The Discovery of Heaven

by Harry Mulisch

  "No, we're not with them."

  "Why not?" asked Quinten.

  "For God's sake!" said Onno, raising his arms. "Not again! You're just like Max."

  "Why?"

  "I'll tell you sometime."

  But there were no other rooms free, all the hotels were full; there were four or five conferences being held in Jerusalem at the moment. Only in the Old City might there be still something available, but of course security was not all it might be there. When Onno said that they weren't so easily frightened, and anyway had to find accommodation somewhere, the receptionist made a couple of telephone calls and noted down the name and address of a hotel.

  After they had had a bite to eat in the bar—with Quinten being refused a glass of milk with his ham roll—a taxi took them to the eastern part of the city. At the end of a wide shopping street jammed with traffic the ground sloped gradually downward, and a little later, on the other side of a valley full of vegetation, really more a gully, the massive walls of old Jerusalem rose up above them. Behind them, in a flood of sunlight, were countless towers, with a gold and a silver cupola in the center. Quinten bent deep over his suitcase to be able to see it better through the front windshield.

  "Look at that," he said softly. "There it is. It really exists."

  Although the Arab on his camel belonged to the same order as the heavy, sandy yellow stones of the city wall that he was riding past, the driver hooted at him to move aside, drove through the Jaffa Gate, and stopped in a small square. A little later there they were in the throng of tourists, Palestinian merchants wearing headscarves, Roman Catholic monks and nuns, Greek Orthodox, Armenian, Coptic priests in exotic robes, religious Jews in kaftans, military patrols made up of boys and girls, with Uzis and Kalashnikovs slung around them. The pealing of church bells and the cries of the merchants merged into a din that effortlessly absorbed the two dull thuds with which a jet broke the sound barrier in the distance.

  Hotel Raphael, probably not mentioned in any travel guide, sat wedged unimposingly between a bureau de change and a grocer's, which had displayed its boxes and sacks of herbs like the palette of Carpaccio: vermilion, rusty-brown, terra-cotta, cornflower blue, olive-green, saffron-yellow. The reception desk consisted of a corrugated wooden counter in a narrow hallway leading via a couple of steps into what was obviously the lounge-cum-breakfast room; slumped in a chair with a torn plastic back, a man in his sixties sat watching the television, which was fed by a V-shaped indoor aerial. He put his cigarette in an ashtray and got up.

  "Quist?" he asked with a melancholy smile. "Shalom,"—and then in English—"My colleague said you were coming." He shook hands with them and introduced himself as Menachem Aron.

  He had not made things easy for himself. On his head was a wig of chestnut-colored hair that was too thick and too even, out of which reddish-gray hair protruded by his ears; what's more, there was a light-blue yar-mulke pinned to its crown, which in this case may not have been strictly necessary liturgically—unless he was taking account of the possibility, Onno reflected, that God could not see he was wearing a wig. Aron put two forms on the counter and asked how many nights they wanted to stay.

  "Two?" asked Quinten. "Three?"

  "I'm not saying anything. It's your undertaking, you must know."

  "Two, then." That should be enough.

  "Shower in the hall," said Aron, putting down their room keys.

  "I don't know about you," said Onno, "but I'm going straight to bed. I've had it." He pointed to the suitcase. "What do you think? Shall we ask if he's got a luggage locker?"

  Aron disappeared through a door behind the counter and a little later came back with a narrow iron drawer, into which a wallet fitted. When it was explained to him what was needed, he asked Quinten to follow him. In a cluttered little office, also used to store crates of empty bottles, a girl looked up from her typewriter and nodded to Quinten with a look that made him a little uncertain. Her black hair was cut very short, like his mother's.

  In the corner stood a head-high green safe from a bygone age; in the center of the door was a heavy brass plate with the name Kromer on it. Quinten had seen at once that the monster had an old-fashioned letter combination lock, which had long since ceased to be used. Aron put one knee on the tiled floor and turned the knob back and forth four times, making sure that the combination was invisible to his guest. When the colossal steel door, a good ten inches thick, slowly swung open, Quinten saw that there was room for a hundred commandments.

  "Heavy," said the hotel keeper, putting the case on the bottom shelf, but he asked no other questions. After he had closed the door with a bang, he struck the knob twice with the side of his hand. "All right?"

  "Yes."

  The girl turned around and asked something in Hebrew, perhaps just to be able to see Quinten again, with the white lock of hair in his black pony-tail. But Aron stood guard over his daughter and motioned to Quinten that he could go back to the counter.

  Something had happened in the meantime. Onno stood open-mouthed on the threshold to the lounge, with his eyes obviously focused on the television. With an imperious gesture at hip height, he motioned to Quinten to be quiet.

  Quinten went up to him and also looked at the screen: pictures of an exalted praying and singing throng on a square, most of them kneeling, with arms opened wide, their faces raised ecstatically to heaven; dotted among them were pizza stands. He could not catch what the voice of the Hebrew commentator was saying. When the camera swung around, he suddenly saw where it was: in the Sancta Sanctorum! The crowded Holy Stairs, the chapel, through the bars a close-up of his father's stick on the papal prayer stool opposite the altar! A little later an old woman came into the shot, gesturing excitedly, talking in Italian with a breaking voice, of which he understood only the word miracolo, followed by a priest choosing his words and subtitled in Hebrew, but not the one made of butter. After the stick with the snake's-head handle had been shown again, the Israeli newsreader concluded the item with an ironic look at the viewers.

  Speechless, Onno sank into a chair.

  "Tell me!" said Quinten. "What's happened?"

  "I'm going crazy. This morning my stick was discovered—by that old woman. She's the first one to go up the Holy Stairs on Sundays, and she alerted the fathers of the Holy Cross. When she saw their amazement, she began screaming that a miracle had happened, since no one could get into the chapel. Within an hour the news had spread through the city and people began flooding in from all directions. Guess what? They believe that my stick is Moses' staff, with which he struck water from the rock. This is proved by the handle in the shape of a snake's head: at the pharaoh's court, Moses once threw his staff on the ground and it changed into a snake. At the same time, they say, the serpent from paradise is now worshiping the acheiropoeton in the papal Holy of Holies, and that indicates the end of Original Sin and the second coming of Christ. At the moment there seem to be jams on all the approach roads to Rome."

  It took a while before Quinten could say: "But those fathers know that it's your stick, don't they?"

  "So they're obviously leaving it at that." Onno nodded. "They didn't take proper care, and now it's not in their interest for it to become known. What's more, they feel that the rise in appreciation for their chapel is marvelous, of course."

  "And what if Mauro recognizes your stick?"

  "He won't dare say anything. Perhaps he'll accept a bribe to keep quiet. There's no turning back for anyone."

  "And why didn't the rector speak just now? Could there be something else wrong?"

  "Perhaps Padre Agostino will be canonized in a while. Patron saint of the dairy industry."

  "Who was that priest at the end?"

  "Cardinal Sartolli, the archpriest of San Giovanni in Laterano. He was being diplomatically noncommittal. He said that the Church was of course pleased by the piety of the people but that they should now wait for an official reaction from the Vatican." Onno looked up at him. "Quinten! What have we done?"<
br />
  Quinten looked at him for a moment—and suddenly, as if struck by lightning, he fell about laughing.

  63

  The Center of the Center

  "I've never seen you laugh like that," said Onno the following morning at breakfast, after he had read the latest news of the situation in Rome to Quinten from the Ha'aretz: by now pilgrims from all over the world were streaming to the Sancta Sanctorum; the Piazza San Giovanni in Laterano had been closed to all traffic, and, like the Holy See, the chief rabbi's office in Jerusalem was making no comment.

  "Doesn't it make you laugh yourself silly? All those praying people precisely when there's nothing more to worship? Only that silly walking stick of yours."

  Onno folded the paper. "Right. So we've traded the Ten Commandments for my walking stick, and you're going to take them back." He looked at Quinten over his reading glasses. "Might those two stones perhaps be just the same as that rod of Moses they're worshiping?"

  "How can you think such a thing?" said Quinten indignantly. "Your stick isn't Moses', is it?"

  Onno nodded and silently spooned up his egg. "But I assume that the safe in Hotel Raphael isn't their final destination."

  "Of course not."

  "I wasn't able to sleep too well, as you may perhaps understand, and so I tried again to put myself in your shoes ... I know that that's impossible, but why shouldn't someone attempt the impossible . .. and I think you want to deliver them exactly where Titus got them from. Or am I wrong?"

  "I don't know," said Quinten. He had not thought about it himself—he would see—but perhaps it was a good idea.

  "That means the spot where the temple of Herod stood."

  "But," Quinten added, "it must in the exact spot where the Holy of Holies was."

  Onno wiped his mouth with a sigh.

  "Of course, you can never be too exact. So that means some more learning. I hadn't thought that I'd get to know so much because of you." He pushed back his chair with an unbearable scraping sound and got up. "Shall we go and take a look at the situation, then?"

  Quinten was a little surprised at the initiative his father was suddenly showing. It was as though he were in a hurry all at once; perhaps he felt that it was time they put an end to the whole affair, after what was now happening in Rome. But he himself was curious about the spot where all those temples had stood. In the doorway, Aron pointed out the narrow street that they had to take: straight ahead—that would bring them directly to the Temple Mount, Moriah, ten minutes' walk.

  The heat was becoming more intense again after the cool night. The crowded street, adorned with drying laundry, like all streets around the Mediterranean, was the beginning of the souk: an uninterrupted string of tiny shops selling souvenirs, pottery, multicolored cloth, sweets, indeterminate workshops, copper smithies, a barber's, but above all of yelling tradesmen trying to offload their wares onto the tourists. And every ten yards men with headscarves forced themselves on one as guides; hearing where they came from, all of them without exception shouted the Dutch shibboleth "Allemachtig achtentachtig!" with its string of guttural sounds.

  Onno stopped at a display of walking sticks with primitively carved wooden handles.

  "Suppose I took this one," he said, pointing to a snake's head. "That would really be tempting fate."

  "I'd be careful about that in Jerusalem."

  "Forty shekels," said the shopkeeper, and pulled out the stick.

  Since he found them all equally ugly, Onno shook his head and walked on, but the man followed them and a few steps farther the price had fallen to thirty shekels, twenty-five, twenty.

  "Wait a bit," said Onno, "and we'll get it for nothing."

  "If we simply go on walking, we'll automatically become millionaires," added Quinten—thinking for a moment of the disguised hotel keeper, who had no idea that his safe had been temporarily transformed into the ark of the covenant and was housing a billion guilders' worth of sapphires.

  For ten shekels Onno purchased a heavy stick with an uncarved handle, almost a truncheon, helpfully fetched by the salesman from his workshop. Relieved that he again had something to lean on, he walked on. By now they had been walking for a quarter of an hour, but there was no sign of the Temple Mount anywhere. Farther on, the street was topped by arches, and a little later they found themselves in the shadows of a crowded, labyrinthine bazaar, which made it impossible to walk straight ahead.

  When Quinten looked to see where they were at a street corner, he read: " 'Via Dolorosa.' "

  "Yes, that's what it's like here. The way of the cross of our Lord and Savior." Onno pointed to a relief above a church door with his stick. "This is the fourth station, where Jesus met his mother. But," he said, and looked left and right, "this route leads to Golgotha, over which the Church of the Holy Sepulcher was built; and it must start from Pilate's Citadel Antonia, where the Holy Stairs come from. So we have to go that way, because the fortress, I think, is also on the Temple Mount."

  At that moment Quinten grabbed his arm and pulled him into a shop selling jewels. "What's wrong?"

  "There's Aunt Trees."

  Behind a man holding a closed red parasol over his head, she was walking in the middle of a group of white-haired ladies, looking as alike as their flowered dresses.

  Crouched in his hiding place, Onno followed her with his eyes. He felt quite moved. "How old she's become," he said softly, "the shrew. But as devout as ever. She's going to put her hand in the hole where the cross of Jesus Christ stood."

  "Or did you want to meet her?" asked Quinten. "She would have recognized you too, of course."

  "I don't really know." Onno stood up with a groan. "I've no idea anymore what to do with my life, but of course I can't go on acting as if everything's the same as before. You've made sure of that."

  Obsequiously, the shopkeeper held up a silver chain—or what was supposed to be a silver chain—with a small Star of David on it.

  Onno looked into the eyes of the old Arab, who wore a blob of fine white lace on his head. "We'll have to buy this," he said. He paid the absurd price he was asked and put the chain around Quinten's neck.

  Quinten felt it and asked: "Are you allowed to wear one of these if you are not a Jew?"

  "Only if you've been given it by your father. That's bound to be somewhere in the Talmud."

  A few houses farther on, they bought a map at a newspaper stand, which quickly showed them the way back to the Jewish quarter. The crossing point was clearly on a kind of border, formed by soldiers, who were standing around in a bored fashion on either side of a narrow street. As they descended a wide staircase, they passed another group of soldiers shortly afterward; in the shadow next to radio equipment with a long aerial, they sat and relaxed on chairs, automatic rifles at the ready on their laps.

  "God and violence," said Onno. "It's been like that here for four thousand years." The stairs made a ninety-degree turn—and suddenly they stopped.

  For a moment Quinten was reminded of Venice, when he had emerged into the Piazza San Marco from the maze of alleyways. But there art and beauty reigned, full of wind and sea and with a floating lightness. Here something else very different was going on: it was not beautiful; it was crushing. He had the feeling that the scene he was watching was not only where it was but in himself, too, like a pit in a fruit—like the word testimony on the plane yesterday.

  Hot as an oven, filled with the buzzing of voices, the sound of drums and exotic high-pitched trills from women's throats, a great square extended before them, enclosed on the far side by the massive, yellow Wailing Wall. It did not form a division between two spaces, like a city wall; it was like a cliff. On the area above it gleamed the golden and silver cupolas that he had seen from a taxi; and from there came the electronically amplified wail of a muezzin. In this city the religions not only existed side by side, they were even piled on top of one another.

  "That wall," said Onno, "is all that is left of the temple complex of Herod. It stood on top of that plateau. As
far as I know it's not called the Wailing Wall because people have been lamenting Jewish persecution there for centuries, like Auschwitz and the gas chambers, but because of the destruction of the temple by the Romans. It will appeal to you." He glanced uncomfortably at Quinten. "They pray for its rebuilding and the coming of the Messiah."

  Quinten looked up. Here and there soldiers with rifles were sitting on the wall. "How can we get up there?"

  Onno began climbing down the last few steps feeling giddy. "Now that I'm finally in Jerusalem, I want to have a look around down here first. Do you realize what all this means to me? All through my childhood this hoo-ha was pounded into me with a sledgehammer. It's no accident that my sister's walking around here too."

  The mood at the foot of the wall was more festive than plaintive. Part of the square was fenced off and reserved for men, a smaller area for women; at the entrance they were given paper yarmulkes—perhaps folded in prisons by Palestinians—and for half an hour they mingled in the religious throng. All along the wall, out of which clumps of weeds were growing, the faithful stood facing the huge blocks, the bottom two rows colored brown by the hands and lips that had been pressed on them for twenty centuries. Orthodox Jews, in knee-breeches, with round hats and ringlets down their cheeks, were indulging in strange jerking movements, like puppets, while reading books; old men with gray beards sat on chairs facing the wall, also reading. When Quinten began to pay attention, he saw that everything related to reading. The cracks between the stones were cemented with countless folded pieces of paper, obviously with wishes written on them.

  "That's right," said Onno. "Here you're in the world of the book. I come from there myself. Perhaps you should be glad you've been spared that, but perhaps not."

  Here and there were tables with books on them, which people occasionally leafed through; now and then someone took a copy with him to the wall. Through a stone archway in the left-hand corner of the square Quinten took a few steps into a dark space, which for a moment reminded him of his Citadel, where there were many more books on shelves. Suddenly a small, untidy procession appeared from the caves: men in prayer clothes, with cloths over their heads, carried an opened wooden box into the light. It contained two large scrolls with writing on them.