The Discovery of Heaven

by Harry Mulisch

  "Everything is about to change," Onno suddenly said solemnly. "The child will change from an embryo into a human being, Ada from a daughter into a mother, you from a mother into a grandmother, and I from a son into a father." He looked at Max. "You're the only one who won't change. Just like you."

  Max nodded. He had an impulse to pray that he would remain as unchangeable as a stone.

  "Every thirtieth of May from now on," said Sophia after a while "we will celebrate a birthday. Wait a moment, that means that it will be a Gemini."

  "A Gemini!" repeated Onno with horror, and looked at her in disbelief. "You can't be serious."

  "What do you mean? The end of May is Gemini, isn't it?"

  "The end of May is Gemini..." repeated Onno again, with sarcastic emphasis. "You're not going to tell me that you believe in that nonsense? You're like my mother; she combines astrology with Christianity, and you obviously combine it with humanism. Astrology as an overarching world religion. But okay, go ahead, it's all excused because of its ancient roots. Max's profession wouldn't even exist without astrology."

  "Our ancestors, the astrologers." Max nodded. Gemini, he thought—and at the same moment he remembered Eng and Chang, but he kept that to himself. Imagine if Siamese twins were really born upstairs—or nonidentical twins. In a sense one would be Onno's child and the other his own; was such a thing possible?

  "And you," Onno asked Sophia, still with a sardonic tone in his voice. "What 'are' you?"

  "Virgo."

  "That's what I like to hear, Mother. That makes a totally respectable impression on me."

  Whenever Onno said "Mother" to Sophia, Max felt sick, as though that made him something like Onno's "father."

  "I don't believe in it at all," said Sophia, and pointed to the astrology column in the magazine on her lap. "I just happened to see it here."

  A step at a time an emaciated, aristocratic-looking gentleman in his fifties came in; the plastic tube hanging from his nose was attached to an upturned bottle on a tall stand on wheels that he pushed along beside him like a bishop pushing his crosier. Although it was as though his body were filled only with a rarefied gas, he didn't give the impression that he intended to die—rather, that he had something better to do and that he was mainly annoyed by this stupid delay in the hospital; that probably seemed to him something more for the bourgeoisie. His dark-blue dressing gown, obviously silk, was edged with white braid; a white handkerchief protruded from the breast pocket. Without deigning to look at anyone, he put on the television and sat down at the table next to theirs. A woman in a harsh pink bathrobe and a huge plaster over one ear, like Van Gogh, said that there was nothing on at this hour. As though he had received a compliment, the gentleman made a slight bow, calmly lit a pipe, which contrasted strangely with his catheter, crossed his legs, and looked expectantly at the screen. Heraldic coats-of-arms had been embroidered in gold thread on his blood-red slippers.

  Max and Sophia, who were sitting with their backs to the set, were talking about the war, about the improvised situation in those days in the hospital in Delft.

  But then Onno suddenly said: "Be quiet for a moment."

  Charles de Gaulle had appeared in a special broadcast. The awkward-looking general, lumbered with his colossal body, which was somewhat like Onno's, looked straight into the camera and addressed the French people. Despite the bloody events of the last few weeks, he said, he would not resign as president of the republic; he declared the Assemblee Nationale dissolved and announced general elections; if the riots continued, then very forceful measures would be taken. It was a live broadcast without subtitles; a soft woman's voice gave a simultaneous translation—but in Dutch it was no longer the same: France speaking to France, in French. It was as though that language were the only real presence, on the one hand crystalized as the general, on the other the French people. Perhaps, thought Onno, the fact that the speaker in all his monumentality at the same time had something of a small boy about him, who was allowed to put his father's suit on for a short while—the suit of the King of France—as though under the table little Charles was still wearing his short trousers, with bare knees covered in scabs from healing wounds.

  "Right!" said the man at the table next to theirs, and got up.

  The speech had lasted no longer than five minutes.

  Onno gave Max and Sophia a perplexed look. "Shall I tell you something? It's over. At this moment the whole of right-wing France is taking to the streets. The party's over."

  Max had not been following it; he was less able to concentrate on politics at this moment than ever, and he listened without interest to Onno, who said that in his view a new age had dawned with those few sentences, because by nature of his profession he had an infallible instinct for that kind of thing; the 1960s were over, imagination had been ousted from power, and from today on the world was going to be a less enjoyable place. But they themselves had the same kind of memory as the previous generation had of the 1920s— and it was doubtful whether the next generation would have such a thing.

  "Speaking of the next generation .. ." said Sophia "Do you remember why you're here? You're going to be a father."

  With a jerk, Onno returned from world politics to the lounge. He looked at his watch. "Let's go. We can wait upstairs too."

  A huge iron service elevator, obviously not intended for visitors but for stretchers and coffins, took them slowly to the second floor. In a narrow space next to the operating room a varnished wooden bench had been screwed into the wall; on the opposite wall hung a poster with a sunny Greek coast: deep blue bays between foam-edged rocks, behind which Ada was now being operated on.

  They sat awkwardly next to each other, Sophia in the middle, her carryall at her feet.

  "What is it that you're lugging with you everywhere?" asked Onno.

  Without saying anything, she opened the zipper and with one hand took out a tiny white gown and a pair of tiny socks.

  "In the incubator it won't be necessary for the time being, but if everything goes okay, I'll put the things in Ada's bedside cupboard shortly. That's what she would have done herself."

  "You're fantastic," said Onno, opening the gown between his fingers and looking at it like a biologist at a newly discovered species of animal. "Fancy your thinking of that.. ."

  The sight of the microscopic wardrobe reminded Max of the shadow that in B-movies was cast by the approaching villain, of whom only the feet, wearing shiny shoes, were shown.

  "Well, well—les boys!"

  In the doorway stood the journalist who just over a year ago had been pulled across the table in the pub by Onno for attacking his friend.

  "I don't believe this!" said Onno. "What are you doing here?"

  "I'm doing my job. I've got an article to write on what's going on here."

  "How do you know what's going on here?"

  The journalist shrugged his shoulders. "Where does a newspaper get its information from?"

  "For God's sake, beat it. Publicity is something I can do without. Of course you were called up by some male nurse anxious to make a few guilders on the side."

  "There's no point in asking me, Onno. I'd rather be sitting in the pub too."

  "I'm not Onno to you."

  "Okay, Dr. Quist, let's keep calm. I can understand that you're a bit overwrought. What's going on inside you at the moment?"

  "The uncontrollable desire to smash your face for hour after hour! And if you don't clear off this minute I'm going to do just that."

  When Onno made to get up, with the smock still in his hands, the journalist shrugged his shoulders.

  "Okay, I'll do it without you," he said, turned on his heel, and disappeared.

  Onno threw the smock furiously into the carryall. "Those sensation-seeking scum . .."

  "Don't get excited," said Max. "The fellow has already been sufficiently punished by being who he is."

  Suddenly Sophia put her hand on both their arms. "Quiet a moment. . ."

  There wa
s the scarcely audible sound of a child crying on the other side of the wall.

  A little later a nurse put her head around the door and said with a smile: "The stork has been here! An angelic little boy! Mother and child are doing fine!"

  The fact that it was a boy was hidden by a diaper—but establishing the sex meant little. They stood speechless in front of the incubator while doctors, assistants, and nursing staff looked over their shoulders. No one had ever seen such a baby. Newborn infants tended to look like boxers at the end of the final round: swollen, eyes puffed and closed, reeling from the violence they had been through—but what was lying there in the sealed glass space was really like a precious museum piece in a display case, more like a putto, such as could be seen in Italian Renaissance paintings: all that was missing were the wings.

  It was not balding and wrinkled in the way some infants immediately prefigured their old age, but had strong black hair with a deep mahogany glow, which covered its whole scalp as though it had just come from the hairdresser's; its skin was firm and seemed bathed in the light of the full moon. Nor did it have the bloated monstrousness that could be found beautiful only when seen through the eyes of maternal and paternal instinct; its cheeks were full, and in the thighs and at the wrists there were slight folds of skin, which in an adult would indicate obesity. But there was no trace of endearing chubbiness; everything was perfect, like a work of art worthy of the name. At the same time this caused it to radiate a certain aloofness, as though it did not need anyone. The small nipples, the slim fingers and toes, looked as if they had been engraved with a fine etching needle; although it had been born a month early, not only the ears but the nose and mouth too had already developed into more or less their final shape.

  However, most striking of all were the eyes. They were wide open, and the space between the dark lashes was completely filled with lapis lazuli, a color blue that none of them had seen before in a human being. It reminded Max of the color of the Mediterranean—but only at a particular moment, when after driving for days through Belgium and France he caught the first glimpse of it, between the scorching hills near Saint-Raphael: Thalassa! The incredible blue of that moment; he now saw it in two places in that pale, strange face. His fear of an immediately evident likeness had immediately disappeared—he could obviously relax for the first few years. He had looked immediately at the nose and the thumbs, but there was nothing of himself to be recognized in them, either. There was no discernible likeness to Onno, either, and from Ada it had only the black hair and the black, sharply etched eyebrows and eyelashes, which made the blue of its eyes even deeper.

  "What a beautiful child," said Sophia. "That's going to cause him problems in the future." Suddenly she turned around and asked the faces behind her, "How is my daughter?"

  "She's still in there. Everything is going according to plan, but it will be a little while yet."

  Onno and Max were not thinking of Ada.

  "What's his name?" asked Max.

  Onno looked at him proudly. "You must know the story of the man who said to a colleague of yours that he understood how astronomers could determine every possible property of the stars with their instruments—but how had they discovered their names?"

  "That is indeed our most brilliant achievement." Max nodded.

  "Quinten," said Onno.

  De Profundis

  PART THREE

  THE BEGINNING OF THE END

  Second Intermezzo

  —Congratulations! That must have been a satisfying moment for you. So there he was, our envoy—after years of hard work.

  —Only for a moment, though. After that, it was like it always is: once you've achieved what you wanted to achieve, it's no longer what you wanted to achieve, but simply what you've achieved. You've come to take it for granted. What you win you lose, all things considered. What's more, when you see the havoc you've had to wreak to achieve it, it takes away the satisfaction. But anyway, I'm a professional, an old hand. Only the end matters.

  —I take it you're thinking of the friendship between those two. But that tree that blew over. . . was that coincidence, or were you behind that, too?

  —I was behind that, too. There were two trees, by the way.

  —What was the point of that? It was a very risky course of action, wasn't it? Suppose she hadn't survived, or had had a miscarriage. I know you don't care for this kind of question, but perhaps you'd like to answer anyway.

  —If I couldn't make trees blow over exactly as I want, I wouldn't make any trees blow over. We know the position and force of every molecule in the air and, moreover, the elasticity of every point in the tree and its roots— it would gratify Laplace if he could see our aerodynamics division handling that kind of thing.

  —Laplace? I expect he's one of those French intellectuals with a dirty scarf around his neck and a shawl over his shoulders.

  —I don't know if they did that in his day. At any rate, a great man, a colleague of Max Delius's. But also an incorrigible optimist. A demon who knew all the world's preconditions at a given moment, he claimed—would not only be able to reconstruct the past precisely, but also work out the future with certainty.

  —Definitely someone from the eighteenth century. Even we can't do that.

  —We do very well at the level of trees being blown over.

  —Tell me, why did that poor child have to have such a dreadful accident?

  —Because otherwise the mission couldn't have been accomplished. In everything I did, I had only one thing in mind: the return of the dictate.

  —All right, I can understand your not wanting to answer. Obviously it's a matter of your professional honor, and I respect that. I expect it will be clear to me in retrospect.

  —To you, yes. In the past things were easier for us.

  —What do you mean?

  —When we simply used to address people directly as the need arose.

  —But we stopped doing that after the creatures got the idea that it was not our voice they were hearing but their own inner voice. Of course, we couldn't stand for that kind of pickpocketing. It's undeniable that technology is increasingly taking the place of theology on earth, but psychology shouldn't get any big ideas on that score.

  —It's still a shame it happened like that. The fact is that heaven and earth are only linked by means of the word—the present operation has precisely made that clear yet again.

  —Exactly. This operation was the period we put after that conversation.

  —It would be nice if people were scared to death when they hear what has happened—namely, that the testimony has been returned—and the shock brought them to their senses.

  —No one will ever know. And anyway: senses? Don't make me laugh. Did you really think, that brood would give up anything at all? Come now. What they once have, they want to keep. That wretch Lucifer knows exactly what he's doing. With each new invention, people have stolen a piece of our omnipotence and in so doing have demonized their own reality step by step. Under the terms of the contract he has turned them into vampires, who are sucking us dry under his patronage. With their rockets they are already traveling faster than the wind, sound even, and one day they will approach the speed of light; with their television they are in fact already virtually omnipresent—they can see in the dark, they can look, into the insides of a human being without opening him up; with their computers they have a complete operating and monitoring system, in which they're already vying with your department; they can observe elementary particles, and they already know what happened ten to the minus forty-third seconds after our explosion of light. Beyond that limit their theories have failed up to now; for the time being all their calculations result in infinity, and let's hope that they never realize the deeper meaning of that; but by now I'm not sure of anything anymore.

  —I've something to tell you about that in a moment.

  —If they want, they can even destroy the earth. Excuse my saying so, but that power really was our prerogative. Meanwhil
e they're busy destroying the planet without meaning to, and to be on the safe side, they're already walking on the moon as a jumping-off point for the rest of the universe. In the foreseeable future they will have mastered our absolute privilege: the creation of life, as a pendant to its wholesale extermination. A virus to begin with, then a microbe, then a worm, Caenorhabditis elegans probably, and one day they will produce people in their own image—and these days that's often as vacuous as a doll: instead of an expression, they have things, like cars. Of necessity they will become peoplelike things. Human knowledge doubles every twelve years—now, in their 1985, they know and can do twice as much as in their 1973, and as omnipotence draws closer, literally everything becomes possible down there. Knowledge itself is power—who do you think thought up that aphorism? That damn Francis Bacon again, of course. Knowledge is power sure enough, and not just over nature, but over people, and us too. The earth has changed once and for all into his doomed House of Solomon and people no longer need us—we've become fairy stories to them, curiosities, literature . . . Do you remember that string of questions that the Chief once fired at Job—whether he could raise his voice to the clouds, and whether he could shut out the sea with doors, and heaven knows what else? No, he could not, only the Chief could do that, and now just look at everything our Job can do. There are some things that are brand-new even to our Chief. Lucifer has won, and there's no use in beating around the bush any longer. Through his devilish move with the treacherous viscount, he has proved the stronger—there's no getting away from it. Less than five years after Bacon's death, Galileo and Descartes wrote their fundamental works, the Dialogo and the Discours de la methode, the beginning of the modern age, which set us off along the fateful road to Auschwitz and Hiroshima and the decoding of DNA. Old Goethe had foreseen that course of events, although he gave it a worthily positive twist: he has his hundred-year-old Faust end up as a technocrat who subdues the sea with dikes and canals—that is, he turns nature into a human creation.