The Discovery of Heaven

by Harry Mulisch

  But when Quinten appeared in the doorway, on tiptoe, his hands still above his head on the door handle, something changed in the stiff professor, too. When he was sitting reading in his rocking chair—he was always reading—he put the book away, folded his pale hands on his lap, and looked at the approaching child. Unlike the Spiers' apartment, where everything was furnished with precious antiques, the room here had the character of outgrown student quarters, up to and including the worn Persian carpets, the old desk, the worn brown leather armchairs, and even a half-disintegrated hockey stick in an umbrella stand. Although it was a second house, the long wall opposite the windows was covered with bookcases up to the ceiling. Here and there were framed architectural drawings, most of them a little lopsided, but Quinten's first port of call was always a large, framed etching, which was on the floor against the bookshelf.

  Once Themaat had knelt down beside him and told him that it was an obelisk:

  "Say it after me: obelisk." And when Quinten said nothing: "You must regard it as a petrified sunbeam. It's in Rome, near the Lateran, that palace here on the right, the place where the popes resided in the Middle Ages. Can you see all those signs that have been carved in the shaft? That means that they are actually chiseled into light. Can you see all those birds? They're Egyptian hieroglyphics. I think your father can read those—at least he could before he started wasting his time with politics. You take after your father, Q. The emperor Augustus had wanted to take that monster to Rome, but an unfavorable augury prevented him from doing so. Three hundred years later the emperor Constantine didn't bother about that; he was the man who introduced Christianity. Look, there's almost no pavement. That print was made in the eighteenth century; today it's a very busy place, with hundreds of scooters and honking cars. In that building behind is the former private chapel of the pope, the Sancta Sanctorum, and also the Scala Santa, the holy staircase of Pontius Pilate's palace in Jerusalem, up which Jesus Christ walked. At least so it's said. There are still bloodstains on the steps. You're only allowed to climb it on your knees."

  "What on earth are you saying to that little mite?" asked Elsbeth, looking up from her magazine. "You must be out of your mind."

  "A person is never too young to learn."

  Then Quinten was off again. Via a door next to the staircase, he went to the cellar, which extended on either side of a low passageway under the whole castle. There was suddenly an even deeper silence than above—perhaps because it was emphasized by the echoing sound of drips, which, somewhere far off, at long intervals, fell into a puddle.

  The musty passageway was almost completely dark; scarcely any light penetrated into the compartments through the small, high windows, almost black with dirt. Some of them were still half full of coal, which was no longer used; others were packed with hundreds of empty bottles, discarded furniture and gardening equipment, broken carriages, bicycles without wheels. Washrooms, rinsing rooms, pantries, larders—everything full of the debris of decades. The great kitchen, where for centuries staff had bustled about, until they dragged themselves exhausted up the back stairs to the attic late at night, and lay desolately in the deep gloom.

  Cracked draining boards, disconnected water pipes, and tiles that had been prised up. The kitchen dumbwaiter to the dining room, where Mr. Spier's living room now was, had plunged to the bottom of the shaft with its ropes broken.

  Quinten crept into it, wrapped his hands around his knees, and stared into the darkness.

  38

  The Grave

  A few weeks before Quinten's third birthday, which in 1971 fell at Whitsun, there came a proud moment for Onno. At the insistence of Helga he had found time to pay a visit to Drenthe—in an official car, although that was not entirely proper; he had picked up Helga from her home. There was no question of them living together; neither he nor she wanted that. He had resumed his visits to the Unicorn, although now without plastic bags full of laundry, and it sometimes seemed to him that his episode with Ada came from a novel he had once read, in which Quinten was also a character.

  The high point of his friendship with Max also belonged to the vanished 1960s; it too was bathed in the melancholy light of memory. He had the beginnings of a middle-age spread and wore a dark-blue suit, but with dandruff on his collar and mostly with a tail of his shirt hanging out of his trousers, so that a segment of his white belly was visible. He always had an inappropriate tie and socks that were too short—all those disasters that Max called his "Social-Democrat lack of style."

  They were approaching forty now, but they no longer celebrated their joint conception on the day of the Reichstag fire, because that was also the day of Ada's accident and her father's death. Helga sometimes accompanied Onno to official receptions or dinners, although she usually did not feel like it, so he had to pester her first. But that endeared her to him; it proved that she did not care about the dubious glamour of his position but about him.

  Sophia's mother was also at Groot Rechteren. Onno had greeted Quinten by putting his hand on his crown, raising his eyes heavenward, and saying, "A wise son gladdens his father's heart." Precisely because he in fact no longer thought of Quinten when there was no reason, he did not really know what sort of tone to take with him. During lunch in the kitchen— fried eggs with ham, milk, fruit, everything local—Max sat like a paterfamilias opposite Sophia at the short end of the table; on his right sat old Mrs. Haken and Onno, on his left Helga with Quinten. The driver had also been invited, but he preferred to stay on the forecourt and eat the sandwiches he had brought.

  "A Christian Democrat who knows his place," Onno had said. "The real mechanisms of oppression are not outside human beings but in them—and that's just as well. Recently far too many of them have disappeared, and we shall pay for it yet."

  "Well, well," said Max. "Strong language for a progressive politician."

  "External behavior without inner behavior is not possible. That cannot be replaced by the police—you'd need two policemen per individual for that: one for the day and one for the night. But who would guard the police, then?"

  "What would you say to God?" asked Max, laughing. And then he said to Helga, "Is your companion really becoming such a reactionary?"

  Before she could answer, Onno said: "It's all far more hopeless than you lot think. But please don't let's talk about it, because then I'd prefer to go."

  Suddenly Max heard a tone in his voice that he didn't recognize.

  "Are you leaving already?" asked Mrs. Haken. "You've only just come."

  "No, Granny. I'm staying for a little while."

  Helga inquired about Max's work. He knew that she did this out of politeness; he still had the same stiff relationship with her. Obviously she would never forgive him for the role that he had played in her life—first when without realizing it he had broken up her relationship with Onno, and then when he had restored it, again without realizing it. When he had first heard that they were back together again, thanks to the landing on the moon, he had a momentary feeling that nothing had changed; but he only had to look at Quinten and Sophia to see that this was not the case.

  Westerbork, he said, was operating better than expected; all his colleagues throughout the world envied him the research he was able to do. In reply to a question from Onno, he said that after all kinds of violent evictions and conflicts with the police, the last Ambonese family had gone; there were scarcely any reminders left of the Schattenberg estate, and hence of the transit camp at Westerbork. In order to prevent their return—that is, the return of the Moluccans—all the huts had been demolished; the barrier had also gone. Against his will, by the way, but the survivors wanted it, so what else could he do? Even the rails had been removed; only a rotten buffer was still there. He had, however, thought of something for the last Day of Commemoration, on the eve of the fourth of May; a couple of hundred visitors always came then. He had devised a small computer program that caused all twelve mirrors to bend meekly toward the ground, which happened down to the thou
sandth of a second at eight o'clock; they stayed in that position for the two minutes' silence and then turned heavenward again.

  "One does what one can," he said, and lowered his eyes for an instant. "Only the house of the former German camp commandant is still standing. Strange, isn't it? The widow of the military commandant from shortly after the war still lives there. Would you like to hear a nice story? A few weeks ago there was a sudden power cut, so we immediately switched over to the emergency generator; a little later we heard her trotting up to the terminal. She had a package in plastic wrap in her hands: she asked if she could leave it in our tridge for a while. It turned out to be her husband's evening meal— beefsteak, roast potatoes, and peas—that she had made for him twenty years before, that he had not been able to eat, because he had suddenly died of a heart attack."

  "Right!" cried Onno to Helga, shaking his knife over his head. "That is love! Take a leaf out of her book."

  Quinten knelt on his chair and looked at his father open-mouthed as if at a fireworks display.

  When Onno saw the expression on his face, he said: "Yes, my son, it leaves you speechless. Even if love can no longer find its way to a man's heart through his stomach, it still transcends death! Why don't you say something, you scamp? When I was your age I was already reading Tacitus."

  "Onno . . ." said Sophia reproachfully. "He understands more than you think."

  After lunch, while Helga stayed behind with Quinten, they went to see Ada—Onno, being the largest, sat next to the driver; Max was wedged between Sophia and her mother on the backseat, with arms folded. On the way Mrs. Haken asked when they were going to tell Quinten what had happened to his mother.

  "Maybe never," said Onno at once, without turning his head. Whereupon he turned around after all and said to Sophia, "I'm sorry."

  "There's nothing to be sorry about. Don't worry, one day he'll suddenly be able to talk, I'm sure of it." And to her mother: "Of course he mustn't be allowed to think for a moment that I'm his mother and Max his father. He must know how things stand immediately. Isn't that so?"

  "Of course," said Max. He now saw clearly the gray hairs that had appeared here and there in her hair. He was sitting closer to her than he ever did during the day, and at night it was dark. "Just imagine."

  "And when do you plan to let him see Ada for the first time?" asked Mrs. Haken.

  "Onno must decide that."

  "No, you must decide," said Onno. "You know him best. It all depends on what kind of boy he turns into, because it will be a dreadful shock of course. When he's six? Ten? What do you think, Max?"

  "I think we'll know precisely when the moment comes."

  "Probably true."

  "By the way, do you know," asked Sophia, "who still visit her a couple of times a year? Marijke and Bruno. They got married."

  No one said anything else. Everyone sensed the same thought in the others: would she survive for years? Would she have to go on living for years? And if she suddenly died—should Quinten never have seen her, even if she was doing nothing but breathing?

  The nursing home—called Joy Court by sardonic civil servants from the health department—was in a new building in a new street on the outskirts of Emmen. It was built in the same modern nonstyle as the room in which Oswald Brons had descended into the flames, with brick interior walls that looked like exterior walls, so that although one was inside, one constantly had the impulse to go inside.

  "Even architects leave people out in the cold these days," said Max.

  Onno agreed with him: "It's hopeless. Architects are peace criminals. The end is nigh."

  Ada lay in a small room on the second floor, with a view of a paved courtyard. They gathered silently around the bed; a chair was pulled up for Mrs. Haken, whose eyes filled with tears. Here they were, thought Max:

  Quinten's great-grandmother, his grandmother, his mother, and his father, too, in any case. Ada had changed again, but it was difficult to say what had actually changed. It was like when you had bought a new book and put it in the bookcase unread: when you took it out for the first time after a few years, it wasn't new anymore, although nothing demonstrable had changed. It had not renewed itself; it had not moved with the times. There she lay, her head turned to one side on the pillow, and she did not even know that she had a son with unworldly blue eyes, let alone that the Russians had occupied Prague, that the Americans were now destroying Cambodia too, and that her husband was an alderman for Amsterdam.

  Even a cat knew more than she did, thought Onno; maybe she still had the consciousness of a mouse. But with mice you were allowed to spread poison or set a trap ... he was shocked by his own thoughts and glanced guiltily at Sophia, who had taken Ada's hand in hers and was looking at her daughter with an imponderable expression in her dark eyes.

  Back at Groot Rechteren they drank tea in the front room, but no real conversation started up again. In the kitchen the driver was reading the newspaper. Mrs. Haken went for a nap on her daughter's bed, and Sophia showed Helga photos. While Onno made a few telephone calls at Max's desk, Max, with his arms folded, looked at a point in the bookcase and thought of the plans to install movable thirteenth and fourteenth mirrors in Westerbork, which would improve the resolving power of the instrument by a factor of two; but The Hague felt that the radio observatory had already cost enough.

  The windows had been pushed up and from the direction of the coach houses came music that sounded like the Rolling Stones; now and then there was a dull thundering sound to be heard as a car drove over the loose planks of the bridge over the outer canal. Onno turned and said that politics consisted of telephoning; you wondered how Julius Caesar had done things. He sat down in the green armchair, where, lost in thought, he took an astrophysics magazine off the table.

  In the distance was the faint rumble of a train, passing the unmanned level crossing. A little later Max saw Quinten lying on his tummy across Onno's feet, half over the still-unpolished shoes with the threadbare laces. That was very unusual; he had never done anything so intimate with him—Quinten was not very close to him. The sight reassured Max. His fear of fatherhood had receded over the years, like the bald patch on the back of his head; but unlike that spot, it had never disappeared entirely— just as someone who had recovered from cancer or a heart attack never felt a hundred percent sure and would never forget that he had once fallen prey to it, although he sometimes didn't think of it for months: for the rest of his life there was a monster lying in wait somewhere in a dark cave. He knew that now—for as long as Ada was alive, he might be able to determine paternity by means of a blood test: if Quinten had certain genetic factors that were lacking in both Ada and himself, then Onno was the father; if they were lacking in Onno, then he was. He could have his own blood analyzed very simply, and with a little thought he would be able to secure blood samples from Ada and Quinten, but how could he get hold of Onno's blood? Anyway, it could not be completely ruled out that there were no factors missing; either in his own blood or in Onno's. Indeed, that wouldn't surprise him. In the future it might be different, but for the time being tests couldn't give a conclusive answer in all cases.

  Quinten tried in vain to turn the lid of a tin box, in which something was rattling. Onno didn't notice what was happening at his feet; with his eyebrows raised skeptically, he leafed through the specialist journal, as though it were a publication of the Theosophical Society. Only when he felt Quinten's warmth penetrating through the leather of his shoes did he put it down and bend forward.

  "Can't you turn it? Leave it in there. It's much nicer when you don't know what it is. What would you say if the two of us went for a walk?"

  "Are you sure?" asked Max. "It'll mean venturing out into nature."

  "I shall give nature a dreadful shock."

  "Look after your father, Quinten," said Helga as they walked hand in hand to the door.

  In the forecourt, Onno was undecided about which way to go. Only now did he see the flowering rhododendrons beside the coach h
ouses: huge violet explosions that hung heavily over the water and from beneath which some ducks swam, like the faithful emerging from a cathedral. The decision was made by Quinten. The warm hand pulled him along over the bridge and down the path by the moat; they were walking under the shade of the majestic brown oak and past the side of the castle. The flat, weathered stones of the lower part, which rose at a slight angle from the water, were obviously still from the middle ages.

  Onno realized guiltily that it was the first time that he had been alone with Quinten. He was a degenerate father; he left everything to Max as if it were the most natural thing in the world—and on what basis? The little hand in his reminded him of his own in his father's large hand when he had walked with him along the pier at Scheveningen. They had bent over the railings together and looked at the large oblong nets that were winched squeaking and creaking out of the waves on which ten or twenty innocent fish were thrashing about. He was still wearing the curls and pink dresses that his mother liked to see him in. The memory shocked him: was Quinten perhaps the kind of creature that his mother had looked for in himself and that she had brought into being through him? He stopped and looked at Quinten. Yes—if you didn't know, he might just as well be a girl, even without a dress or curls.

  "Take a lesson from your wise old father, Quinten," he said as they walked toward the pinewood through the young saplings. "The new is always the old. Everything that's old was once new, and everything that's new will one day be old. The oldest thing of all is the present, because there's never been anything else but the present. No one has ever lived in the past, and no one lives in the future, either. Here we are walking along, you and me, but I in turn once walked just like this with my father along the pier at Scheveningen, which was blown up by the Germans in the war. He told me about the miraculous catch of fish, and that the Lord of Lords had called the apostles "fishers of men." Thirty-five years is an unspeakably long time ago for me, but for your foster father thirty-five years ago is yesterday. For him everything is yesterday. And the war is not even yesterday, but this morning, a moment ago, just now. I don't get the feeling that you're very fond of him, though, or am I mistaken? Tell me honestly. If you ask me, you understand me perfectly well, although you can't understand a word. True or not? Or are you making fools of all of us? Do you understand everything, perhaps, and simply don't feel like talking? Do you get out of bed at night and secretly read the Divina Commedia ? Yes, that's it, I think. Of course you're annoyed at the corrupt translation that Max has in his bookcase, and you can't find anything by Virgil. Isn't that it? Admit it."