The Discovery of Heaven

by Harry Mulisch

  She looked at him questioningly. "Where were you thinking of going? It's past four. Surely you're not going to take a taxi to Amsterdam?"

  "I can go to the observatory. The director lives on the premises—he'll have a bed for me. Otherwise I'll sleep at the caretaker's."

  Sophia got up. "What nonsense waking those people up. You can sleep in Ada's room. Why don't you go upstairs now and start by having a shower."

  Yes, why not? He'd been frightened of finding a distraught widow, crying despairingly over the body of her husband; but it was as though his death had made her even more steadfast. He, too, hated the idea of having to go straight back into the street. And perhaps she would prefer not to be alone in the house tonight.

  "Well . .. If I'm not being a trouble to you, I'd like to."

  She turned off the lights and, upstairs, pointed out the bathroom to him—a small room with a washbasin, a folded ironing board against the wall, and a tall laundry basket. He would have preferred to take a bath, but there was only a separate square shower compartment with a white plastic curtain. He quickly took off his clothes, which were still not completely dry, threw them in a heap, and stood on the springy, zinc floor of the shower compartment; an attempt to clean it, obviously with some acid or other, had left white corrosion marks in the metal. But the modest jet from the shower was warm and filled him with a blissful feeling of rebirth, as though he hadn't been subjected to enough water today. An egg-shaped piece of pink soap hung from a rope, and with it he was able to finally wash everything away—not only the dirt, but also somehow the closeness of what had happened. When he opened the curtain, a bath towel was lying over the edge of the washbasin, and a folded pair of pajamas.

  They were Ada's father's, of course. The legs were too short, but the flannel was soft and pleasant. In Ada's room, at the back of the house, her mother was making up the bed; the window was open. She glanced briefly at him.

  "That makes a difference."

  He had never been in here. Of course Ada had taken most belongings to Onno's, but her girlhood things had remained. Dolls and stuffed animals on the low bookcase filled with girls' books; small things and knick-knacks, boxes, bottles, on the wall a large poster of a melancholy bloodhound, but also a framed photo of Stravinsky; a bent music stand with a woollen rabbit. Everything looked neat; obviously, the room had been painted not long ago.

  They said goodnight and he got into bed. Next to him there was a cord against the wall; the switch near the ceiling was the same kind of parrot's beak as in his own childhood room, at his mother's. It made the same click and immediately the darkness overwhelmed him. Outside there was deep silence. He put his hands under his head and closed his eyes. Had it really been today that he had met them from the station? The crown of the tree came swishing down ...

  He woke when she slipped in beside him under the blanket. At first he thought he was dreaming, because this was impossible. He wasn't dreaming. Suddenly he felt Sophia's arm around him and her warm body next to him, shaking with sobs. Her hair was loose. Yes, of course this was the impossible, completely unthinkable!

  "What is it?" he asked.

  "I'm sorry," she sobbed and buried her face in his neck. "Don't send me away. It's because of the way you looked with all those scratches and those ruined clothes. It's exactly how Oswald looked the day that I met him in the war, after a bombing raid . .. On the very day that he died. Of course he was an old fogey, but. . . And then Ada .. . perhaps it's better that he won't have to go through that now . . ."

  He was alarmed by her words. Might it be fatal after all? In confusion, he in turn put his arm around her, both in fatherly consolation and seeking help, and under a thin rucked-up nightdress he felt her soft back, her full hips. What was happening? His body fitted exactly into the curve of her body, her breasts, her belly, like a musical instrument in its case. Unwittingly, he stroked her large naked buttocks, which were not those of a girl but of a mature woman, in her mid-forties—and as though his hand were seized and dragged down by a whirlpool, it slipped between them and landed in another tropical world of damp, hair, living flesh, that seemed to envelop it suddenly and completely in the darkness.

  He began to shiver and kissed her. She pulled down his pajama bottoms and he disappeared into her unaided, as though her opening were everywhere. She kept her tongue out the whole time, right out of her mouth, while a dark growl came from her throat, and in the depths of her belly something seized the head of his penis each time—what was that secret? Her cervix? He thought of her husband for a moment, stiffening on his trolley in the morgue, who must have felt this too when he sired Ada, but he didn't think very much; the snapping soon took him to a climax, as though he were being pumped up. He caught his breath, and with a loud scream the whole scene exploded, and with a second and third and fourth scream he emptied himself into her. Sweating and breathless, he slumped back beside her, and before he had even realized it, she had got out of bed. He was just able to hear the door close.

  He hadn't seen her. He groped for the cord of the switch and, dazzled by the light, closed his eyes. What had just happened was impossible! It must have been a hallucination, provoked by all the emotion and exhaustion! He felt his penis: still half erect and soaking wet. Perplexed, he wondered whether he had really slept with the grandmother of his child—in the bed of her daughter, who had just been in an accident, dressed in the pajamas of her husband who had just died. Those last two facts were certain in any case.

  How could they look each other in the face tomorrow morning? Who had seduced whom? She had seduced him, of course! For the first time in his life he had been seduced. Perhaps she hadn't been to bed with her husband for years. Shouldn't he get up now, leave a note and go? But how should he start that letter? Dear Sophia? Dear Mrs. Brons? They were equally impossible. No heading at all? And it was as though the thought that he would have to put his damp clothes on again, and walk to the observatory through the Botanical Garden after all, was the final sign for his body to put an end to things for today. He had just enough strength to pull the cord.

  He woke at a quarter past nine; the memory of the previous night immediately filled him with frenzied uncertainty. He cracked the top joints of his thumbs. He quickly got out of bed and drew the curtains. It was calm weather; only a few branches that had blown down and fragments of roof tiles recalled what had happened. His clothes were hanging over a chair: everything had been cleaned, dried, and ironed; even his shoes had been polished. In the bathroom Brons's shaving things were still on the washbasin, but he did not touch them. When he entered the room downstairs, Sophia was on the telephone. Her hair was up again; she nodded to him and pointed to the coffee pot, which was on the table.

  While he poured himself a cup, he could hear that the conversation was about mourning and the funeral. She had behaved naturally to him; her eyes again had the look of the abbess, as though nothing had happened. If that was the attitude she had chosen, she was making things easy for him.

  Or had nothing really happened? Had he dreamed it, perhaps? He sneaked a look at her. Was that the woman who last night had stuck her tongue out so far? Only now did it strike him that she had a good figure, fuller than Ada's, but in good shape everywhere; nowhere were its contours blurred with fat. There was a clear transition from her firm calves into slim ankles.

  "That was Dol," she said, putting the receiver down, "Onno's sister. She's taken all the formalities off my hands. Did you sleep well?"

  "Very well. And thank you very much for tidying up my things."

  Onno had also already called. There had still been no change in Ada's condition; he would be coming to Amsterdam in the ambulance in the course of the morning. She herself would be going there that afternoon.

  "Did you say that I'd spent the night here?"

  "Yes. You did, didn't you? Would you like a fried egg?"

  "Yes please, Mrs. Brons."

  When she had disappeared into the kitchen, he thought: the woman's split into tw
o completely separate halves. There was a daytime Sophia and a nighttime Sophia, who had nothing in common—a cool, unfeeling person, and a second one brimming with emotion. He remembered how Ada had sometimes talked about her as a disgusting bitch, but had she really known her mother? It fascinated him—but it was also clear to him that he mustn't make any allusion to what had happened last night.

  He thought about everything that he had to do today. Of course he had to call Onno, then he had to go to the observatory: prepare everyone for the news that a week's observation material might have been lost. He had to call Dwingeloo; Floris must contact the police. He had to call his insurance company, and his garage. The car was not a write-off, there was probably nothing wrong with the engine, but he never wanted to see the thing again; they would have to clean it up and sell it. He took out his diary and was going to make a few notes, but the point of his pencil had broken off. While he was sharpening it, the shop doorbell rang.

  "Would you go and see who it is?" called Sophia.

  He walked to the front of the shop, up little flights of stairs and through the caverns. At the cash register stood a tall, thin man with a short black beard, who stared rather wildly into his eyes.

  "Have you got anything on metempsychosis?"

  Metempsychosis—that sounded like madness. Max looked around.

  "Perhaps in the psychiatry section .. ."

  "I mean the transmigration of souls," said the man, still staring at him.

  It was on the tip of Max's tongue to say that they didn't have anything on migration, but Sophia had already appeared.

  "We're closed. We're closed because of a bereavement." To Max she said, "Your egg's ready."

  28

  The Funeral

  On the evening of that day, on his way to Keyzer's, where he had arranged to meet Max at seven o'clock, Onno looked in alarm at the Concertgebouw: he had completely forgotten to phone the orchestra! They were due to give a subscription concert shortly! When he asked the porter at the stage door whether anyone from the administration was there, Marijke came past with her clarinet. When he told her what had happened, the color drained from her face and she clutched the case to her, like a child in need of protection. She would pass on the message and visit Ada the following day.

  "You needn't bother," said Onno. "At the moment she's not aware of anything that's happening around her."

  "How do you know that? Anyway, I want to do it for myself, too."

  He gave her the room number, pressed a kiss on her forehead, and went across the street, to where the restaurant was filled with dining concert-goers.

  Max was sitting at a small table against the wall. "What's the news?" he asked immediately.

  "Not too good."

  Onno had been told by the neurologist that afternoon that Ada's electroencephalogram was fortunately not "flat," as he called it, but did show a "diffuse, seriously slowed pattern."

  "I know those kinds of terms from my own subject," nodded Max.

  "He said that for the time being they couldn't make any predictions. Only if it continues like this for two or three more weeks may they perhaps be able to call it an irreversible coma."

  "And if you've got a flat E.E.G...."

  "Then you're a vegetable."

  They sat opposite each other in silence.

  "But suppose ..." Max began hesitantly. "Ada's now in her fifth month . . . and if it takes—"

  "It doesn't seem to make any difference to the child."

  Suddenly Max realized that at the moment he was the only person who could still say what had happened in the Gulf of Mexico. But even if that remained the case, it still wouldn't help him. Even if she had not had an accident, Ada would never have talked about it.

  "What then?" he asked cautiously.

  "Yes, then there will be a problem. But there's no question of that for the time being. It only happened last night, do you realize? Her mother was there this afternoon—she used to be a nurse; she also said that she'd known cases of unconsciousness that lasted for weeks."

  Onno could hear himself saying this—and at the same time he saw Ada's motionless face on the pillow, the horrible catheter in her nose, and himself sitting in their silent house that afternoon for minutes on end looking at her cello, like at a tombstone.

  "In any case," said Max thoughtfully, "it seems there's no threat to the child."

  "Everyone agreed about that."

  The waiter handed them the menus, but Onno waved him away and said he wanted four rissoles and two glasses of milk. Max would have preferred to eat nothing at all, and ordered only a plate of vegetable soup. He had the impression that Onno was more optimistic than he was; he himself did not trust it—and of course that was because of what the same Sophia had said, last night.

  "Off you go again," said Max, "with your milk and your rissoles."

  Onno sighed deeply. "To be quite honest . .. but of course you must never tell anyone . . . this is not the worst thing. I'm the stock comic type of the married bachelor."

  Max smiled. He was about to say that in that case he, who was Onno's opposite in everything, was probably the tragic type of the unmarried husband—but that was too ambiguous for him to manage to say. For his part,

  Onno had of course immediately had the same thought, and he also knew that Max was thinking that, and he appreciated the fact that he didn't want to slip into their usual tone now.

  Max spread the napkin over his lap. "How did your mother-in-law react when she saw Ada?"

  "Incomprehensible. She looked at her daughter as though she were just any patient. No feeling at all, even though her husband has just died too. I ask you. No, what a mother to have. I never wanted to believe Ada, but now I've seen it with my own eyes."

  "She was very nice to me, though," said Max, without looking at him, "I can't say any different. She gave me shelter for the night, pressed my trousers, and fried an egg for me. Perhaps she has difficulty in showing her feelings."

  "Yes, yes. I could tell you a few of Ada's stories about her, but I won't. Maybe you know them too, for that matter. Anyway, Brons is being cremated on Monday—you'll be getting an invitation. Will you be coming, or will you be back in Dwingeloo?" His voice faltered. "What's wrong? You suddenly look as if you've pooped in your pants."

  Max's eyes had widened in dismay. He noticed that, at the prospect of seeing Sophia again, he was getting an erection under his napkin. What in heaven's name did that mean? Did it mean that he, like Ada and Onno, had not only never understood her, but not even himself?

  Max drove from the observatory to the crematorium near The Hague in a Volkswagen borrowed from his garage. He really ought to have been in Dwingeloo, but when he had mentioned the accident, someone had filled in for him.

  Here all hope went up in smoke. Just like three months ago, at Onno's wedding, it was rush hour here too—but now in order to undo something the foundations of which were constantly being laid in the town halls. The same black limousines, now without white ribbons on their side mirrors, drove in and out of the gate, and now not accompanied by confetti and laughter but, in a leaden silence, filled only by the soft crunch of ground-up shells under the tires. He breathed in the sea air deeply. Here too there were groups of people standing everywhere, but he saw no one that he knew. At the gate a man in a black suit, with a hat in his hand, asked him for which deceased he had come; because of his profession his face expressed such a boundless, universal, almost syllogistic sorrow at the mortality of all human beings, hence also of Socrates, that no one could match it with their individual sorrow. The service for Mr. Brons was in the small hall. The cortege had not yet arrived.

  He walked down the wooded path, past the columbaria. In the niches of the brick walls the urns stood like in an eighteenth-century pharmacy; but at the same time it made an Asiatic impression on him. There was something Chinese about it, something from a culture that had been submerged for thousands of years. He would never have himself cremated; it was far too final for
him. He and Onno had once come to the conclusion that you had to decide for yourself whether after your death you wanted to return to your father or your mother. If you wanted to return to your father, then you must go into the fire, because that was spirit; but your mother was of course the earth, the body. Since that conversation, Onno had known for sure that he would have himself cremated.

  The sun shone low over the tops of the trees—and when the crematorium loomed up he saw above the low flat roof, against the dark background of the wood, thin pale blue smoke drifting slowly upward, like from a cigarette. He decided to walk around the building first before going in.

  Around the back he stopped. Not because of the container of rubbish, which was standing there, because rubbish was inevitable everywhere; or because of the drivers, who stood laughing and talking by their parked hearses, since everyone had a job to do; but because of the square chimney that he recognized from Birkenau. Now too there was no smoke coming out of it, only scorching heat. At its base there was the hum of ventilators from a grille. He couldn't see it, but at the same time he did see it: how stokers under the ground took the coffins out of the descended elevators, carried them across a tiled floor in neon light, and pushed them, flowers and all, into the white hell: not thousands a day, true, two or three an hour, but that was what was going on down below.

  In the waiting room of the small hall a small company had gathered. Onno's parents were there, and his youngest sister's husband, Karel, the Rotterdam brain surgeon. The others—friends and acquaintances of Brons's of course, freethinkers and anarchists, perhaps even teetotalers—he had never seen before. He could only remember Ada's father vaguely, but in some way they were like him: slightly shabby, like Social Democrats, but without their petit bourgeois air and plus a certain intellectual clarity, in the way they looked at things. They had read books—even if they were probably books that only they still read. They looked shyly now and then at the Calvinist prime minister, who had read mainly one Book.