He realised he had almost reached that point.
He thought of the roll of papers, and the strange manner in which it had come into his possession. “I will continue it with a description of my own life”, he decided, “and leave it to fate to decide what will happen to it. It shall be my testament, and I shall leave it in the care of him who said, ‘I have remained to give, to each what he desires’; he shall see that it comes into the hands of people who can make use of it, of people who thirst for an inner awakening. If it leads to only one person awakening to immortality, it will give meaning to my life.”
He went to his desk and sat down, to illustrate the teachings of the roll of papers with his own experiences. His intention was to take them back to his former apartment and place them in the hole in the panelling, from which they had fallen on his face that fateful night. He started:
“TO THE UNKNOWN PERSON WHO SHALL INHERIT THESE PAPERS
The hand that wrote these papers you are holding may well have long ago decayed.
Something tells me that they will come to you at a time when you need them, as a ship with torn sails that is being driven onto the rocks needs its anchor.
In the writings that accompany mine, you will find set down a teaching, which contains all we need to know to cross over, as by a bridge, to a new world full of marvels.
I have nothing to add, apart from a description of my life and the spiritual states I achieved with the help of the teaching. If all these lines do is to strengthen you in your belief that there truly is a secret path leading beyond mortal humanity, then they will have achieved their purpose.
The night, in which I am writing these lines for you, is filled with the stench of horrors to come, horrors not for me, but for the multitude of those who have not ripened on the tree of life. I do not know whether I shall see the `first hour’ of the new age, that you will find mentioned by my predecessor, perhaps this night will be my last, but: whether I part from this earth tomorrow or in a few years’ time, I am stretching out my hand into the future to touch yours. Grasp it, just as I grasped the hand of my predecessor, so that the chain of the `doctrine of wakefulness’ shall not be broken, and pass on your legacy, when your time comes.”
It was long past midnight when his narrative had reached the point in his life when Chidher Green had saved him from committing suicide. He paced up and down, deep in thought. He felt that here began the great gulf separating the comprehension of a normal person, however imaginative, however ready to believe, from that of one who had been spiritually wakened. Were there words at all to give even an approximate impression of what he had experienced continually from that point onward?
For a long time he was uncertain whether or not to finish his description with Eva’s funeral. He went into the next room to take the silver holder he had had made for the roll of papers out of his suitcase. While he was looking for it, he happened upon the papier-mache skull he had bought a year ago in the Hall of Riddles. Deep in thought, he examined it by the light of the lamp, and the same thoughts that he had had a year ago came into his head.
`It is more difficult to master the eternal smile than to find the skull one bore on one’s neck in a previous existence.’ It sounded like the promise of a joyful future, in which the serene smile would be mastered.
His past life, with all the pain of his designs and desires, now seemed unbelievably distant, alien, as if it really had all taken place in this ridiculous and yet so prophetic object made of papier-mache, and not in his own head. An involuntary smile greeted the thought that here he was holding his own skull in his hand. The world he had left behind seemed like a magicians’ shop, full of worthless junk.
He picked up his pen and wrote,
“When Chidher Green left me, and, in some way I could not understand, seemed to take all my grief for Eva with him, I turned back to the bed to kiss her hand; but I saw a man kneeling there with his head on her arm, and in astonishment I recognised my own body. Myself I could not see any more; when I looked down at myself there was nothing but empty air. But the man by the bed had stood up and was looking down at his feet, just as I believed I was doing. It was as if he were my shadow, and had to carry out every movement I ordered him to.
I bent over the dead body - he did so as well. I presume that as he looked at her he suffered and felt pain; I presume so, but I do not know. For me the woman who was lying there, motionless, with a smile frozen on her face, was the corpse of a divinely beautiful, unknown girl, like a wax model that left my heart cold, a statue that was a perfect likeness of Eva, but only a likeness.
I felt so incredibly happy that it was an unknown woman, and not Eva, who had died, that I could not speak for joy.
Then three figures entered the room. In them I recognised my friends and saw them go over to my body to comfort it, but it was only my `shadow’; it smiled and answered not a word. How could it have? It could not open its mouth itself, it was incapable of doing anything other than what I ordered it to do. To me, my friends and all the other people I saw later in the church and at the funeral had become phantoms, just like my own body: the hearse, the horses, the torchbearers, the wreaths, the houses we passed, the graveyard, the sky, the soil and the sun, they were all images without an inner life of their own, like a colourful dreamworld I was observing, glad that it did not concern me any more.
Since then my freedom has expanded more and more, and I know that I have grown beyond the threshold of death. Occasionally at night I see my body lying there asleep, I hear its regular breathing, and yet all the time I am awake. Its eyes are closed, and yet I can look around and be anywhere I want to. When it is roaming around, I can rest, and when it is resting, I can roam around. But I can also see with its eyes and hear with its ears whenever I want to, only when I do that, everything about me is dull and joyless, I am like other men again, a ghost in the realm of ghosts. But when I am freed from my body and observe it as a shadow that automatically carries out my orders in the shadow-world it inhabits, my condition is so strange that I do not know how to describe it.
Imagine you are sitting in a cinema, full of happiness because of some great joy you have just experienced, and on the film you see your own figure rushing from one sorrow to the next, collapsing at the death-bed of a woman whom you know is not dead, but waiting at home for you; imagine you hear your own image on the screen utter cries of grief and despair with your own voice, produced by a machine - would you be moved by such a film?
It is only a feeble example I can give you; I hope that one day you will experience it. Then you will know, as I know now, that it is possible to escape death.
The stage I have never succeeded in reaching is the great solitude, of which my predecessor speaks. That would, perhaps, be even more cruel for me than earthly life, if the ladder that leads up to it should stop there; but the glorious certainty that Eva is not dead takes me beyond it.
Even though I cannot yet see Eva, I know that after only one more short step along the path of awakening, I will be with her, and be with her in a much more real sense than would ever have been possible in my earlier existence. All that separates us is a thin wall, through which we can already sense each other. How much deeper and calmer is my hope of finding her than in the days when every hour I called for her. Then I was devoured with expectancy, now I am filled with joyful confidence. There is an invisible world which pervades the visible, and I am sure that Eva is living there, waiting for me.
If you should suffer a like destiny and lose the one you love on earth, then know that there is no other way of finding your love again than by the `Path of Awakening’. Remember Chidher Green’s words to me, ‘anyone who does not learn to see on earth will certainly not learn to do so on the other side’.
Beware of the doctrine of the spiritualists, it is a poison, it is the most dreadful plague that has ever been visited upon humanity. The spiritualists also claim to be able to converse with the dead, they believe the dead come to them: they deceive themse
lves. It is good that they do not know who they are that come to them. If they knew, terror would strike them to the bone.
First you must learn to become invisible yourself, before you can find the path that leads to the invisible ones, and learn to live both here and on the other side, just as I have become invisible, even to the eyes of my own body.
I have not yet reached the stage when my eyes are open to the world beyond, and yet I know that those who were blind when they left the world are not there; they are like melodies that fade away and float through the cosmos until they come across strings on which they can sound once more; where they think they are is not a place, it is far less real than the earth, it is a dream island of phantoms without a spatial dimension.
Only human beings who have awakened are truly immortal; suns and gods pass, only they remain, and can accomplish whatever they will. There is no god above them.
It is not for nothing that our path is called a heathen path. What pious people call their god is only a state, which they could achieve if they had the ability to believe in themselves. In their incurable blindness they create for themselves a barrier they dare not cross; they create an image for them to worship, instead of transforming themselves into it.
If you must pray, then pray to your invisible self; it is the only god that answers your prayers, other gods give you stones instead of bread.
Unhappy are they who pray to an idol and their prayers are heard: they lose their own selves, since they are no longer capable of believing that it was they themselves that answered their prayers.
If your invisible self should appear within you as an essence, you will be able to recognise it by the fact that it casts a shadow; I did not know who I was until I saw my own body as a shadow.
A new age is dawning in which mankind will cast radiant shadows instead of dark blemishes onto the earth, and new stars are rising. There will be light and you, too, have your part to play.”
Hauberrisser stood up, hurriedly rolled up the sheets of paper and pushed them into the silver container. He had a distinct feeling that someone was urging him to act with all haste.
The sky already bore the first signs of the coming day; the air was leaden and made the withered grass outside look like a huge woollen carpet with the grey waterways appearing as lighter stripes.
He left the house and set off for Amsterdam, but after only a few steps he abandoned his plan of taking the document back to his old house in the Hooigracht, turned back and went to fetch a spade. He felt sure, now, that he was to bury it somewhere nearby.
But where?
In the graveyard, perhaps? He looked in that direction. No, not there.
His eye was caught by the blossoming apple tree. He went over to it, dug a hole and placed the container with the documents in it.
Then, as fast as he could, he hurried across the meadows and over the footbridges through the half-light towards the city. He had suddenly been gripped by a deep anxiety for his friends, as if there was some danger threatening them of which he had to warn them. In spite of the early hour, the air was hot and dry, like the atmosphere before a storm, and so still it was stifling. There was something uncanny aboutthe whole landscape, itlay before him like a huge corpse; the sun, a disc of dull yellow metal, hung in the sky behind a veil of thick haze; far away in the west, over the Zuiderzee, a bank of clouds blazed red, as if it were evening instead of morning.
Fearful, lest he should arrive too late, he took short cuts wherever possible, through the fields and along the empty roads, but the city did not seem to come any nearer.
As daylight grew the sky gradually began to change: against the pallid background, great whorls of whitish cloud twisted and turned, like gigantic worms whipped to and fro by invisible eddies, but always remaining above the same spot: a battle of aerial monsters sent down from space. High up in the air cones of cloud spun round like immense inverted goblets; the faces of wild beasts with grinning jaws fell upon each other and wound themselves into a seething tangle; below, on the ground, was the same lowering, deathly stillness as before.
As if borne along by the hurricane, a long black triangle appeared from the south and passed below the sun, blocking out its light so that for some minutes the land was plunged into night, before it settled on the ground in the distance: a swarm oflocusts blown over from the coasts of Africa.
All the time he had been hurrying towards the town Hauberrisser had not met a single living being. Now he caught sight of a strange, dark figure, larger than man-size, which seemed to emerge from a clump of gnarled willows at a bend in the road, head bent low and clothed in a long robe.
At that distance he could not make out its features, but the dress, posture and outline of the head with the long side locks immediately told him that it was an old Jew who was approaching.
The nearer the man came, the less real he seemed to become. He was at least seven feet tall and did not move his feet at all as he walked; there was something slack and hazy about his shape. Hauberrisser even thought he saw one or other of his limbs-the arm or the shoulder - separate from the body, to rejoin it immediately. A few minutes later the Jew had become transparent, as if his body were not a solid mass, but a sparse collection of black dots.
Immediately after that, the figure glided silently past him and Hauberrisser saw that it was a cloud of flying ants which, remarkably, had taken on the shape of a human body and maintained it, an incomprehensible freak of nature, like the swarm of bees he had seen so long ago in the convent garden in Amsterdam. Shaking his head in disbelief, he watched the strange phenomenon for some time as it sped faster and faster towards the south-west, towards the sea, until it disappeared like a puff of smoke on the horizon.
He did not know what to make of it. Was it some mysterious portent or merely a meaningless quirk of nature? It seemed unlikely to him that Chidher Green would choose to appear in such a fantastic form.
To get to Sephardi’s house as quickly as possible Hauberrisser, still brooding on what he had seen, cut across the West- erpark and was heading towards the Damrak when a wild commotion in the distance told him something must have happened to arouse the crowd. Soon the broad streets were so jam-packed with a seething mass of excited people that progress was impossible, he decided to see if he could get round by cutting through the narrow streets of the Jewish Ghetto.
Hordes of believers from the Salvation Army were milling about in the squares, praying out loud or bellowing the psalm, “Mere is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God”; in a frenzy of religious mania, both men and women were tearing the clothes from each others’ bodies; foaming at the mouth, they sank to their knees, directing a mixture of obscenities and hallelujahs at the heavens above; amid horrible fits of hysterical laughter, fanatical monks scourged their bare backs until the blood ran; here and there epileptics collapsed with shrill screams and rolled twitching over the cobblestones; others, followers of some insane creed, `humbled themselves before the Lord’ by squatting down in the midst of the mesmer ised crowd and hopping around like frogs as they croaked, “Jesu, Lover of my soul, Let me to thy bosom fly.”
Filled with horror and disgust, Hauberrisser wandered through a maze of twisting alleyways, constantly forced out of his way by the throng until he found he was boxed in and could move neither forwards nor back; he was opposite the skull-like house in the Jodenbreetstraat.
The blinds were down and the sign announcing the Hall of Riddles had vanished. In front of the building was a wooden scaffolding painted gold with a throne on top of it; on the throne, wearing an ermine cloak and a diadem so thickly encrusted with diamonds it looked like a halo, sat `Professor’ Arpad Zitter throwing copper coins with his head on to the ecstatic crowd; he was also making a speech which, because of the incessant hallelujahs, was scarcely audible, apart from the repeated bloodthirsty call to, “Cast the whores into the flames and bring me their ill-gotten gold.”
With great difficulty Hauberrisser managed to push his
way to a street corner. He was trying to work out where he was, when someone grasped his ann and pulled him into an entrance. He recognised Neill. They were immediately separated again by the milling throng; they shouted to each other over the heads of the crowd and realised that the same impulse had brought both of them into the city. “Come to Swammerdam’s”, shouted Neill.
It was impossible to stand still. Even the tiniest of courtyards and the narrowest of alleyways was overflowing with people; occasional gaps in the crowd allowed them to make some progress, but conversation was reduced to hurried scraps. Sometimes next to him, now in front, now behind, now separated by the crush, Pfeill told Hauberrisser about Zitter, “A monster, that man… terrible … the police have given up … can’t do anything about him. … Claims to be the Prophet Elijah; people believe him and worship him. … Terrible bloodbath in the circus the other day … he incited them to it. … Mob took over the circus …. and dragged in some ladies, elegant but demi-monde, of course … and then set the tigers on them. Megalomania … thinks he’s Nero. … First of all he married Madame Rukstinat and then, to get at her money, poisoned …”
A procession of robed figures carrying burning torches and wearing pointed hoods that came down over their faces, like the judges of the Vehmgericht, came between Pfeill and Hauberrisser, and their muffled, monotone chorale - “0 sanctissima, o pi—issima, dulcis virgo Maa—rii—aaa” - drowned his last words.
Neill reappeared, his face blackened by the smoke from the torches. “… and then he gambled away her money in poker clubs. After that he was a spiritualist medium forseveral months … incredibly popular … the whole of Amsterdam flocked to his seances.”
“What about Sephardi?” Hauberrisser shouted over to him.
The Green Face Page 22
