The Green Face (22 page)

Impatiently Hauberrisser listened to their boasting until
something was let slip that made his heart race; Antje mentioned
that the negro had attacked a young lady - “very respectable she
was.”

He had to hold on to Swammerdam for a second, to stop
himself collapsing on the spot, then he emptied the contents of
his purse into the waitress’ hand and, incapable of uttering a
word, gestured to her to tell him what had happened.

They had heard a woman’s voice screaming, they had run out
- everyone started talking at once. “I ‘eld ‘er in my lap, she was
out for the count’, yelled Antje over the commotion.

“But where is she? Where is she?” exclaimed Hauberrisser.

The sailors fell silent and looked at each other in bewilderment, as if they had just become aware of what had happened:
no one knew where Eva had disappeared to.

“She was on my lap”, Antje kept on insisting, but it was clear
from her face that she had no idea what might have happened
to Eva.

Then they all rushed outside, Hauberrisser and Swammerdam among them, hunted through the alleys screaming “Eva!
Eva!” and shone their torches in every comer of the churchyard.

“That’s where the nigger went, up there”, explained the
waitress pointing to the green, glistening roof, “and I laid ‘er
down on the cobbles when I tried to follow ‘im, then we took the
corpse back inside and I clean forgot about ‘er.”

They knocked on the doors of the adjoining houses to see if
Eva had perhaps taken refuge in one of them. Windows were
pushed up, voices shouted down to see what it was all about -
but of Eva there was no trace.

Weary and distraught, Hauberrisser promised everyone
within earshot they could name their reward if they brought him
any news at all of her. Swammerdam tried to calm him down,
but in vain: the idea that in her despair at what she had been
through - or possibly driven out of her mind and not knowing
what she was doing - Eva might have committed suicide by
throwing herself into the canal was more than he could bear.

The sailors ranged over the whole area, beyond the Prince
Henrik Quay and all along the New Cut, and returned emptyhanded. Soon the whole harbour area was on its feet; fishermen,
still only half-dressed, rowed around with boats’ lanterns,
checking the wharfs and piers; they promised to drag all the
canal outlets when it was light.

All the while Hauberrisser was afraid that Antje, who kept on
recounting her story in a thousand variations, would tell him that
the negro had raped Eva. The question burnt within him, but he
could not bring himself to put it; finally he overcame his reluctance and, haltingly, indicated what was on his mind. The rabble
around him, who had never stopped trying to comfort him with
their descriptions, accompanied by the vilest oaths, of how they
would chop up the nigger alive as soon as he was caught, were
immediately silent, avoided his eye or spat vigorously on the
pavement.

Antje was sobbing quietly to herself. In spite of a life spent
amongst the most horrible filth, she was still woman enough to
know how his heart was being torn to shreds.

Swammerdam alone remained calm and untroubled. The
expression of unshakeable confidence on his face, and his gentle
smile as he kept patiently shaking his head whenever anyone
suggested Eva might have been drowned, gradually restored Hauberrisser’s hope, so that eventually he followed the old
man’s advice and let him take him home.

“You must lie down”, Swammerdam told him when they
reached his door, “and do not take your troubles to sleep with
you. Our souls can do more than we imagine, when they are not
disturbed by the worries of the flesh. Leave it to me to take any
practical steps that are still necessary; I will report your
fiancee’s disappearance to the police, so that they can set up a
search for her. I don’t think anything will come of it, but we
should do everything that common sense dictates.”

On the way back home he had gently tried to divert
Hauberrisser’s thoughts, and the young man had told him of the
roll of papers and the plans he had made to start studying it
which would presumably be interrupted now for some time, if
not for good. Swammerdam returned to the papers when he saw
the old despair begin to reappear in Hauberrisser’s face. He
grasped his hand and held it fora long time. “I wish l could make
you feel the same certainty that I have regarding Juffrouw Eva.
Even if you had only a small portion of it, you would know what
destiny requires of you. As things are, however, I can only give
you some advice; will you follow it?”

“You can rely on that”, promised Hauberrisser, suddenly
moved at the memory of Eva’s words in Hilversum, that
Swammerdam with his living faith was capable of heights
beyond any man. “You can rely on that. You radiate such
strength that I sometimes feel as if a thousand-year-old tree were
giving me shelter from the storm. Every word you utter helps
me.”

“I will tell you of a little incident”, Swammerdam went on,
“that once served as a signpost in my life, although it was apparently insignificant. I was still fairly young at the time and had
just suffered such a bitter disappointment that the world seemed
dark, seemed like hell. It was in this mood of bitterness at the
way fate seemed to torment me pitilessly without, as I thought,
any point or purpose, that one day I witnessed a horse being
trained.

They had it on a long rein and were driving it round and round
in a circle, without giving it a moment’s rest. Every time it came to a hurdle, which it was supposed to jump, it refused or
swerved. For hours the lashes rained down on its hide, but
still it would not jump. And yet the man who was tormenting
it so was not a vicious person, indeed he was himself visibly
distressed by the task he had to perform. He had an open, genial
face, and when I protested, he said, ‘I would willingly spend
a day’s pay on sugar-lumps for the nag, if it would only understand what I want it to do. But I’ve tried that method before, and
it doesn’t work. It’s as if these animals had a demon in their brain
that stops it working. And what I want the beast to do is so
simple!’ Every time the horse came to the hurdle I could see the
glint of fear appear in its wild eyes and I knew what was going
through its mind, “The whip, the whip.’ I racked my brains to
see if I could not find some other way of making the animal
understand. I tried to tell it, first by telepathy, later by shouting
out loud, that it only had to jump and it would all be over. But
my efforts were futile; to my sorrow, I had to acknowledge that
it was only the terrible pain that would finally teach it its lesson.
And as I came to that realisation, I saw in a flash that my situation was just like that of the horse: fate was lashing me with its
whip, and all I was aware of was my suffering. I hated the
invisible power that was tormenting me, but I had not understood that it was all being done so that I should learn to perform
some task, take some spiritual hurdle, so to speak.

That little incident was a milestone onmy road. I learnt to love
the invisible forces that were whipping me onward, for I sensed
that they would have given me `sugar-lumps’, if it were possible
by that to lift me from the lower stage of mortality into a new
state.

The analogy has, of course, a flaw”, Swammerdam went on
with a smile. “It is by no means certain that for the horse to learn
to jump could really be called progress; it might have been better
to leave it in its wild state. But I don’t need to tell you that. The
important thing for me was that until then I had lived under the
delusion that my suffering was a punishment and had racked my
brains trying to work out how I had earned it; now the blows of
fate had meaning forme and, even though I could often not work
out what the `hurdle’ was that I was supposed to `jump’, I was a willing horse from that time on.

In that experience I suddenly understood the hidden meaning
behind the verse in the Bible about the forgiveness of sins: when
the idea of punishment disappeared, so did that of sin and the
distorted image of God as a vengeful God was transformed into
the concept of a beneficent power that wanted to teach me, as
the man did the horse.

How often have I told others of this apparently insignificant
incident, but how seldom has the seed fallen on good ground.
Whenever they followed my advice, people always thought
they could easily guess what the invisible `trainer’ expected of
them, and if the blows of fate did not stop immediately, they
slipped back into their old ways and bore their cross, either
grumbling or, for those who took refuge in the self-deception of
so-called humility, submissively. I tell you, anyone who has
reached the stage when he can occasionally work out what those
above - the name I prefer for them is `The Great Inwardness’
- want from him, is more than half-way to completing the task.
The willingness itself means a complete revolution in our attitude to life; the ability to work out what is required is the fruit
of that seed. But how hard it is to learn to work out what we
should do.

At the beginning, when we make our first, hesitant attempts,
it is like a mindless groping in the dark, and sometimes we do
things that resemble the actions of a madman and for along time
seem to lack all consistency. It is only gradually that the chaos
forms into a countenance, in whose varying expressions we can
read the will of destiny. At first they are grimaces, but that is the
way it is with all great matters. Every new invention, every new
idea to appear in the world puts on a grotesque face as it develops. For a long time the first models for a flying machine were
dragon-like gargoyles, before they became real faces.”

“You were about to tell me what you thought I should do”,
said Hauberrisser, almost shyly. He surmised that the old man
had only embarked on such a long digression because he was
afraid that if he put his advice, which he obviously saw as of
extreme importance, forward too soon, it might not be fully
appreciated and be wasted.

“I was indeed, Mijnheer, and I shall. But Ineeded to lay a firm
foundation first of all, so that you would find it less offputting
when I advised you to do something which looks more like a
breaking-off than a continuation of your present concerns. I
know that at the moment you are filled with one desire alone:
to search for Eva; that is very natural and understandable, and
yet what you must do is to search for the magic power that will
make it impossible for any misfortune ever to strike your bride
again. Otherwise you might well find her, only to lose her for
ever, just as people come together on earth, only to be tom apart
by death.

When you find her, it must not be like finding something you
have lost, but in a new way, and in a double sense. You told me
yourself on our way here that your life has gradually become
like a stream that is petering out in the sand. Everyone comes
to this point at some time or other, although not always in each
single existence. I know what it is like. It is like a death of the
soul that spares the physical body. But precisely this moment is
one of the most precious and can lead to victory over death. The
earth spirit knows well that it is at such moments that it is in
danger of being overcome by men and so that is when it sets its
most cunning traps. Just ask yourself: what would happen if you
were to find Eva at this very moment? If you have the strength
to look the truth in the face, you must reply that the river of your
life and of your bride would run in the same bed fora while, only
to dry up for good in the sands of everyday routine. Did you not
tell me that Eva was afraid of marriage? And it is because destiny wants to keep you from that that it brought you together and
tore you apart within such a short time. In any other age than the
present, when almost the whole of humanity faces an immense
void, what has happened to you could have been merely one of
life’s grimaces, but today that seems out of the question.

I do not know what is in the roll of papers that came to you
in such a strange manner, yet I advise you - I urge you - to let
all practical matters take their course and seek what you need
in the teachings that the unknown author wrote down. Everything else will come of its own accord. Even if, contrary to
expectation, its teachings should turn out to be false and you should only find the twisted features of the Deceiver grinning
out at you, yet I believe you would still find in them what was
right for you.

He who seeks aright cannot be deceived. There is no lie that
does not contain an element of truth, only the seeker must be
standing at the right point.” Swammerdam quickly shook
Hauberrisser’s hand in farewell. “And it is today that you are at
the right point. You are safe to reach out for those terrible
powers which otherwise bring certain madness: today you are
doing it for the sake of love.”