Harry Mulisch - The Discovery of Heaven

Sophia had forbidden him to go across it: it was a very romantic, dilapidated, wobbly construction, with planks missing and which for some reason always reminded Max of a Schubert song: "Leise flehen meine Lieder durch die Nacht zu dir …" On the other side, in the shade of tall beech trees, was the orangery: a low, long building with large windows, where Seerp Verdonkschot lived with his friend. He not only lived there with his friend but also had his antiquities room there. There was scarcely ever another visitor when Quinten went in. For Verdonkschot himself was not there usually either; he worked for the post office — a gruff man, according to Max, embittered because he wasn't taken seriously as a scholar, either by the university in Groningen or by the Provincial Museum in Assen. Perhaps that was because he also put his antiquities up for sale.

His friend, Etienne, a man of about forty who was on the corpulent side, always put his head around the door and said: "Hello, beautiful, are you back? Don't pinch anything, you hear?"

On the wall were colored maps showing the extent of the Beaker culture in Drenthe, and Verdonkschot's prehistoric finds were displayed in two rows of showcases: dozens of stone arrowheads, five thousand years old, hand axes, rusty hairpins, potsherds, half-decomposed pieces of leather. It was not the objects themselves that fascinated Quinten; they didn't really appeal to him. It was the atmosphere in the brightly painted room: the orderly silence, with those dirty old things in it, which belonged deep in the earth and were now lying in the light like the guts of a fish at the fishmonger's in the village.

It was mysterious because it was really forbidden. And the strangest thing of all was the idea that all those things were lying under the glass even when no one was looking at them — at night, too, when it was dark here and he himself was in his bed. That was impossible, of course, because then they'd scream with fear and he'd hear from his bed; but he never heard screaming coming from the orangery at night. Just the call of an owl sometimes. So they only existed when he saw them.

Outside, he always climbed straight onto the erratic stone, which had appeared there too. He sat down and waited until Verdonkschot's goat Gijs came toward him with lopsided leaps. If Gijs had been able, he would definitely have given him a butt with his horns, but the rope was just too short for that.

Then Quinten would talk to him: "Why are you always so rotten to me?" He put out his hand to stroke the goat's head; but that was always refused with an abrupt movement. "I haven't done anything to hurt you, have I? I like you. I think you're much nicer than Arendje, for example — he bangs into people with his head down like that sometimes too. I think you're just about as nice as Max, but not nearly as nice as Daddy. Daddy's the nicest person in the world. When we go for walks he always tells me lots of things. He can speak every language and read hieroglyphics. Do you know why I can't go and live with him? Because he's so busy playing boss. That's why he hardly ever comes. He's the boss of at least a million million people. Auntie Helga doesn't live with him either. I've never been to his house, but he lives in a castle in Amsterdam. When I'm grown-up I'm going to see him there. Then you can come too. Do you know who I think is nicest of all? Mommy. Mommy's really tired, Granny says. Mommy fell asleep. Do you know what made her so tired? I bet you don't. But I do. Shall I tell you? But you mustn't tell anyone, do you hear? Because it's a secret. Do you promise, Gijs? It's because she always had to wave to everybody in the gold coach."

Meanwhile, Onno had gotten busier and busier playing boss. Late one evening, during the closing stages of cabinet formation, after he had been to see Helga and had drunk a couple of rum-and-Cokes on his way home, the man charged with the task of forming the cabinet called and asked if he wanted to be minister of state for science policy.

"Since when has that been a matter for the person forming the cabinet?"

"I'm ringing on behalf of your minister."

"Can I think about it for a little?"

"No."

"Not even for five minutes?"

"No. The whole business has to be completely sewn up within twenty-four hours — the whole damn fuss has been going on for more than five months. There are rumblings in the land."

"To what do I owe the honor, Janus?"

"Indirectly to the suggestion of a friend of yours, a certain pub-crawler from your town: the new minister of housing."

"And my own minister? Does she know that I'm extraordinarily ill-disposed toward science?"

"Yes, yes, Onno. I'm sure it will get you into difficulties in the cabinet. Come on, I've got plenty else to do. Yes or no?"

"If it's a matter of the national interesi:, everything else must be put aside. Yes."

"Fine. I'll expect you sober at General Affairs in The Hague tomorrow morning at ten o'clock. We're going to do a good job. Goodnight."

That had suddenly changed everything. He was not unhappy being an alderman, which he had now been for four years; although government had less and less influence every year, in a number of respects his job had more direct power than being a minister of state, who was hidden behind a secretary of state. In local politics he had direct contact with people; in national politics that would no longer be the case. For precisely that power sometimes filled him with disgust, as though he had suffered a defeat; exerting power was necessary to make society function, but at the same time there was something unmistakably plebeian about it.

There was also the advantage that as an alderman he worked in Amsterdam and not in that stuffy lair of civil servants The Hague, from which he had once fled and to which he would now have to go every day — it was a blessing for Amsterdam that the seat of government was not in the capital. But with a feeling of shame, he also realized immediately why he had said yes: to please his father and to put his eldest brother's nose out of joint. They would know immediately that he was going to be a minister one day: the highest state of political happiness.

Still looking at the telephone, he was suddenly amazed that in response to the question "Yes or no?" uttering the short sound no wouldn't have changed a thing in his life, while enunciating the equally short sound yes had changed a lot — while the spectrograms of the two sounds could only have been identified by experienced phoneticians. And if he had said ken, nothing would have changed either, although that also meant "yes," but in Hebrew. It was all obvious, bread-and-butter stuff to him, as easy as ABC, but suddenly it disturbed him, while at the same time he was really disturbed about being disturbed.

After saying yes, he had even less time for visits to Groot Rechteren: from then on Quinten saw him more often on television than in real life. By now he was in the first grade at the elementary school in Westerbork; and on one of Onno's sporadic visits — in a large dark-blue official car with two antennas, after he opened an institute of technology in Leeuwarden — Quinten told Sophia proudly that he knew how to read.

"Show Daddy what you can do," she said, and gave him the book.

" 'Pirn is in the wood,' " read Quinten, without using his forefinger. But before Onno was able to praise him, he looked at the newspaper lying on the ground and read the headline: " 'Cambodian President Lon Nol extends special powers.' " In the astonished silence that ensued, he said, "I didn't learn it at school at all. I've been able to do it for ages."

Max was the first one to say anything. "Who did you learn it from, then?"

"From Mr. Spier."