The Discovery of Heaven (79 page)

"And your school," asked Sophia, without looking up from the apple she was peeling. "What'll happen to that?"

"I know enough. And anyway, the most important things that I know, I didn't learn at school."

"But, Quinten, you're almost there. Another year, and you'll have your high school diploma. Aren't you afraid that you'll be terribly sorry if you don't finish high school? That'll change the course of your whole life. You do want to study, I assume?"

Quinten looked at the bare trees on the other side of the moat. He could still look right through the wood; soon it would again become an impenetrable wall. In the distance a car was driving along the road to Westerbork. His father had once asked him too what he wanted to "be." "An architect," Max had said—but the idea of doing this or that for the rest of his life, and nothing else, still seemed idiotic to him. He wasn't born to gain certainty; he could leave that to others. Something completely different was waiting for him—that was the certainty that had come to him six months previously in the field near Klein Rechteren.

"I don't think so," he said.

Sophia tried again. "You won't be seventeen until next month. Keep at it for another year, then you'll be eighteen; and afterward you can do what you like for a year. Or two years. Then you can still always decide if you want to study or not. But if you stop now, you'll have decided once and for all."

"I'm going to look for Dad," said Quinten.

He was sorry for his grandmother. In order to keep up appearances she got up, brushed the crumbs and remains of bread into her other hand, and threw them over the balustrade, which immediately unleashed a flurry of quacking down below. She too was alone. Her daughter had been struck down by a terrible accident, her companion killed by a meteorite, and now she was being abandoned by her grandson, too. What else was there to do? Moreover, in a few months' time she'd be out in the street—with all her things, those of her daughter, and those of Max.

He went over to her, put his hands on her shoulders, and gave her a kiss on her forehead; a strange, sweet-and-sour smell penetrated his nostrils. Immediately afterward, she pressed her crown against his breastbone for a moment, which reminded him of Gijs, Verdonkschot's billy goat. When she raised her face, it was wet with tears. It was the first time that he had seen her cry.

"Granny!"

"Don't worry about that. When did you want to go?"

"As soon as possible." Only when he said this did it become final for him.

Again Sophia controlled herself. "But where on earth are you going, Quinten? In which direction? You can't simply just get on the first train that comes along."

"Perhaps that's a method too. First I'm going to see Dad's lawyer tomorrow. He knows where he is, doesn't he?"

"But he won't tell you. He's got his professional code of ethics."

"I can at least try. Perhaps he'll let something slip out, or something will slip out that I can use. And mightn't Auntie Dol know more than we think, too? Anyway, perhaps it's best if I go to see her first."

Sophia looked at him red-eyed. Suddenly she could no longer restrain her tears; her face contorted, she sat down, put her hands over her eyes, and said in an almost sing-song voice: "Quinten ... something dreadful's going to happen when you've gone . . ."

He had never seen her like this before. Helplessly he sat down opposite her. "What makes you think that?"

"I don't know ..." she whispered, with her shoulders heaving, "I feel it."

"What nonsense! No one knows what's going to happen. Perhaps I'll be away for a few months, and then I'll keep you posted about everything. And after that I can always go back to school again. Otherwise I'll take the state examination."

He himself did not really believe that, and he saw that Sophia didn't believe it either. Holding a napkin to her eyes, she got up and suddenly went inside, with her face averted.

Quinten looked at the apple peel on her plate: one long uninterrupted spiral, like she always made. You could make it as long as you wanted, he thought—infinitely long if only you peeled thinly enough. He breathed in the mild air deeply. It was over; in fact, he was not there any longer. But at the same time it seemed as though through that awareness everything struck him more intensely than ever before, just like at Christmas the burnt-out, guttering candles on the tree flared up once more and then went out, with the floor covered in colored wrapping paper and unwrapped presents.

Max had always told him to stay in his room on
Heiligabend
until the Christmas tree had been decorated and the candles lit. "Come on!" From the harsh electric light of his room into the warm candlelight—a dark world from the distant past. ... He got up and went over to the stone balustrade. Deep in the wood an owl croaked. On an artificial island on the other side, the pitiless coots had built a new nest, around which everyone else swam respectfully. Fancy his unemotional grandmother suddenly becoming so tearful! But was he to stay here because of that? Would he have to look after her, as she had looked after him for all those years? His decision was made. He was going. He was going to look for his father. Deep in himself he felt the unshakable certainty that nothing and no one could stop him.

"Quinten?"

Via Max's bedroom, where Max's made-up bed had already frozen into an untouchable museum exhibit, he went into Sophia's. She was kneeling on the floor, in front of the open bottom drawer of the chest of drawers. In her hands she had a tiny compass. Much smaller than the one on the edge of Max's desk, it was no more than three quarters of an inch across.

"Take this with you," she said, and gave it to him, with the cool, distant look in her eyes again. "It belonged to your granddad. He always carried it when we went walking on the heath, in the years after the war. It was still big in those days."

The needle was fixed, but after he moved a pin at the side, it wobbled into motion: it still worked. A black leather shoelace had been threaded through the ring. Without saying anything, he allowed Sophia to put the instrument around his neck. He realized with relief that she had resigned herself to his departure. He had never known Granddad Brons; for Quinten, he belonged more to history than to himself, like most things in the crammed drawer. Although it was not locked, he had never rummaged in it; nor did he want anyone to poke their nose in his own things. He bent down and took out a yellow card from the chaos of photos, letters, folders, dolls, girls' books, a woollen rabbit.

"
Certificate of Report
," he read, "
As required under Article 9, first clause, of Decree No. 6/1941 of the Reichskpmmissar for the occupied territory of the Netherlands, regarding compulsory reporting of persons of wholly or partly Jewish extraction.
" He turned it over. "
Haken, Petronella. Number of Jewish ancestors in the sense of Art. 2 of the decree: one.
" He looked inquiringly at Sophia.

"That's my mother's," she said. "Her grandmother on her mother's side was Jewish."

"That means—" Quinten began.

"Yes, that you've also got Jewish blood in you."

"You never told me that!"

"It wasn't worth mentioning. Work it out."

"My great-grandmother was a quarter, you an eighth, Mommy a sixteenth, and me a thirty-second." He put the card back and said, "No, it's not much. Did Max know about this?"

"To tell you the truth, I never thought about it."

His aunt and uncle could only repeat that they did not know where Onno was, either. Dol was the only person in the family to have had a letter from him, and since then she had not heard anything either; nor had he tried to get hold of his stored things in any way. Only on one occasion—already eighteen months ago—had Hans Giltay Veth written to them; Onno wanted the certificate of his honorary doctorate returned to Uppsala. They had done that, although they did not know the reason, nor did the lawyer.

It was their last day in the suburb near Rotterdam. They were just able to receive him in the midst of their moving. Uncle Karel, the surgeon, had finally laid down his scalpels, and they were going to move permanently to their second home on Menorca, where Quinten had stayed a couple of times during summer vacation.

In the dismantled front room, as they sat with plastic cups of mineral water on nailed-down boxes, the conversation that he had had with Sophia repeated itself: about interrupting his studies, and if he was so sure that what he was doing was sensible, and about where was he going to look. He had the feeling that Onno had almost disappeared from their lives. His things had already been collected a few weeks ago by a storage company; they were now in a warehouse in the docks. Sophia had been informed about it, but she had obviously not wanted to burden him with that message. While he waited for the train to Amsterdam on the platform, the expression that his uncle had used for his father constantly echoed through his head:
dropout.

In the lobby of the lawyers' office building behind the Rijksmuseum the name J.C.G.F. Giltay Veth, M.L. stood among a long list of other names. The bearer of it came to see him himself: a fat, kindly man in his early fifties, with a small pair of reading glasses on the tip of his nose. In the elevator up to the top floor he told Quinten that he had known his father since they were students together. Although Onno could say terrible things, Giltay Veth had seldom laughed so much as he had with him. His room looked out over the entire center of town. He pointed out the palace on the Dam in the distance to Quinten, with Atlas carrying the globe of the world on his neck— like someone, thought Quinten, who was himself outside the world.

When a black girl in a white coat put down some tea, they sat down opposite each other at a long table, half of which was taken up by piles of folders and dossiers.

"I must extend my sympathies on the death of your foster father," said Giltay Veth. "I read about it in the paper. It's scarcely credible, something like that." Lost for words, he shook his head for a moment. "Of course I had nothing to do with it, but are his affairs properly sorted out, as far as you know?"

"You should ask my grandmother about that. I believe there are problems, because he had no family at all."

"Please tell your grandmother that she can always contact me if she needs help. It won't cost her a penny. I know that I will be acting in the spirit of your father."

Quinten looked straight at him. "Didn't you tell my father, then?"

Giltay Veth held a lump of sugar in his tea and waited until it had absorbed all the tea. "No." He let go of the lump. "I can only contact him in extreme cases."

"So he doesn't know at all that Max is dead?"

"I couldn't tell you. Perhaps he's read about it in the paper somewhere, too."

"So he's not in Holland?"

The ghost of a smile crossed Giltay Veth's face, but it immediately disappeared; he stirred his cup seriously for a few seconds.

"I know what you're getting at, Quinten. To tell you the truth, I expected your visit much earlier. I knew that you'd be sitting here opposite me one day; I said as much to your father at the time. But if you want to know from me where he is, I can't tell you."

"I swear I'll never tell anyone that I heard it from you. Surely I can bump into him by accident somewhere, as it were, can't I? Coincidences like that do happen, don't they? My foster father was hit by a meteorite; surely that's a much greater coincidence?"

"Absolutely." Giltay Veth nodded. "Except that it's not a question of my knowing and not being able to tell you; I really don't know. I haven't the faintest idea."

"How can that be? In his farewell letter to Max my father wrote that he could always be reached by you in emergencies."

"That's true, but only in a roundabout way. There are two other addresses in between. The first is that of a colleague of mine—abroad, yes, you got hold of the right end of the stick there. But he knows only of a post-office box in another country. That might be Holland, but just as easily Paraguay. Suppose you managed to get me to tell you where that colleague is—which won't happen. Even then that gentleman won't help you out, because he knows nothing about you. Quite apart from the fact that the only thing he knows is that post-office box number, in another country." He put one hand on top of the other and looked at Quinten. "Forget it, lad. Your father has covered his tracks thoroughly. Something dreadful has happened to him; you must assume that he's not alive anymore. I know all about your situation. I know of the dreadful fate that befell your mother, I know what happened to your father and recently to your foster father, but you must resign yourself to it. There are boys whose fathers have been murdered, or have been killed in a plane crash. It's all equally horrible, but that's obviously how life is. Try and put it out of your mind. Don't let your life be scarred by it."

Quinten made an awkward gesture and said: "If I knew that my father was really dead, there would be nothing wrong. But he isn't dead. He's somewhere in the world and is doing something or other at this moment. Perhaps he's sitting reading the newspaper, or drinking a cup of tea." He faltered. "That means . . . are you actually sure that he's still alive?"

Giltay Veth nodded. "If it were otherwise, I would know and so would you."

"Then I'm going to look for him."

The telephone rang, and without waiting to see who was on the line, the lawyer said: "I don't want to be disturbed." He put the receiver down, folded his arms, and leaned back."No one can stop you. But have you asked yourself whether you're acting in accordance with your father's wishes?"

He had been talking the whole time about his father's
spirit.
Quinten took Onno's letter out of his pocket and read the last sentence aloud. When he had explained his interpretation—that it wasn't a ban on looking for him but just a statement of the pointlessness of doing so—a smile crossed Giltay Veth's face.

"You'd make a good lawyer, Quinten."

"It says what it says."

"There's no arguing with that. But it also says that you won't find him. How were you planning to go about it?"