The Discovery of Heaven (90 page)

"What had happened to those first two angels?"

"I don't know, Quinten," said Onno, and sighed again. "Listen a moment. The temple of Solomon was laid waste by Nebuchadnezzar, and from that moment on the ark disappeared. Later again, in the sixth century B.C., the second temple was built on the same spot, that of Zerubbabel—without an ark, that is. That building fell into disrepair; Herod demolished it and built the third temple. Jewish tradition, however, makes no distinction between the second and third temples, since the rabbis did not accord Herod the honor, because he collaborated with the Romans. For them the third is still the second, renovated by Herod into a huge monster, again on the same spot. But that temple existed for no more than a few years: it was destroyed by Titus, as you know. It appears from eyewitness reports that the Holy of Holies was empty at that time too."

"That can't be right," said Quinten, pointing with his index finger to the two small altars, behind which was the Sancta Sanctorum; "because the ark of the covenant is inside."

Onno looked at him for a couple of seconds speechless.

"That's the stuff!" he said with a laugh. "Generations of theologians, rabbis, historians, and archaeologists have confirmed that the ark has vanished since the Babylonian exile, but Professor Doctor Quist, M.L., M.E. knows better. Listen, I agree it's odd that this chapel is called the Sancta Sanctorum, but perhaps we shouldn't take it too literally."

"The chapel isn't just called that, it also says that there isn't a holier place in the whole world. There's nothing figurative about that."

"All true. But how do you explain, then, that on the triumphal arch of Titus the candelabra can be seen, and the table with the shewbread, but not the ark? If Titus had taken that, too, then surely it would have been depicted at the very front?"

"Well, there could be a reason for that, couldn't there?"

"Such as?"

Quinten shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know .. . perhaps Titus and Vespasian were a little frightened of that God of the Jews and it seemed safer not to make too much fuss about the ark."

"Not such a stupid idea in itself," said Onno with a small movement of his head. "It's difficult for us to imagine—we are the heirs of that Jewish monotheism that recognizes only one God and none other; in fact that's even the content of the First Commandment. However, when the Romans defeated an enemy, they not only imprisoned their soldiers, but sometimes they incorporated their gods into their own pantheon. But suppose it's as you say, what happened then?"

"Well, it's quite logical," said Quinten. "Titus took the ark, but didn't show it in the procession. Then Vespasian hid it in the imperial palace, after which Constantine later gave it to the popes in deepest secrecy. They then hid it behind bars somewhere here. And that's also the reason why the chapel had to be spared when the Lateran was demolished."

"Not a bad solution," nodded Onno. "But in that case that architect, Domenico Fontana, must have known about it—otherwise he wouldn't have quoted the temple in this building with the Scala Santa. No, of course he knew nothing himself, but his patron, Sixtus V, did."

"Of course."

"Wasn't that terribly risky, in combination with the name of the chapel and that inscription? Wouldn't that have given someone the clue that the ark of God is here?"

"Have you heard about something, then?"

"No, it's not that," said Onno, and was silent for a moment. "It's true, some ideas are so obvious that you can scarcely believe that no one has hit on them before. For centuries everyone believed that the
Iliad
was a myth; but with Homer in hand Schliemann simply started digging and immediately found Helen's Troy. He was obviously someone just like you. If only we had that historioscope of yours, we could simply check it in the past." He looked at Quinten in amusement. "Have you any idea what it would mean if what you're saying were true?"

"What do you mean?"

Onno turned to him. "The
ark,
Quinten! The whole world would be turned on its head if it suddenly emerged that it still exists and is here in Rome. That could have some very strange consequences."

But that aspect didn't interest Quinten. Lost in thought, he stared at the wall behind which was the Sancta Sanctorum and asked: "How large was that ark?"

"I'm sorry, I can't remember off the top of my head. Moses on Mount Horeb remembered hundreds of measurements and specifications without noting them down, but even I haven't got a memory like that."

"But we can check it."

"Of course, everything can always be checked. You just say the word. It's all in the Torah."

"In the what?"

"In the Torah. The Law. The Pentateuch, in Greek. The first five books of the Bible, which Moses is supposed to have written: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. I can still recite it all by heart, but of course you've never heard of them."

"I've heard of Genesis," said Quinten, and got up. "So we must manage to get hold of a Bible somewhere."

"I'm sure we'll be able to in Rome."

"Shall we see if we can walk around it?"

The medieval chapel was indeed in the center of the Renaissance building, like the core in a nuclear reactor. At the back, too, there was a sacred area; on the right was the chapel of San Lorenzo. When they got there, Quinten stopped in shock and looked at a door that also seemed to be looking at him.

The center of the world!
A bronze double door from the fourth century, which gave access to the Sancta Sanctorum. In the two top panels were round decorations, like irises with a pupil. They were locked by two heavy, sliding padlocks, one below the other, as large as that on the altar, which looked like a nose and a mouth. The wide marble doorpost was crowned by two short pillars, bearing an architrave; in the space below was an inscription:

SIXTVS•V•

PONT•MAX•

Quinten knew of course that "Pont. Max." was the abbreviation of Pontifex Maximus, the papal title Great Bridgebuilder; nevertheless he looked in alarm at Max's name, which suddenly appeared here above that bronze face that he knew from his Citadel. He returned to the familiar look of the door and this time felt no fear.

Suddenly he turned to Onno. "What was in it?"

"In what?"

"In that ark of the covenant."

"The two stone tablets of Moses, with the Ten Commandments on them."

The following morning they took the bus to the Via Omero, where the Istituto Storico Olandese was located. Initially, Onno had hesitated about going there; perhaps he would have to give his name and would be recognized: in the past he had had it in his portfolio and had cut its grant, in order to release funds for Max's thirteenth and fourteenth mirrors. On the other hand he knew that an arbitrary minister of state was not only forgotten years afterward but often while he was still in office. Anyone who had been a minister of state, or even a minister, imagined that he and his family would bask in the glory for all eternity, but apart from them no one generally remembered. And perhaps that was right; because everything always repeated itself. Without people's poor memories, politics would be completely impossible. Moreover, it didn't really matter to him if he was recognized.

In the quiet reading room, where a few students sat hunched over their papers, Onno went to the librarian, an exceptionally small, graying lady, who was standing on tiptoe with a pencil between her teeth in front of an open drawer of index cards. He had to force himself to suppress the image of Helga before he could ask whether she had a Dutch Bible that they could consult.

She glanced at his untidy appearance and said: "You've come to the wrong place. Perhaps at the embassy."

"Are you sure?" asked Quinten.

She looked up at him, and Onno saw her change at the same moment, like a landscape when the sun breaks through.

"You look as though there's a hurry," she said, laughing.

"That's true."

"Wait. Perhaps I can help."

When she'd gone, Onno said: "What is it with you and women that I haven't got?"

Quinten looked at him in such astonishment that Onno thought it better to leave it at that remark. A few minutes later she came back with a small Bible, which she handed to Quinten.

"There you are. For you. It was in the bedside table in a guest room. If you ask me, no one ever looks at it, so it's going to a better home now."

"It would have been incredible," said Onno severely. "A Dutch institution without a Bible on the premises!"

In the nearby park, the Villa Borghese, they sat down on a bench. The silence among the trees and lawns, made even deeper by the distant roar of the traffic around, had an air of timelessness. The soft green veil that the spring had drawn over everything, like a child breathing against the windowpane, reminded Quinten of Groot Rechteren—and he wondered in astonishment what the connection was between nature and the things they were now concerned with.

"What kind of covenant are we talking about, actually?" he asked, while Onno leafed through the printed cigarette paper with his legs crossed.

"The one between God and Israel, the so-called Old Covenant. With Christ you later got the New Covenant, between God and those who believed in Christ. According to the Christians, the Old Covenant was thereby fulfilled and transcended."

"And how did the Jews react to that?"

"Well, how do you think? They weren't too impressed. Jesus of Nazareth was a rabbi who said that he was the Messiah, but the other rabbis considered that sacrilege. You know what rabbis are like. According to them, the true Messiah was still to come, and they still believe that." Onno laid a hand on his crown. "Good God, if only my father could hear me going on like this." Suddenly he stiffened and stared straight ahead with a look that Quinten didn't understand.

"What's wrong?"

Onno glanced at him, handed him the Bible, and said: "Hold this. I've got to put something right."

Quinten looked in astonishment as his father fished an envelope out of his inside pocket, took a box of matches from his trouser pocket, and lit the envelope at one corner.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm mailing a letter."

He turned the burning envelope between his fingers until he could no longer hold it. He ground the charred remains, which had fallen, into the earth with his heel and scattered them with his stick, until nothing more could be seen. Quinten watched in astonishment.

"Don't pay any attention and don't ask me anything." Onno took back the Bible and looked in St. Paul's Epistle to the Hebrews for the passages whose existence he remembered. "It's a long time, son, since I devoted myself to Bible study. Thank goodness it's the Authorized Version, in the language of Canaan, and not one of those new-fangled versions of the God-Is-Dead school."

While an occasional lady with a child or a gentleman with a dog passed them along the path, or a jogger trotted by, he read aloud to Quinten about Christ, who had not entered the "the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us."

" 'Christ,' " he recited with a solemn voice, " 'being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building; neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us.' It says here that he consecrated man 'through the veil, that is to say, his flesh.' Come now, come now. And here it talks about 'the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched and not man.' If you ask me, all that contains a prohibition against ever building an earthly Holy of Holies with human hands again."

"But," said Quinten, "over there is a Christian building that is called Sancta Sanctorum and is the holiest place on earth."

"That's what I mean."

"So perhaps it's not so very Christian at all. That is, Christian but at the same time not Christian."

Onno nodded. "I take your point, but where do you want to go from here?"

Quinten pointed to the Bible. "Look at the ark of the covenant again. I want to know how big it was."

Onno looked up the book of Exodus and did not have to look for long. It was as though when he saw all those names and turns of phrase he again smelled the smell of his parents' house.

"Two and a half ells long, one and a half ells wide, and one and a half ells high."

"And how long is an ell?"

"Well, from your elbow to the tip of your middle finger, so about eighteen inches."

"So about forty-three inches long, twenty-seven inches wide, and twenty-seven inches high."

"That's about right."

Quinten looked through the hilly park, but all he saw was the heavy padlock. "If you ask me, that's also the size of the altar in the Sancta Sanctorum."

"Let's hope," said Onno with a little laugh, "that it's a bit bigger, otherwise the ark won't fit in it."

"Why are you laughing?"

"Because everything is always right—if you want it to be. Just think of that crazy Proctor, in the castle. Do you remember? Look, I've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven buttons on my shirt; the top one is open. So that tallies with the six days of creation and the Sabbath."

"But something can really be right, can't it?"

"Of course."

"Why else would there be such thick bars in front of that altar? And on that canopy above there are two angels with outspread wings, aren't there? We're on the track of something, Dad!
Non est in toto sanctior orbe locus
— that could also have been in the temple of Jerusalem!"

Onno closed the Bible, looked at Quinten seriously and made a gesture. "Yes."

"Well, then! I have to know what's going on here."

"Why on earth do you have to, Quinten?"

"I don't know," said Quinten with something impatient in his voice, while he was thinking of
the center of the world.

57
Discoveries