The Discovery of Heaven

by Harry Mulisch

  She turned around and surveyed the room again. There was one more or less beautiful object to be seen—an overladen carved Chinese chest in dark wood, with handles and a copper lock; when she lifted the lid and looked at the discarded clothes and shoes, a strong camphor smell rose from it.

  "What's the system here?" she asked in the tone of someone about to set to work. "So I know how I'm to clear things up."

  "There is no system. The wild disorder of genius reigns."

  But that was not completely true. She went into the back room, where between the bulging bookcase and the disgustingly filthy basin, opposite the bed, a large number of sheets of squared paper had been pinned to the wallpaper: carefully arranged in numbered horizontal columns, and vertical ones with headings like: Masculine? Feminine? Nominative. Possible "accusatives." Orthographic variants. Consonant 2c before 24? Spread over the columns were characters, from the look of them not only those from the Phaistos disc, some groups boxed with red or green ink, with captions— everything precise and clear. On his rumpled pillow lay Machiavelli's Il principe; the view from the window was of a dark, tiled courtyard.

  Ada picked up some clothes and asked: "Have you got a washing machine?"

  "There's one upstairs that I have the use of, but I'm frightened of the bloody thing. The whole house shakes when it's on; sometimes it even goes walkabout through the kitchen."

  "Is there a vacuum cleaner and that kind of stuff? Buckets and mops and suchlike? Perhaps some soap as well?"

  "Bloody hell, Ada, are you actually thinking of cleaning up in here? Are you a real Hercules?"

  "Just you go into town for a few hours."

  "Okay, have your way then." He gave her a kiss on the forehead. "Provided you don't interfere with anything."

  14

  Repayment

  People returning from a journey carry the distances they have traveled with them like outspread wings—until they put the key in their front door. Then the wings fold up, and they are home again, as though in the center of an impassable steel ring on the horizon. The moment they close the door behind them, they can no longer imagine they have ever been away. Everything is as it was: the entrance hall, the staircase, the banisters. Max gathered up the newspapers and the mail and went slowly upstairs. He opened the windows, unpacked his case, put his washing in the laundry basket, and took a shower. Then he looked through the mail, sorted the newspapers into a chronological pile, with that from the day of his departure on top, and started leafing impatiently through them.

  Only in Vienna had he been able to glance at Western newspapers for a few days; apart from that, it had not even occurred to him that there must be some news. However, after going through the first week he had had enough: what had happened had happened, what had not happened had not happened. One thing he did know was that he would now imagine for years that people who had died during those weeks were still alive.

  He put the telephone on his lap and started dialing Onno's number, but when he got to the fourth digit he hesitated. Suddenly he had forgotten it. He put the receiver down and stared into space: there was a choice between three or four numbers. He'd dialed it hundreds of times, but there was nothing for it but to look it up, feeling guilty as he did so. Obviously he was more tired than he thought.

  "Quist speaking."

  "Onno, it's Max."

  "Max! How long have you been back?"

  "I've just gotten in from Budapest."

  The pause between his saying "Max" and Onno's crying "Max," was a fraction longer than he had expected. There was a minimal hesitation: something was wrong.

  "What are you going to do? Do you want to go to bed?"

  "What are you talking about? I took the plane. Come on over."

  When Onno sat down in the green chesterfield armchair half an hour later, there was again something hesitant in his manner; but Max did not think he should bring it up, like some anxious mother whom nothing escaped. As he reported on his journey, he felt as though he were talking about a dream. That same morning he had walked from his hotel on Lenin Kórüt to the imposing Parliament building, to take a last look at the Danube, with the old fortified castle hill on the other side with its palaces and churches and citadels—all that awesome Europa, which he had also seen in Vienna and particularly in Prague, and which was just as strange and at the same time familiar as the Austrian accent he had heard in all those countries. While he told Onno about his days in Berlin and in the Polish towns, he could scarcely imagine that he had really been there. Birkenau appeared before him, motionless in the mist. He was about to tell Onno about his walk around the camp, which had taken hours, but he fell silent.

  "You're in a gloomy mood, Max."

  Max nodded and looked at his nails. "Anyway, you were right that I had to go. It's just that it hasn't strengthened my links with Holland."

  "Could you live over there?"

  "Nonsense. I was born here, Dutch is my language, I grew up here and my friends are here—and we mustn't forget my girlfriends. Anyway, that wouldn't be the main problem, certainly not in Vienna or Budapest. As far as that's concerned, there's no shortage."

  "Okay, okay," said Onno. "Spare me that."

  "By the way, in Vienna I found another Delius in the phonebook."

  "And you didn't telephone."

  "That's right."

  Onno nodded. He felt uncomfortable, and after a short silence he asked about Max's impressions of the situation behind the Iron Curtain.

  "What do you mean?"

  "What do you mean 'What do you mean?' "

  "What do you mean what do you mean what do you mean? What do you want me to say? Big Soviet stars on the buildings, statues of Lenin, portraits of all kinds of local patriarchs, banners with slogans that a polyglot like you can read, but I can't. Everything shabby and grubby, a ghastly arrogant bureaucratic fuss everywhere, like here at the town hall or the post office or the job center."

  "Dictatorship is the natural element of bureaucracy," said Onno in agreement. "In a dictatorship everyone's a bureaucrat."

  "In Prague no one had heard of Kafka—but at the same time everyone is much friendlier than here. A lot of good things are being suppressed, I think, but probably a lot of bad things too."

  "So things should stay as they are?"

  "You mustn't ask me that kind thing. In any case fascism doesn't stand a chance there, if you ask me, and that's the main thing. The rest is a luxury."

  "Stalinism too?"

  "What are you getting at, Onno? The great villains were Hitler and Mussolini, and they were gotten rid of by Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin. That's the way I see it."

  "That's what I'm frightened of."

  "Okay," said Max. "I'm quite aware of what you're driving at, but let me test you out. Suppose God calls you before his throne and says, 'My son, I have decided that the world is going to be ruled for all eternity in the spirit of either Hitler or Stalin. You must decide which of the two it is to be—with the proviso that if you are unwilling to choose between those two villains, or if you refuse to take part in such immoral games, it will be Hitler.' What will you say then?"

  "Then I suppose you'll say Stalin," said Onno.

  "Without a moment's hesitation."

  "And why won't you hesitate?"

  "Because Stalin represents the inhumanity of rationalism, and Hitler that of irrationalism—and because by my very nature I'm on the side of rationalism. Hitler was an irresponsible madman, but Stalin calculated everything, so that he himself was responsible."

  "Do you really think that? What a child you are. No wonder all the women go for you. What's the difference for their victims, by the way? Is it nicer dying in the service of reason?"

  "No, it makes no difference for the individual. Everyone dies their own unique death."

  Onno stared at him for a moment. "Shall I tell you something? You've not been in the Eastern bloc at all. You've been only in Hitler's pan-German Reich, and maybe also in Franz Joseph's dual mon
archy."

  Max smiled. "Let's say that I represent the continuity of history, and let's suppose that you have given no answer to God's question. Stalinism will disappear and the world will be governed forever in the spirit of Hitler. The end of civilization looms. A gulf opens between us."

  "Perhaps there's a third possibility."

  "God didn't say anything about that."

  Onno nodded. "Perhaps it would be more sensible to stop this conversation."

  There was something in his tone that made Max also think it would be better. "Okay, but I hope you'll still have a Cuba libre." He got up to pour him a drink. "Tell me, what have you been up to?"

  Onno opened his legs and crossed them again. "I've been setting my indelible stamp on domestic politics. We're in the process of designing a strategy to obtain recognition of the GDR at the party conference. That will please you."

  "Onno .. . I'm not sure if you understand me properly. Do you ever read anything except the newspaper these days?"

  "Yes, I know how you feel about it. It's not about the GDR but about the Netherlands."

  "Why don't you do something useless, as befits a gentleman."

  Onno nodded. "We shall see which of us turns out to be more of a gentleman." After a short silence, he added, "I'm glad you're back, so that besides the socially relevant drivel of my comrades in the labor movement I can also enjoy your shameful views." He took hold of his glass of rum-and-Coke and began twisting uncomfortably in his chair. "But I have a dreadful confession to make." When he saw that Max was alarmed, and expected something really awful, he said, "Something very nice has happened between Ada and me."

  In the days when chemistry was still an adventurous science, it sometimes happened that adding one liquid to another led to a completely incomprehensible fizzing, change of color, and rise in temperature: this was how Onno's news entered Max's mind. It was as though he saw Ada's figure appearing physically, moving diagonally from him to Onno, like a chess piece, the black queen.

  "What a surprise, Onno. Since when?"

  "A couple of weeks."

  Max couldn't make head or tail of it. He was happy for Onno, but still couldn't imagine the two of them together, in bed, and he didn't want to imagine them, but at the same time he saw her naked body before him as he looked at Onno.

  "Congratulations. You couldn't have done better."

  "Of course I should have asked you for her hand, but you weren't there."

  "No. You'd sent me away."

  "Hold on, you don't think—"

  "Of course not."

  Max laughed. He wanted to ask how and where they had met, but it was no concern of his. It was no longer his business. If Onno didn't tell him of his own accord, he didn't want to know. Only now did it sink in that it was all finally over between him and Ada—whereas it had been over for a long time. Neither of them had gotten in touch, but the question whether he had let something slip through his fingers must no longer be asked; if that was the case, then it was his own fault, and in any case it was irrevocable.

  Onno put his glass down, sank to his knees and folded his hands. "Do I have your blessing?"

  "Isn't it a primary requirement of courtesy among civilized people that you should offer your woman to your friends?"

  Onno hoisted himself back into his chair. "That's true. Thank you very much. Consider it a repayment for Helga."

  Within a few weeks—the summer was coming to an end—Max had actually forgotten that the situation had ever been any different. The first time he saw Ada again was after a performance of the Concertgebouw Orchestra. She had gotten her job, and the season was opening with Bruckner's Seventh. He sat next to Onno in the full auditorium on his best behavior and surveyed the colossal organ, which looked like the Torah shrine in an Oriental synagogue. The adagio with its merciless cello passage churned him up. He never went to concerts, it affected him too deeply, and now it was even more intense than usual—not only, because Ada was playing, but particularly because since his journey he had become more vulnerable, like someone after an operation.

  Meanwhile Onno tried to pass the time by reading the program notes: the little Austrian had incorporated his emotion at Wagner's death in the adagio—and Onno thought: adagio, Ada-Gio, Giove, Iuppiter, Zeus, Ada, and the Supreme God. There she was on the platform, on the right, subject to the will of the conductor.

  In order to get closer to music, he had studied a textbook on harmony— during meetings at the Amsterdam party headquarters, in pubs, and in back rooms in hotels in the woods; no longer did anyone have to explain to him what "C sharp minor" meant, but that had not helped. When another conspirator asked him why he was not listening, he had said without looking up from the book, "I don't read with my ears,"—whereupon the stern questioner was embarrassingly downgraded in the hierarchy by the laughter of the others, perhaps for the rest of his political career. Onno had, however, discovered that he had perfect pitch.

  After the concert they went to a pub behind the Concertgebouw furnished with secondhand items, as crowded as a tram in the rush hour: there were grubby local artists, divorcées, students, concert-goers, orchestral musicians in tails and evening dresses. When Ada came in and fought her way over to them, Max and she had greeted each other cheerfully, with a sort of tense relaxation, kisses on the cheek, as though things had never been any different, and without alluding to the change, even with a glance.

  "Great to see you again! Had a good trip?"

  "Very unusual."

  "What did you think of this evening?"

  "Marvelous. Congratulations on getting the job."

  "Marijke!" she called to a colleague. "Do you want a half of Pils too?"

  He scarcely recognized her. She talked and laughed, buttonholed other people, introduced them, disappeared into the throng with them, appeared again, hung on Onno's arm, made dates, waved at people leaving, and seemed perfectly happy. What he did not know was that he had become a different person for her too, since Onno had told her about him.

  "Are you coming with us?" asked Onno, when they had paid their bill.

  "I'll stick around for a bit," he said, with a glance in the direction of Marijke. "Safe home."

  Just as in the past Onno had never seen Ada without Max, Max never met her again without Onno—but they did not see each other that often. More and more of Onno's time was taken up with the party, particularly in the evenings; in general, politics tended to ruin marriages and relationships— although there were some people who went into politics precisely so as not to have to stay at home—but Ada too had her rehearsals and performances. Max himself now had to go to Dwingeloo every week.

  Increasingly often, he woke up in the mornings with a dull sense of unease, which was new to him. In fact it began before he was properly awake, while he was still half asleep: a dark pessimism, particularly about his work. Doubts about the soundness of his research program, telling arguments that he could no longer remember when he had opened his eyes; but the gloom remained hanging there like the stench after a fire. Whereas he used to jump out of bed after a few seconds to turn on the shower, now he lay there for minutes on end, wondering what was wrong. He thought of his work, but there was nothing wrong with it—there was something wrong with him. In the course of the morning the gloom lifted, but when he had to go to the east of the country and sat in his car for an hour and a half, the depression sometimes returned.

  It was not a real depression, requiring expert advice and pills, because he suspected that it had a demonstrable cause: his journey. What had been dominant in his memory for the first few weeks—baroque palaces and cathedrals on hills, statues of saints on Prague bridges, the Vienna Hofburg, gypsy music in the evenings in art nouveau Budapest hotels, or in shabby cafes with names like Fixmatros—had increasingly given way to the immobile expanse of Gehenna at the center of its satanic triangle. That fathomless, monstrous thing had penetrated further into him than he had thought— perhaps he should not have listened to Onno. Perhaps h
e needed a vacation to recover from his vacation. He considered ten days in the Canary Islands—it would do him good—but he knew that he wouldn't call his travel agent to fix it up.

  Ada soon moved in with Onno. The first-floor neighbors had left, and he had rented their floor as well, so he suddenly had a real house, with its own kitchen and a front door. The basement remained his study, Ada was given the new front room, the back room became their bedroom, and a purpose would be found for the little side room.

  "That's where our child will go!" Onno had exclaimed. "The dreadful brat that will keep me awake with its disgusting howling, so I shall unfortunately be obliged to smother it under a pillow."

  However, he had no wish for a child, and neither had Ada. After she had spent a few weeks scrubbing, polishing, emulsioning, and painting, watched approvingly by Onno, she simply wanted to get the moving van over from Leiden, but that was too much for Onno. He felt that they should talk to her parents first. Not that it would make any difference, but she was after all their only child, and it wasn't right for him simply to whisk her off without a word. He had never even met them!