The Discovery of Heaven

by Harry Mulisch

  "And that will be just as true if I have an abortion," said Ada. "And that's another reason why I am not doing it. My child is the cause of everything, but at the same time it's the only ray of hope. Eventually we'll all be dead, and then all our problems will have disappeared, but he'll still be alive somewhere, and his children and his children's children."

  "How do you know it's going to be a boy?"

  She shrugged her shoulders. "Onno thinks it's going to be a girl. He's even thought of a name."

  "A name?" repeated Max in dismay. "Is he already thinking of names? But in that case it's already there!"

  Marijke squirmed her way between the bodies and set down two glasses of wine in front of them.

  "Are you okay here?"

  Ada glanced at Max, who sighed and gestured.

  "We're doing the best we can."

  The man opposite them, leaning aside for someone trying to take his coat off, complained that these days the trams in Amsterdam were always as full as this in the rush hour; you couldn't use public transportation anymore.

  "So what are we going to do now?" asked Max.

  Ada shrugged her shoulders. "Nothing."

  "Have you met his family yet?"

  She nodded.

  "And?"

  "He's presented me to his parents very officially. We've been to tea. It's wheeled in on a cart by a housekeeper, after which the lady of the house pours the tea herself."

  "And how did they react to you?"

  "I couldn't really make it out. They were cordiality itself, but I don't know how much of it was sincere. According to Onno I went down well. He himself was as nervous as if he were making his first visit. His mother didn't strike me as exactly a genius, and his father was a bit intimidating. He didn't say much. He was very friendly, but behind it there was something completely different. When I said so afterward to Onno, he said that I'd seen that he's a politician. According to him they're glorified street fighters, with brains that are really muscles—people who know how to settle scores with their enemies."

  "And then he said," added Max, "that it was characteristic of him too, that he would also crush his enemies to the last man." He remembered the way Onno had settled accounts with Bart Bork in the park in Havana. His eyes began stinging a little. Onno was completely a part of him, but it was an Onno that would no longer exist for him.

  "Very possibly. I can't remember."

  Ada looked at her watch. She wanted to go home; Onno was waiting for her. Just like that afternoon in The Hague, she experienced her presence in the crowded pub as in the kind of portrait that you can have taken of yourself at the fair: behind a pasted-up, life-size photo of the queen, with a crown and ermine mantle with the face cut out and you having to stick your own through the hole. Deep inside she felt the presence of something else—not only localized in her womb, but even more in her whole self. At the same time it was still completely part of her, as Max had said: it was her and not her. Her personality contained a part of herself as something else, which was nevertheless completely herself, just as on the platform her part belonged to the indivisible orchestral sound.

  24

  The Wedding

  When Max had found the wedding invitation in his mailbox, in which Onno Matthias Jacob Quist and Ada Brons announced their forthcoming marriage—both sets of parents had been passed over, which must have been a severe blow, particularly in The Hague—a great sense of resignation came over him. Untruth had now gotten its hooks into his life and would always remain there. His life had broken irredeemably in two: a white section up to that evening in the Bay of Pelicans, and a black section afterward. It had never occurred to him that such a thing could happen—and now it had happened, not in the form of an illness or a disaster that was no fault of his own, but because of his own actions: in a certain sense he was the very opposite of a murderer, but the remorse came down to the same thing.

  In the past he would wake up like a trapeze artist falling into the safety net: he would leap out of bed and survey the day stretched out before him. Now he made a sound as though wanting to vomit and would have preferred to stay under the covers. Regularly there were girlfriends under there with him, but less frequently than in the past; after all, that insatiability had been the cause of everything. The harmonious triad he had formed with Onno and Ada had changed once and for all into a dissonant chord by a composer of the Darmstadt school.

  Onno thought it very discreet of him that as a former boyfriend of Ada's he preferred not to act as a witness at his wedding: "Your noble character throws a pleasant light on my capacity to choose my friends."

  The wedding day, Max's birthday, brought a melancholy reminiscence of summer; it was windless and the sun shone mildly from a cloudless pale-blue sky. In the afternoon Max, without an overcoat, walked to the town hall, which had been hidden away in the center of town on a seedy side canal full of whores after the monarchy had driven the republican citizenry from its proud municipal palace on the Dam. There wasn't an obvious entrance; only Amsterdammers were able to find the obscure brick gateway to the inner courtyard. Here the continuation of the Dutch nation was in full swing: a bustle of wedding parties coming and going, black limousines with white ribbons on their side mirrors turned in and out of the gate; all around were young petit bourgeois in rented morning coats, with brown shoes, collars that were too large, and gray top hats, only wearable by people who had attended the Ascot races for generations, brides in white carrying bouquets, sometimes accompanied by stumbling bridesmaids, posing for photographers, while handfuls of confetti were scattered over them with shrieks of laughter. Everywhere there were groups of people huddled together, and after a quick inspection he had located the one belonging to Ada and Onno.

  Actually, there were two groups. One consisted very obviously of Onno's family, which he was seeing for the first time: ten or twelve distinguished-looking people, ladies with hats on, pearl necklaces, and lots of bright-red and navy-blue with white polka dots. They looked with skeptical amusement at the working-class Amsterdam goings-on. One of them was undoubtedly a brother: as large and heavy as Onno, with the same face, but everything transposed into the well groomed and well adjusted. The much smaller, slightly stooping but sturdy old gentleman with a hat and walking stick, who now took a watch out of his waistcoat pocket and glanced at it, was of course his father; it was already obvious from the way in which the others grouped around him. His mother was a strapping woman, taller than her husband, with white hair and a straight back.

  Taking off his hat, a chauffeur held open the door of a recently arrived car, from which an unmistakable Quist also emerged and joined them with his wife: obviously Onno's eldest brother, Diederic, the provincial governor. He now also suddenly saw Ada's parents: they stood next to the group, looking rather out of place without merging with it, like fat rings in soup. The other group, alongside but some distance away, was obviously the group of apostles of the New Left: giggling men of his own age, though perhaps still somewhat intimidated by the physical proximity of one of the icons of the old Holland, reaching back into the sixteenth century, the Holland that they wanted to abolish.

  Max hesitated. Whom should he join? He had met Ada's parents on only one occasion, and apart from that he knew none of them—while no one had had a more intimate relationship with the bride and bridegroom than he had. He slowly strolled in their direction and when he caught something in passing about "the Cypriot syllable sequence," he realized there was a third group, comprising Onno's linguistic colleagues. And there was even a fourth one—he suddenly saw Bruno and then Marijke too. There were the musicians. He greeted Bruno, whom he hadn't seen since they said goodbye at Havana airport.

  "Do you still think of Cuba occasionally?" asked the pianist with a deadpan expression.

  "Every day."

  "I had hoped that Ada would get fed up with Onno there so I could be the bridegroom here today. Now I'm a witness."

  "I'm not even that," said Max, while thinking:
just imagine if she'd been to bed with him too.

  "It's a black day for us."

  A little later Onno turned into the gateway: on a bike, with Ada on the back. To applause he slid from the saddle, as triumphantly as a circus artist jumping off his nine-foot-high unicycle, and acknowledged the applause with a bow.

  "Forgive us for being a little late, but we had to buy a bridal outfit first. Doesn't she look marvelous, my bride-to-be?"

  Ada was wearing a simple black dress with a gold lame jacket over it, which was not a perfect fit but gave her the look of a precious jewel. Onno himself looked as he always did, with a red tie; according to Max, he hadn't even washed his hair.

  "Can I?" asked Marijke. She took hold of Ada's lower arm and bit the price tag off the sleeve.

  After Onno had locked his bike, he cried: "I'll introduce you all to each other soon. Right now we have to tie the marital knot and be quick about it!"

  The dark, paneled wedding room was actually too small for the marriage party. Max stood at the rear looking at the backs of Ada and Onno. Besides Bruno, Ada had her father as a witness; Onno had a woman who was probably his younger sister, and one of his political friends. A fellow party member of theirs, the alderman for public works, acted as the registrar for the occasion. He announced that at the request of the bridegroom he was not going to read the normal text but that of the Batavian Republic, which had not been used since 1806. He took a brown parchment off the table, glanced over his semicircular glasses at the Calvinist patriarch in the front row, and read:

  " 'Ceremony, as used at Weddings at the Municipal House in Amsterdam since the joyful Revolution of the nineteenth of January 1795. Bridegroom and Bride! Since we assume that you have not made a rash choice, are uniting with honorable intentions, and have obtained the blessing for that union from Him, to whom you owe everything; we also make no objection to complying with your lawful request by setting the seal of the law on your mutually declared love and promises of faithfulness. Before doing so, however, we shall briefly remind you of your duties.

  There was some hilarity in the room. The Social Democrat rebels tried to read something in Quist's face, but it remained as impassive as a stone; likewise, the provincial governor, the public prosecutor, and the professor of criminal law, whom they of course knew by sight, gave no sign of life. After the alderman in true patriot fashion had urged them to industry, honesty, good behavior, modesty, obedience, and thrift, and had warned them of the corrupting influence of being too forbearing to their children, he asked:

  " 'Dost thou, Bridegroom, take thy Bride, here present, as thy Lawful Wedded Wife?' "

  Onno threw back his head and cried with pathos: "I do!"

  Not everyone in the room began laughing, but most people did. The alderman, too, found it hard to keep a straight face.

  " 'Dost thou, Bride, take thy Bridegroom, here present, as thy Lawful Wedded Husband?' "

  "I do," said Ada softly.

  There was something in her voice that silenced everyone. Max felt an unexpected catch in his throat. He had difficulty in controlling himself, and would have preferred to leave the room, but that was of course unthinkable. Ada and Onno had to take each other's right hand, and as they stood there, the language of the revolutionary past continued:

  " Do you therefore now admit, in the presence of an omniscient God, and in the hearing of your Fellow Citizens gathered here, that you have accepted each other in marriage, and, following the duties presented to you, will live together until death do you part?' "

  "I do."

  "I do."

  " 'May God, who is love itself, make you keep your promise; may He protect you from domestic displeasure, may He crown your union with the greatest of his blessings; and be with you in all the circumstances of your life!' " The alderman looked up, took the glasses off his nose and said, " 'Be mindful of the Poor.' "

  "Fantastic," whispered one of Onno's political friends. "Be mindful of the Third World."

  Max was overwhelmed with emotion: wasn't he the poor fellow they should be mindful of? But no one was thinking of him, or must think of him, except for Ada perhaps. He saw Onno put a wedding ring on her finger; when the alderman waited for Ada to do the same to him, he said gruffly:

  "Men don't wear rings."

  They signed their names, and after the formalities had been completed they shook hands with the alderman, after which there was an opportunity to congratulate them. Max waited until the first crush was over. Without a word, he kissed Ada three times on her cheeks. When he shook Onno's hand, he realized that this was the second time: the first had been in his car, that first evening, as they were passing Leiden and introduced themselves. The hand was white and warm and dry.

  "Congratulations, Onno."

  "Thanks very much, Max. Happy birthday."

  "Thanks very much. How do you feel?"

  "Determined. I shall become the most narrow-minded of heads of family. All your fault."

  In the evening there was a dinner for close friends, but before that everyone was welcome in a pub next to the town hall, where tables had been reserved and champagne was waiting. There, too, the groups did not mix. The musicians clung together, as did the scholars, while the politicians ignored the tables and mounted the bar stools, where they ordered beer; Ada sat with her parents, who had detached themselves from the Quists.

  When Onno saw Max, he took him to the corner at the back, where his family had nestled. "Now you must finally come and see what fate has allotted me."

  At their table he pointed to Max with his forefinger, like an auctioneer, and said: "This is my friend Max Delius."

  "Oh, so you're him," said a lady approaching fifty, who a little while later turned out to be Onno's eldest sister, married to the public prosecutor. She had something large and formidable about her that seemed endemic in that family; there was something rough about her face, something masculine, that frightened him a little.

  "Yes, Trees, that's him," said Onno in annoyance. "All it needs is for you to peer at him through your lorgnette." He gave Max no opportunity to shake hands, because now he pointed out his parents, his two brothers and their wives, and his youngest sister and her husband. He called her Dol, and she was the only one for whom he had a kind word. Then he left Max alone with them.

  There was a rather charged atmosphere. The Amsterdam style with which everything was being done here—the bride and bridegroom on a bike, the reception in a pub, artists everywhere, freethinkers and Reds, no sign of a clergyman; instead, a revolutionary document from the Napoleonic period—and now they were saddled with the son of a war criminal from the German occupation: their dismay was not entirely incomprehensible. Such things did not happen in The Hague. Of course everyone at this table knew who his father was, but hence also who his mother had been. People here knew everything— except who he was. Onno's brother Menno, the Groningen professor of law, about ten years his senior, offered him a chair with a friendly smile, and when he sat down among them he felt the weight of the family. He himself had no one in the world—family for him was something from a distant past—but suddenly here a power was assembled that helped him understand Onno better. This here was what he was reacting against, but with the strength of that same family of which he was irrevocably a part.

  "Well, Mr. Delius," said Diederic, the governor, folding his arms and leaning back. "Did you find the ceremony edifying?" He was in his early fifties; Antonia, his wife, also a fairly formidable matron, appeared to be approaching sixty and could almost be Ada's grandmother.

  Max realized with dismay that a new phase of ambiguity and secretive-ness had begun—how could he ever simply be himself again, without being reminded at every turn of something he could not say?

  "I thought that text from the Batavian Republic was an original idea of Onno's. Particularly if you take the current political situation into account."

  "The only problem is that the marriage of course will be completely invalid in that form," said the p
ublic prosecutor. He was thick-set and a little bloated, with thin, lank hair and sharp blue eyes. "That alderman will probably have to resign."

  "Don't be so silly, Coen," said Dol. "Stop making a laughingstock of yourself."

  She wasn't at all like her gangling sister, Trees. She was on the frail side, with an open, attractive face; obviously Mendel's law had ensured the reappearance of some refined ancestress. Max realized at once why she was Onno's favorite sister.

  "Resign," growled Coen. "Resign."

  "How about another glass of champagne," suggested Dol's husband, Karel, a brain surgeon at a Rotterdam hospital, as Max knew from Onno. He too looked out of place, with his sharp, gaunt features, which gave him the appearance of a diabolical scholar from the Frankenstein family, obsessed with destroying the world, though that was not what he wanted.

  "Resign," repeated Coen once again, prompting Menno's wife, Margo, to burst out laughing.

  "It's like the Council of Blood in the revolt against Spain here," she said.

  "Are you a left-winger like Onno, Mr. Delius?" asked Trees. "Surely not. I hope you exert a favorable influence on him."

  "Of course," he said. "I focus only on higher things. I'm an astronomer."

  "Oh really?" Onno's mother leaned forward. "So you can foretell the future."

  "To," said Quist. "Be quiet."

  "Absolutely," said Max. "In a number of respects, at least. For example, when the next eclipse of the sun will be. But in other respects, no."

  "What respects?"

  "For example, whether or not a letter will arrive telling you you are about to make a long journey."

  "That's a shame."

  "You're telling me."

  "I'd so like to go to the Galapagos Islands one day," said Mrs. Quist dreamily, looking at her husband. "It seems they have all kinds of strange animals there. Do you remember those turtles in Surinam, Henk?"

  Quist nodded. "That was back in 'twenty-seven."

  "They'd completely lost their bearings. After laying their eggs on the beach, they didn't return to the sea, but went farther and farther inland, where they were put into baskets by little Negro boys."