The Discovery of Heaven (72 page)

None of this went ahead, either, and the owners continued to succeed each other. Now there was mention of an auction house that wanted to set up shop in the castle; now a recreation center for overworked managers. Meanwhile, nothing more was done about maintenance. Mr. Roskam had cleared his workshop, and no one knew whether or not he had followed the baron underground, into the domain of his father's cap.

Cracks in the external walls became visible; there were leaks; plaster fell from the lath ceilings; and in the corners of the rooms mildewed wallpaper began to come loose from the latching, exposing rough, centuries-old masonry. Autumn leaves blocked the gutters, so the rainwater streamed down the walls and flooded the cellars, which led to a plague of gnats in summer. It was as though the castle had cancer. It deteriorated month by month, and a stubborn spirit of resistance seized everyone: they weren't going to be driven out by the capitalists!

Eighteen months after Gevers's death, in 1983—Max had meanwhile turned fifty, Sophia sixty—the first breach appeared in their community: Keller agreed to let himself be bought out. At that time the owner was a good-natured-looking man in his forties, according to the vicar a Jehovah's Witness, whose wife ran a sex club in Amersfoort. He called himself an "antiques dealer," which meant that he drove to Spain with a "partner" in an empty van every month and came back with a load of peasant chairs, tables, and cupboards, which he stored in the dilapidated orangery. Keller's house was intended for the partner, who gave more of the impression of a lackey who would go through fire for his master.

According to him, no one need have any worries about taking advantage of their protected period of three years; after that the castle would be thoroughly restored, with a link-up to the natural gas network and central heating. The present residents would of course receive the right of first refusal, though they would have to take into account the fact that the rents would then be many times what they were at present. According to Mr. Spier, it would amount to a gigantic brothel under the patronage of the Supreme Being.

But suddenly it turned out that he had in turn also sold the castle. He had kept only the buildings beyond the moat—and when Max and Sophia saw the new lord of the manor, they knew immediately that things were going to be very different.

There was no doubt about it. There was the victor—the exalted market mechanism had finally achieved its worthy goal: a small, self-satisfied man with a bald head and a short beard called Korvinus, the owner of a demolition company. He had obviously decided to shorten the three-year notice period dramatically by means of harassment, because he immediately began poking his finger in everywhere. When Quinten, counter to the new regulations, had put his bicycle on the forecourt again, instead of in the bicycle shed, Max received a registered letter the following day asking him in emphatic terms to prevent this happening. Kern was informed that the communal upstairs landing was not part of his property and could not be used for the storage of goods. Clara was informed that she must no longer put her laundry out to dry on the roof, as was usual in slums. The stone demolition ball, which his workers hurled at house walls with cranes, was in some way or other in his head too.

Every week he was there for one occasion, by common consent solely in order to think up new tricks—but obviously that wasn't enough for him. He needed a jailer. The former storage rooms of the baron's, in the loft, were converted into an apartment, and one day its occupant appeared: Nederkoorn.

Max started when he saw him for the first time, and every time after that. A huge fellow of his own age, with a hard face, always in black riding boots, which he struck with a plaited whip, invariably accompanied by an Alsatian. Max would have most liked to empty a submachine gun into him immediately, but perhaps that would have been precisely more in the spirit of his new fellow resident. He had not introduced himself, never said hello, and spent hours training his dog, Paco, on the lawn opposite Piet Keller's former house. He shared his life with a plump young woman, much younger than he was and three heads shorter, who to Max's astonishment was obviously in love with him and put an arm around his shoulders when they drove off in their jeep.

But Sem Spier did not limit himself to murderous fantasies.

"I'm going," he announced a few days afterward with a tense face. "I can't live under one roof with that fellow. I'm sorry, that person makes me physically ill. It reminds me too much of something."

Everyone saw that he was serious, everyone begrudged Korvinus his victory, but everyone respected his decision and understood that the last phase had now begun.

The departure of Piet Keller had been something like that of Verdonkschot and his friend for Quinten: more an astonished observation of the fact, which his father had written to him about: that not everything remained the same. Keller's children had long since left home, just like Kern's daughter Martha for that matter, and he had helped him load up the keys and locks and the other things from his workshop, which he had played with so often. When he had asked if the two cart wheels along the gravel path shouldn't come too, Keller had hesitated for a moment and said that he had no room for them in the terraced house where he was going to live. When the hired van had disappeared bumpily over the loose planks of the outer bridge, he had the feeling that Keller—from whom he had learned so much—had never existed.

But he couldn't bear to watch the departure of Mr. Spier. He remembered that when he was a little boy, Granny had always come to tuck him in and turn off the light; after she had given him a kiss and gone to the door, he pulled the blanket over his head and squeezed his eyes tight shut—if he opened them afterward then it must remain just as dark as when they were still shut. There mustn't be any difference any more between open and shut. If the light on the other hand was still burning, because she was clearing something up in his room, that was a disaster; then in some way or other the night was ruined.

Inside at the Spiers' everything was already packed in boxes and gray horse blankets. When the moving van turned onto the forecourt that early afternoon, he said goodbye to them on the terrace. Mrs. Spier had tears in her eyes and couldn't say anything; she just hugged him to her and kissed him five or six times.

But Mr. Spier shook hands with him firmly and said: "We're sorry we won't be able to see you every day anymore, QuQu. You've become part of our life—in fact you were always something of our child. I hope that things will go well in your life, but I don't really have any doubt that they will. As long as you look after yourself. You promise me that you'll look after yourself?"

"Yes, Mr. Spier."

"Come and visit us in Pontrhydfendigaid when you're in England—or in Wales, I should say."

Quinten went to the pond with his recorder, to the embrace of the rhododendrons. He left the instrument unplayed in his lap all afternoon; he sat in front of his hut until it began to grow dark. It was an overcast spring day; there was no wind, and the oily, gleaming water was only occasionally crossed by the reflection of a bird flying overhead.

Now Mr. and Mrs. Spier had also disappeared from his life. The Judith. The Quadrata. Pontrhydfendigaid .. . Was his father there too perhaps? He felt sad. Why was there actually something, and not nothing? And if everything passed anyway, what point was there in its ever having been there? Had it really ever been there? If there were no more people one day, no one who could remember anything anymore, could you then say that anything had ever happened? That was, could you
now
say that
then
you could say that something had happened, when there would be no one else to say anything? No, then nothing would have happened—although it would have happened. He knew that he could talk to Max about this; but because he couldn't talk to his father about it, he didn't want to talk to Max about it either.

He was reminded of the Remembrance Center that had been opened at the Westerbork camp the previous year, which he had gone to with Max and Granny. In the large photographs and also in a film you could see people getting into cattle trucks, supervised by people just like Nederkoorn, being transported to their deaths. He had seen that Max leaned forward to inspect all the faces closely—obviously in the hope that he would discover his mother by chance. There were also women, of whom one could see only the backs of their heads. All dead. Surely that could never have happened! Max had told him that there were admirers of Hitler nowadays, who maintained that all those films and photographs were fake, that none of it had ever happened—but why did they admire him? They were saying that actually Hitler was a failure who had not managed to do what he had proclaimed. Fine sort of admirers they were—Hitler would have put them up against a wall straight away. But still . . . those people could
say
that it hadn't happened, although it had happened—that would be proved by the historio-scope—but if one day there were no more people left so no one else could say that it
had
happened, how could it
not
not have not happened?

That fish there, poking its nose out of the water, creating an expanding set of circles, like an ever-expanding halo—had it really done that forever? And he himself; he was sitting here now. Was it possible that he had never sat here? Was he actually sitting here now, properly speaking? Did anything really exist? Perhaps you should say that the world existed and did not exist. A bit like the Citadel. And he himself: he existed and he did not exist. That was completely wrong, then. What was he to do in such an idiotic world? What was the point of his being here?

When he got back, Mr. and Mrs. Spier had gone. Korvinus was already walking through the empty rooms with a yardstick, and month later he was living there himself. From that moment on it was as though the castle were keeling over, like a torpedoed ship.

No one dared to go and look, not even by accident, to see how Nederkoorn was living up in the loft. According to Max, he slept under a swastika flag, with a portrait of Himmler above his bed. On Max's own floor, which he shared with Kern, everything was unchanged at first sight; but below, Spier's Empire interior had been replaced by oak furniture, so massive— and probably reinforced with concrete on the inside—that, according to Kern, Korvinus could count himself lucky that everything did not crash through the floor and plunge down into the cellar.

He, too, had a wife who was obviously devoted to him; but because he had obviously forbidden her to fraternize with fellow residents, it was impossible to discover whether she was attached to him because of or despite the stone ball in his head. They had two sons of the same age as Quinten and Arend Proctor. Quinten had nothing to do with them, but Arend made friends with the elder, Evert—probably against Korvinus's will. It was obvious that he wanted the whole castle to himself, and links of friendship with the enemy made his war of nerves more difficult.

When Paco was not cringing at Nederkoorn's whip and orders, he lay in the forecourt on a chain under a room of Themaat's, where he barked continually. Invoking her husband, who was ill and could not stand it, Elsbeth had complained about it a few times, but from Nederkoorn she could only count on the kind of glance one casts at an object. Once, at her wits' end, she had phoned the police, but they could do nothing.

"The police can almost never do anything," Max had said afterward, "except pick up Jews—they were very good at that."

The dog itself was unapproachable: if anyone came closer than three yards, it began leering and bared its teeth with trembling lips, without giving the impression of laughing. Only when it saw Quinten did it immediately stop barking; it laid its ears flat into its neck, wagged its tail, and allowed itself to be stroked. When Nederkoorn had first seen that, he had erupted into rage.

"If you so much as lay a finger on that animal again, you'll have me to deal with!"

Quinten had never stroked him after that—not because he was frightened of Nederkoorn, but because Paco would of course have to pay for it. But he did, when he had the chance, take his book and sit below Mr. Themaat's window, so that the dog would at least be quiet for a little while. He had learned so much from Themaat that he was prepared to do that for him. He did not go to the pond anymore anyway, since his hut had been destroyed. As far as his chain allowed, Paco crawled toward him and would lie down with his snout as close as possible to him and with his golden brown eyes focused on him. He looks just like me, thought Quinten, but he doesn't know that he's got eyes. Once Korvinus had appeared on the terrace and had ordered him to go away—the forecourt wasn't a slum where the rabble sat in the street; but immediately Sophia had opened the window above and said calmly:

"It begins to strike me that you talk a lot about slums, Mr. Korvinus. Why is that?"

That had helped—but how long was this to go on?

One evening, lying on the sofa, Max tried to work a little, but he was constantly disturbed by thoughts of the situation at the castle. He got up in irritation and went to Sophia's room. She was sitting in her dressing gown on the edge of her bed and giving herself the daily insulin injection that she had needed for years.

"I'm sorry to disturb you, Sophia," he said, and looked at the needle in her thigh, "but I'm angry. I can't concentrate anymore, and what does it really have to do with me? Since the days of feudalism are over and the bourgeoisie now rule the roost, I spend hours every day thinking about the fact that we are living here. But you live somewhere precisely so that you can do something else. When you're walking, you don't think the whole time about the fact that you're walking—except when you've just broken your leg. I've got other things to think about—at present I'm involved in the most interesting project in my whole career. Do you remember that I once explained to you that the mirrors in Westerbork are actually a single huge telescope? But nowadays, with those computers, we're able to link up all the mirrors on earth, so shortly we should have a supertelescope with a diameter of over six thousand miles, as large as our whole planet. So what's in it for me not to be outwitted by this rabble here at the castle?