The Discovery of Heaven (99 page)

When they drove out of the city in a taxi at about six o'clock via the Porta San Paolo and pyramid of Cestius, it was already growing light. Onno was again wearing the gray suit in which he'd arrived from Holland four years earlier; he enjoyed the feel of the cool air against his cheeks and on his neck. How could a human being let himself become so overgrown! He remembered a conversation that he had had years ago during the conference in Havana with a man who had spent years in a Stalinist work camp. The conversation was about beards, apropos of Fidel Castro and his friends, and he himself had said that he would only let his beard grow if he were one day to land in prison. Whereupon the other looked at him in silence for a while and then said, "When you land in prison, you'll shave yourself four times a day."

The sky was beginning to grow red, as though beyond the horizon the lid of an oven were being slowly opened. It was Sunday; there was little traffic.

"And what if the first plane that's leaving is going to Zimbabwe?" asked Onno.

"Then we'll go to Zimbabwe. We've got plenty of money."

"It's not a matter of money, and anyway I'm paying. But surely we've got time to pick something? I'd rather go to San Francisco than Zimbabwe. Do we absolutely have to be dependent on chance?"

"I don't know," said Quinten impatiently. "I think so."

"And when we're in Zimbabwe—what then?"

Quinten shrugged his shoulders and looked outside. In the distance the cupola of St. Peter's had almost disappeared. Here and there were large postmodern buildings in the countryside, such as he had seen in Mr. Themaat's catalog. He really didn't know. All he knew was that from now on he must not intervene anymore. From now on everything had to be determined by circumstances, just as a skier adapted himself to the terrain, avoiding trees and ravines and not trying to glide upward.

As they got out of the taxi at Leonardo da Vinci airport, the sun rose above the countryside and drenched the planes on the runway with dazzling gold, which a moment later changed to silver. It was already busy.

In the noisy departure hall Onno, pulling his case on wheels behind him, said: "Look. All thieves, making off with their booty."

Quinten carried the suitcase with the stones in it; he had his backpack on his back. They stopped in front of the great board with departure times and looked up at the destinations for the next few hours: Buenos Aires, Frankfurt, Santo Domingo, London, Cairo, Vienna, Nicosia, New York, Singapore, Sydney, Amsterdam . . .

"And what if it's Amsterdam?" asked Onno.

"Then it will be Amsterdam."

At the counter where they sold last-minute tickets sat a girl with her name on a badge;
ANGIOLINA
. Obviously she came from the deep south. Her hair was blacker than black; there was a dark shadow on her upper lip. Onno said they had decided to go abroad for a few weeks on impulse and that they wanted to book.

"Of course," she said, rearranging her silk scarf, which Quinten thought was back to front around her neck. She picked up her ballpoint pen. "What destination?"

"We'll leave it up to you. We want to leave on the next plane that has room in it."

"That's how I'd like to live," she said with a face that showed that nothing surprised her anymore. She glanced at the clock and looked at her monitor. "You can't make Vienna anymore. It will be Cairo or Santo Domingo. Perhaps you can just catch the eight o'clock British charter flight to Nicosia."

"Two singles to Nicosia," said Onno quickly, before it became Santo Domingo.

"Nicosia?" repeated Quinten. "Where's that?"

"On Cyprus. Nice island. Lots to see."

"Your passports, please." While she began to fix the tickets, she asked, "Would you like travel insurance?"

Onno looked sideways with a smile. "Do we need travel insurance, Quinten?"

"Of course not."

"We're trusting to our lucky stars, Angiolina."

She nodded. "At twelve-twenty local time, there'll be a short stopover in Tel Aviv."

Onno looked at Quinten, who answered his look in silence. He turned to Angiolina and said: "Make that two to Tel Aviv."

"So we're taking them home," said Quinten, after he had been given his boarding card.

Onno made no reply. He could feel that everything was not over yet. The check-in counter was in a corner of the hall, closed off with barriers. Cara-binieri with submachine guns and bullet-proof vests strolled in twos across the marble floor; other men, too, in plain clothes, leaned against the pillars here and there. Outside, close to the high window, there was an armored police car on the pavement. It was busy, mainly older vacationers bound for Cyprus, obviously in a group, as could also be seen from their bright leisure clothes; the passengers for Tel Aviv were recognizable from an absent look on their faces. After they passed the barrier, everyone was interrogated separately at a row of iron tables.

"Let's sit down here until it's our turn," said Onno. "I'm getting tired out, and my head's spinning without my stick."

Quinten looked at him in concern. Only now did he realize that he had not for a moment taken his father's state of health into account. "Perhaps you should take a few days off in a little while."

"Good idea, Quinten. Israel seems to me just the country to have a rest in. Have you thought of what we're going to say when we open the case?"

"No."

"Everything will be all right, won't it?"

62
Thither    

"Yes."

"So when they ask us what kinds of stones they are, we'll say 'The tablets of Moses.' "

"Yes, why not? No one will believe it, and then we won't be lying."

"But once they've stopped laughing, they'll ask again." Onno looked at him with a sigh. "It looks as though we've got a choice between prison and the madhouse." That there was the slightest chance the stones actually were what Quinten supposed them to be again seemed to him completely idiotic.

"Have you got a better idea, then?" asked Quinten.

"I've always got a better idea. Do you know what we're going to say? That it's art. Artistic creations by a modern artist. No one will dare doubt that—plastic arts have succeeded in making themselves as invulnerable as— you name it... as Siegfried. Even the police can't do anything about that."

"Quinten looked at the patrolling policemen. "Just look: it's quiet at all the other counters, and here it looks like there's a war going on. What is it about the Jews?"

Onno nodded. "After all those thousands of years, their existence is beginning to take on the features of a proof of God's existence more and more clearly."

The remark reminded Quinten of what Mrs. Korvinus had once said. The day after Max's death, he told his father, he had heard Nederkoorn in the hall saying to Mrs. Korvinus that as far as he was concerned, all the Jews could be stoned out of the universe like that—and then she had said that they were still being punished because they had crucified Christ.

"It's just as well you've gotten away from that castle," said Onno, making a face. Because he wasn't sure that anti-Semitic platitude had not taken root in Quinten, he decided to nip it in the bud immediately. "The Jews didn't crucify Christ at all, Quinten; the Romans crucified Christ. Crucifixion was a Roman punishment for serious criminals. Over there, that Orthodox Jewish gentleman, with the beard and the black hat on the back of his head—if you say to me, 'Kill him,' and I kill him, does that make you his murderer and not me? I don't have to do what you tell me, do I? Now, if I were completely in your power, then it would be different, but I'm not. You can say so many things. The Jews cried, 'Crucify him,' but Pilate did it. He could have stood his ground, at the top of those sacred stairs, and said, 'Get lost, I wouldn't dream of it, he's innocent,' couldn't he? He was the boss, wasn't he? Yes, he was responsible for keeping the peace in the occupied area. He didn't want any problems with the emperor here in Rome. All understandable—that's how it goes in politics—but why should the descendants of those loudmouths later be persecuted and exterminated and not the descendants of the actual murderers—that is, the Italians? Peter and Paul were also crucified by the Romans, and without the Jews demanding it. But not only were the Italian people not forced into the gas chambers; until recently, Christ's representatives on earth were virtually exclusively Italian descendants of the Romans. And the popes still have their seat in Rome, just like the Roman emperors. All very strange, isn't it? God moves in ironic ways, shall we say. I also used to think that the hatred of Jews was all about Christ, but that isn't the case; it existed long before Christ. They keep thinking up new reasons for it: that they're rich and showy, that they're poor and dirty, that they pull the strings of plutocratic world capitalism, that they're revolutionaries and have communism on their conscience, that they've got no homeland, that they're reestablishing their homeland—it's all grist for the mill, as long as it's bad. The fact that one accusation contradicts another doesn't matter, because hate is primary. And the fact that hate has always been there is another proof for anti-Semites that there must be a basis to it."

On the way to the runway a taxiing plane turned its back on them and for a few seconds emitted a deafening din. Quinten waited for a moment.

"And what is it based on?"

Onno put his hand on the suitcase, which Quinten had on his lap. "On this. At least, if what you think is in there is in there. On the fact that the God of the Jews had sanctified his people by entering into a covenant with them, which no other people can boast. Obviously an intolerable thought for many people. Anyway, give me that thing. I'll do the talking if it's necessary." He got up. "Remember, you don't know a thing, you're just tagging along."

At the tables, a few yards apart, they were questioned separately by the security officials, Quinten in English, Onno in Italian. They were asked whether the suitcases and that backpack was their property. Whether they had packed their luggage themselves. If they had lost sight of it since they had packed it. If anyone had given them anything to take along. In reply to the question what he was going to do in Israel, Quinten said that he was accompanying his father and that he wanted to visit the holy places, while Onno said:

"On business."

"What kind of business?"

"I try with moderate success to make my living as an art dealer."

The official looked at the two pieces of luggage from all sides, put two red stickers on them, gave Onno his ticket and passport back, and allowed him to pass with a brief wave of his hand.

"If we check in the suitcase," said Onno as they were standing in the back of the queue at the counter, "the stones may break, and of course they sling them around on the platform. But if we take it as hand luggage, we're almost bound to have to open it. What shall we do?"

"Hand luggage."

"Of course." Onno nodded—and he couldn't resist adding with a smile, "The first set was smashed to pieces as well, after all."

Through passport control, too, in the crowded departure lounge by their gate, there were heavily armed policemen and all kinds of people whose function was not immediately clear. Bent over the screen of the detection apparatus sat a fat woman in a blue uniform; behind her, a blond girl with her arms folded watched. Onno put the suitcase on the conveyor belt, whereupon it disappeared under the rubber flaps. A little later the belt stopped. Perhaps it won't come out again, thought Quinten—slowly the X-ray picture faded and disappeared from the screen; even after the machine was dismantled down to the last screw, nothing would be found of the suitcase.

When it appeared after half a minute on the other side under the rubber flaps, the girl came forward and invited Onno with a razor-sharp smile to open the case. He could tell from her accent immediately that she wasn't Italian but Israeli. Quinten helped him with the locks, and to his amazement Onno saw a beige envelope marked
WESTERBORK
SYNTHETIC
RADIO
TELESCOPE
, with an astronomical mirror as a logo. The girl put the envelope aside and folded open the newspapers.

"What on earth is this?" With her fingers wide apart, she raised her hands in the air and looked with a distaste at the gray stones. She lifted one up and asked, "What kind of material is this? Its lighter than you'd think. Lava?"

"Maybe some plastic or other," said Onno as well as he could in ancient Hebrew. "Modern art, at any rate. A creation of a promising young German: Anselm Buchwald. An atmospheric evocation of the Grail legend."

She looked up and said in modern Hebrew: "To me it looks more like an atmospheric evocation of the Third Reich."

"Who knows, perhaps it amounts to the same thing."

She looked at him piercingly with her green eyes. "You speak Hebrew like Jeremiah."

"Like Job would be more correct," said Onno with feigned sadness.

"The Lord has given and the Lord has taken away: praised be the name of the Lord!"

After they had been let through, he asked Quinten what was in the envelope.

"Secret," said Quinten gruffly.

Onno shook his head. "You mustn't do such unexpected things. As if we didn't have enough problems already."

"You see," said Quinten with a laugh when they were off the ground, "we've gotten away."

"As long as they're not waiting for us in Tel Aviv," said Onno, looking worried. "It's a quarter past eight. Those fathers have probably already discovered my stick, or else they will within an hour. Padre Agostino will turn to Gorgonzola from fright, and in two hours Angiolina will give a precise description of that strange father and son who wanted to leave on the very first flight, and they'll hear from that Israeli policewoman that there was something very strange about the pair," he said, and pointed up at the baggage locker. "In three hours' time, when we land, there will be an expatriation request waiting for us at the airport, and we'll be taken back on the same plane under guard via Cyprus to Rome, where we shall languish until we die in a dungeon of the Castel Sant'Angelo, rattling our chains and gnawed by the rats."