The Discovery of Heaven

by Harry Mulisch

  The naming of that date gave Max a new shock. It was now November—and time would continue, week after week, through winter and spring to summer, until that day of days irrevocably dawned.

  "Yes," he said, not knowing what to say.

  "I'll tell you something else," continued Onno. "We are announcing the engagement this afternoon. Our wedding will be in two weeks. The twenty-seventh."

  "That's my birthday."

  "I know, but that's the date they had free at the town hall. Perhaps you can arrange to take the day off. Of course you're going to be a witness."

  Max felt as though he were being tortured. A machine had started that could not be stopped but which could not continue in this way. Something must happen—but what?

  "Very honored, I'm sure."

  "I say, you don't give the impression of being very edified by the fact that the urge to found a family has taken hold of your friend. Are you really paying attention?"

  "To be honest, Onno," he said, sitting at his desk, "not completely. In Leiden we're busy processing some important measurements from Dwinge-loo, which keep running through my head. Would you mind if I give a colleague of mine a call?"

  "If you consider the universe more important than my wedding, then you must phone now. Obviously you've lost all sense of proportion."

  Max smiled and dialed his own number, which turned out to be engaged.

  "Hello, Max here," he said to the stupidly repeating tone. "Is there any news yet? You can't be serious—a polarization of forty percent with a wavelength of ten centimeters?—That's sensational! But if that's right, then . . . Of course. Of course . . ." He didn't know what else to say. He was saying whatever came into his head. "And what if it consists of two double radio sources? Yes, why not? On the one hand the structure of the magnetic field is virtually uniform, but on the other hand if you take account of the Faraday rotation . . . What did you say? Yes, that's a bit difficult," he said with a hesitant look at Onno. "I've got a visitor. But. . ."

  "Okay, okay, I'm going," said Onno, putting down his glass. "Off you go to your polarization."

  "I'll be right there. I'll be in Leiden in twenty minutes."

  However, he did not go to Leiden. He took Onno to the Kerkstraat in his car and then parked not at his apartment, but one street farther on, so as not to be caught out in case Onno and Ada went for a walk. So things had gotten this far! With a feeling of self-loathing that he had never experienced before, he went up the steps again and, without turning on the light, he continued pacing deep into the night following the set diagonals and perpendicular bisectors, now and then glancing at Onno's glass, which he had not completely emptied.

  The following morning when he awoke, it immediately took hold of him again and did not let go for the whole day. From minute to minute the embryo was growing in the darkness of Ada's womb; thousands of new cells were being added and organizing themselves into a dreadful threat. Although important data from the Computer Institute were in fact coming in, he kept going over to the window of his office in Leiden with his hands in his pockets and looking out over the Botanical Garden, where the Dutch autumn had descended on the tropics.

  For some time he had been repeating the same thoughts over and over. There was a 50 percent chance that it would be his child—that was a dreadful risk—and even if it turned out eventually not to be his child, he would still live for years in fear of an emerging likeness. As far as he knew, there still was no method of determining paternity at the pregnancy stage. But suppose that his paternity were to be evident on the day of birth, from his spatula-shaped thumbs. What would happen then? Or if gradually his own nose—that is, his mother's—appeared under a replica of Ada's eyes. What would happen then? Shouldn't he emigrate within eight months? Accept the fellowship in California on Mount Palomar after all? Hang himself? What would he do in Onno's place? Perhaps he would murder him.

  He rubbed his face with both hands. Was it conceivable that he had wrecked his own life? How could the dignity ever return to it? He was now the moral wreck, up to his neck in lies and betrayal. He thought back to that night in the sea: what in heaven's name had possessed him? How could he have ever been so crazy! Onno had asked him to be a witness at his wedding in two weeks' time: that was as impossible as a refusal would have been. He was caught in a trap. There must be a fundamental change in the situation this week, tomorrow rather than the day after—but how? He would have preferred to be honest and confess his faux pas to Onno, fall at his feet, take his foot and put it on his neck and await his fate. Or perhaps he should do it in writing, in a more cowardly but more accurate way.

  He sat down at his desk, took a sheet of squared paper, sharpened a pencil over the wastepaper basket, and began writing without much conviction:

  Dear Onno,

  I'd give many years of my life not to have to write this letter. Our friendship, which has now lasted for nine months, was the most precious thing I possessed. I'm not even sure whether "friendship" is the right word. Lots of men are friends, without my having the impression that it has much to do with our relationship; I too had plenty of "friends," of course, but that was always a completely different kind of thing. "Spiritual affinity," then? I don't thinly that word touches the core either, because what two souls are more different than ours? Perhaps, I've sometimes thought, we should think more of the affinity of lightning and earth, sometimes with me as the lightning, and sometimes you. I can't speak for you, but when I met you I often felt like a thundercloud that couldn't discharge. Or rather: after I'd met you, I realized that I'd felt like that. I'm aware that so far this sounds like a love letter, and in a certain sense it is. But of course it won't escape you of all people that I'm using the past tense. In a way that I will never forgive myself for, I have forfeited the right to say we are still friends. It's almost impossible for me to admit what has happened; most of all I would like to go on writing to the end of my days, simply to postpone it. Onno! The child that Ada is expecting may be mine.

  The moment he had written this, he realized that he could obviously never send the letter. He had no right to reveal this on his own initiative, without consulting Ada. In that case he would, again for his own convenience, in a certain sense be doing the same to her as he had done to Onno. He was dependent on her; without her he couldn't do anything. So the first thing he must do was talk to her. But again that must be done behind Onno's back— whatever he did would drag him further and further into the mire. And apart from that he must manage to persuade her to abort her fetus. It was all equally disgusting, but doing nothing was also impossible. If he couldn't get her to come around, she might say that he must marry her in two weeks' time and act as the father—with a 50 percent chance that it would be Onno's child. That would also mean the end of the friendship, but if that was what happened, he wouldn't hesitate. He simply had to accept it as his fate. For that matter, if he hadn't seduced Ada that evening, she would not in turn have seduced Onno—so that even if it was Onno's child, it would not exist without him. Moreover, deep inside he felt a kind of acceptance of the fact that in that case he would have a child of Onno's.

  But what would Onno do in that case? He was looking forward to his child and was preparing for his wedding. Perhaps he had already talked to his family about it. Suddenly everything would be taken away from him. That was also inconceivable. On the other hand it wasn't inconceivable that Onno would react in a similar way and be prepared to accept a child of his, though at the same time terminating their friendship. No, that was improbable—unless he really had slept with a woman that afternoon in Havana, when he himself had gone to Varadero with Ada. "I can't face myself anymore. I'm a moral wreck. I've spat in the holy-water font." In that case he would be caught up in a similar situation, and perhaps reason that without that escapade none of it would have happened, and that he would now have to pay for it with his friend's child. But no, for Onno there was perhaps something even more powerful at issue: for him his child might have to be first and f
oremost a Quist, a continuation of the dynasty—but for that of course it had to be really a Quist and not in fact a Delius. He himself did not have that feeling, and it required little effort for him to understand why not.

  A young female colleague, who worked on polarization but looked more like a champion swimmer, poked her head around the door of his room and said that there were still problems with 3 C 296.

  "I'm studying it too," said Max, tapping the letter with the eraser end of his pencil. "What would you say if it were to consist of two double radio sources? In that case the smaller one might coincide with the optical mist. Think of Centaurus A."

  She stared at him for a moment, then raised a forefinger and disappeared.

  This was the second time he had blurted this out for something to say, but it now dawned on him that it was probably true: at first sight it explained everything. Perhaps he had made an important discovery, on which he should start work immediately before it was taken out of his hands—but he wasn't in the mood for discoveries. First he must get to talk to Ada. He took the letter and tore it in two five times over; then he tore each half once more, after which he carefully mixed the clippings with the other rubbish in his wastepaper basket.

  23

  Heads or Tails

  She was playing not for the audience but for her child—the sounds from the instrument between her legs, she thought, must penetrate deep into her abdomen and surround the little creature inside with beauty. After the last heroic bar, while the Czech guest conductor stood hunched up, as though he had had a sudden attack of colic, there was a moment's silence in the auditorium—and then the applause erupted, with hurrahs and, here and there, enthusiastic whistles. Slowly the maestro freed himself from his cramp; with a broad smile, shaking one hand with the other, he thanked the orchestra, his gaze meeting Ada's for a moment. With a flourish he took his handkerchief out of his breast pocket and mopped his brow ceremoniously, and only then did he turn his back on them, look at the balcony for a few moments with a triumphant snort, after which his head slumped forward as if he had been shot in the neck.

  The audience rose to their feet and acclaimed him as though he were Franz Liszt himself—although a troublemaker like Mazeppa would be immediately arrested by the police in Amsterdam in the present circumstances, with a great degree of approval from the same audience. Tapping the side of her cello softly with her bow, Ada waited for him to turn around and, with an imposing gesture, baton in one hand, handkerchief in the other, make them rise like puppets. When she was on her feet, she realized that she wasn't looking into the audience but was staring over their heads, straight through the back wall to a point in the infinite distance.

  In the orchestra's room under the stage she put her instrument to bed in its case; because there was a rehearsal the following morning she didn't take it home with her. Her friend, the clarinetist Marijke, asked if she was going along to the pub. In fact she would have preferred to go straight home, as she was feeling tired, but it was the kind of suggestion that only the strongest characters could refuse.

  "Just for a bit then," she said when Marijke persisted.

  Max was sitting on a collapsed red sofa next to the gas stove and reading the paper. He stood up in surprise.

  "What a coincidence!"

  Ada was not so sure it was a coincidence—on the contrary. Of course, he had looked in the listings to see when the orchestra's next performance was. He was still tanned from Cuba. They kissed each other on the cheek. She took off her wet coat and sat down next to him, while Marijke was swallowed up by the rapidly swelling crowd.

  Now came what could no longer be put off. When Max heard that they had performed Mazeppa after the intermission as a kind of encore, he said that Prokofiev had obviously also listened closely to that highly romantic symphonic poem, because it always reminded him of the passage from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet that had been playing in the street in Havana, with Michelangelo's Creation of Adam. The two compositions merged in Ada's memory, and she heard what he meant. These days Onno could also explain everything to her about the Pythagorean comma, or about il diavolo in musica, or why the Mixolydian and Aeolian scales were each other's mirror image, but he would never be capable of an observation like Max's.

  "Together," she said, "you and Onno know everything about music. But I sit there in front of a score counting and have to play the strings. That's something else."

  Max nodded and looked at her. "Only the three of us know everything."

  She realized immediately what he was alluding to. Head bent and looking at her hands on her lap, she said after a few seconds: "Maybe not even then."

  Max bent one knee and turned ninety degrees to face her on the sofa. "Listen, Ada," he said softly. "Since Onno told me that you're pregnant, I've thought of nothing else. This is an absolute disaster."

  "I'm very happy about it."

  She could see that he was in a panic; but whatever he said, she knew that she wasn't going to budge an inch, and perhaps he sensed that. He made a few uncoordinated movements with his head and one hand.

  "Of course, you're a woman, you're pregnant, you're expecting a child, and of course you identify completely with that child. I understand that. It's probably something like an artist who's pregnant with a symphony, or a novel; they're not going to let anyone or anything get in their way, either. But at the same time that's the difference—because a work of art has only a mother, while your child has a father too. After all it wasn't an immaculate conception!"

  "I'm assuming it wasn't—although I was using the pill."

  "It was more of a doubly maculate conception. But who's the father? You don't know."

  "And I don't want to know. You and Onno are the father. You two are such a unity after all, aren't you?"

  "Ada, you're crazy! It will all come out one day who it is, Onno or me. I hope to God that it's Onno—then it will be all right, that is . . . all that will happen is that we'll have been living in fear for years, or I will at any rate. But supposing a duplicate of me is born, what will happen then? What will we have done to Onno then? How are we supposed to go on? That will be an inconceivable catastrophe, won't it!"

  "These things were sent to try us," said Ada, folding her arms. "I'm quite aware what you're getting at, but you can save yourself the trouble. I'm not having an abortion."

  Max moved slightly closer to her. Other people were now sitting at their table too: an untidy man with a gray beard, who had clearly decided to have a wild old age and was trying to impress a young girl with a story from the war, while her boyfriend listened rather uncomfortably. Now and then all three of them had to bend forward under the pressure of the throng behind them. The smell of wet hair and coats mixed with smoke and beer formed a gas that no one would have been able to stand for more than a minute at home; amid the screaming and laughter Max and Ada need have no fear that they were being eavesdropped on.

  "But for God's sake, can't you see that there's no other way out! You can tell Onno you've had a miscarriage—and after a few months you'll be pregnant again if you want to be."

  Ada took a sip of her white wine, which had been brought by a waiter who had become as thin as a pencil stroke from having been mangled by bodies evening after evening.

  "No, I won't be."

  "What do you mean?"

  She put down her glass and looked at him. "I won't get pregnant again."

  "And why not?"

  "I have a presentiment."

  "Based on what?"

  "I don't know."

  "Do you mean because of the abortion, perhaps? Listen, obviously we won't have it done by an old lady with an enema—I'll make sure of that. Maybe we can even have it done in the Academic Hospital in Leiden."

  "It's got nothing to do with that, but I know for certain that this is my only chance of having a child."

  She felt sorry for him. Perhaps he was the father of her child, perhaps not; in any case he had a dreadful time ahead of him. Everything that Max had
thought of she of course had thought of herself; but even if the sky were to fall in, she was determined to have her child. Everything would sort itself out somehow in the end, even if the child was Max's—if necessary at the cost of her marriage and Max and Onno's friendship: that was all of secondary importance. Perhaps Max would want to spend the rest of his life with her in that case, perhaps not; perhaps she would have to cope by herself—it didn't matter. She would face that when she came to it: as long as her child was born. The source of this determination was a mystery to her. In the past she had only known it in regard to her musical career, but when a world-famous young cellist of her own age had recently performed with the orchestra, in the Elgar concerto, with a Stradivarius, she hadn't thought for a moment: I'd like to be sitting there.

  "But that's completely irrational, Ada. Countless women have had abortions and had children afterward."

  She looked at him. "If you're so rational, why don't you simply tell Onno the truth?"

  Max emptied his glass helplessly. "I started writing him a letter, but I tore it up."

  "Why?"

  "I felt I couldn't do it behind your back."

  "Well, now I'm in the picture."

  "Do you think I should do it? What do you think the consequences will be for you? You didn't tell him, either."

  "No," said Ada. "And not just because I felt I couldn't do it behind your back. I'm prepared to take the risk. The truth's a toss-up: heads or tails. If we tell him, everything will be wrecked for certain."

  "Unless we get married."

  She put her hand on his for a moment and smiled. "Even then. In that case we'll only get into a new quagmire."

  "Exactly," nodded Max. "Quagmire—that's the word. Morass. Whatever we do it will be a disaster. And even if we do nothing and it turns out to be Onno's child, even then our relationship with him will be all wrong. Like when you know someone has cancer but they themselves think they're healthy."