The Discovery of Heaven

by Harry Mulisch

  It was the first time that they had been in each other's company on a daily basis and formed a household, but that meant no change: he continued to call her Mrs. Brons, and unlike what happened between people who were having an affair, there were no marital tiffs between someone and his friend's mother-in-law. Awakened in the morning by the ducks, they breakfasted on the balcony, and he devoted all the time that he could spare to taking down the shelves in the front room, removing the plywood boards that were supposed to give the old handmade doors a modern look in the 1950s, and on painting, varnishing, and emulsifying.

  Gradually, he was seized by a kind of frenzy, which made it almost impossible for him to stop in the evenings. Long after Sophia had sat down in front of the television with a glass of wine and was sewing curtains, he was still up a ladder moving his roller over the playful cloud formations on the ceiling. He had never done anything like this—his girlfriends had always looked after that for him—and the immediately visible result had a relaxing effect on him; what's more, he thought of his work now and then while he was doing it, but in a different way than at his desk: more indirectly, in a certain sense more fruitfully, just as he always had his best ideas when he was cleaning his teeth or his shoes, or under the shower. Actually, there was no shower—he had one put in. Because the castle was not connected to the gas network, a new heater had to be put in that used bottles of butane gas; the decrepit oil stoves also needed replacing.

  When he needed fresh paint or brushes or planks, he drove in his dirty clothes to the shop in the village of Westerbork, six miles south of the new observatory and with only its name in common with the camp. He had still not been to the latter; until the mirrors were completed, there was nothing for him to do there, and he had resolved to put it off for as long as possible.

  In their first few days there they had paid courtesy visits to the other occupants of the castle. Mr. Spier, the husband of Mrs. Spier, was on the point of leaving when they knocked. He was as small as she was, and as painfully correct with his carefully cut, thin dark-blond hair, in his three-piece dark-blue pin-striped suit, with a decoration in his buttonhole and a pearl pin in his tie: a little off-center, as was proper. He said politely that they were bound to meet each other frequently, after which Max immediately invited them for a glass of champagne in a few weeks' time. Mr. Verloren van Themaat, who taught the history of architecture at the Polytechnic in Delft and lived in the other wing on the ground floor, was in the habit of coming only on the weekends; at the moment he was spending the summer in Rome, in the Netherlands Art Historical Institute.

  In the southern half of the loft—in a series of what were formerly servants' rooms on the northern side, where superfluous furniture of the baron's was stored—lived an English translator, that is, a translator from English: Marius Proctor, a man of nearly forty, with black hair and a rather somber expression. His wife, Clara, a provocative, cheerful person with hair dyed red and large earrings, looked like a fortune-teller; she made ghostly abstract objects from old umbrellas, which hung on the sloping walls of their rooms. Whenever she invited Max and Sophia for afternoon tea, sitting on their modern 1950s chairs, Proctor usually disappeared without a word through the thick padded door into what was obviously his study: the tower room above the one in which a crib and a commode were waiting for Quinten.

  He earned his living by translating novels, but his real work at the moment was a translation of Milton's Paradise Lost; apart from that, Clara said that for years he had been writing a book on a discovery he had made, which would create a stir in the literary-historical world. In any case he had the sunken cheeks and temples of the fanatic who was gnawing at himself. They had an aggressive son of about four, called Arendje, who whenever he saw Max ran straight at him and began pushing against his thighs with both hands, as though he wanted to get him out of the room, out of the castle, with his head bent malevolently forward, like a billy goat; amused words and gentle force had no effect, and when Clara finally pulled him away, Arendje tried to give him a kick in the shins. Max was not inclined to go upstairs too often. Once he tried to start up a conversation on literature, but Proctor only answered with a few vague remarks and for the rest maintained his sphinxlike silence. Sophia disliked him, but Max said that he had obviously been crushed by some insight or other, or perhaps by Clara.

  They got along best with Theo Kern and his wife, on their own floor. Going to their apartment meant leaving this world and entering another. The arrangement of the rooms was the mirror image of their own, but that was the only similarity. At first sight the confusion reminded Max of that at Onno's, but at a second glance it became clear to him that it was more the opposite, but in a different way to the calculated order in his own place.

  It was orderly disorder, or disorderly order—it was a third possibility: an artistic, unplanned arrangement of countless things, which had obviously landed somewhere by chance, casually put down, forgotten, like at Onno's, but which here formed an incomprehensible, harmonious creation, just as a swarm of birds at a certain moment took on a perfect shape that had not been composed by anyone. For that matter there were birds, too. Spread through the rooms were three cages, each containing three creamy white doves; some of the cage doors were open, with the crested creatures cooing and bowing on the top.

  Stands with clay models on them, tables with drawings and plants; on the mantelpieces, on the tables, and on the ground there were wire sculptures, prints, pinecones, branches in vases, stones, statuettes, tree trunks, shelves. There was no distinction between bedrooms, living room, and kitchen; one suddenly came upon the Kerns' white four-poster bed, the varnished wooden bed of their daughter, who was in a summer camp at the moment, somewhere a draining board, a fridge, an oven—everything absorbed into the whole—clear, blond, weightless, as translucent as paper.

  And in the midst of all this stood the artist: small, thick-set, jovial, always barefoot, his head surrounded from crown to chin by a huge halo of graying hair, like a dandelion after its petals had fallen. Whenever Max saw him he was reminded of a gnome on a toadstool; but his heavily built wife, Selma, who in her full, long dresses that reached to the ground looked as though she were eternally pregnant, who seldom laughed and sometimes looked at her husband as though he were mad, made one suspect that there were something entirely different in the sculptor—because in Max's view the hidden side of a man was visible as his wife, just as the hidden side of a woman was visible as her husband. But it seemed more sensible to him not to mention that view to Sophia.

  Mother Earth was his usual name for Selma. She had long, loose dark-blond hair and a withdrawn look; Sophia got on very well with her. Like the Proctors, they seemed to have a slight problem with the constellation of Max and Sophia and the child that was about to appear; but they got used to it. Kern occasionally came and looked at Max's efforts, helped now and then and lent him tools—his electric drill, his stapler. They ate with them a few times: large, tasty dishes with a South American feel, so that they were spared the greasy schnitzels in the country restaurant.

  Onno had not yet appeared at the castle. Whenever Max had dropped Sophia off at the Wilhelmina Hospital—where she went to visit her daughter and grandson—they arranged to meet somewhere in town, once even in the canteen of the party headquarters, which was around the corner from Max; spiritually he himself was no longer living in his half-dismantled flat. But their conversations were only about practical things and never lasted longer than half an hour. With a few friends, Onno had been elected to the party executive on behalf of the club of rebels by a party conference; as a reaction, a right-wing schism was approaching, which according to Onno every Social Democratic party in Europe envied them for, because in left-wing circles only left-wing schisms were the tradition, which meant that those parties were becoming more and more right-wing.

  Because of all this, he was busier than ever; sometimes, to his own alarm he realized in bed at night that he hadn't thought of Quinten and Ada for the whole
day. Meanwhile his second cousin, the real estate agent, had sold Sophia's place for a reasonable price for conversion into a snack bar, the stock of "In Praise of Folly" had been taken off her hands by colleagues, superfluous effects had been collected by an auction house, Brons's wardrobe by the Salvation Army. Once the moving was complete and they had furnished the rooms at Groot Rechteren, Max and Sophia drove to Amsterdam one warm July morning, where Onno was waiting for them at the hospital.

  The staff were very reluctant to part with Quinten. He had been laid in bed next to Ada—as he had been for the last few days, since he no longer needed to be in the incubator. They looked in shock at the angelic child, with his wide blue eyes, next to Ada's motionless, almost marble face with its closed eyelids. The tidal wave under the sheets had broken, and Max felt the sight sinking deep into himself, as something that would never disappear from his memory. The moment a nurse pulled the sheet aside and picked up Quinten, everyone here realized that something irrevocable was happening, like a second birth, a second farewell. Ada, too, was shortly to leave the hospital; they were looking for a nursing home near the castle.

  "May I have him?" asked the nurse with Quinten in her arms. "I've never known such a marvelous child. Do you know that he hasn't cried once since his birth? How much do you want for him?"

  In the car Sophia sat in the backseat, with Quinten next to her in a travel bassinet. Little was said. Like Max, Onno was thinking of their fateful journey in February, of which this journey was in some senses the pendant, but neither of them mentioned it.

  When Onno got out on the forecourt of Groot Rechteren, he looked around him, puffed out his chest, and said: "Right! This is a suitable environment for my worthy son! It's true that nature of itself is cretinous, and feudalism is completely out of keeping with the character of a simple man of the people like me, who as a Socialist through and through thinks only of the welfare of the low-paid, but in this special case the party executive will overlook it."

  When Sophia took the travel bassinet carefully out of the car and was about to take it inside, he said, "No, Mother, I'll do that. That is my privilege." He put the handles of the bassinet over his arm like a shopping bag, raised one hand, and as he mounted the terrace began reciting solemnly: "In nomine patris, et filii, et spiritus sancti!"

  In the tower room Sophia laid Quinten on the chest of drawers to change his diaper, and Max showed Onno the apartment. In Sophia's living room-cum-bedroom he recognized the corduroy sofa and the low table, but here, with a view of the moat and the wood, everything had taken on a completely new look. The portrait of Multatuli had obviously been given to the house clearer. When he saw all this, he wondered what had really possessed Max, but the time to raise the subject had now passed.

  Mixed with other things of Sophia's, Max's belongings were mostly in the larger room at the front: the green chesterfield armchair; the grand piano; his books. On his desk again was the row of small instruments, transformed into symbols through their combination and precise arrangement. Although he knew all those things, they too had changed character here. Onno asked whether the rent wasn't astronomical, but Max said that it was scarcely half what he had paid in Amsterdam.

  Onno stood at the mantelpiece, on which were the books in the "shelf of honor." Kafka had disappeared from the row, and in its place he now saw a copy of Turgenev's Fathers and Sons. There was also a photo of Ada and him, taken last year by Bruno in Havana. Next to it a second, framed old photograph. He had seen at once that they were Max's parents. Without saying anything he looked at Max.

  Max nodded. "Risen from limbo," he said.

  "Where has that suddenly appeared from?"

  Max told him about the visit to his foster mother, without going into the circumstances.

  Onno bent forward and studied the couple. "You've got the top. half of your face from your father and the bottom half from your mother."

  "Do you remember that you said something like that about my face before—the day we met?"

  "No," said Onno, "but I'm sure I hit the nail on the head."

  "Of course."

  "Are you coming?" called Sophia.

  She was sitting under a sun shade on the balcony over which Max had spread two bags of fresh gravel, giving Quinten a bottle. Both Max and Onno were struck by the unity that she formed with the child, as though she were really the mother. Both fathers saw a completely happy woman, who seemed never to have had a daughter.

  Kern and his Selma also appeared.

  "Max has already told me about you," said Onno, after he had introduced himself with a click of his heels, perhaps as a commentary on Kern's bare feet.

  Kern gave the impression that he had not heard. With one hand, covered in clay and stone dust, he gestured toward Quinten, who, as he lay on Sophia's lap drinking, fastened the deep-blue pools of his eyes on the orange stripes of the sun shade.

  "Whoever saw such a creature? This is completely impossible!"

  "You've either got the gift or you haven't," said Onno proudly. "There are artists who create beauty in a dogged struggle with spirit and matter, like you, but I do it in a lascivious moment with flesh." As he spoke these words he suddenly felt a chill go through him, as though Ada's presence on the balcony were suddenly penetrating his body.

  Perhaps because he could not bear Quinten's gaze, Kern had left shortly afterward. In a cooler covered in condensation stood a bottle of champagne, and after Max, with ballistic satisfaction, had made the cork prescribe its parabola into the moat—where the ducks made a beeline for it, flapping and half running over the water, before ducking and waggling their tails and turning their attention to more serious things—the Proctor family appeared. Clara behaved like a woman behaves when she sees a baby for the first time; but when the gloomy translator saw Quinten, something in his face changed: it lightened as if a veil had been removed. The effect of the child on Arendje was even more strange. As Max poured the glasses, he kept a wary eye on the little rascal, who ran to Sophia—in order to be able to intervene at once in case he tried to plant his fist on Quinten's nose.

  Instead of that, he hugged him, kissed him on the forehead, and said: "Doesn't he smell nice."

  Little Arendje tamed! Proctor looked back and forth between Quinten and Onno—and then said something that made Max's heart leap:

  "He looks like you. He's got your mouth."

  He couldn't have given Max a greater present. And yes, perhaps that was the case: perhaps he did have the same thin, classically arched lips. It was as though the last remnants of his doubt were washed away by those words like the dirty scum by a jet of water after one had washed one's hands.

  After sufficient chairs had been pulled up, the company split into two by sex, with Quinten in the middle of the women. While the latter group swapped experiences with infant care, Onno told Proctor that his wife had been a cellist. He assumed that Max had told him about the accident and said:

  "I was first going to call my son Octave in honor of her: after the simplest, completely consonant interval, on which all music is based. Have you already plumbed the Pythagorean mysteries of that simple one-to-two relationship?"

  Max had told Onno about Proctor's withdrawn nature, and he could see that Onno was trying to find a way to get through to him.

  Proctor made a vague gesture. "I know nothing about music."

  "Who does? Music transcends all knowledge. But when I hear the name Octave in my mind's eye, I see a type that I wouldn't want to see as my son. More an elegant, rather effete philosopher on stiltlike heron's legs with a flower in his buttonhole and not the robust man of action that my son must become, as I am myself so signally according to everyone. So I moved from the completely elemental to the cunning two-to-three of the dominant. The pure fifth!"

  That was new for Max, too.

  Meanwhile, Proctor's brain had also been working, because he said: "The octave consists of eight, and God is also eight."

  It took a couple of seconds to get through to On
no. "God is eight? How did you work that out?"

  "You know a bit about languages, don't you?"

  A bitter laugh escaped Onno. "To tell you the truth I don't really know anyone who knows as much about languages as I do. That's the reason why I couldn't call my son Sixtus. Not because that's a pitiful interval of three-to-five, but because the name derives not from sextus, the Latin word for 'sixth,' as everyone thinks, but from the Greek word xystos, which means 'polished.' "

  "So you also know what the tetragrammaton is?"

  "Please continue, sir."

  Next Proctor reminded them that God's name Yod He, Wau, He was Jehovah. Because Hebrew, as Mr. Quist of course already knew, had no separate figures, those four letters also had the numerical value 10, 5, 6, and 5. Adding them together gave 26. If, following the rules of Gematria, you added the 2 and the 6 together, you got 8.

  "You stagger me!" exclaimed Onno. "You are a gifted cabbalist! But if God is eight, what is five?"

  "Of course it can be an infinite number—" Proctor began, but the last word was lost in a rattling cough that suddenly took hold of him.

  "Not infinite," Max corrected him. "Very great. Although . .. perhaps an infinite number, yes."