The Green Face Read Online Free PDF Page A

not closely enough.”
    “Do you think the Jews have a mission?”
    “Of course! The mission of overcoming themselves. All
people have the mission of overcoming themselves. Anyone
who is overcome by others has failed in his mission; anyone who
fails in his mission will be overcome by others. If one overcomes oneself, other people don’t notice; if, however, one
overcomes others, then the sky turns red and the man in the street
calls the phenomenon progress. The feeble-minded think the
flash is the important part of an explosion. - But you must
excuse me, I’d better stop now.” Neill looked at his watch,
“Firstly I must get home as quickly as possible, and secondly I
don’t think I could live up to all this clever talk in the long run.
So, your servant sir- as people say whenthey mean the opposite
- and if you feel like it, come and see me in Hilversum soon.”
    He put a coin on the table for the waiter, gave his friend a
friendly wave and left.
    Hauberrisser tried to get his thoughts back in order.
    `Am I still dreaming?’ he asked himself in astonishment.
`What was that? Is there a thread of remarkable coincidences
running through everyone’s life or am I the only person these
things happen to? Are events like rings which only link to form
a chain when they are not disturbed by people making plans and
then charging after them and tearing destiny to tatters, when if
they hadn’t, they could have woven themselves miraculously into a continuous chain?T

    Out of the habit of generations and from his own experience,
which had so far appeared to make sense, he put this appearance
of the same thought at the same time in his mind and that of his
friend down to the effect of thought transfer, but for once the
theory did not seem to correspond to the facts, something which
in the past he had merely accepted and then tried to forget as
quickly as possible. Pfeill’s memory of the face with the olivegreen glow and the black cloth over its forehead had a tangible
source: a portrait that was supposed to be on a wall in Leyden;
but what was the origin of his dream vision of a similar olivegreen face with a black cloth over its forehead which he had seen
just a short while ago in Chidher Green’s shop?
    ‘The reappearance of the odd name Chidher within such a
short time as one hour, first of all on a shop sign and then as
a legendary designation for the Wandering Jew is strange
enough’, Hauberrissermused to himself, `but there are probably
few people who have not had any number of such experiences.
How is it that names which one has never heard of before suddenly pour down upon one from alldirections? And why is itthat
one often finds that people in the street start to look more and
more like a friend one has not seen for years, until he himself
comes round the comer - not just like one’s memory, no, a
photographic likeness, so similar that one’s thoughts automatically turn to one’s old friend; where do such things come from?
Do people who look similar also have similar destinies? How
often have I found that to be true. Destiny seems to be inextricably bound up with one’s physique and physiognomy; there
seems to be a law of correspondence governing it, right down
to minute detail. A ball will roll, and so will a die, though in a
different way; why should not a creature with a thousandfold
more complicated existence not be yoked according to a law as
regular, if a thousandfold more complicated, to one pair of
shafts? I can well understand why astrology does not die out,
perhaps has even more believers than ever before, and that one
in ten have their horoscope cast; but people are on the wrong
path if they believe the stars they can see in the sky determine
the path of their destiny. That comes from other `planets’, from ones which orbit in their blood and around their hearts and have
different periods from the heavenly bodies, Jupiter, Saturn etc.
If the place, hour