Harry Mulisch - The Discovery of Heaven

"He doesn't exist, but according to those who believe in him he made the world."

"Max says the world started with a bang."

"Then I expect that's right. In the Sistine Chapel you can see God: he's floating in the air and he's got a beard, like Moses."

"And you."

"But his isn't nice and white like mine. When you're older you must go and have a look in Rome. There's plenty more to see there, for that matter."

"How on earth can you paint someone that doesn't exist?"

"You make something up. Or you use a trick. Michelangelo simply painted some old chap or other who came into his street every day selling pizzas; he made him float in the air and then everyone said it was God. If I had to make a sculpture of God for Assen Council, then I'd simply be able to carve my own head."

"And yet," said Quinten, "you could make a sculpture of God himself perfectly easily if he doesn't exist."

"You'll have to tell me how you're supposed to do that."

"Well, you take a block of marble and you carve it until there's nothing left."

He looked at Quinten perplexed, and then burst out into a thundering laugh. "Then I take it to Assen. 'Here it is,' I'd say. 'God! Do you see! Nothing!' Do you think they'd understand? And pay me? No way! They wouldn't even pay for the marble. They're as thick as two planks."

"Who's the devil, then?"

"Christ, Quinten! Who's the devil? Why don't you ask the lady vicar. The devil is the archenemy of God!"

"Doesn't he exist either, or does he?"

"No, of course not."

"Well then, I know how you can make a statue of the devil too."

Kern lowered his mallet and chisel and looked at Quinten. "How, then?"

"You've got to fill the whole world with marble."

Quinten could see that he was confused.

"Where on earth do you get things like that from, QuQu?"

"Just like that.. " Quinten didn't understand what he meant, but he had the feeling that he should go now. He glanced at Moses; under his arm he had some large thing or other, a kind of map, which was obviously slipping out of his hands and threatening to fall on the floor, which he was just able to prevent. In real life he would probably have been a gardener or something. "Bye," he said.

Whenever he came out of the studio, there was the house in front of him. Seen from the castle, the group of outbuildings on the other side of the moat looked rather small and insignificant; the house itself, looked at from there, made a powerful, inaccessible impression. He always stood and looked at it for a few moments. He didn't think of anything — or, rather, what he thought coincided with what he saw: the castle, self-absorbed like his own thoughts, the clock with no hands above the door. Sometimes it was as though it suddenly became invisible for a split second.

To the right of Kern's studio was a smaller stable that housed the workshop of Mr. Roskam, the caretaker of Groot and Klein Rechteren, who did repairs; the door was usually locked. At the side a covered staircase led to the second floor, where different people lived every few months: sometimes a blond woman, then a man with a black goatee. He had no contact with them, but he did with Piet Keller, who lived on the other side.

On either side of the gravel path, which led to his front door past the large erratic stone, one could see the top halves of cart wheels. At first sight it looked as though someone had buried them up to the axles — but Quinten knew better. It was the other way around: they weren't sticking in but out of the earth; they weren't the top halves but the bottom halves. In fact the cart was under the path, the coach, the golden coach, which he had once seen on television: but upside down, pulled by eight horses, the coachman with the reins up in the box, all upside down in the ground, and there wasn't a queen in it but a much more beautiful woman, the most beautiful woman in the world — and the coach was standing still because they'd all fallen asleep..

When Piet Keller had once asked him why he never simply walked down the path but always around the wheels, across the grass, he had said: "Just because."

Keller was in his fifties, a skinny man with a stoop and an unhealthy complexion, usually dressed in a short beige dust coat. His wife sometimes suddenly made strange jerky movements with her whole body, which made Quinten a little afraid of her; his daughter and two sons, all three of them a head taller than he was, had reached an age at which they probably scarcely noticed Quinten. In an adjacent barn he had his workshop, and Quinten was in the habit of watching him, too, for hour after hour. He repaired old locks, which had been sent to him from miles around, not only by individuals but also by antiques dealers and museums. All around were boxes containing thousands of keys in all shapes and sizes, tins full of levers, locks, bars, tumblers, bolts, stops, and other components whose names he had taught Quinten. Countless skeleton keys hung on large iron rings.

"I've got every key," he had once said with a wink, "except musical keys and St. Peter's."

On a trestle table illuminated by a wobbly light, fixed to the wall with wire, lay the locks that he was currently dealing with; next to it was a set of shelves with countless compartments full of screws, nuts, pins, and other small items. There was also a heavy bench with a lathe and drilling and grinding machines. When Quinten was there, Keller usually accompanied his work with a mumbled, monotone commentary: not didactic, simply reporting on what he was doing and what he was thinking. Occasionally, when he was working on a heavy medieval padlock, as large as a loaf, which was locked and of which the key was missing, lyrical notes crept into his reports.

"Look at that, isn't it an angel? We call this a sliding padlock. Can you see those H-shaped grooves? That's where you have to put the key. I'm going to make it in a while. Inside there's a barrier of very strong springs; the ends are now relaxed, making them lock the shackle in the body of the lock."

"How do you know? Have you looked inside?"

"No, and I'm not going to. At least not now. First I'm going to do something quite different." From one of the storage boxes he fished out a couple of long, steel pins, which fitted in the H. Back at his bench, he lubricated them with oil and began sliding them slowly inside, with his eyes looking up, as though that was where the inside of the lock could be seen. "Yes, now I can feel the first curve in the spring blades. . yes. That's right, yes… a little further… now they're compressing.. yes. . it's difficult, it's rusty in there.. perhaps a little careful help with the hammer.. and now a couple more taps and one more, that should be enough…" There was a stiff click from inside, and he pulled the stirrup out of the lock.

He looked at Quinten with a smile. "Yes, QuQu, I could earn my living in a much easier way. But 'Thou shalt not steal.' Just ask the lady vicar."

He pulled out the pins and pushed the shackle back in again, which made a second click.

"What are you doing? It's locked again now!"

He put the monster down in front of Quinten. "You can already pick ordinary locks a bit, but try this one. Perhaps you can take over from me one day — I can't talk my own sons into it."

The lady vicar, Ms. Trip, the head of the Calvinist congregation in Hooghalen, was unmarried and lived twenty yards farther on, with her black cat, in the former gardener's house, which had a large conservatory built on. She had little contact with the other residents of Groot Rechteren— only the Verloren van Themaats occasionally had tea with her; she was a friend of the baroness's. Although she was no older than Sophia, her hair was already snow-white. When she sat on her terrace reading — Karl Barth, or a nice novel — or tended the flowers in her garden, which sloped down to a tributary of the moat, Quinten sometimes stopped and looked at her from the gate. She would give him a friendly nod, but she never waved to him, and he did not think that was necessary. She must know an awful lot, perhaps almost as much as his father, because everyone always said, "You must ask the lady vicar about that" when they did not know the answer themselves. It was mostly about God, or Jesus Christ, but he had never asked her anything. Usually he ran straight on toward the bridge.