The Green Face (8 page)

As if it was somehow connected with his newly-discovered
law of spectral return, the image of the old Jew at his desk
suddenly took on a frightening reality. He could sense the phantom, as if it were moving along beside him only an arm’s length
away, invisible to the physical eye and yet more immediate than
that distant star shining down from the Milky Way which
everyone could see night after night and yet which could well
have been extinguished for seventy thousand years.

He had reached the narrow, old-fashioned house with two
windows and a tiny front garden. He stopped and unlocked the
heavy oak door. So vivid was the feeling that there had been
someone walking beside him that he instinctively looked round
before he entered. He climbed the stairs, which were scarcely
wider than his own chest and which, as in almost all Dutch houses, ran straight up, uninterrupted and as steep as a fireescape, from the ground floor to the attic, and went into his
bedroom. It was along, narrow room with apanelled ceiling; the
only furniture, a table and four chairs, stood in the middle; all
the rest-cupboards, washstand, chests of drawers, even the bed
- had been built into the walls which were covered in yellow
silk.

He had a bath and went to bed.

As he switched off the light his eye was caught by a green,
cube-shaped cardboard box on the table.

‘Aha, the Oracle of Delphi in papier-mache, they’ve sent it
from the Hall of Riddles’, was his thought as he subsided into
sleep.

A while later he started out of his sleep; he thought he had
heard a strange noise, a tapping on the floor, like little sticks.

There must be someone in the room!

But the front door was shut, he could clearly remember
locking it.

Cautiously he was feeling along the wall for the light switch
when something struck him a swift but gentle blow on the ann;
it felt like a small, flat length of wood. At the same time there
came a thud from the wall and a soft object rolled down over his
face.

The next moment he was blinded by the glare of the lightbulb.

Again he heard the tapping noise; it came from inside the
green box on the table.

“There must be some mechanism inside that stupid cardboard
skull that has managed to set itself off, that’ll be it”, he muttered
to himself in irritation. Then he felt for the object that had rolled
over his face and had come to rest on his chest.

It was some sheets of paper tied up in a roll. As far as he could
see with his bleary eyes it was covered with cramped and faded
writing. He threw it to the ground, turned out the light and went
back to sleep.

‘It must have fallen down from somewhere, or I accidentally
opened some kind of little trapdoor in the wall when I was
feeling for the switch’, were his last clear thoughts before they drifted off into a labyrinth of images at the centre of which stood
a fantastic figure, an amalgam of all that he had experienced that
day: a Zulu with a red woollen bobble-hat on his head and green
frog’s feet was holding out Count Ciechonski’s visiting card,
whilst next to him stood the skull-house from the Jodenbreetstraat, grinning all over its bony face and winking now with one
eye, now with the other.

The last manifestation of the outside world that accompanied
Hauberrisser’s slide into the abyss of sleep was the distant wail
of a ship’s siren.

Baron Pfeill had intended to catch the late afternoon train for
Hilversum, where his villa, `Sans Souci’, was, and had set off
in the direction of Central Station. He had managed to fight his
way through a maze of stalls and booths, already thronged with
workers on their way home, and had almost reached the harbour
bridge when, as if at a sign from some invisible conductor, all
the bells of the hundred church towers broke out together into
an earsplitting din, telling him that it was six o’clock and he had
missed his train.

On an impulse, he turned and went back to the old part of the
town.

He almost felt relieved that he had missed his train because
that gave him a few hours to settle a matter that had been on his
mind ever since Hauberrisser had left him.

He stopped outside a marvellous old baroque building of red
brick with a pattern of white shaded by the gloomy avenue of
elms in the Herengracht, looked up for a moment at the huge
sash window that took in almost the whole length and breadth
of the first floor and then tugged at the heavy bronze knob in the
middle of the door that also operated the bell.

It was an eternity before an old servant in a livery of white
stockings and mulberry silk knee-britches opened the door.

“Is Doctor Sephardi at home? - You do recognise me, don’t
you, Jan?” Baron Neill took out a visiting card. “Take my card
up, please, and ask whether -“

“The Master is already expecting you, Mijnheer. Follow me,
please.” The old servant led the way up the narrow staircase
which was carpeted with Indian rugs, the walls covered with
Chinese embroidery; it was so steep that he had to hold on to the
curved brass handrail to avoid losing his balance.

The whole house was filled with an overpowering smell of
sandalwood.

“Expecting me? How can he be?” asked Baron Neill in astonishment. He had not seen Doctor Sephardi for years, and it was
only half an hour ago that he had had the idea of visiting him in
order to check his memory of the picture of the Wandering Jew with the olive-green face, in particular certain oddly contradictory details he remembered and which, remarkably enough, did
not seem to fit in with what Hauberrisser had told him in the cafe.

“The Master sent you a telegram at den Haag this morning,
asking you to visit him, Mijnheer.”

“At den Haag? But I’ve been back in Hilversum for ages. It’s
mere chance that brings me here today.”

“I will inform the Master of your arrival immediately, Mijnheer.”

Baron Pfeill sat down and waited.

Everything, right down to the last jot and tittle, was in exactly
the same place as it had been when he had last been here: the
seats of the heavy carved chairs were draped in glistening
Samarkand silk; the pair of roofed chairs - southern Netherlandish work-still stood either side of themagnificent fireplace
with its columns and jade tiles with gold inlay; Persian carpets
still spread their glowing colours over the black and white
squares of the floor, the niches in the panelling above the black
marble table still sheltered the delicate pink porcelain statuettes
of Japanese princesses, and along the walls were arrayed the
ancestors of Ishmael Sephardi, portrayed by Rembrandt and
other old masters. His forebears, distinguished Portuguese
Jews, had had the house built in the seventeenth century by the
celebrated architect, Hendrik de Keyser, and there they had
lived and died.

Pfeill compared these people from a past age with his memory of Ishmael Sephardi. They all had the same narrow skull, the
same large, dark, almond eyes, the same thin lips and sharp,
gently curving noses, the same unworldly, almost arrogantly
contemptuous look of the Hispanic Jews with their unnaturally
narrow feet and white hands, who had little more in common
with the ordinary Jews of the line of Gomer, the so-called
Ashkenazim, than their religion. These features had remained
the same throughout the centuries with no hint of adaptation to
changing times.

Then Pfeill was standing up to greet Doctor Sephardi as he
came into the room, accompanied by a strikingly beautiful
fair-haired woman of some twenty-six years.

“Did you really send me a telegram?” asked Pfeill. “Jan told
me -“

“Baron Pfeill is so sensitive”, Sephardi explained with a
smile to his young companion, “that one only has to feel a need
and he will respond to it. He has come without having received
my missive.” He turned back to Neill, “You see, Juffrouw van
Druysen is the daughter of a late friend of my father’s who has
come from Antwerp to seek my advice on a particular matter
about which you are the only person who can supply the information. It concerns - or, to be more precise, it might be connected with - a picture that you once told me you had seen in the
Ouheden Collection in Leyden, a picture of Ahasuerus.”

Pfeill stared at him in astonishment. “That was why you sent
me a telegram?”

“Yes. We went to Leyden yesterday to see it, but were told
that there had never been such a picture in the collection. Hol-
werda, the Director with whom I am well acquainted, assured
me that they had no paintings at all since the Museum only
housed Egyptian antiquities and -“

“Perhaps you will allow me to tell Baron Pfeill why I am so
interested in the matter?” the young lady interrupted. “Don’t
worry, I won’t bore you with a long description of my family
background. To put it in a nutshell: there was a person, or rather
- it does sound a little odd - an `apparition’, that had some
influence on my father’s life, that would often occupy his
thoughts for months on end.

At the time I was too young, perhaps also too full of life, to
understand what went on inside my father’s mind, although I
loved him very dearly (my mother had died long before). But
recently this has all started to come back to me, and I am filled
with a restlessness to find out about things which I should have
come to understand long ago.

You will say that I am being hysterical if I tell you that I would
like my life to end today rather than tomorrow. The most blase
libertine cannot be closer to suicide than I am.” She suddenly
stopped, bewildered, confused, and only managed to compose
herself when she saw that Pfeill was listening gravely and
seemed very quickly to understand her state of mind. “Oh yes, the picture or the `apparition’, what is all that about? I know
virtually nothing about it. All I know is that whenever I used to
ask my father about God or religion - I was still a child then -
he would tell me that a time was near when all that mankind had
relied on would be torn apart and that a spiritual gale would
sweep away all the works of man.

Only those would be safe from the destruction who - these
were his very words - could see within themselves the green
bronze face of our forebear, the ancient wanderer who will not
taste death.

Whenever I pressed him to tell me what our forebear looked
like, whetherhe was a living human being ora ghostorevenGod
Himself, and how I might recognise him if I should happen to
meet him on the way to school, he would always reply, `Calm
down, my child, and do not worry your pretty head about it. He
is not a ghost, and even if he should appear to you as a ghost do
not be afraid, he is the only person on earth who cannot be a
ghost. Over his forehead he has a strip of black cloth concealing
the mark of eternal life. For anyone who bears the Mark of Life
openly and not concealed deep within himself, is branded with
the mark of Cain: and even if he should appear in glory like a
flaming torch, he is a prey to ghosts and a ghost himself.
Whether he is God I cannot say; you would not understand,
anyway. You can meet him anywhere; he is most likely to come
when you least expect him. But you can only see him when you
are ready for him. Saint Hubert, you remember, saw the pale
stag amid the turmoil of the hunt, but when he raised his crossbow to shoot it …’ ” Miss van Druysen paused for a while and
then went on, “Then, many years later, when the dreadful War
came and Christianity, to its everlasting shame

“Do excuse my interrupting”, said Neill with a smile, “but
you mean ‘Christendom’; Christianity is the opposite!”

“Of course. That’s what I meant, Christendom; - then I
thought my father had had a vision of the future and was referring to the great bloodbath

“I am sure he did not have the War in mind”, now it was
Sephardi who broke in. “External events such as a war, however
terrible they may be, are as harmless as thunder sounds to the ears of those who have not seen the lightning strike the ground
at their feet. Their only response is, ‘Thank God it was nowhere
near me.’

The War split mankind into two, and neither half can understand the other. Some have seen Hell open up before them and
will bear the image within them for the rest of their lives; for the
others it was just so much newsprint. I belong to the latter. I have
examined my soul and recognised with horror - I openly admit
it - that the suffering of all those millions has made no impression on me whatsoever. Why lie? If others can say the
opposite of themselves and tell the truth, I take my hat off to
them in all humility. But I find it impossible to believe them; I
cannot imagine that I am a thousandfold more despicable than
they. But do excuse me for interrupting you, Mejuffrouw.”

`A man who is not afraid to lay bare his own shortcomings is
an upright soul’, thought Pfeill, glancing with warm approval
at the proud olive-skinned features of his scholarly friend.