The Discovery of Heaven

by Harry Mulisch

  "Which might be the best for everyone. And second?"

  "Second, that she had also offered to look after the child herself. But you didn't want it to go to a single woman."

  Max waited for a moment to see whether Onno had already realized, but there was no indication that he had.

  Onno listened to him with the slightly unpleasant feeling that he was being intruded upon, even if it was by his best friend. Not only in his immediate family were they talking about him behind his back, about things that directly affected his life. He hadn't the faintest idea what Max was getting at.

  "That's right." He nodded. "So?"

  "I arranged to see her and I've just met her, in the station buffet. I've come straight from there."

  What in heaven's name was going on here? Onno sat up. "Isn't that slightly odd? She didn't tell me anything about having arranged to meet you."

  "You weren't supposed to know." Max struggled for words. Now he was about to say it for the second time. "Brace yourself, Onno. I suggested to her that she and I should look after your child."

  Onno stared at him numbly. What he had just heard could not be possible. "Say that again."

  "It's now more or less certain that I'm to become telescope astronomer in Westerbork, and in the foreseeable future I will probably move to Drenthe permanently."

  "What on earth are you saying? I remember you saying that you'd feel like an exiled criminal in Siberia there."

  "Things have changed for me, Onno. Your mother-in-law is prepared to move in with me, so that your child would be in good hands."

  Onno felt as if he were seeing a city collapse and subsequently rise from its ruins in the shape of another city—Amsterdam changing into Rome, the palace on the Dam into St. Peter's. Once before he had had such a sensation. Years ago one winter evening, snow had deadened every noise and every sound in the city and he sat bent over his photos of Etruscan inscriptions: suddenly he saw everything shift into a new constellation, turn on its head, flip, and suddenly his discovery had been made. The sudden metamorphosis of his friend into his child's mentor and that of his mother-in-law into Max's house companion hadn't yet entirely sunk in, but wasn't it the ideal solution? Goodbye to all those cousins and their spouses!

  Or was it complete madness, too crazy for words? Max with his dreadful mother-in-law in Drenthe. Surely that would be impossible. He, the frenzied satyr, under one roof with the icy Sophia Brons—what had gotten into him? How had he hit upon the idea of effacing himself in that way? Had his past caught up with him, as a foster child himself? But he had offered it to him; he was sitting there waiting for an answer. Was it perhaps simply friendship?

  "Max ..." he began—it was as though the resonance of his voice sent tears into his eyes. "I don't know what to say .. ."

  "Then don't say anything. Or rather say it's okay, and then we'll have it over with."

  Onno got up and went out of the room. At the basin, he threw water over his face with both hands. While he was looking for a towel, which was not there, he asked himself whether he could accept the offer. Could he be the cause of such a radical change in Max's life? Maybe Max felt partly responsible, since he, Onno, would never have met Ada without him. Or was the accident involved, because Max had been at the wheel, although he was entirely free of blame? He wiped his face on a sleeve and went back in.

  Max had stood up too and was looking at the sheets of squared paper with linguistic diagrams on them that were pinned to the wall; the Phaistos disc was obviously not yet out of Onno's system.

  "My ears are still buzzing," said Onno. "Are you sure you're not letting your sense of humor run away with you?"

  Max burst out laughing. "I don't think I've ever been as serious as today."

  "Perhaps it's been staring us in the face all along, but please help me understand. What's gotten into you? I couldn't stand one day with that creature. What am I to make of it? Is there something going on between you and her, perhaps?"

  "Ha, ha," laughed Max. "Don't make, me laugh."

  "You're capable of it, but probably there are limits even for you."

  "I imagine," said Max with great control, "that I shall live there like a vicar with his housekeeper and her grandchild. She'll cook my food and iron my shirts, collars never toward the point but always away from it. I'll get by sexually somehow—I'm sure to bump into someone."

  "But why should you do all that for me?"

  "Not just for you. I've had enough of the kind of life I've been living up to now myself. I don't have to go to Westerbork if I don't want to, do I? But I'm going to turn over a new leaf in my sex life too; anyway, it's a practical impossibility to live like a beast in the country. Let me put it like this: in a certain sense it suits me very well. I want to work with that telescope, and otherwise I would have been on my own, in rooms with the local lawyer. Commuting from Amsterdam every day would of course be crazy, certainly in a Volkswagen; and anyway, there are often things to do at night. I'll start an affair with the surgical nurse at Hoogeveen Hospital and then with the German teacher at Zwolle High School. I can teach her a thing or two. And eventually something beautiful will develop between your mother-in-law and the antiques dealer in Assen."

  "But supposing you do meet someone, someone you want to start a family with?"

  "Then of course I'll take your child with me. But I can't see that happening. Anyway, the unexpected is always possible—even your cousins Hans and Jan-Kees could get divorced."

  "Dear God," cried Onno, raising his hands. "You've reminded me. My family! How am I going to tell my family?"

  That was it.

  "Does that mean that we're going to do it?"

  "Of course we're going to do it! I'm sure that Ada would have thought this was the best thing too."

  That remark had a big impact on Max. He hadn't thought about it yet, but there could be no doubt about it; it was as though he could see her, nodding with eyes closed. He put out his hand, and Onno looked at it for a moment before shaking it.

  "Champagne!" said Max. "La Veuve!"

  "I wish I had." Onno shook his head gloomily. "I don't even have any beer here. I've sunk completely back into barbarism."

  "Let's go out for a drink, we have to celebrate this. It's my treat."

  "You go on. I need to be alone now. I need to stare numbly into space for a long time to get over the shock. And then the three of us must meet as soon as possible; there are bound to be all kinds of snags, but we'll solve them. The child is being born one and a half months prematurely, and according to the doctors it will definitely have to stay in the incubator for four or five weeks. Plenty of time to settle everything."

  32

  The Dilettante

  When Max had gone, Onno went upstairs and dropped onto his bed. Suddenly the mists had cleared and a future again lay in front of him like day after night. Max had convinced him, but it was still not completely clear to him; after all, bringing up a child was a matter of about seventeen years— that meant Max was basically tying himself down until the year 1985, when he would be fifty-two. Fifty-two! Good God! By that time life will be more or less over; his own, too. At least perhaps not over, because why shouldn't someone live to ninety, but certainly changed from afternoon into evening. And meanwhile Max would be doing other things besides bringing up a child—namely, scientific research; bringing up a child would help him in this, since it brought order into his existence.

  His child was perhaps precisely what Max needed in order to do really important astronomical work, since otherwise he would waste a large part of his time charming another thousand women out of their panties—which would be all well and good if you could remember it, so that you could look back on it all with satisfaction on your deathbed. But of course you forgot; all that would be left will be an enormous pile of laundry, in which one pair of panties was indistinguishable from the other. Apart from that, when you were ninety, what good to you was the knowledge that you had lain on top of countless eighty- or sevent
y-year-olds? Or on centenarians? You would sit dribbling on a park bench and an old woman would come by, her body twisted into a rheumatic angle, talking to herself, supporting herself on a black lacquered stick, and you would think: I was once in the sack with that girl. Terrific triumph.

  But perhaps Max didn't want to remember it at all; perhaps he wanted to leave and forget women continually because he had once been left and forgotten. At any rate it would never happen to him, Onno himself. He had been to bed with eleven women, all of whom he remembered exactly: Helga had been the ninth, Ada the tenth, Maria from Havana the eleventh; and since the accident there had been no one else.

  However, now that Max had reached this point, he reflected, there were of course other conceivable ways of changing his life—without Sophia Brons.

  Max was taking her as part of the bargain; he himself could not bear the thought of having that woman around him the whole time, but Max obviously didn't feel intimidated by her. However much of a bitch she might be, he was also giving back meaning to her life. No, Max was trying to represent his offer as an act of egoism, to make it easier for him, Onno, to accept; but it was and remained first and foremost an unselfish act of friendship, for which Onno would be grateful to him all his life. He could now devote himself to his activities with a clear conscience, without wrestling at the back of his mind with the doubt whether he had done the right thing. The club of rebels had recently put him up as a candidate for the party executive, and a decision was due soon; if that went ahead then he would have to concentrate fully on his responsibilities.

  Suddenly he jumped off his bed, went to the telephone, and dialed his youngest sister's number. He wanted to make it definite immediately, so that there would be no way back.

  "Dol? It's Onno."

  "Just a moment, I just got in. Let me give the dog some water.—Yes, I'm here now."

  "Listen carefully, Dol. I know I'm taking you by surprise, but I want to get it off my chest immediately. My friend Max has just been here—you know, my best friend, Max Delius—and he's offered to bring up my child together with my mother-in-law. I just wanted to tell you."

  "Good heavens, Onno, wait a moment, not so fast. What on earth are you saying?"

  "That my problem has been solved. Max is getting a job at the new radio telescope in Drenthe, and he's going to live there; my mother-in-law is going to move in with him as housekeeper, and there'll also be room for my child. It couldn't be better. It's all wrapped up."

  Stuttering, Dol tried to say something. "But Onno ... wait a moment.. . you can't just. . ."

  "Oh yes I can!"

  "Don't be so idiotic. You can't decide this in the blink of an eye."

  "I already have."

  "How do you see it working? Have you thought through all the implications? Are you sure that you won't regret it? Anyway, I don't think this is something to discuss on the telephone. Can't you—"

  "There's nothing further to discuss, I'm just letting you know. Hans and Paula will both get a nice note from me, thanking them for their offer—and I can't see what other implications this solution is supposed to have. I can't see into the future, but why should I regret it?"

  There was a few seconds' delay before Dol replied. "Because ... I don't really know how I'm supposed to say it . .. it's not what I think, but I can imagine someone thinking . . . look, of course I can't say anything against your mother-in-law, but—"

  "Well against who, then?" he said, feeling himself getting angry. "Or rather, against who else? Out with it—say what you mean."

  "Well, I don't want to offend you, Onno, but your friend Max ... he struck me as a very interesting man, good-looking too, but... he isn't one of us, is he?"

  "Et tu, Brute!" cried Onno in fury. "You mean that he's the son of a Jewess and a war criminal, the son of everything that God forbade and not the son of decent Christian folk who plundered the colonies for centuries! That's what you mean! And that a fellow like that isn't eligible to bring up a Quist! No, but now I am absolutely sure. I'm glad you said it. Thanks a lot for your help."

  The following morning, Sunday, he was sorry about his outburst and called her again. His brother-in-law came to the phone; Dol was taking the dog for a walk. He accepted Onno's excuses on her behalf; with hindsight she had understood. Anyway, he began, yesterday evening they had been over to the Statenlaan . . . but because Onno realized at once that Karel was trying to bring up the question of Max again in that roundabout way, he interrupted him and said that he didn't care what his parents had said, because his decision had been made: this was what was going to happen and nothing else—it was pointless coming back to it. The family would simply have to learn to live with it. Next he was on the phone to Max and Sophia, and they agreed that he would come to Leiden in the course of the afternoon with Max; Max would pick him up from the gate of the hospital.

  Why he visited Ada for a moment every day—recently usually outside official visiting hours—was not completely clear even to Onno himself. He did not need to do it for Ada's sake: it was more a visit to a grave than to a sickbed. However, paradoxically, in that grave a dead body was not slowly but surely starting to decompose, but on the contrary an unborn body was taking shape. As he stood next to her with his arms folded, the ward nurse came up to him and said that Dr. Melchior, the surgeon, had asked whether he would drop by; he was in his room, in the wing opposite.

  "By the way, now I'm talking to you: can we have your permission to cut Ada's hair a little shorter? Up to now we've left it more or less as it is, but for reasons of hygiene . . . Given the circumstances it will soon grow again."

  Onno realized that he could not refuse, just as he could not demand that she should be made up every morning. He nodded, pressed a kiss on Ada's black, silky hair, and left the ward without so much as exchanging a glance with the nurse.

  He wondered what Melchior wanted from him; he had spoken to him only yesterday. On his way there he again noticed that the staff looked at him in a special way: everyone knew by now who he was and the state his wife was in. It was as though some of them wanted to see how someone felt in his situation, while most of them gave the impression that they wanted to help him by looking at him.

  With his fleshy, round face, his hump, and his deformed leg, the little surgeon came out from behind his desk and shook Onno's hand. He was wearing a white short-sleeved gown.

  "Have a seat," he said. "We can keep it short. I wanted to speak to you alone for a moment, without your mother-in-law." He folded his large hands on the top of his desk and looked penetratingly at Onno, while he obviously carefully weighed his words. "Yesterday you inquired how risky next Thursday's operation would be."

  "I understood from you that the chances were quite good."

  Melchior nodded and allowed another silence to fall, during which he did not take his light-blue eyes off Onno. Onno looked back at him in bewilderment, getting the feeling that those pauses contained the real message rather than his words.

  Slowly, the surgeon said: "In general that is the case. But complications can always arise, which may be fatal."

  "We're aware of that," said Onno. "My mother-in-law perhaps most of all—she was in medicine herself. There was no need to keep that from her."

  "So I've heard." Melchior again inserted a silence. "But you know, a mother ..."

  Suddenly Onno felt the blood draining from his face. Was he understanding him correctly? Was the man prepared to pull the plug? If he were to say to him now that an unexpected fatal outcome might ultimately be the best for everyone, first and foremost for Ada, to the extent that there was still such a person as Ada, would the required complication occur on Thursday? Some hemorrhage, or a cardiac arrest, with fatal consequences? Thursday was the day when that would be possible; if it didn't happen, then the opportunity would have been missed and her body might remain in its present state for months and perhaps years, before it died a natural physiological death.

  It would be a long time before that would cha
nge in the Christian-dominated Netherlands, without someone risking a prison sentence and being struck off the medical register; that was another reason for changing society. He got up and went to the window, where he looked out without seeing anything. He was now in conversation with the doctor, but he must not indicate with so much as a word that this was happening; if he were to utter the word euthanasia, Melchior would dismiss that suggestion in alarm and the operation would proceed faultlessly. If Ada were to die on the operating table and suspicions were to arise so that people like his brother-in-law Coen could take him to court, on the basis of laws that his brother Menno taught, then everyone could swear under oath that there had been no question of terminating a life. The judge might have his own opinion, but the upshot would be acquittal, acclaimed by the enlightened section of the nation.

  What was he to do? He now suddenly had to decide on her life. He couldn't possibly do it! He felt the responsibility weighing on his back like the sack of anthracite on that of a coalman from his childhood. But was her life "her" life anymore? Was there still a subject called Ada lying fifty yards away from here on a sheepskin? The day before yesterday he had asked the neurologist if her E.E.G. was completely flat—to which Stevens had replied that it was indistinguishable from a flat E.E.G. But he also thought of the conversation he had had a week ago with Max at Ada's bedside, when they had said that everyone, despite all the E.E.G.'s, instinctively whispered at all those bedsides.

  He turned around. Melchior was leafing through a pile of large index cards, which had been bound into a temporary notebook with tape; he gave the impression that he had already forgotten the topic of conversation. Onno looked at his watch.

  "I'm sorry," he said. "Someone's waiting for me at the gate. Shall we continue this conversation another time?"