The Discovery of Heaven

by Harry Mulisch

  Onno stopped speaking. Hopefully, he had finally persuaded Quinten by now. "Anyway . . . Grisar mentions that he was given permission on May 29, 1905—and I just saw in the Herald Tribune that that's exactly eighty years ago today."

  There was a silence.

  "Then I'll be seventeen tomorrow," said Quinten in astonishment. He had not thought of his birthday for a moment. Since he had left Holland, the time had assumed the endless quality of earlier summer vacations.

  "Indeed!" cried Onno. "That too! The omens are favorable—and we're going to celebrate that, on the dot of twelve at Mauro's on the corner. Just say what you want, and you'll get it sight unseen."

  After a few seconds Quinten's voice came from the black window, in which his contour was scarcely distinguishable from the night sky behind him:

  "Your help."

  "My help? What with?"

  "With recovering the Ten Commandments."

  "Dear Quinten," said Onno after a few moments of feigned calm. "Even as a joke I don't think that's very good. You're surely not going to tell me that you are really toying with the idea of violence?"

  "Yes. That is. . . I'm not playing. And violence? No. At least. . . if everything that happens without permission is violence then yes, yes."

  Onno groped over the table, found a box of matches, and lit a candle. When he saw Quinten's face, with two small flames in his dark eyes, he realized that he was serious. But that was inconceivable! Up to now he had let himself be manipulated by Quinten's enthusiasm, which was as infectious as it was inexorable, as if he had no will of his own; but this was really the moment to call a halt to it.

  "That's really enough now, Quinten," he said decisively. "You must know when to stop. It's gradually beginning to show signs of an obsession. Listen, I know exactly what the excitement and the suspense of a new theory are like, particularly if you've formulated it yourself; and I don't need soccer matches or wars for that. But you're threatening to cross a borderline, and that could go completely wrong—you could wind up in prison. And I don't think I can recommend Italian jails to you."

  Because his back was starting to get cold, Quinten climbed off the windowsill and closed the window. "Aren't the Ten Commandments worth the risk of prison?"

  "Yes!" cried Onno, and raised both his arms. "If you put it like that—of course! Life imprisonment! The stake!"

  Quinten gave a short laugh. "Tell me honestly, Dad. Do you think it's a crazy idea?"

  "I don't really know," sighed Onno. "An anecdote of Max's about Niels Bohr occurs to me. When somebody once developed a new physics theory, Bohr said, Your theory is crazy, but not crazy enough to be true.' " He looked at Quinten ironically. "As far as that's concerned, yours is in excellent shape."

  "So it's almost certainly true."

  "So it's almost certainly true. Credo quia absurdum."

  Onno felt that he was losing ground again. He got up and started pacing around the room in his threadbare brown slippers with the worn heels, without a walking stick, looking for support as he turned around. How was he to tackle it, in God's name? Now, if it was a question of the treasure of the Romanovs or the Treasure in the Silver Lake—but the stone tablets of the Law! Did Quinten really know what he was talking about? Of course God didn't exist, and perhaps Moses had never existed, but the Ten Commandments existed: there was no doubt about that. On the other hand it seemed as if the existence of the Decalogue—the foundation of all morality—on the one hand crystallized into God, on the other hand into Moses, and in between also into those stone tablets. Was it that what was primary was not things but the relations between things? Did love create lovers, and not the other way around? Could love itself subsequently take on the form of a stone, or of two stones?

  "What are you thinking about?"

  Onno stopped and was lost for words. Quinten looked at him, half his face in black shadow cast by the candlelight. The calm that the boy exuded suddenly infuriated him.

  "Dammit, Quinten, you must be out of your mind!" he exploded. "What are you getting into your head? How do you imagine it happening? How are you proposing to get into the chapel? And then into that altar? Were you going to saw through all the bars perhaps? Read Grisar! In the sixteenth century you had the Sacco di Roma, when the chapel was plundered by French troops, but they could only get in by forcing the priests to open the door. But they didn't have the key to the altar, and there was no other way of getting in. Otherwise even in 1905 all those gold and silver treasures wouldn't have been in there anymore. And you think you can do it? Without anyone noticing?"

  "Yes."

  "How, then?"

  "By opening those locks."

  "And you can do that?"

  "Yes."

  "Without keys?"

  "Yes."

  "While it's bristling with priests everywhere and the Holy Stairs are full of people?"

  "But not at night. Of course we're going to let ourselves be locked in."

  "We? Do you really think I'm going to allow myself to get involved in such a crazy undertaking?"

  "I hope so."

  "But there's bound to be an electronic security system!"

  "There isn't."

  "How do you know?"

  "I checked."

  "And do you by any chance know what the Eighth Commandment says?"

  "No."

  "Thou shalt not steal."

  "I don't regard it as stealing."

  "And how do you regard it, then?"

  "As a confiscation."

  "A confiscation—how on earth do you think up these things?" Helplessly, Onno turned half around his own axis and said entreatingly, "Quinten, don't make me unhappy. Till I suddenly saw you at the Pantheon about ten days ago, I lived here like a kind of Lazarus in someone else's grave, if I can put it like that. The only person I talked to all that time was that dear Edgar. You helped me out of that hole, and I'm grateful to you for that. But what you want now really goes beyond all limits! Letting yourself be locked in the Sancta Sanctorum to see whether the stone tablets of Moses are in there! While I'm saying it, I can't believe my own ears. Just imagine the carabinieri suddenly charging in with their pistols drawn: Young art thief caught red-handed in Sanctum! I can already see it in La Stampa."

  "Art thief?" repeated Quinten. "And you yourself say that according to Grisar there's nothing left in that altar."

  "Yes, just you appeal to the archaeological literature when you talk to the police. Do you really understand what the police is? Anyway, there's something on that altar, you're forgetting that for convenience: the acheiropoeton—Christ depicted by an angel's hand and for more than a thousand years carried through the streets of Rome in procession by one pope after another. You can count yourself lucky if they don't beat you to death on the spot. There are things in the world that it's best to keep away from."

  Quinten stared at him for a moment. "Right," he said. "Then I'll do it alone." He put the light on, sat down on the edge of the table, and opened Grisar's book.

  Onno realized in despair that nothing would keep Quinten from his fateful plan. What was the force that was driving him on? That iron remorse-lessness with which he tackled everything had in a certain sense dumbfounded Onno since his birth. What was he going to do now? If he let him do it alone, of course he would lose him—while, he suddenly realized, they had found each other thanks to the same fury. Could you reject something that you owed your life to? Moreover, he had brought it all on himself with his remark that Christianity had no architectural Holy of Holies.

  It began to dawn on him that he was losing. With a groan he sank onto the mattress and put his chin on his folded hands. He couldn't handle his son. And, all things considered, what had he really got to lose? There was of course no question that Quinten would be able to pick even one of those locks. Perhaps they would be caught in their absurd attempt and indeed land in jail—what would happen then? After having expounded their theory and watched the pitiful shaking of heads, they would be released agai
n. It would undoubtedly be in the paper. The pope would shroud himself in silence, everywhere all over the world rabbis would raise their eyebrows over all this meshuggah nonsense, and old Massimo Pellegrini would explain on television that while he had always known that Qiuts was a talentless dilettante, he had not known that he had meanwhile turned into a mentally disturbed person, who even involved his under-age son in his absurd and dangerous delusions. Subsequently, the Dutch embassy would leap into action, after which his ex-colleague at the ministry of culture would put them quietly on the plane to Holland, and then the business would be over with—but he would have kept Quinten. He decided he might as well play along, dammit.

  He turned to look at Quinten. "And what if they're not there, Quinten? There is a minimal chance of that, isn't there?"

  "Then nothing. Then I'll close it up and we'll leave," said Quinten without looking up. "But they're there."

  "And what are you going to do, in that case?"

  "Then I'll take them with me, what did you think? No one will ever know. You yourself said that the altar won't be opened for another thousand years, but even then no one will miss them, because no one knows that they were there."

  Onno looked at him, perplexed. "Now I don't understand anything anymore. You make a earth-shattering discovery, which would make you immortal, and you keep it secret?"

  "Didn't you yourself say that otherwise it might end in a war?" "That's true. But what do you plan to do with them, then?" That question surprised Quinten. He looked up in astonishment. He had not thought about it for a moment. "I don't know," he said with a helpless note in his voice. After a few seconds he jerked his shoulders back and bent over the book again. "I'll see when I get there."

  The following morning—it was Quinten's birthday—they read Grisar's minute account seated next to each other at the table, examined the photographs and drawings, and ran their index fingers over the plans. Supplemented with Quinten's own observations in the chapel they constructed a plan, that, according to Quinten, couldn't fail. According to Onno, however, everything could always fail, even failure—then he leaned back and told Quinten about the phenomenon of the failed suicide: the intention was to call attention by a failed attempted suicide, but that failed because unexpectedly the suicide succeeded.

  "Can you imagine anything more sad?" he asked with a laugh.

  It had not been said with so many words that he would assist in Quinten's crazy enterprise, but Quinten appeared ultimately not to have any doubts—and since at his wit's end he had finally plunged into the adventure, something like a paternal frivolity had taken hold of him. The idea that the stone tablets would be in that altar was of course monumental nonsense—the whole enterprise would culminate in a dreadful anticlimax, since they would not even manage to get the first door open, and that blow would be a hard one. But who had a son with such fantastic aspirations? What did other sons want? Equipment. Money. Fun. Who had a son who wanted the Decalogue?

  Because the relief in the arch of Titus was up quite high and couldn't be examined closely, in the afternoon they went to the Piazza Monte Citorio, where there was a large bookshop opposite the parliament building.

  As they passed the Pantheon, Onno suddenly stopped and asked: "Shouldn't you give your grandmother a call?"

  "No," said Quinten at once.

  "But, Quinten! She's all by herself in that castle, and she knows that it's your birthday too. As far as I'm concerned you can say that you're living with me. Can't you imagine that she's getting worried? You've been away from home for three weeks already."

  "You were away longer without calling."

  That remark shut Onno up; he didn't say anything more for the rest of their walk. Quinten may have forgiven him, but he would never forget something like that. The fact that he had abandoned Quinten for so long also obliged him to collaborate in his whim.

  In the art history section in the bookshop they found a bulky standard work on the monument, in which there was a series of detailed photographs of the relief. Onno studied the faceless man at the far left intently.

  "Yes," he said finally. "If you want to see it, then you can see that he's carrying something flat with him."

  "Didn't I say so?"

  "Absolutely."

  In the Via del Corso they took the bus and went to the Sancta Sanctorum, to find out the opening times and to test their plan against reality. It was as though the kneeling faithful on the stairs were the same; it was just the same, too, in the silent chapel. Onno looked with satisfaction at the huge bars and locks: what French looters had not succeeded in doing 450 years ago, Quinten would not succeed in doing now. But Quinten didn't even deign to look at the altar; obviously, he was by now so sure of himself that he was only interested in technical details.

  As though he were admiring the ceiling paintings, he showed Onno that cameras had not been installed anywhere. The sanctum was obviously regarded solely as a place of pilgrimage and not a museum; the supernatural painting ot the Savior on the altar might be miraculous, Onno reflected; in the art trade, of course, it was not worth a penny. When the old priests, gnarled like olive trees, saw Quinten again, a glow of affection lit up their faces; perhaps they did not even know themselves what he reminded them of.

  "They're all deaf," whispered Quinten.

  "Let's hope so."

  When they got outside again, Onno suggested that they should say no more about it for now.

  "It's just like with an exam: on the last day you mustn't do any more, and take distance from everything—so that your mind can recover. Now we're going to celebrate your birthday. I know a reasonable restaurant behind the Piazza Navona. Tomorrow you can make your criminal purchases, I'll read up on the Ten Commandments, and to kill time we'll go and collect them the day after tomorrow. Okay?"

  Of course Quinten saw the ironic twist in the corner of his father's mouth, but he didn't mind.

  "Agreed," he said.

  59

  Waiting

  The evening of the following day, Friday, they found another table on a terrace opposite the Pantheon, where they went to eat. The square was full of Romans out for a stroll; young tourists in jeans formed blue garlands on the steps of the fountain with the obelisk, where Onno had left his plastic bag full of shopping ten days before. When dusk fell and the rattling of steel shutters being let down in front of shop windows rang out on all sides, it seemed as if the temple—in the sophisticated light of floodlights on the surrounding roofs—gradually began to phosphoresce from its journey through the day, through all those hundreds of thousands of sundrenched days.

  Shortly afterward a couple of small bats flapped around the ancient walls, like charred snippets of paper from a distant fire. What Quinten had never seen on the photographs and drawings of Mr. Themaat he now suddenly saw: the building looked like a weathered skull, with the cupola as the cranium, the architrave as the triangular hole of the mouth, and the columns as a row of teeth.