Harry Mulisch - The Discovery of Heaven

Themaat made a gesture in his direction and said to Elsbeth: "Antinous."

She smiled, glanced at him, and nodded.

Quinten didn't understand what was meant, but he didn't care.

One day, when he started talking about those letters to Mr. Spier, in fact just for something to say, Spier immediately became enthusiastic:

"That's the Quadrata, QuQu, the most beautiful capital there has ever been! How did you find out about that?" Then he told him that it was also called "lapidary" from the Latin lapis, meaning "stone." "That letter forms the perfect balance between body and soul."

"How is that possible? A letter isn't a human being, is it?"

"Of course it is!"

"Well how can letters have a soul?"

"They speak to you, don't they?"

"That's true." Quinten nodded earnestly.

"Like everyone, a letter has a soul and a body. Its soul is what it says and its body is what it's made of: ink, or stone."

Quinten thought of his mother. Was she just a couple of ink spots, then? Or a stone with no letters on it?

"A letter doesn't have to be made of anything," he said.

"Oh no? I sometimes dream of pure letters, floating through the air, but that's impossible, just like a soul without a body."

"And what about those letters in the Pantheon? They're not made of stone, precisely not stone. The stone has been carved away: I've seen Theo Kern doing that sometimes. They're made of nothing. So you sometimes do have a body without a soul in it, don't you?"

He was now in the sixth grade, and according to the teacher he should gradually start spending more time on his homework. His marks were not bad, but not good either; what naturally interested him, he mastered immediately, even if it was difficult; all the rest, even when it was actually easy, required lots of effort. But instead of learning his geography, or doing arithmetic, he preferred to find his way toward the Citadel with Mr. Themaat.

Sometimes the professor showed him examples of modern architecture from the first half of the twentieth century, by Frank Lloyd Wright or Le Corbusier or Mies van der Rohe, of which he was quite fond himself. Sometimes Quinten thought it was nice, but that was all; because the cool objectivity of those matchboxes in no way reminded him of the Citadel, he lost interest.

Classical buildings came closest, centrally the Roman Pantheon, which, with its circular, windowless central section, added something somber and threatening to the pure light of the Greek temples. The Athenian Parthenon, which Mr. Themaat showed him, might be perfect, even as a ruin, but to his taste it was too rarefied and transparent. According to Themaat, the Romans had in fact never invented anything themselves from an artistic point of view; they had taken that sense of circularity and somberness from Etruscan tombs, tumuli, as could still be seen in Rome in the mausoleum of Augustus, or the tomb of Hadrian, the Castel Sant'Angelo. He should go and see all those things one day, later.

Under the direction of Themaat, who once talked of him to Max as "my best student," Quinten had soon found his way to the Italian Renaissance. There he was most fascinated by the churches of Palladio, who again showed that combination of brilliant classical facades and introverted brick walls. Themaat praised him for his good, albeit not very progressive, taste but that compliment was lost on him; none of it had anything to do with taste.

In the baroque, he had a vague feeling of recognition in the exuberant ornamentation, and neoclassical buildings from the nineteenth century fascinated him because they reminded him of those of Palladio in the sixteenth century. In any case they were all exteriors: magnificent exteriors, but he was precisely not interested in exteriors, only interiors.

Running the risk that he was revealing something of his secret, he decided one afternoon to ask a crucial question:

"Is there a building that has an interior but no exterior?"

Themaat stared at him for a couple of seconds before he was able to answer. "What made you think of something like that?"

"I just thought of it."

"Of course that's impossible, just like a building with an exterior but no interior."

"That's perfectly possible."

"How?"

"If it's not hollow inside, but of solid stone. Like a sculpture."

"There's something in that," said Themaat with a laugh. "And perhaps an interior without an exterior is possible too."

While he looked in his bookcase, he said that he himself had been brought up with the idea that the Renaissance was old-fashioned, and to tell the truth he still thought so; but when he heard Quinten so preoccupied with it, he had the feeling that there was something like a "re-Renaissance" coming. Then he showed him photographs of Palladio's Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza, his architectural swan song.

From the outside it was an ugly brick box, but inside it showed indescribable magnificence. The back and the side walls were made of inlaid marble facades, exuberantly decorated with Corinthian columns, statues in luxurious window frames, with triangular and segment-shaped pediments; there were other sculptures — on pedestals, ornaments, scrolls, reliefs, inscriptions, behind the sloping benches of the semicircular room more pillars and sculptures — all made of wood and plaster, but you had to know that. That was also an exterior without an interior, said Themaat, because it was a piece of decor, and at the same time it was an interior without an exterior. Quinten understood that, but it was only partially a depiction of the Citadel.

"For that matter, do you remember that book by Bibiena that you used to like looking at so much?"

No, Quinten had forgotten, but when he saw it again a vague memory awakened in him. Themaat explained to him that those decor drawings showed the inside of buildings that had no outside. Obviously pleased with his explanation, the professor looked at the perspective drawings a little longer. Then he suddenly said: "Wait! Perhaps I have something even nicer for you."

From the case where everything was in perfect alphabetical order, he looked a little farther on from Palladio, Pantheon, and Parthenon — a large book of reproductions of Piranesi's Carceri.

When he opened it, it gave Quinten a jolt. Almost! It was almost there, his dream! — the same rooms continuing endlessly in all directions, full of staircases, bridges, arches, galleries; the deep shadows without sources of light; everything filled with the same still air. But in these etched prison visions it seemed chilly and dank, while in the Citadel it was warm and sweet. Except for him, the Citadel was empty, but here there were figures to be seen everywhere; the pillars and the massive, decorated facade were also missing. Only in combination with the decors of Palladio and Bibiena would it have really resembled the scenario of his dream.

"Now I'm gradually getting a vague idea of what you're looking for," said Themaat. "But in that case we'll have to look at a completely different kind of book than we have up to now. You don't want existing buildings but architectural fantasies. By the way, do you know that Piranesi is also the man who made your favorite print over there?"

"My favorite print?"

Themaat pointed to the framed etching that stood on the floor against the bookcase.

Quinten looked at it in astonishment. For years the print had merged with the other things in the room, he had never noticed it: the obelisk next to the building with the Scala Santa, the Sacred Staircase.

In the early summer of 1980, the two new movable mirrors were inaugurated in Westerbork — not by Onno's successor, but by the minister himself. Onno and Helga drove with Max from The Hague and were welcomed by Diederic the governor, who was shortly to retire. Apart from that, everyone from Leiden was there — at the center the old director, now eighty, but still upright, as if he were the axis around which the globe of heaven turned. The whole of Dwingeloo had also naturally appeared, even Tsjallingtsje, but that was because she wanted to see Sophia and Quinten at last. Quinten had initially not wanted to go, but when he heard that his father would be there, Sophia and he had naturally come, too. When Max saw them all together in the control building, with a glass of champagne in their hands, he was reminded of a certain kind of thriller, in which all the suspects were finally gathered in the lounge of the hotel, where after an acute reconstruction the detective singled out the culprit, whom one would never have thought capable of doing it.