The Green Face (19 page)

“But that is what torments me”, said Eva. “Life seems tome
a dreadful, devouring monster and I feel at a complete loss as
to how to deal with it. Everything is stale or threadbare. Every
word we use has become dry as dust. I feel like a child who is
looking forward to being transported into a fairytale world and
then goes to the theatre and sees actors dripping with greasepaint. Marriage has become an ugly institution which robs love of its bloom and reduces men and women to mere functions. It
is like slowly sinking into the desert sand. Why can’t we be like
mayflies?” She stood still and cast longing glances at a floodlit
fountain enveloped in a golden haze of fluttering moths. “They
spend years as grubs, crawling overthe earth, preparing fortheir
wedding as for something sacred, to celebrate one short day of
love before they die.” She stopped with a shudder of horror.

Her eyes had darkened, and Hauberrisser could see she was
in the grip of some deep emotion. He raised her hand to his lips.
For a while they stood there motionless then slowly, as if half
asleep, she put her arms around his neck and kissed him.

“When will you become my wife? Life is so short, Eva.”

She gave no answer, and without a word they walked together
towards the open wrought-iron gate where Baron Mill’s car
was waiting to take Eva home. Hauberrisser wanted to repeat his
question before she said goodbye, but she was the first to speak,
snuggling up against him.

“I long for you as I long for death”, she said softly. “I will be
your lover, of that I am sure; but we will be spared what people
call marriage.”

He scarcely grasped the meaning of her words, he was numb
with the joy of holding her in his anus. Then he responded to the
shudder of horror still within her and felt his hair stand on end
as an icy breath enveloped both of them, as if the angel of death
were taking them under his wings and carrying them far away
from the earth to a realm of eternal bliss.

As he awoke from the trance, the strange, rapturous ecstasy
of dying that had seemed to consume all his senses, slowly left
him and was replaced, as he watched the car take Eva away from
him, by the gnawing torment of the fear that somehow he was
destined never to see her again.

Eva had intended to visit her aunt early the next day, to give
her what comfort she could, and then take the morning express
to Antwerp, but she changed her mind when she arrived at the
hotel to find a hastily-scribbled note, smudged with tears.

The terrible events on the Zeedijk appeared to have put the
old lady in a state of shock, for she wrote that she had resolved
not to set foot outside the Convent until she felt sufficiently
recovered from the distress they had caused her to concern
herself once more with what she insisted on calling the hurlyburly of the modem world. Her final sentence, however, culminating in the lament that a horrid migraine made it impossible for her to receive visits from anyone at all, suggested that
serious concern about the old lady’s mental health was unnecessary.

Eva did not hesitate, but sent her luggage to the station
straight away. The porter recommended she take the midnight
train to Belgium, as there were usually many free seats on it.

It took her some time to overcome the feeling of disgust the
letter had left in her. Was that what the female heart had come
to? Eva had been afraid that `Gabriela’ would never recover
from the blow and what did she find - a headache! ‘We women
have lost our sense of greatness’, she complained to herself
bitterly. `Our grandmothers took it all and embroidered it into
their wretched samplers.’ It was a young girl’s fear that made
her press her head between her hands. `And am Ito become like
that, too? It is humiliating to be a woman.’

The loving thoughts, which had accompanied her all the way
from Hilversum back into the city, tried to reassert their power.
The whole room seemed to fill with the scent of the flowering
limes, but Eva tore herself away and went out to sit on the
balcony, gazing up at the star-bright sky. As a child she had often
found comfort in the idea that up there was a Creator who looked
down on her insignificance; now she felt humiliated by her
insignificance. She had a profound distaste for all the attempts
by women to rival men in public life, but to have nothing to give
the man she loved but her beauty seemed a poor, miserable offering, seemed to be making much ado about a matter of
course.

Sephardi’s words, that there was a hidden, royal way along
which a woman could be more to her husband than a mere
provider of earthly pleasure, brought her a faint ray of hope. But
where did that path begin?

Tentatively, timidly, she made a start, trying through the
exercise of reason to work out what she would need to do to find
such a path. But she soon sensed that it was nothing more than
a vain, feeble begging for light from the powers above the stars,
instead of the vigorous struggle for illumination which she
knew a man would have been capable of. She felt miserable, her
heart consumed by the most delicate and yet deepest sorrow a
young woman can know: to appear before her beloved emptyhanded and yet to be overflowing with longing to give him a
whole world of joy.

No sacrifice would have been too great; she would have made
it gladly for his sake. With the instinct of her sex, she knew that
the most a woman could do was to sacrifice herself, but whatever course of action she thought of, it seemed fleeting, paltry,
childish, compared with the intensity of her love.

To subordinate herself to him in all things, to relieve him of
care, to anticipate his every wish: how easy that must be, but
would it make him happy? It was nothing more than what millions of women did, but she longed to be able to give him
something beyond what was humanly possible.

She had long sensed within her the deep bitterness of being
as rich as a king in her desire to give, yet as poor as a beggar in
the gifts she could offer, it now manifested itself with a crystal
clarity that made her shudder, as the saints before her had
shuddered as they had trodden the path of martyrdom through
the scorn and derision of the mob.

Overwhelmed by the torment, she rested her forehead on the
balcony rail and, her lips pressed tight together, screamed a
silent, inward prayer that the very least among the host of those
who had crossed the river of death for the sake of love might
appear and reveal to her how to find the mysterious crown of
life, that she might take it, and give it away.

She looked up, as if she had felt the touch of a hand on her
head, and saw that the sky had suddenly changed. Across it ran
an oblique slash of pale light and the stars were pouring into it
like a swarm of glittering mayflies blown by a stormwind. Then
it opened up to reveal a hall with ancient greybeards in flowing
robes sitting at along table; theireyes were fixed on heras ifthey
were ready to hear her declaration. The features of the chief
among them were foreign, between his brows he bore a shining
mark, and from his temples rose two blinding rays, like the horns
of Moses.

Eva knew that she should swear an oath, but she could not find
the words. She wanted to beseech them to hear her prayer, but
she could not lift up her voice, the words stuck in her throat then
piled up in her mouth.

Slowly the tear in the sky began to close up again and, as the
hall and the table gradually faded, the Milky Way spread over
it like a glowing scar. Only the man with the blazing mark on
his forehead was still visible. In despair Eva stretched her arms
out to him, mutely pleading with him to stay and hear her out,
but the face made to turn away. Then she saw a man on a white
horse dash in a wild gallop up through the air from the earth; and
she saw that it was Swammerdam.

He dismounted, walked up to the man, screamed at him and
then grabbed him angrily by the breast.

With a commanding gesture he pointed down at Eva.

She knew what he was saying. In her heart the words from the
Bible rang out, that the Kingdom of Heaven shall be taken by
force. Her supplicant tone evaporated like a summer mist and,
confident in her eternal right to self-determination, she commanded, as Swammerdam had taught her, those who guide
destiny to drive her onward towards the highest goal a woman
can achieve; to drive her ever onwards, faster than time itself,
without pity, deaf to her pleading should she weaken, bypassing
pleasure and happiness, without pause for breath, even if she
should die a thousand times in the attempt.

She realised that she would have to die, for the radiant sign
on the man’s forehead was uncovered and when she commanded him it shone with such a blinding light that it burnt into her mind, her thoughts; but her heart rejoiced, she would live, since
she had seen his countenance at the same time. She trembled
under the immense pressure from the power that was released
within her and burst open the prison gate of slavery; she felt the
ground tremble beneath her feet, she felt a swoon coming over
her, but still her lips murmured the same command, over and
over again, even when the face in the sky had long since disappeared.

Slowly, very slowly, awareness of who she was and where
she was returned.

She knew that she intended to go to the station, remembered
that she had sent her luggage on ahead, saw the letter to her aunt
lying on the table, picked it up and tore it to shreds. Everything
that she did, she did as naturally as she had done before, and yet
everything seemed new and unaccustomed, as if her hands, her
eyes, her whole body were now mere implements that were no
longer directly connected to her inner being. She felt as if at the
same time, in some distant cornerof the cosmos, she were living
a second life as a child that had only just been born and had not
yet awoken to full consciousness. The objects around her in the
room no longer seemed essentially different from her own
organs, both were utensils for her will and nothing more.

The evening in the park in Hilversum was like a fond memory
from her childhood, from which she was now separated by long
years; she thought of it with tenderness and joy, but she was also
aware of its insignificance compared with the ineffable bliss a
time still to come would bring. She felt like a blind girl who had
known nothing but pitch-blackness and for whom all the joys
she had so far experienced paled in the light of the certainty that
the hour would come, perhaps only after long and painful sufferings, when she would be able to see.

She tried to settle in her own mind whether it was merely the
great difference between what she had just experienced and
earthly things that made the physical world suddenly seem so
insignificant; she found that everything she perceived through
her senses floated past her almost like a dream which, pleasant
or unpleasant, is only a phantasm without deeper significance
for the awakened soul.

When she looked into the mirror as she was putting on her
coat she found there was a mild strangeness in her own features;
it was as if her memory at first only tentatively recognised the
image as herself. In all that she did there was an almost deathly
calm. The future appeared to her as impenetrable darkness and
yet she confronted it with serenity, like someone who knows
that the ship bearing them on life’s voyage is firmly anchored
and can look forward with composure to the following day,
whatever storms the night may bring.

It occurred to her that it must be time to go to the station, but
a presentiment that she would never see Antwerp again stopped
her from leaving. She took out paper and ink to write a letter to
her beloved, but stopped after the first line. All initiative was
paralysed by the inner certainty that anything she might now do
of her own will was in vain and that it would be easier to stop
a bullet in its flight than to try to steer the mysterious power, into
whose hands she had put her destiny.

The murmur of a voice from the next room that had been
audible through the wall without Eva having paid any attention
to it, stopped all at once, leaving behind a silence which gave her
the sensation of suddenly having become deaf to physical
sounds. Instead she thought after a while that she could hear,
deep within her ear, as if it came from another land, an insistent
whispering that gradually swelled into the muffled guttural
sounds of an alien, barbaric language. She could not understand
the words. It wasjust the irresistible compulsion to stand up and
go to the door that told her that they expressed an order which
she could not resist.

At the top of the stairs she remembered that she had forgotten
her gloves, but, scarcely had the thought occurred to her than her
attempt to turn round was brushed aside by a power which
seemed alien and malevolent and yet, in its deepest roots, her
own.