The Discovery of Heaven

by Harry Mulisch

  Obviously something was wrong, because they'd been together for an hour. Everyone called everyone else by their Christian names, but the staff were addressed as "sir" and "madam." Why was that? Onno wondered. Why was it that this handful of people called the tune in Holland? How was it possible that it was possible? Obviously, there were indeed two different kinds of people in the world. He emptied his glass, looked around the circle, and was going to ask whether there shouldn't actually be a god on board as well, but controlled himself.

  The first signs of drunkenness were becoming noticeable. In the forecastle an interim minister had been shouting for sometime "Steady as she goes!" at the helmsman, who each time nodded with a smile. A veteran politician in an over-thick sailor's jersey said threateningly to a serving lady, "Tonight I shall count your hairs." The radar aerial revolved slowly and superfluously. They passed Marken, and when they had left Volendam and Edam behind them, the coast slowly sank below the horizon. Although the boat was in the middle of nothing but water, it was becoming more and more oppressive. Everyone had become convinced that things were not going according to plan in the cabin: something was wrong. While Onno discussed with the minister of internal affairs the delicate matter of the crown prince, who in all probability would become liable for military service under his regime, his party leader came out of the cabin. His tie was loose and his shirt was hanging out of his trousers at the back; with clumsy, uncoordinated gestures he took Onno aside behind the sloop. It became quieter on deck, and immediately Onno knew that something was seriously wrong.

  The leader with his bald pate, prime minister of the cabinet in which Onno had been a minister of state, vice-premier of the coming cabinet, two heads shorter than himself, waved a sheet of paper and looked up at him.

  "Things have gone to pot, Onno. Were you in Cuba in 'sixty-seven?"

  That was it.

  "Yes."

  "When you were there did you take part in ..." He put on a pair of reading glasses with heavy frames and looked at the paper, but Onno immediately completed his question:

  "La primera Conferencia de La Habana? Yes, but actually not."

  Lost for words, the leader took off his glasses and stared at him. "And at the conference you were actually on the first committee—that of the armed struggle? I can scarcely get the words out."

  "Yes, Koos."

  Koos revolved on his own axis in astonishment and looked out across the water; on his neck, his slightly too long white hairs came together in a series of points, like shark's teeth. "What in God's name is the meaning of this? Do you really think that you can take over Defense with something like this in your CV? Why did you keep it from me?"

  "I didn't keep anything from you. I simply didn't think about it anymore. It was fourteen years ago. For me it was a silly incident that meant nothing."

  "Does your stupidity know no bounds, Onno?"

  "Apparently not."

  "Do you realize what you're doing to the party? The whole cabinet formation may now be in jeopardy. Tell me, who are you? Did you have guerrilla training there as well, perhaps?"

  Onno ignored that remark and asked: "Is that an anonymous letter?"

  "Yes."

  "Then I know who wrote it."

  "Who?"

  "Bart Bork."

  "Bart Bork? Bart Bork? That ex-Communist student leader? Were you at that conference with him?"

  "On the contrary—he couldn't get in. But he had a score to settle with me, and it seems as though he's got what he wants."

  "Would you now please tell me at once what actually happened?"

  "I would appreciate doing that with the prime minister present."

  "That's fine by me."

  "Was that addressed to you?" asked Onno as they went toward the cabin, followed by the silent glances of the others.

  "No. Dorus suddenly put it on the table just now. Goddamnit, Onno, I won't let him have the pleasure."

  Onno knew that the prime minister was the bane of Koos's life. When Dorus had been minister of justice in his own cabinet, he had become thoroughly irritated by the bigoted zealot, who could not ignore a single abortion—to say nothing of euthanasia—but who ordered the security forces to open fire without pity when the Moluccans hijacked trains in Drenthe; in the last cabinet formation Koos had been eliminated remorselessly by him— as leader of the opposition he had not gotten a hold on him—and now he had to serve under him again. Politics was the continuation of war by other means, in which you could win or lose; the problem was that you got used to winning but never to losing. That meant that when you lost, more went through you than when you won; that when you lost, you lived more intensely, which in turn resulted in some people ultimately preferring to lose than to win, because winning bored them. Onno would have liked to say to Koos that this destructive tendency was a much greater enemy of his than Dorus, but he had never dared.

  Meanwhile Dorus had also appeared on deck, where he was applauded by everyone when he did a handstand to relax. Onno saw that Koos, who was fifteen or twenty years older than Dorus and who could scarcely stand up properly, was extremely irritated by this. Like Onno, he came from a Calvinist family.

  A little later in the warm cabin the atmosphere was icy. Apart from them, only Piet, the new Liberal chief, was at the table.

  "We're listening," said Dorus. He was in shirtsleeves, his hair combed with excruciating care. His appearance had something fragile and boyish about it, but his shaded eyes, which were focused on Onno, and his fleshy, slightly pursed lips in his expressionless face with its pointed nose, talked a different, a more remorseless, language.

  Onno was surprised at his own calm. Without feeling that it really mattered, he explained what had happened fourteen years before: his meeting with Bork after the political and musical demonstration in Amsterdam, where Bork had announced that Onno would become a beachcomber on Ameland after the revolution—and that it was precisely that ominous remark that had finally made him decide to go into politics. Then the Cuban invitation to his wife, the misunderstanding at the airport, and the explosive conference in which he had found himself. He said nothing about the role of Max, who had persuaded him to go. Finally, he told of his meeting with Bork in the park in Havana, where he was exchanging money on the black market, where he had gotten even with him.

  "And now it's his turn again," he concluded. "But it was an interesting conference, from which I learned a lot. It's just that looking back on it, it might have been more sensible if I had enrolled as a press representative."

  Dorus tapped the tips of his outstretched fingers against each other and looked around the circle. "We believe you."

  "At least I do," said Piet, with the astonished, innocent look in his blue eyes that won him so many votes.

  "Moreover," continued Dorus, "I appreciate your honesty. There are also photocopies of the conference administration enclosed, in the name of a certain Onno Quits, and you could have said that was someone else or that they're forgeries. As long as there's no photograph on which you can be seen in the company of the formidable Dr. Castro Ruiz, you could have risen very high."

  "I'm not lying, Dorus, because I have nothing to hide."

  "But as things are at present, what's the good of us believing you? Will the chiefs of staff believe you—or want to believe you? It's like that naughty bishop who's found in the brothel and who proclaims, 'In order to be able to fight evil, one must know evil.' What's happened to your authority? Because I assure you that the generals will also be in possession of these documents within twenty-four hours. This epistle," said Dorus, putting his narrow, well-manicured hand on it, "was not addressed to me but to the American ambassador, who had the politeness to send it to me by courier last night. Well, that means that the CIA now knows about it, that our own armed forces will soon know about it, and that they will know about it in Brussels, at NATO headquarters, under the archpatriarchal leadership of our inestimable countryman. Mr. Bork has done his work thoroughly. And you can rest
assured that our American friends will not wish to run any risks, however small, that a pro-Fidel lout will ever have authority within the treaty organization over the forces on the north German plain, nor that this individual should be informed of vital military secrets, so that the Cold War might have been fought in vain."

  With this the open account of the Eighty Years' war that had been fought in vain was settled. Politics, thought Onno, was a profession in which everything was settled down to the last cent. "It's hopeless, Onno," sighed Koos, without taking his thin cigarillo out of his mouth. "You're finished. For that matter, I don't mind you knowing that even in my time some generals had strange ideas: I was already going too far for them. What's more, certain monarchist groups from the former resistance have been hoarding caches of weapons since the beginning of the 1970s, just in case the New Left came to power. They know that we know who they are and where they've buried their stuff, and as minister of defense you'd also be informed of that."

  "That is," observed Dorus, "we know what we know, but we don't know what we don't know."

  "It won't be as bad as that," said Koos. "Most of them are okay people, although there are a few generals among them. It's just to give you an impression of the atmosphere."

  With a mixture of numbness and relief, Onno said: "It goes without saying that I am withdrawing."

  "And if our feathered friends of the press inquire for what reason?" asked Dorus. "Your name has been circulating in the newspapers for some weeks."

  "Because you in your unfathomable wisdom decided on a different distribution of portfolios, which unfortunately left me high and dry. Or think of some illness for me. Say I've had a slight brain hemorrhage."

  "Nonsense," said Piet. "Why should you have to lie because you don't want to lie? Apart from that, Bork may still make the matter public. If anyone asks anything, you simply tell it like it is and in a year's time you'll become mayor of Leiden."

  "The job of beachcomber of Ameland," said Dorus, with a deadpan expression, "appears to have been already allocated."

  "Dorus!" cried Piet reproachfully, but also smiled.

  "Just tell us what you want," mumbled Koos.

  "And who will get Defense now?" asked Piet.

  "Without the shadow of a doubt you have a sweet prince on board for that exceptionally responsible post who is dear to all of us."

  "Just a minute!" said Koos indignantly, sticking up an index finger, the top joint of which was deformed. "That means that we—"

  "Undoubtedly," Dorus interrupted. "With his crystal-clear intelligence, old Koos has immediately hit on the essence of my spontaneous brainwave."

  Onno had gotten up and said that he felt superfluous here. They agreed that for the time being he would say nothing to the others; God willing, they might have solved the problem before they arrived in Stavoren. Onno promised that he would not jump ship in Enkhuizen.

  When he sat down again in his chair on the afterdeck, everyone in the circle looked at him in silence, but no one asked anything. Only Dolf, the badly shaven Catholic minister of economic affairs, put a hand on his shoulder as he passed. What he would have preferred, Onno reflected, would be to be fired by cannon from the ship onto the shore, because he no longer had any business here. While the conversations were resumed, he realized calmly that once again he did not know what he wanted to be.

  From one minute to the next, everything had changed. He did not feel at all like simply remaining in Parliament; and a job as a mayor did not come into consideration, or becoming director of the Foundation for Pure Scientific Research, or anything in "Europe"; it was now a fact that he was definitely leaving politics. It had begun with Bork and it was ending with Bork. That his life should be forever linked with Bork's filled him with disgust. He saw Bork's leering eyes and felt as if a disgusting insect had crawled over him; he rubbed his face with both hands to shoo it away. Then he thought of Max, who ultimately had all the turning points in his life on his conscience, but did not bear him any malice. The only person whom he begrudged his fall was his retired elder brother—fortunately his father did not have to experience it. And as far as Helga was concerned: she'd probably be just happy that it had gone as it had.

  The few citizens of Enkhuizen who saw them walking through the quiet old streets from the marina to the church stopped and were sure that they were dreaming: it wasn't just the prime minister walking there but everyone. That was of course impossible, because all those faces belonged on television and not in their little town: if it was really true that all those in power were now in Enkhuizen, then great danger probably threatened them.

  The mayor and the local police were also in the dark; only the vicar and the sexton welcomed them. Giggling like a class of schoolchildren, the visitors distributed themselves across the wooden pews in the nave. In order to stretch their legs, Koos, Dorus, and Piet had joined them, but they immediately withdrew into a side chapel, where they continued their deliberations under a painting of St. Sebastian. The church still smelled of incense from the morning mass. The minister who had just now kept shouting "Steady as she goes!" suddenly mounted the stairs to the pulpit, undoubtedly to preach a Calvinist fire-and-brimstone sermon, but was prevented from doing so by his minister of state. Meanwhile, the Social Democratic party chairman, who had begun as a Protestant theologian, had vanished—and shortly afterward Bach's equally invisible variations on the choral "Vom Himmel hoch da komm ich hier" came thundering out of the motionless pipes.

  Onno glanced around: the front of the organ reminded him of the opened jaws of a whale, attacking him from behind. He felt completely out of place, both in this Catholic church and in this company. He thought back with embarrassment to his inflated words of just now, that he would line up the generals and threaten them—he would be jokingly reminded of this one day, when people happened to bump into him.

  Feeling a certain stiffening in his body, he looked at the crucifix on the altar and listened to the music. Bork's observation at that time may have been decisive in his decision to go into politics, but there was a deeper motive behind it: his failure with the Phaistos disc. Now the wheel had obviously come full circle, shouldn't he try and go back to the disc?

  Four years ago he had still been able to take the escape route of becoming a member of Parliament; now everything was much more final. Perhaps it was because of Bach, but suddenly the prospect attracted him. Of course he would have to get back into it again—he hadn't kept up with the specialist literature in the intervening fourteen years. The only thing he knew for certain was that it had still not been deciphered, not even by Landau, his Israeli rival, because Landau would certainly not have deprived himself of the pleasure of informing him personally. He sighed deeply. Who knows, perhaps all those years had been necessary to allow the solution to mature deep inside him: perhaps he might very shortly have the liberating insight!

  The sexton came out of the sacristy and asked something of someone in the front row, who turned around, scanned the church, and pointed at him. Onno looked up inquiringly, whereupon the sexton made a turning movement next to his ear.

  Onno got up in astonishment, while two things went through his head at once: how could anyone know that he was here—and how was it possible that the gesture for "telephone" was still determined by the mechanics of a piece of equipment that had not existed for fifty years and could only be seen in Laurel and Hardy films?

  The sexton took him to the sacristy. The telephone stood on a table with a dark red cloth on it; in a wall cupboard with its sliding doors open hung long mass garments, like the wardrobe of a Roman emperor.

  Onno picked up the receiver. "Quist speaking."

  "Are you Mr. Onno Quist?" asked a woman's voice.

  "Yes, who am I speaking to?"

  "Mr. Quist, this is the central police station in Amsterdam. We managed to find out where you were via the prime minister's office. We're sorry, but you must prepare yourself for some shocking news."

  Onno felt himself stiffenin
g and immediately thought of Quinten. "Tell me what's happened."

  "We know that you are a friend of Ms. Helga Hartman's."

  It was as though those two words, Helga Hartman, penetrated his body like bullets.

  "Yes, and what about it?"

  "Something very serious happened to her last night."

  Onno suddenly could not speak anymore; his breath was stuck in his throat like a ball.

  "Mr. Quist? Are you still there?"

  "Is she dead?" he asked hoarsely.

  "Yes, Mr. Quist..."

  Was this possible? Helga dead. Helga dead? His eyes widened in dismay; he felt as though he were emptying, in the direction of Amsterdam, where her dead body must be.

  "Really completely dead?" he asked, immediately hearing how idiotic the question was.

  "Yes, Mr. Quist."

  "Christ Almighty!" he suddenly screamed. "How in God's name did it happen?"

  "Are you sure you want to talk about it on the telephone—"

  "For God's sake tell me! Now!"

  She must have been attacked in the early hours of the morning, when she was opening the front door of her house. She was dragged inside and in the hall attacked mercilessly with a knife, probably by an addict; after her house had been ransacked, she was left to her fate. There was no trace of the culprit. Because her vocal chords had been cut, she could not call for help; but bleeding heavily, she managed to open the door and crawl to the telephone booth on the other side of the canal, with some change in her hand that had been left in her emptied bag.

  Obviously, she wanted to call the emergency number, and if she had been given immediate help, she would probably have survived, but the telephone had been vandalized. Probably only an hour later, toward morning, she was found by a passerby; by that time she had already died from loss of blood. She was in the morgue at Wilhelmina Hospital.

  Onno did not rejoin the others, but went out into the street through a side door. A small crowd had meanwhile gathered by the closed church door, but nothing from his surroundings got through to him anymore; without looking where he was going, he wandered into the town along a narrow canal.