The Discovery of Heaven

by Harry Mulisch

"I don't know about that, but they'd be found the very next day by the Arabs, and that might be an even bigger disaster than if they fell into the hands of the Jews."

  "Do what you want. In any case I don't want to hear another word about it. But I'd be careful if I were you. If you want to be murdered by Muslims foaming at the mouth, then you should try something here. You're playing with fire, you are."

  Ibrahim, who had kept politely in the background, resumed his task and pointed to a small silver dome, close to the gate, with scaffolding around it, surrounded by a fence. That was the Dome of the Chain—so called after a silver chain that King David had hung up in it, a gift from the angel Gabriel: if one lied while holding it, then a link fell out of it. Onno was no longer listening—he was no longer interested—but Quinten peeped inside through a small gap.

  The supernatural lie detector was a miniature version of the Dome of the Rock, but open around the sides; the ground was strewn with fragments, broken stones, pieces and fragments, tools, dented cans, plastic bottles, and rags: in the center stood an electric masonry saw. To the north of the Dome of the Rock there were more small buildings, but Quinten too felt that he had seen enough. He joined Onno, who was standing at the top of the eastern staircase of the temple terrace in the shade of the arcades, looking out at the Mount of Olives.

  Ibrahim was indefatigable. "There," he said in the tone of a proud owner, pointing to the foot of the hill, "is the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus Christ—"

  "I know, I know."

  "Over there is his mother's grave, and there on the top of it... do you see that small dome? That's the spot from where she ascended into heaven."

  Onno felt giddy and leaned heavily on his stick.

  "I hope," he said to Quinten, "they've got some official here in Jerusalem who directs vertical traffic, to prevent jams."

  Quinten burst out laughing; he was glad that the fit of rage had passed. Although it might annoy his father again, he asked Ibrahim: "Do you know where Titus's encampment was?"

  Ibrahim pointed to the north slope of the Mount of Olives. "Somewhere over there. The conquerors of Jerusalem always came from the north."

  Quinten looked around him and opened the map. So that meant that the tablets of the Law and the menorah and all those things had been taken out of the temple along this same route, down the terrace here, and then across the valley of Kidron to the other side. He was struck by a strange gatehouse obliquely opposite, in the east wall of the plateau, surrounded by grass and trees. It was deeply embedded in the ground, with a double nave, crowned by two low towers with flat domes; both gateways had been bricked up. At the front, where the battlements were, stood Israeli soldiers in green berets.

  "What gate is that?"

  "Ah!" said Ibrahim raising both hands. "The Golden Gate! According to the Jews, that's the gate through which God once entered their temple to mount his throne there. It must stay closed until the coming of the Messiah, at the end of time. That is why every religious Jew wants to be buried over there on the slopes of the Mount of Olives."

  Onno pointed to the soldiers on the roof with his stick.

  "The Messiah would be gunned down immediately."

  A crooked smile appeared on Ibrahim's face. "Not only that—the Messiah has a second problem. On the other side of the wall there are Muslim graves, and that's unclean; he mustn't walk over them."

  "What a rotten thing to do," said Quinten, "putting them there."

  "So you see,"—laughed Onno—"they ride rough-shod over dead bodies here—or precisely not, how shall one put it?"

  "For the Christians," added Ibrahim, "the Golden Gate is a symbol of Mary, through whom Jesus came into the world and who remained a virgin before during and after his birth: closed, so to speak."

  Those words made Quinten rather uncertain. He glanced timidly at the mysterious gate and thought of his mother for a moment; to hide his embarrassment he looked at the map, which he still had unfolded in his hand. Suddenly he was struck by the fact that the whole temple square had the shape of a trapezoid, and the raised terrace with the Dome of the Rock too. He showed his father.

  "What's so special about that?"

  "Well, that stone that we just saw is a trapezoid too."

  "Yes," said Onno. "That's right."

  Quinten did not know what to make of it either. Had the rock served as the model for the terrace and the square? The Piazza San Marco in Venice was in the shape of a trapezoid, too—he'd thought that so beautiful. Were all those trapezoid-shaped things connected in some way through that shape? Or all spherical objects? Was an eye connected with the sun? Yes of course, profoundly. And with a soccer ball? The sphere, the circle, the octagon, and square, the ellipse, the rectangle, the triangle, the cube, the pyramid—all those shapes with which Mr. Themaat had first acquainted him; what was their real message? What were they themselves? Did they actually exist somewhere? Perhaps where music came from too? He looked back at the map, and saw that it was not the Dome of the Rock but the Dome of the Chain that was exactly in the center of the temple square.

  "To tell you the truth," said Onno, letting his eyes wander over the Mount of Olives, Mount Scopus, Mount Zion, "all this metaphysics here is starting to make me sick. Anyway, it's getting far too hot. What would you say if we got a bus and had a drink in the west, in the new city? Nothing can happen to us there, I think." He turned around. "What's happened to our poet? We've still got to pay him."

  "There he goes."

  Hands behind his back, his head cocked a little to one side, like a real gentleman, they saw Ibrahim just descending the northern staircase of the temple terrace.

  64

  Chawah Lawan?

  They got off at a busy junction and crossed to a row of shops, where a table was just being vacated on a shady terrace.

  "Look at that," said Onno, rubbing his left thigh. "Here we can finally have a normal conversation."

  The priests and Orthodox Jews had vanished from the streets; even the tourists had largely given way to women shopping, workmen, and groups of schoolchildren. Although there wasn't an Arab in sight, there were again fully armed male and female soldiers sitting on the edge of a large container of plants.

  "Why is it," asked Quinten, "that Ibrahim knew so much about all those biblical figures? Muslims have got the Koran, haven't they?"

  Onno looked at him for a few seconds. "Is that what you understand by a normal conversation?"

  "What's so abnormal about it? It's an ordinary question, isn't it? All these things exist, don't they?"

  "All right, I'll answer," said Onno with resignation. "The Bible and Koran overlap to a great extent. According to Islam, Allah in heaven has the original copy of the Holy Scripture; the Torah and the Gospels are corrupt editions and forgeries of it; the Koran is a true copy." He nodded, looking at Quinten. "Yes, you need quite a nerve to declare your grandfather and your father to be your son and your grandson. . .. Right. And now could we change the subject perhaps? Or don't you have any sense of everyday reality anymore?"

  "This is everyday reality to me."

  "That's what I was afraid of. But do you never have the feeling that it might get utterly exhausting for other people in the long run?"

  "But you don't get tired from thinking and learning things? I only get tired when I'm bored."

  "I admit," said Onno, "boredom doesn't get much of a look in around you." He looked around. "Of course you're right, it all exists, but not everything exists in the same way. Have you ever listened to other people's conversations? Here on this terrace you can't understand them, but people usually talk about people—about their family and friends, or people at work, or people in politics and sports, and mostly about themselves."

  "And what if I were to get completely sick of that kind of chatter? When they talk about things, it's almost always about the things you can have, like cars, money. I never talk about people, and not about myself, and not about what I've got."

  "No, you talk about tra
pezoids, or sacred stones—and you're not concerned with those stones but with their sacredness, their meaning. You only care about meanings and connections. I admit I may have lumbered you with that—concrete things are not my strong point, either; but even I'm not as abstract as you. Did you really examine that rock just now? Do you know what kind of stone it is? Granite? Limestone?"

  "Why should I examine it if it doesn't mean anything? There are so many rocks."

  "Can you hear what I'm saying? If a rock means something you don't have to examine it, and not if it means nothing, either. So you really never have to examine anything. Do you belong in this world?"

  Quinten did not reply. No one knew who he was—not even himself. What was "this world"? The boys playing soccer in Westerbork, they belonged in this world—but the feeling that they got when they scored a goal was what he got when something interesting occurred to him.

  All these people here were sitting chattering about other people or about things that you could have, like those two white-haired ladies at the next table: none of it had anything to do with him. So would it be best if he went into a monastery? Became a father of the Holy Cross? Had a black ribbon tied around his arm at the Wailing Wall? Then he thought of what he himself possessed—the tablets with the Ten Commandments on them, which he had seen were made of sapphire; the testimony, which was at the same time not his possession and which today or tomorrow at the latest he would give away somehow. After that there was nothing more for him here, not even in a monastery. Yesterday, in the Francis Bacon . ..

  His thoughts were interrupted by a girl who came to take their order. He pointed to the neighboring table, where an old lady with her back toward them had an orange drink in front of her. "What's that?"

  "Carrot juice."

  "Carrot juice? Never had it."

  "Order that, then," said Onno. "Don't you want anything to eat? What time is it?"

  "A quarter to twelve. I'm not hungry."

  After Onno had ordered a cup of coffee for himself, he asked: "Shall we go to a post office in a bit and phone Granny Sophia? We were going to do that in the Holy of Holies."

  "And are you going to tell her everything?"

  "You must be joking! That would probably cause a short circuit in the telephone exchange. Just to let her hear from us. I don't know what else you've got in mind, but it will probably mean us eventually going back to Holland."

  "Yes?" asked Quinten. "And what then?"

  Onno sighed. "That's a mystery to me, too. When I saw Auntie Trees just now in the Via Dolorosa, I took it as a signal that the world is after me again. But what am I supposed to do there? For you that's no problem— you're seventeen, you can go in any direction you like; but I've got no point of reference anymore. Really, I'm just a kind of walking Tower of Babel. What's someone like that supposed to do? In our family everyone lives to be ninety; I can't go on roaming the world for another forty years." He put his stick between his parted legs, his hands on the handle, and rested his chin on them, looking at the passersby.

  Quinten found that attitude much too old-looking and asked: "Can't you start something completely new?"

  "Something completely new . .. Tell me something completely new."

  "Or something very old," said Quinten. "What did you want to be when you were little?"

  Onno put his cheek on his hands and looked at Quinten reflectively. "What did I want to be when I was small . .."

  "Yes. The very first thing you wanted to be."

  "The very first thing I wanted to be ..." repeated Onno, with a sing-song tone in his voice, like in a litany. He raised his head. "A doll doctor."

  "A doll doctor?" Quinten repeated in his turn. "What's that?"

  "Someone who repairs broken dolls." Onno had not thought about that for almost half a century, but now that he said it, he suddenly realized it was of course connected with his mother, who for years had dressed him up like a girl.

  "Well," said Quinten, "then you must become a doll doctor!"

  At the same instant Onno saw himself sitting in a small shop in the center of Amsterdam, in a narrow cross street, surrounded by shelves filled with hundreds of pink, gleaming dolls, repairing broken eyelids, installing new "Mommy" voices. ..

  "I'll think about it," he said. "What would Lazarus have done after he'd been raised from the dead?"

  "Isn't that in the Bible?"

  "Not if you ask me. I vaguely remember a legend about him going to Marseilles, where he became the first bishop."

  "Perhaps he simply bored everyone stiff with his experiences while he was dead."

  "But then we'd have some information about it. As far as I know he never talked about it." He turned his head to Quinten. "Just as I shall never be able to talk about a certain experience." When Quinten did not react, he said, "In any case we will need a roof over our heads in Amsterdam. The first few weeks we can stay in a hotel, but then I'll have to rent or buy something. I'll telephone Hans Giltay Veth right away. Won't he be surprised!"

  Quinten knew that he wouldn't be going with him, but he couldn't say so. What was he to say in reply if his father asked why not? He didn't know himself. Not because he didn't want to, but because it wouldn't happen.

  "Aunt Dol said that your things are in storage in Rotterdam, at the docks."

  "I don't want any of that," said Onno immediately, while at the same moment the dark-brown Chinese camphor box appeared before his eyes, decorated all around with heavy carving, in which Ada's clothes had lain for seventeen years.

  "Mama's cello is in my room in Groot Rechteren now," said Quinten.

  Onno nodded in silence.

  The girl put their order in front of them. Quinten took a mouthful of his carrot juice and to his amazement it tasted of carrots—or, rather, to his astonishment the taste of carrots could also appear without loud cracking and crunching. He wanted to tell his father this, but then saw that astonishment had taken hold of him too.

  "Look," said Onno, perplexed, and pointed to the dark-brown cookie with caramelized sugar and peanuts that was on the saucer next to his coffee. "A gingersnap! Do you remember? We were always given those at Granny To's. The ones that make such a noise in your mouth." He took the round brown cookie carefully in his fingers, raised it with both hands like a priest lifting the host, and it was on the tip of his tongue to say "Mother! Hoc est enim corpus tuum!"—but he simply cried out rapturously, "A gingersnap!"

  At that the amazement spread still further. At the next table, two old ladies were about to leave. One was already waiting in the street; the other— dressed in a creamy white dress with sleeves reaching just below her elbow—was still paying the waitress and turned to look at Onno for a moment.

  "A gingersnap," she said in Dutch with a strong Hebrew accent. "I haven't heard that word for a long time."

  Quinten did not look at her. His attention was caught by the blue number on her wrinkled forearm—31415. When they had gone, Onno opened his mouth to speak, but Quinten asked:

  "Did you see that number on her arm? I thought only the rabble had themselves tattooed."

  For a few seconds Onno looked straight into Quinten's eyes. "Did she have a number on her arm?" he asked, as if he couldn't believe what he had heard.

  "Three-one-four-one-five. What's wrong? Why have you got that funny look in your eyes?"

  Onno began trembling, feeling as if the trembling came from his chair, from the earth, like at the beginning of an earthquake. He did not take his eyes off Quinten.

  "What's wrong? Dad?" asked Quinten in alarm. "Why aren't you saying anything?"

  What he had seen, and what Quinten had not seen, was the color of her eyes—that indescribable lapis lazuli, which in his whole life he had seen in only one person: Quinten. He was going to say that she had eyes just like his, but when Quinten told him about her tattoo, the numbers that people were given in Auschwitz, it immediately triggered a short-circuit in his head. Was he seeing ghosts? He didn't want to think what he was thinking; it wa
s too terrible, too much to cope with. He tried to put it out of his mind, to grab it and crush it underfoot, like a hornet; but it was there and it wouldn't budge. He had to think about this, think it out of existence, right away; but not with Quinten there—he had to be alone. Quinten must never know what he was thinking. He got up, swaying, holding on to his chair.

  "I want to go. I'm going to the hotel. You stay here. I'll see you in a bit."

  Quinten got up too. "It's not something to do with your brain, is it? Should I phone a doctor?"

  "There's nothing wrong with my brain—that is . . . please don't ask any more questions."

  "I'm going with you."

  Quinten paid the waitress, who was still clearing the table where the two old ladies had sat, and took hold of Onno's arm. At the end of the pedestrian precinct he hailed a taxi and helped Onno in. They did not speak during the short drive; he felt that his father was fighting a battle that he didn't understand. Had he had a slight stroke again, but refused to believe it? At any rate, he mustn't leave him alone. They drove past the wall of the Old City to the Jaffa Gate again and got out in the square, which was already as familiar as if they had been living there for weeks.

  "Need a guide? Need a guide? Where are you from?"

  Aron appeared from the office and put the keys on the counter, with a face that seemed to say that nothing in the world could surprise him anymore, since everything was as it was and would always be as it would be. Up winding stairs, punctuated by neglected corridors with steps up and steps down, they got to their rooms on the third floor, at the back of the hotel.

  Quinten opened Onno's door and gave him the key. "I'll be next door," he said. "If you need me, just call."

  "You don't have to stay in the hotel because of me. Go on into town, there's enough to see. I'll see you later."

  "Try to get some rest."

  When he had crossed the threshold, Onno turned and they looked at each other for a moment, as though each of them were expecting the other to say something else, but they did not.

  Inside, Onno lay straight down on the bed, put his stick on the floor next to him, closed his eyes, and folded his hands on his chest. Laid out in this way, his thoughts immediately started up again.