The Discovery of Heaven

by Harry Mulisch

  "As you like. There isn't that much to continue."

  "What's wrong?" asked Max. "Why aren't you saying anything?"

  Surrounded by tentative gray-haired Sunday drivers, they were making their way along the highway to Leiden.

  Onno groaned and looked sideways at him. "Can I trust you?"

  Max laughed uncomfortably. "Is it conceivable that I should say no?"

  "Then swear you'll never tell anyone what I'm going to tell you in deepest secrecy."

  "I swear."

  "Not my mother-in-law, not my child, or anyone else—even later. Raise two fingers of your right hand and repeat it."

  Max took his right hand off the steering wheel, raised two fingers, and said: "I swear."

  Onno then told him what had just happened. Max, too, was shocked by the sudden emergence of extreme seriousness. Deciding on life and death— like Onno he had never dreamt that it might become an issue in his life. That was something for doctors, military people, politicians, not for astronomers; so it was still more Onno's territory than his.

  "When I said that we might continue our conversation another time, he said there wasn't much to continue. Of course he wasn't talking about our conversation, but about Ada's life. He looks like Quasimodo, the bell-ringer of Notre-Dame, but I know from my brother-in-law that he's a top man at his job. What would you do in my position?"

  Perhaps Max was in his position. Suddenly his brain was operating quickly and efficiently. "I'd want to find out," he said, "whether the neurologist and the surgeon are really one hundred percent certain that Ada is brain-dead, that there's not one ounce of individuality left in her. Because even if there's just a tiny bit left, it's murder. I'm inflexible on that point. Suppose there's only as much left as a one-year-old child; then you can't do it. You can't murder babies, either. But if there's really nothing left at all, zero percent, just a vegetable, then it means nothing. Then you can."

  "You talked differently last week. I got the impression that in your view not even the dead should be killed, so to speak."

  "That was fantasy." Max nodded.

  "But how can I find out what Quasimodo really thinks? I can't just ask him, because then the whole thing would be called off at once. And I can't approach that neurologist Stevens, because Melchior didn't inform him, of course."

  At that moment Max had an idea.

  "Do you know what we'll do? Ask casually if Ada is going to be given a local or a general anesthetic. If he says he won't be anesthetizing her since she has no perception left, then that would settle it, but if he says 'local' or 'general,' you'll know the score."

  "This marks the exact scientist!" Onno exclaimed. "But if I ask him he'll probably smell a rat anyway, because he doesn't strike me as stupid. Perhaps it'll be better if I involve my brother-in-law on some pretext—he's a brain surgeon as you know; all these butchers know each other. Or maybe not," he said, shaking his forefinger. "He may say that a cesarean section is never carried out under local anesthetic, that he doesn't need to ask the surgeon. But he'll have been immediately alerted, because everyone has obviously considered that possibility, certainly good old Karel, who in terms of character might be persuadable, if he weren't such a holy Joe. No one else must be involved!" He looked sideways again. "I know a better way. You must find out."

  Max glanced at him, then looked back at the road. "How do you see that happening?"

  "You must get friendly with the surgical nurse a day before and find out from her if they're going to use an anesthetic—if necessary in bed, without regard of persons. So that disgusting promiscuity of yours will finally have some point for a change."

  Max smiled. Now that promiscuity might have some point—even though Onno was only half serious, of course—it no longer existed. "Success doesn't strike me as guaranteed."

  "Bashful all of a sudden?"

  "Listen, she may be a lesbian; you never know with nurses. I could tell you things. . .. There has to be a surer way of getting a result. Suppose I read up a little on the technical side of the anesthetics business—"

  "Anesthesiological. Anesthetics are the substances."

  "... so that I can see whether equipment is switched on and that kind of thing. Then on Thursday I'll simply wander into the operating room by mistake a quarter of an hour beforehand. Things like that are always possible in Amsterdam. Then I'll let you know; as the husband, you'll accompany the stretcher to the door of the operating room, where they won't let you through. Then you can ask to see the surgeon for a moment and privately give an indication of your decision."

  Onno looked pensively at the little imitation three-wheeled car ahead of them that would not budge from the outside lane.

  "Right," he said. "That's what we'll do, compañero. What would I do without you?"

  "Nothing, it seems."

  When the three of them had met for the first time that afternoon in the back room at the bookshop, with tea and biscuits, Onno's main problem was in getting used to their new status: Max as foster father, Sophia as foster mother, himself as a grass widower. He felt embarrassed by the situation, but Sophia was businesslike as always; she seemed to have adjusted completely to the changed circumstances, like someone who had simply changed jobs. But Max was aware that only she and he knew that the relationship they were entering into with each other was a facade, hiding a completely different relationship; and that too was in turn of course a facade, behind which there was nothing but chaos and uncertainty. Now that plan they had hatched on the way here had been added to that awareness; he felt as if he himself were falling under something like an anesthetic. What he would have liked most was to stay over at "In Praise of Folly," in order to sink into the arms of the nighttime Sophia, but of course that was out of the question now that Onno was there.

  "Goodbye, Mrs. Brons."

  " 'Bye, Max."

  The next conclave was on Tuesday evening at Onno's, but there really had not been that much more to discuss. They had soon reached an agreement on the financial side of things, and the sale of the bookshop had meanwhile also been agreed upon. Onno had not had to think very hard: from the inexhaustible reservoir of his family a second cousin had emerged who had always been a bad sort but who was now the director of a large real estate firm. Onno had called and told him to get an extortionate price for the premises without charging a commission, as otherwise he would report him to the police. And as far as accommodation in Drenthe was concerned, Max had talked to the director of the observatory, who had smiled mysteriously and said that he might know of something nice. That sounded promising, at least not like a two-bedroom house in a new development. It also meant that his appointment as telescope astronomer was virtually settled.

  Afterward, Sophia did the backlog of cleaning, vacuumed, and put on the washing machine, which reminded Onno of Ada's first visit: she was more like her mother than she realized, or had realized. While Sophia busied herself upstairs, Max suggested that they really ought to tell Onno's mother-in-law about their anesthesiological plan. In the first place she knew about these things, and in the second place it concerned her daughter. But Onno felt that was precisely why she should be kept out of it: as a mother she would never have a hand in the death of her child, even if there was nothing left of that child. Max was not so sure, but he could not give away the fact that he knew her better than Onno. The main reason why she should remain ignorant—and on this point Max agreed—was that Melchior's position must not be jeopardized in any way: he was the only one who was sticking his neck out and was ready to break the great taboo, and he had made his veiled proposal precisely in the absence of Sophia.

  On Wednesday morning—after staying the night in Leiden, since it was ridiculous driving back to Amsterdam again—he went to the Academic Hospital. He had devised the plan of presenting himself as a writer of medical novels doing background research who would like a look at the operating room, where he would be given an explanation of how the anesthetists' equipment worked. But once on the terrace
he remembered that disastrous night three months ago, and his courage suddenly failed him. He decided to go to the medical faculty library first.

  While next to him two students whispered about the Carre theater in Amsterdam, which was probably going to be occupied tomorrow after a musical performance—led by the writer and the composer whose paths he had already crossed a few times and who, it seemed, had just returned from the rebellious ferment of Paris—he leafed through manuals of anesthesiology and studied illustrations of equipment. Then he asked a surly lady with her gray hair worn up in a bun and a pencil behind her ear to point out where the literature on obstetrics was.

  While he immersed himself in the techniques of cesarean sections and looked at the gory insides of wombs, where infants were being retrieved from damp, dark caverns, apparently against their will, he was struck by the mirror-image similarity between the work of surgeons and his own. Just as he, starting from his own body, looked into the depths of the universe, where everything became increasingly incomprehensible, they took the opposite direction and penetrated that same body, where they encountered similar mysteries, culminating in enigmatic neurons and DNA molecules, whose operation was perhaps ultimately determined by quantum processes. The fact that the dimensions of the human body were almost exactly halfway between those of the universe and those of the smallest particles was in line with that fact. Man was the axis of the world—that was not a theological dogma: you could measure it.

  However, he encountered an unexpected problem. The cesarean section, a routine operation lasting no more than half an hour, was usually carried out under general, but sometimes under local, anesthetic; in the latter case only the lower half of the body was anesthetized, with a lumbar injection. That meant that even if the equipment was not switched on, no conclusions could be drawn from it. If the red lights were not on, that meant that on Thursday he would have to locate within a few seconds a particular hypodermic syringe among scores of other syringes, scissors, hooks, clamps, forceps, scalpels, and whatever else might be ready to ensure that everything went according to plan. That was of course impossible. Nor was there any point in finding out on some pretext or other whether there was an anesthetist in the operating room. Of course there would be one; it was inconceivable that he would get a telephone call telling him that he could stay home today, since the patient couldn't feel anything anyway. Blood pressure and heart function all had to be monitored, whether anesthetic was administered or not.

  Max closed the book with a bang, which earned him an icy look from the librarian. She had of course seen long ago, over the top of her glasses, that it was a layman struggling there with the Anglo-Saxon folios bound in red and blue linen, with gold lettering. Of course hypochondriacs regularly came here in order to self-diagnose their imaginary illnesses. He felt ridiculous, like a general practitioner who imagined in the observation room in Dwingeloo that he could see at a glance whether the mirror was being used for espionage purposes.

  A ten-minute conversation with an expert in the Academic Hospital would make everything clear; but if it went wrong and got into the newspapers, then that person might report to the court and give an affidavit on that strange conversation the day before the fatal operation that had caused an uproar in the whole of the conservative Netherlands. Murder! He would be traced—because the librarian had once seen him coming out of the observatory while out walking with her friend through the Botanical Garden— and Melchior would wind up in jail. There was simply no way of finding out quickly without a risk. Unless he were to immediately take a plane to a distant country, Italy for example, and introduce himself in the hospital in Rome as a German writer working on a short story about a pregnant woman in a coma, who . .. No, even that was probably too risky. Such a spectacular case might even make the world press.

  33

  Cesarean Section

  Onno and Sophia had seen it before, but when the three of them entered the ward the following afternoon, Max stopped on the threshold in shock. Ada's hair had been cropped. She looked like the girls and women whose hair he had seen cut off by men, foaming at the mouth, because they had consorted with Germans: "Jerry's whores" in the eyes of the mob, who until the Battle of Stalingrad had had a much cozier arrangement with the Germans, apart from cheerfully taking off their panties. The rectangular frame around her face had disappeared and had revealed a round, defenseless head, which only now seemed to have departed finally into the realm of inaccessibility.

  At a quarter to four, two nurses appeared to wheel Ada, bed and all, to the operating room. The previous evening Max had called Onno and informed him about his medical fiasco, whereupon Onno had immediately concluded that the uncertainty about Ada's mental existence remained and that she should therefore remain alive. Max pressed his lips to her forehead and wondered how he would have felt if the decision had been different.

  Onno, too, was relieved that it had gone like this. Looking back on it, he doubted whether Melchior had actually meant it all as he had interpreted it, though he would never dare to say that to Max. Perhaps he had had him carry out an absurd mission. While Max and Sophia went to the lounge, he accompanied Ada through the corridors and in the elevator upstairs, with one hand on her belly. In a room outside the operating room proper, a man of his own age was washing his hands; he was wearing a green short-sleeved smock, with a cap of the same color on his head. Onno introduced himself and asked if he could speak to Melchior for a moment.

  "Can't you tell me?" asked the man. "My name is Steenwijk. I'm the anesthetist."

  Onno looked at him in shock. He had a walnut-colored complexion, which was a little darker around his eyes. Onno realized that he was suddenly in a situation where he might yet find out what he wanted to know.

  "Anesthetist?" he repeated. "Are you putting my wife under an anesthetic?"

  "Of course."

  "But I understood from Dr. Stevens that she can't feel pain anymore."

  With a vague smile Steenwijk shook his head.

  "That's a separate matter. The sensation of pain is a matter for the cerebral cortex. But what we must avoid in the interest of the child during the operation are possible reflexes from the brainstem. And that is intact, as you know; after all your wife is breathing. Anyway, my instinct also tells me that we have to do it."

  Onno looked at him for a moment and then nodded. At one fell swoop all the nonsense had been dismissed. Steenwijk's last sentence about his instinct echoed in his head. Did that mean that in his view, too, something of Ada still remained?

  Although he was no longer certain that Melchior had actually alluded to euthanasia, he said, feeling ridiculous: "Please tell Dr. Melchior that he must remember his Hippocratic oath and do everything to save my wife's life."

  Steenwijk similarly did not answer immediately. Had he understood?

  "I'll tell him, although it really ought to be unnecessary." He looked at Onno with a slightly melancholy expression and said, "You have my sympathy. You can wait next door."

  "My friends are downstairs."

  "As you wish."

  Max and Sophia were sitting at a round bamboo table with a glass top in wicker garden chairs, surrounded by patients in bathrobes over striped pajamas and nightgowns, their bare feet in slippers. Some were playing cards, others were reading illustrated magazines, doubtless from months or years ago, but most of all they were smoking; with the blissful absorption of prisoners who were finally allowed into the fresh air, the smoke was inhaled into lungs, so that the tips of the cigarettes glowed red. On a cupboard stood a television set that had been switched off.

  Calmly, as though she were waiting for a train, Sophia was also leafing through a magazine; beside her chair was a carryall. Max looked at his watch: four o'clock. Although he too was outwardly calm, inwardly he was trembling with fear. He suddenly felt as though time were a hollow cone, within which he had for months been driven from the base, which was as wide as the world, toward the point, which he must soon pass through—and perhaps
he also realized that image was an echo of the usual space-time diagram in relativity literature: the "light cone" of an event. Within an hour the catastrophe might be a fact, if somehow it became immediately apparent that he was the father.

  Onno joined them and said: "I've just spoken to the anesthetist."

  Max looked up with a jolt, but immediately realized that he must control himself so as not to let Sophia know what they had been talking about.

  "And?" asked Sophia.

  Without looking at Max, Onno reported the conversation to her, but actually of course to Max as well—after which Max suddenly realized that he had behaved even more absurdly with his research yesterday than he already suspected. He felt like a little boy who thought that the station-master's whistle set the train in motion and was now having it explained to him in a few words that it was not really like that. He was ashamed—not so much as a friend in Onno's eyes, because he had other reasons for that, and Onno had also seen some merit in the plan, but particularly as a man of science: just imagine if his colleagues were to hear about this. How had he taken it into his head to research a question of life and death in a few hours on his own initiative, in a completely unknown field, which other people studied for ten years! Were the tensions getting too much for him? Perhaps he should start being a little more careful.

  A nurse asked if they would like a cup of tea; only Max refused. Sophia thought that Ada would have a general anesthetic, administered by drip; under normal circumstances, with a local anesthetic you had to sit up and bend forward with your head between your knees, which in her condition was of course impossible; it could also be done lying down, on one's left side. But she still did not think they would do that. Onno said that the most important thing was that there was nothing wrong with the baby, and he wasn't completely sure about that, even though the doctors maintained there was no reason to worry. Sophia assumed a pediatrician would be present—at least that had been the case in her day, but that was long ago. Now and then their conversation flagged. They were aware that Ada was now lying on the operating table under a huge lamp and was being opened up.