The Discovery of Heaven

by Harry Mulisch

  37

  Expeditions

  While life continued in Groot Rechteren and Dwingeloo in rural and astronomical calm, in Amsterdam Onno had embarked upon a lightning political career. Sometimes he had the feeling that the way in which it was happening was not connected solely with his qualities but also with the fate that had befallen him: as though all his political friends felt that he deserved it after his wife's accident—or in any case that they could not decently obstruct him too forcefully. At the beginning of 1969 he had been elected to the city council, and shortly afterward he became alderman for education, arts, and sciences.

  "During my period of office," he had whispered to the mayor after his appointment, at a dinner in the official residence, "education will be principally geared to producing spineless yes-men. With Plato in mind, I will put poets mercilessly to the sword, and I shall bring science completely into line and put it in the service of my personal ambitions. I shall make myself hated like no previous Amsterdam alderman. While your statue is decorated daily with fresh flowers, my name will be spoken even centuries afterward only with the deepest revulsion."

  Whereupon the gray-haired mayor had taken his hand from his ear and said: "Yes, yes, Onno, take it easy."

  Everyone was worried that he would harm the party with his big mouth, but things went surprisingly well: he had found his bearings in a few weeks, and in the council chamber he took a completely different tone—namely, the measured tone that he knew was the only effective one in Holland. A new life had begun for him. University administrators who refused to see him had to cool their heels in his waiting room; the chairman of the arts council was summoned; in The Hague he argued for Amsterdam interests at the ministry, he lobbied his party colleagues in the Lower House of Parliament, he made decisions, mediated, intervened, dismissed, appointed, joined battle with the students. Suddenly he had power, a secretary, civil servants who danced to his tune and a car with a driver, who took him from the town hall to the Kerkstraat in the evenings.

  But there was no one there any longer. When he had closed the door behind him, he was greeted by a silence that seemed to emanate from two boxes: Ada's cello case in his study and the Chinese camphor chest in his bedroom, in which he had stored her clothes. But the thought of her and of Quinten was quickly buried under the dossiers that emerged from his outsize briefcase—partly because he knew that Quinten lacked for nothing and Ada was being well looked after in a nursing home in Emmen, although he had not been there more than twice. Measured by his interest in the cryptic signs on a certain plate in the museum of Herak-lion, his interest in the content of those dossiers was minimal—after all he could just as well be in charge of a different portfolio. But he had resigned himself to the fact that his life was evidently to be determined by brilliant beginnings, which were suddenly frustrated—in his family life just as in linguistics.

  He knew people for whom being an alderman in Amsterdam would be the pinnacle of their life's achievement. He himself was happy with it because it at least gave him something to do. He had decided to make the best of things. He had abandoned the illusion that he could change Holland or even Amsterdam after just a few months—and if he were honest with himself, he didn't really think it was necessary. Where in the world were things better than in Holland? In Switzerland, perhaps—but that was more corrupt and, worse still, more boring. If he could grasp the light-hearted changes that had been brought about in the second half of the 1960s from below and stabilize them, he would be satisfied; but now, as the 1970s approached, he saw imagination being drowned in a morass of constant, embittered meetings, which seemed to be out to achieve something like a merciless, totalitarian democracy. No one did anything anymore; everyone simply talked about the way something ought to be done, if anyone did it. He had once talked in an interview about "the self-abusive reflection," which had caused softening of the brain and weakening of the bone marrow in students.

  His front door was daubed with red paint and in the middle of the night he received a threatening phone call: "We'll get you one day, you bastard!"

  But before he was able to say, "Is that you, Bork?" the caller hung up.

  Since the accident he had lived in celibacy. Not that he forced himself, but because it did not occur to him to take up with a woman. There would be no trouble: he had soon discovered that power had an erotic effect; and if anyone wanted to get into his bad books forever, then they should ask him why he didn't get divorced, which would be a legal formality.

  The fact that his rooms were tidied up every morning by a municipal housekeeper, who also made up his bed and did his laundry while he himself was at the town hall, was of course connected with this. That had been organized by Mrs. Siliakus, his secretary, without whom nothing would have gone right, either with his work or with his life: she supplemented exactly what was missing in him. "Together we make a human being," he was once to say. But Mrs. Siliakus was already in her fifties and for twenty years had shared a flat with a lady of her own age. "If you didn't have such an offensively unnatural nature," he confessed to her in an intimate moment, "but were as utterly normal as me, then I'd know what to do."

  Until, one Sunday evening in July, Max had called him on his new, unlisted telephone number and had asked if he knew that that evening the first man was to set foot on the moon.

  "Of course you'll be watching? It's all on television."

  "What time, then?"

  "At about four."

  "To tell you the truth I wasn't intending to. The moon? You must be crazy. It plays absolutely no part in municipal politics. Tomorrow morning at half past nine I've got to address the chancellor of the University of Leningrad, in Russian. I'm working at it now."

  "You absolutely must watch. The fantastic thing is not that it's happening, because Jules Verne predicted that, and Cyrano de Bergerac, and Kepler as well in fact—"

  "And what would you say to Plutarch? And Lucian? And Cicero? Somnium Scipionis! Of course you've never heard of them. That takes us before Christ. Don't get any ideas."

  "Let me finish for goodness' sake! What I'm trying to say is that one thing never occurred to anyone: that everyone in the world will be witnesses when a man steps onto the moon, without even getting out of their armchairs—even though the moon is not visible in the sky to them at that moment. That's the really inconceivable thing. If anyone had predicted that, he'd have been branded as a madman."

  "Will you always be twelve years old? If I understand you correctly then I have to watch because it's something that can't really be seen: an idea. For you everything is always different. You yourself, indeed, are more or less looking at the Big Bang there on the heath. But okay, I'll listen to you again, although I have the feeling that it won't do me much good. Tell me, how is Quinten Quist getting on? Has he said anything yet?"

  "No idea, I can't understand it anyway. You would probably have to know what language he's babbling in. It may be the same one that you were looking for before."

  "Yes, just you go on opening old wounds, born sadist that you are. Perhaps I shall have to resign myself to being the father of an illiterate. It always happens: Goethe's son was thick as a brick, too. Great men always have imbeciles for sons—which of course implicitly proves that my father wasn't a great man. Anyway, perhaps we should be glad that his lordship is at least prepared to crawl."

  "We sometimes have the impression that he understands things."

  "Let's hope so. How is my esteemed mother-in-law faring?"

  "Fine. Come and see us soon."

  Onno replaced the receiver, but held on to it and sighed. Since Quinten's first birthday, two months ago, he hadn't been back in Drenthe; so many Quists with their retinue had appeared, and fellow tenants of the castle, and even the mother of his mother-in-law, that he had scarcely had an opportunity to spend any time with Quinten. He had had to spend that thirtieth of May mainly massaging his family, who had seen for the first time how a Quist was being brought up by his grandmother and his fath
er's friend.

  With his hands still on the receiver, he looked at his watch. It was eleven o'clock. The five hours still separating him from Max's lunar moment seemed insurmountably long to him. Hearing Max's voice had done him good; it had suddenly torn him away from the drudgery of his work. Of course he could just go to bed, Max would never know, or wasn't there someone who could keep him company? Couldn't he look someone up?

  At the same moment he knew he who he was going to ring—but the brainwave gave him such a shock that it took him a couple of seconds to get over it. He still knew the number by heart.

  "Helga?"

  "Yes, who's that?"

  "How awful. Don't you even recognize my voice anymore?"

  "Onno! What a surprise! How are you?"

  "Well, I expect you heard a bit about all of it. Uh, a lot has happened."

  "Awful. I wanted to write to you, but I didn't know what kind of tone to take. Is there any change in her condition?"

  "No."

  "And your son? How old is he now?"

  "Just over a year."

  "Does he live with you? How do you manage? Aren't you an alderman at the moment?"

  "I live alone. He's being brought up by my mother-in-law and by Max— you know, the chap you were so crazy about. They live in Drenthe."

  "Isn't that a bit odd?"

  "A little, yes, but it's the ideal solution. Of course he's got some new girlfriend there already, but we don't talk about that kind of thing anymore. And what about you? What are you getting up to?"

  "At this moment? I'm sitting reading."

  "What?"

  "You'll laugh: the council report in the paper."

  "You're sitting reading the newspaper? Haven't you read what's going to happen in a few hours?"

  "What?"

  "Tonight a man is going to set foot on the moon."

  "So what? As long as he doesn't slip over. Is that why you're calling? Since when have you been interested in that kind of thing?"

  "Since five minutes ago. Max called and said that I had to watch."

  "And so you're going to."

  "Helga, the shrill note in your voice is not escaping me. I don't give a damn about celestial bodies, including the earth; but I'm glad he did so, because that gives me a chance to ask you to receive me, so we can watch it together."

  "I don't know if I want to, Onno."

  "And, of course, I'm the one who determines what you want?"

  "No, not for some time. How do you know that I haven't long since found another boyfriend, who is now lying languidly on the sofa?"

  "Because I know that no grass can grow where I once stood."

  "Onno, have you really not changed at all?"

  "I'll be with you in a quarter of an hour—and if you don't open the door, I shall abolish the Art Historical Institute tomorrow. First thing in the morning."

  "Of course all you want to do is bring your dirty laundry."

  "Listen, dear Helga. Do you know how the Habsburgs were buried?"

  "I beg your pardon? The what were buried?"

  "The Habsburgs. The Austro-Hungarian monarchs."

  "How they were buried?"

  "Surely you know?"

  "What in heaven's name are you getting at?"

  "Listen. The cortege of the coffin arrived at the Kapuzinergruft in Vienna and then the major domo or someone knocked three times on the door with his staff. From inside you then heard the trembling voice of an old monk, asking, 'Who is there?' And then the major domo said, 'His Imperial, Royal and Apostolic Majesty, emperor of Austria, king of Hungary' and another five hundred and eighty-six such titles. Afterward there was a silence inside, after which he knocked three times on the door again and rattled off the same list. And after he had knocked for the third time on the door and the monk had again asked, 'Who is there,' the major domo answered, 'A poor sinner.' And only then did the doors slowly open."

  "And what do you mean by that?"

  "Do I have to make myself clearer? With my tail between my legs, I'm telling you that I've had enough of playing outside—if that still means anything to you."

  After first appropriating the rooms of the apartment, Quinten had broadened his world to the whole castle with the result that he kept getting lost every day. From the wonderful baby who had teethed after three months, a toddler had emerged who delighted everyone with his beauty. Selma Kern said repeatedly to Sophia that her husband was addicted to QuQu's appearance. He was often called QuQu, since Mr. Spier consistently addressed him as Q—moreover to point him to the door just as consistently, since he did not wish to converse with someone who didn't say anything back. "You learn Dutch first, Q."

  However, at the Kerns' on the other side of his own floor, he was always welcome; if the artist was not carving in his studio in one of the coach houses, he could not take his eyes off the child. Martha, his ten-year-old daughter, a skinny blond girl, was also crazy about him and had resigned herself to the fact that he could not speak. With her legs crossed, she sat with him on the ground and handed him a pinecone or a shell to study, or pointed the white doves out to him. Once when a dove alighted on his crown and stayed there cooing softly, Kern spread his arms out in pleasure, as though he wanted to fly himself, and remained in that attitude looking at Quinten, who did not move either and in turn didn't take his eyes off Selma, in her black dress.

  "This is just out of this world!" he exclaimed.

  A large folder already contained scores of drawings of Quinten, in which the eyes became bigger and bigger, made vivid blue with the tip of the middle finger with methylene powder; he also appeared subsequently with a scepter and an orb in his hands, seated on a voluptuous cushion, or as pope with a tiara on his head. According to Selma, Kern's daughter had never inspired him in this way. He had asked Max whether Onno would agree to him exhibiting the series one day; whereupon Max assured him that he could probably persuade Onno to open the exhibition, but then he would have to be prepared for the latter to claim all the honor for himself as father. Undoubtedly, he would dream up some kind of structure in which there was nothing left for the artist but the stupid duplication of reality— that is: the proof of his complete superfluousness.

  "He would probably call that the 'parrot principle' or some such thing," said Max—again realizing how Onno had become part of his own being.

  Upstairs, at the Proctors', among the gruesome black umbrellas, Quinten looked at the electric train—saw how when the train was approaching the curve, suddenly little Arendje pulled the handle of the transformer right over to the right with a jerk, so that the train derailed and fell on his back, and he convulsed with laughter, thrashing his legs in the air with demonic pleasure. Quinten looked at this with the same expression he had used when looking at the train.

  Then he went exploring in the northern part of the attic. One room there was always locked, and invariably that was the first one whose handle he rattled. When that had no effect, he clambered around in the baron's musty, crammed storage room, over rolled-up carpets, books tied with string, among upturned chairs and tables, fallen chandeliers, cupboards, boxes, and piles of clothes, on which he sometimes fell asleep—and where he was finally found by a relieved Sophia or Max:

  "I've got him!"

  On his second birthday he still could not speak, or at least he had not yet said anything comprehensible; what he did do was display more and more strikingly that strange combination of curiosity and aloofness. He did not wish to be hugged, although he allowed himself to be occasionally, by Sophia; the toys Max bought for him did not interest him any more than a potato, a screw, or a branch. He could look for minutes at the flow of water from a tap, at that clear, cool plait that kept its form and glow although it was made up of constantly new water.

  No one knew what to make of him. He was too beautiful to be true, seldom cried, never laughed, said nothing; but no one doubted that all kinds of things were going on beneath that black head of hair. Once he stood motionless on the balcony looki
ng at the balustrade, at the gray stone banister on the wooden amphora-shaped pillars. Max squatted down beside him to see if there was perhaps an insect walking along them; but only when Quinten carefully put his forefinger on a certain spot did he see that there was a tiny, fossilized trilobite, from the Paleozoic period, about 300 million years old. At the same moment he realized that the creature that Quinten had discovered had lived at about the moment that the extragalactic cluster in the constellation of Coma Berenices -"Berenice's Hair"—had emitted the light that was now reaching earth.

  Quinten looked at him.

  "That's a trilobite," said Max, "a kind of silver fish. What would you like? Shall we free it?"

  He took a file out of Sophia's manicure case, placed the point at an angle beside the little fossil, and gave it a slight tap with a pebble, so that it flew up and disappeared into the gravel. But Quinten bent down and already had it in his hands.

  "When you're grown-up," said Max, "you must become a paleontologist."

  When he was lost, he might also be in the cellar. On his way there he always first tried the handle of the door of Mr. Verloren van Themaat, downstairs in the paneled hall, opposite the Spiers' apartment. But the door only opened on the weekends, and during holidays. The art historian was about sixty, a tall, thin, rather stooped man with thin gray hair and fine features; behind a pair of metal-rimmed glasses, he usually looked withdrawn, as though he were sizing you up, but suddenly he burst into exuberant, almost manic laughter, in which all his limbs participated. His wife, Elsbeth, was probably scarcely forty—in any case about five years younger than Sophia; they had no children. Max was a little intimidated by the professor: an academic intellectual of the severe Dutch kind, who overlooked nothing.

  Once, with Onno, Max had divided intellectuals up according to the Catholic monastic orders: he himself soon turned out to be an unscrupulous Jesuit, while Onno first maintained that he was a coarse Trappist, since he always just did his duty in silence; but finally he joined the cultivated, well-behaved Benedictines, who devoted their souls to God after a successful worldly life. In that spectrum Themaat was a strict Carthusian, who Max felt saw him as an intellectual libertine where astronomy was not concerned.