Harry Mulisch - The Discovery of Heaven

"Watch where you're going, QuQu!"

He looked up. Selma Kern cycled past in her enormous dress. The statue his father had unveiled today might have been carved by Kern. You only had to take away the superfluous stone, and then a cloth. Perhaps Mr. Kern sometimes pulled that frock off Mrs. Kern, so that she suddenly stood naked in the room. He started laughing. What a sight! And maybe Max did that with Granny — when she crept into his bed at night, because she was cold; but he didn't want to think any more about that.

He looked at Kern's studio: he wasn't there; the padlock was on the door.

The door of Mr. Roskam's workshop was open — he could see him shuffling around in the dark. His father had had to bury his cap. Just imagine, his father had to bury his cap on the orders of the baron. He'd never do that! Anyway, he didn't even have a cap. I wonder if Mr. Roskam ever talked about it to the baron — I'm sure he didn't. He was obviously very ashamed, or perhaps he'd forgotten about it.

He walked past the lady vicar's house to the orangery, where Etienne was just driving off in his car. He turned down the window and said: "You can't go in now, beautiful. I have to run to the village. Come back tomorrow."

Once he had heard the loose planks of the bridge bumping, he carefully considered the situation. Mr. Roskam and his father had come out of the gardener's house, where the lady vicar now lived, and the old baron had stood with his son there on the threshold. So the Roskams must have been standing more or less on the same spot where he was now. But the ground was hard here; you couldn't dig a hole here. He looked around to see where he would dig a hole if he had to. He took a couple of steps from the hardened section to the start of the soft forest ground, which was now covered with fallen leaves. He took a stone and put it on the spot where the cap must be. Then he ran back to Mr. Roskam.

He was already old. He was trying to twist a nut off a tap with a pair of pliers, but didn't really have the strength anymore. When Quinten looked into his sad eyes, he wanted to say right away that he'd found his father's cap, but he preferred to surprise him.

"Well, QuQu, on the warpath?"

"Can I borrow a spade from you?"

"Buried treasure?"

"Yes," said Quinten.

"They're over there. Take the small one. But bring it back, mind, and not too late — it's getting dark earlier again."

Back at the orangery he moved the small erratic stone aside, brushed away the leaves with one foot, and stuck the spade in the ground. How deep would the cap be? No more than a foot or two. In order to increase the chance of finding it, he decided to dig a trench about a yard long, then he was sure to find it. Carefully, so as not to damage the hat even more than it already was after fifty years, he began shoveling the earth away. A few inches down he struck a stone, which he threw aside. A little later another stone appeared. He started to get worried that the cap was farther back, or to the side, but of course he couldn't dig up the whole area. It was just as well he hadn't said anything to Mr. Roskam. It was already growing dark. Suddenly there were four arrowheads on his spade, just like those in the orangery in Verdonkschot's windows. Antiquities!

He made a much bigger find than a cap! Wouldn't Etienne and Mr. Verdonkschot be pleased! He looked again at the two stones that he had thrown aside. No doubt about it! Hand axes.

Excitedly, he stuffed the finds in his pockets, filled up the trench, stamped down the ground, and brushed the leaves back in place so that no one else would have the idea of coming to look for prehistoric remains here. He was also glad that Gijs was in his shed and couldn't have seen him working. He decided not to say anything to Mr. Roskam, because he might ask him why he had started digging there; and what was he supposed to say then?

The light in the workshop was on, but the nut still wasn't loosened.

"Well?" said Mr. Roskam without looking up, when Quinten put back the spade. "Did you find any?"

"Yes."

"Good."

Fortunately he didn't ask anything else. But the chauffeur had gone and sat in the car, from which soft music was issuing. The engine was running almost inaudibly; he had obviously gotten cold. Upstairs at the front there was no light on, but when he came in everyone was sitting in the same places in the dusk.

"You've been up to something," said Sophia.

"I've been looking for Mr. Roskam's father's cap."

There was a silence, which was only broken after a considerable time by Max: "Mr. Roskam's father's cap. . you've been looking for it. .?"

"Yes."

"Well?" asked Onno.

"I dug a trench and look what I found."

He emptied his pockets on the table and put the light on. All three of them stood up and bent over the artifacts.

"Fantastic!" cried Max. "Quinten! Unbelievable!" And to Onno he said, "This is unbelievably ironic. God knows all the places that man goes digging, and it's right outside his door."

"Yes," said Onno thoughtfully, holding an arrowhead close to the lamp.

"Such is life," said Sophia.

"Perhaps it's not that odd," speculated Max. "The fact that there's been a castle here for centuries might well indicate that this place was already inhabited in the Stone Age."

"So were all those things in a line?" Onno asked Quinten.

"Yes."

Onno blew on the arrowhead, moistened it with a little spit, and studied it closely again. Then he looked at Max and said: "I'm not an archaeologist, but from my previous life I have some experience of a certain kind of archaeologist. Shall I tell you what I think? That gentleman there in the orangery. . What's his name?"

"Verdonkschot."

"That Mr. Verdonkschot made these things himself and put them in the ground, where he lets them go prehistoric for a few years and then sells them for a bundle. I'd swear to it. That whole collection of his is fake, of course."

Max looked at him flabbergasted and then sank back on the sofa. "Of course!" he cried. "Of course!"

"Okay, you can laugh," said Onno, "because you always laugh. But we've still got a problem. One fine day those con men are going to realize that something's missing and that they've been found out."

"Shall I put them back?" asked Quinten.

"Can they see that you've been digging there?"

"I pushed the leaves back on top."

"Very good. It's October now, and by the time the ground is visible again it'll be February or March next year. And all the traces of your digging will be gone. The stuff will have just disappeared; that's their problem. Perhaps they only dig up their goods after three or four years, because if you ask me they don't look nearly old enough yet. No, there's probably no problem. Throw that rubbish straight in the dustbin."

"What villains!" said Quinten indignantly. "Shouldn't we report them to the police?"

"Absolutely," said Onno. "Legally that's our duty, in fact. But I suggest not doing it, because it's not pleasant work. Naturally it's shameful that I should say so as a minister, but the police can't blame us for not having the idea that we had immediately, of course."

Obviously, the police had other channels for discovering the truth, because a year later a blue police van suddenly appeared at the orangery, policemen in sweaters without hats on threw the contents of the display cabinets into plastic garbage bags, and, under the silent gaze of almost all the residents, Etienne and Mr. Verdonkschot were arrested. Quinten shivered when he saw them getting so helplessly into the van. He looked up at Sophia and whispered, "Daddy's always right" — at which she put a finger to her lips. Just imagine, he thought, that this had happened because his father had reported them. Etienne gave him a wave from behind the barred window.