The Discovery of Heaven (46 page)

"You in Drenthe? Max! A
bon viveur
like you stuck out in the fenlands? You're not going to tell me that you've gotten married in the meantime, without letting me know?"

"When I get married, you'll be a witness," he said, reflecting that he might even be having a child without letting her know. "No, I'm sacrificing myself for science. It's a very special telescope."

"I can still see you sitting in your room with your celestial map. 'I'm going to lay bare the secret of the universe,' you said at the table once."

"Did I?" He smiled affectionately. "They put that kind of thing out of your head at the university. The first thing they destroy there is the impulse that made you want to study a particular subject. The really great geniuses, like Einstein, are all amateurs—and not only in the natural sciences."

"It's better to be happy than a great genius."

"Perhaps. But the annoying thing is just that Einstein was probably happy as well."

"And you?"

"It would be nicely symmetrical if I were both not a genius and unhappy, wouldn't it?"

She slowly shook her head. "You haven't changed at all, do you know that? Who on earth gives an answer like that?"

"You're right."

He thought it over. Of course it was nonsense to say that he was happy, but did that mean that he was not? Logically perhaps, but psychologically? For the last few months he had probably been really unhappy, or at least hopelessly caught in the trap that he himself had built.
Happy, unhappy . ..
those were not the terms in which he was used to thinking about himself: that was more something for girls, to use Onno's expression. But from the moment that he had made his decision tonight, though everything had remained the same—ruined for good, that is—it had also suddenly changed, turned on its head to become its opposite, like when a marathon runner derives strength and perhaps even something akin to pleasure from his deathly exhaustion. He may even have become a marathon runner because he is addicted to the pleasure of exhaustion.

"God knows, yes, I suppose I'm happy."

His foster mother drew back her hands and looked down. "That bloody war," she said.

The remark astonished him, but he did not react to it. He took hold of her hands in turn.

She looked at him. "We haven't seen each other for so long, Max . . . Why have you suddenly come this evening of all evenings?"

"Because I've made an important decision tonight, Mother Tonia, which may determine the rest of my life. But you mustn't ask me what it is, because it may not happen at all. When I'm sure, of course I'll let you know. I don't know ... I suddenly wanted to see you again. Of course I should have done it long ago, I've failed you, but—"

"Don't say any more."

He was silent: At the next table there was a chessboard with an unfinished game on it. Doubtless it would be continued the following morning by two old men, who were now lying in their beds thinking about their next move, leading to a devastating checkmate with the knight and the queen, who would transmit their lines of force across 666 squares to the opposing king like deadly rays. The man in the wheelchair did not move; he had bent his head and was looking at his white hands, folded in his lap. In some ways he also resembled a castled king, waiting to be checkmated.

In the doorway, under the crucifix that was also hanging in here, a young woman appeared and said that it was the children's bedtime. She was tall and slim, in her late twenties; two blue eyes looked at Max from beneath thick, dark-blond eyebrows—and at the same moment he realized that he could take her into the woods across the road later if he wanted. He also saw that she immediately saw that he knew that—but he didn't want to. That was over. As if he had known her for years, he gave her something like a wink with both eyes by way of apology. She blushed a little and went over to the wheelchair.

"Are you coming, Mr. Blits? Time for beddy-bye."

Max and Mother Tonia got up.

"Come with me to my room for a moment," she said. "I wanted to show you something, but I couldn't find it immediately."

As they passed the wheelchair and Max exchanged another melancholy look with the nurse, Mr. Blits fixed him with his one eye and said: "Swine!"

"Ho, ho, Mr. Blits, what's this? Are we going to get silly?"

"Mr. Blits is quite right," laughed Max. "I'm a bad sort."

They took the elevator, and as he entered the small apartment he had a shock. He knew everything from their house in Amsterdam, and later the one in Santpoort, but here it had been reduced to its essence, like a concentrated extract. Immediately on the right was a kitchen the size of a tablecloth, leading to a tiny living room, which was linked to an equaly modest bedroom by a curving hallway.

On the sofa covered with that unforgettably hard, stiff material and dating from the 1920s or 1930s, he had read his first book on astronomy, a translation of Jeans's
The Mysterious Universe;
two vague pieces of material lay over the threadbare arms. Above it hung the reproduction of Brueghel's
Fall of Icarus,
every detail of which had penetrated his very soul: the immense space of land and sea, the plowing farmer, whose red shirt had now faded to a gentle pink, the shepherd leaning on his crook as though nothing were happening, with his back to the event on which everything hinged and which was taking place like a futile incident: an insignificant leg barely protruding from the waves. On the low table in front of the sofa was the cut-glass bonbonniere, which he had never thought of since, but which was more familiar to him than most of what he had at home; in the small bookcase were the familiar spines.
Everyman's Encyclopedia.

A fairy-tale feeling came over him, like an archaeologist who has suddenly uncovered a classical site: suddenly all those antique things were gathered together, in these few square feet in Bloemendaal. There were things in his life that were still more ancient: from the plundered royal tomb of his parents' house—which he could only vaguely remember and which perhaps also still existed somewhere in the house of the thieves who had followed in the footsteps of the murderers, or in those of their widows or their children; but those would never come to light.

On the television set there were two framed photographs: one of his foster father and one of himself. For all those years, during which he had made no contact, his portrait had stood there and Mother Tonia had looked at it? Hondius, in waistcoat and watch chain, looked at him sternly.
Why didn't
you come, Max?
He turned away in embarrassment. His foster mother, down on one knee in the bedroom, was looking for something in a cardboard box, which she had pulled out from under her bed.

Against the wall he saw the mahogany chest with the two opening doors, the symmetrical grain of which still formed the frightening head of a gigantic bat. On it, next to a sewing basket, was another head, of smooth wood, with no face, like in a De Chirico painting. It was clearly not intended for his eyes, since she obviously put her wig on it at night; perhaps it used to be in a box, because he had never seen it before. But who did she have to hide anything from here? Above the door, Christ on the cross again, dressed in nothing but a diaper.

"Yes, I've got it," she said. Supporting herself on the edge of the bed, she struggled to her feet and brought him a large, bent, dog-eared photograph, torn here and there around the edges. "Is this familiar?"

"It's them!" he exclaimed.

There they were, arm in arm: his father and mother. Incredulous, open-mouthed, he looked at the couple. The yellowed black-and-white photo, more a formal portrait, must have been taken before he was born, by a professional photographer, perhaps on their wedding day in 1926. In a tailor-made suit of chiseled perfection, his father was looking into the lens, now replaced by his son's eyes, which immediately recognized his own; he had not put down the cigarette in his right hand. On his left arm his wife, age eighteen, sixteen years younger than himself, close to him, a hand on her hip, the dark hat on her head, and beneath it two indescribable eyes, the color of which he did not see and which he did not remember, combined with his own nose and mouth. He looked up and put his finger on the photograph.

"It's them," he said again, not yet recovered from his surprise. "This is the first time I've seen a photo of them."

"I suspected as much. You're like both of them."

The thought that his child would be as like him as he was like his parents entered his mind only momentarily.

"How did you come by this?"

"I found it among my husband's papers, when I had to clear up before I moved here. I saw at once that it couldn't have anything to do with his family; they were not such worldly people. That photo must have been among the things that we were sent after your father's death."

"Why did your husband never show it to me?"

"I don't know. Perhaps he didn't want to confront you with what had happened and was going to give it to you later, which he was never able to do . . ."

She fell silent. Did she perhaps mean that Hondius had meant to give him the photograph on his deathbed? Max did not take his eyes off the photograph.

"May I have it?"

"Of course."

It was a mystery to him. So this photograph had come from his father's cell, which meant that it was one of the few things he had taken with him when he was arrested—why? He had driven that woman there on his left arm to her death, which had brought him in front of the firing squad, him, the Mortal Ego. So why should he have a photo of someone who didn't exist and hence could not die? Did that mean she did still exist for him? So had she died after all? How explicable was a human being? How explicable was he himself?

31
The Proposal

The following morning Max woke up in his own bed with the memory of something glittering and glowing. He kept his eyes closed for a moment and saw that it was Mother Tonia's silver scalp, which was hidden by her wig— and for a moment the boundless halls of his dream of that night, with their corridors and chambers, their momentous messages and dizzying vistas, opened up again and then immediately closed forever, as if the country of a departing traveler were not only to disappear below the horizon but to cease to exist. . .

He opened his eyes. Everything was in its place in the soft light that shone through the orange curtains. Nothing had changed, and at the same time everything had changed: somehow it had lost its permanence, which allowed it to be the same tomorrow as today and the same the day after tomorrow as tomorrow. It was as though he no longer lived here, as though his soul had already departed. Ten o'clock. Because it was Saturday he had not set his alarm; he did not have to go to Leiden. He got out of bed, opened the curtains, and dialed Sophia's number. She was on the point of leaving for Amsterdam, to go to the hospital.

"I've got my coat on."

"Is Onno coming too?"

"I think so. Why?"

"I have to speak to you for a moment, but without Onno. It's important."

"Has something happened? You disappeared so suddenly yesterday."

"Yes, something has happened, but I can't tell you over the telephone."

"Where shall we meet?"

The obvious thing for him to do would have been to invite her to his flat, ten minutes' walk from the Wilhelmina Hospital, but he had the feeling that that would be crossing a forbidden boundary.

"How about the station buffet? That may be easiest for you."

"But I can't possibly say exactly what time I'll be there."

"I understand. Don't hurry, I'll be there from one o'clock onward. We can have a bite to eat."

"See you this afternoon, then."

On his desk lay the photograph of his parents. He looked at it for a while and decided to have it framed later. He ran a bath and in the hot water tried to think about the future, but there was not much point until he had spoken to Sophia. It was not impossible that she would look at him in astonishment and ask him if he had taken leave of his senses; that would probably mean an immediate end to their secret relationship. But perhaps things might be different, and in that case he must take immediate steps to ensure his appointment in Westerbork and his living accommodations. Although . . . ultimately everything depended on Onno. He must decide. It concerned his wife and what was at least officially his child; he was under pressure from his family, and there was some doubt whether he could come to terms with a scheme that he might be inclined to class as surrealistic. Max was aware that he must rely on the very friendship he had betrayed.

At about twelve-thirty, with the photo in a folded newspaper, he went downstairs, took the morning paper out of the mailbox, and walked in the direction of the Central Station. In the window of a photographer's on the Leidsestraat was a shot of a car crash from the 1920s: a yellowed little snap of two cars that, absurdly, had collided in what was still a virtually car-free world, enlarged by technical wizardry into a large, shiny photograph that looked as though it had been taken yesterday. In the shop a girl offered to transform his damaged photo in the same way; but what mattered to him was not only what was depicted but the object itself, that original paper, that substance, which had been in the possession of his father and mother. There must be traces of molecules from their hands on it.

He walked down the Damrak to the Central Station, which blocked off the harbor front like a dam. It was as if the town council of Venice had hit on the idea of building a station on the Molo, behind the two pillars on the Piazzetta, which would have obscured the view of the lagoon. Amsterdam, he thought, might be the Venice of the North, but Venice was fortunately not the Amsterdam of the South. Ever since he'd had a car, he'd only been in the station once: when he'd made his trip to Poland. Just as he always used to, he glanced to the left before going into the station concourse: at the ramp for goods traffic, along which the 110,000 Jews had been driven to the goods wagons.

The gigantic, semicircular roof of steel girders—so constructed in order to absorb the smoke and steam of locomotives—had always felt like the inside of a Zeppelin, but now it reminded him of the ribs of a whale that had swallowed him up. He felt something akin to stage fright. In the buffet, with its dark paneling and carving and murals, he sat down at a table by the window.