Free The Green Face by Gustav Meyrink Page A

gradually became the talk
of the town and eventually drew me to the attention of the entomological society which, at that time, consisted of a knockkneed barber, a furrier, three retired engine drivers and a technician from the Science Museum who, however, could not come
on collecting expeditions because his wife would not let him.
They were all frail old gentlemen, some of whom collected
bugs, others butterflies, and the society had a silk flag with the
words ‘Osiris: Society for Biological Research’ embroidered
on it. In spite of my young years I was accepted as a member.
I still have in my possession the letter inviting me to join which
ends, `Yours biologically’.
    I soon realised why they were so keen to have me in the club.
All the venerable members were either half blind, and therefore incapable of spotting a moth hidden in the cracks of tree bark,
or their varicose veins made trudging through the inevitable
sand-dunes to look for insects a painful process. Others found
that whenever they swooped with their net on a lively peacock
butterfly they were interrupted by a staccato coughing fit, which
naturally allowed their prey to escape.

    I suffered from none of these infirmities and walking a few
miles to find a caterpillar on a leaf was no problem for me; no
wonder, then, that the cunning old men had the idea of using
myself and a schoolfriend of mine as tracker-dogs. There was
only one who was more than a match for me at finding insects,
and that was the aforementioned Jan Swammerdam, who must
have been sixty-five, ifhe was a day. He only needed to turn over
a stone and there would be a larva or something equally welcome. There was a rumour that he had earned this entomological
clairvoyance by having lived a blameless life - you know how
highly virtue is regarded in Holland!
    I never saw him other than in his black frock coat with the
circular mark of his butterfly net, which he stuffed up inside his
jacket, between his shoulder blades, and the end of the green
handle sticking out between his coat-tails.
    He never wore a shirt collar, tying instead the edge he had cut
off an old linen-backed map round his neck, and I learnt the
reason once when I went to visit him in the attic where he lived.
‘I can’t get in’, he explained to me, pointing to the wardrobe
where he kept his clothes, `Hippocampa Milhauseri’ - a very
rare caterpillar -‘has pupated right next to the hinge and it will
be three years before it emerges.’
    On our excursions we all used the railway; all, that is, with
the exception of Swammerdam, who went on foot because he
was too poor to be able to afford the ticket; and so that he did not
wear out the soles of his shoes with all that walking, he used to
smear a secret rubber solution on them and, in the course of time,
it hardened into a layer a couple of inches thick. I can still see
it today.
    He made his living by selling the unusual hybrid butterflies
which he occasionally managed to breed, but the amount he
made was not enough to keep his wife, who patiently shared his poverty and bore his quirks with an understanding smile, from
falling into a physical decline from which she eventually died.
After that Swammerdam neglected the financial side of his
existence entirely and devoted his life to the goal of discovering
a certain green dung beetle which, some scientists claim, insists
on living exactly fourteen and a half inches under the ground,
but only in places where the surface is covered in sheep dung.

    My schoolfriend and I were extremely dubious about this
rumoured beetle, but that did not stop us, young scoundrels that
we were, from carrying sheep’s droppings around with us and
occasionally scattering some over a particularly hard part of the
track and hiding, so we could giggle at the sight of Swammerdam digging away like a frantic mole.
    One day, however, a miracle occurred that shook us to the
core. We were out on one of our