merely through such a realisation. However much
I seek refuge in philosophy to overcome my sorrow at Eva’s
death, I still feel as if my happiness has gone for ever.”

Swammerdam nodded thoughtfully. “True, true. The reason
is that your insights come from rational thought and not from the
`inner voice’. Without knowing it, we distrust our own insights;
that is why they are grey and dead. The insights that come to us from the inner voice, on the other hand, are gifts of living truth,
and they delight us more than we can say, whenever they are
granted us.

Since I have been following the ‘path’, the inner voice has
only spoken to me a few times, but it has still brightened my
whole existence.”

“And has what it told you always come to pass?” asked
Sephardi, trying to conceal the scepticism in his voice. “Or did
it not prophesy to you?”

“There were three prophecies concerning the distant future.
The first was, that with my help a young couple would open up
a spiritual path which had been blocked for thousands of years,
but which would now, in the coming age, be revealed to many
people. It is this path that gives life its true worth, gives meaning
to existence. My whole life has come to centre round this
prophecy.

I would rather not talk about the second one, you would think
I was insane, if I were to tell you -“

Neill quickly asked, “Does it concern Eva?”

Swammerdam’s only answer was a smile, “and the third
seems unimportant, although that cannot really be the case, and
wouldn’t interest you.”

“Have you any indications that at least one of the three predictions will come true?” asked Sephardi.

“Yes. My feeling of absolute certainty. I don’t care in the
slightest whether I ever see them come true; I am content with
the knowledge that it is impossible for me to feel the slightest
doubt about them.

You cannot know what it is to feel the presence of the truth
that can never err. It is something you must experience yourself.

I have never seen a so-called ‘supernatural’ apparition; only
once in my sleep I saw the image of my wife as I was searching
for a green insect. I have never desired to ‘see God’; an angel
has never come tome, as one did to Klinkherbogk; unlike Lazarus Egyolk, I have never met the prophet Elijah, but that does
not grieve me: I find myself rewarded a thousand times because
the living truth of what is said in the Bible, ‘Blessed are they that
have not seen, and yet have believed’, has shown itself in my life. I believed when there was no ground for belief, and have
learnt to think of the impossible as possible.