Harry Mulisch - The Discovery of Heaven

After the speeches and the ministerial finger on the button, a large part of the company, including Tsjallingtsje, walked to the thirteenth and fourteenth mirrors, which were a mile and a half away; some of them were still holding their glasses of champagne. Floris, who knew how far they had to walk, had put a bottle in his pocket. Sophia stayed behind with Helga in a circle of astronomers' wives, who had seen enough, while Max, Onno, and Quinten walked into the grounds. Onno, who was in Westerbork for the first time, had put a hand on Quinten's shoulder and was listening to Max. Only the villa belonging to the camp commandant was still standing; the huts had given way to a broad, innocent-looking expanse of grass with an occasional tree, surrounded on all four sides by woods. As they walked along the former Boulevard des Miseres, Max tried to give Onno a picture of the scenes that had taken place almost forty years before; looking at the boy he controlled himself, but Quinten suddenly asked:

"Are you a Jew?"

Max and Onno glanced at each other.

"My mother got on the train here and never came back," said Max.

"And what about your father?"

"Not him."

"Is he still alive, then?"

"Not for a long time."

Quinten was silent. Since he had talked to Mr. Spier about it, he hadn't thought any more about the Jews — it shocked him that Max, too, was connected with those things: his mother had even been murdered by Hitler! It did not concern him, but it gave him a vague feeling of guilt that he had never known about it. What did he really know about Max? Last year he had heard him say that he had to go to Bloemendaal, to his foster mother's funeral; he had not asked any more about it, but now he understood why Max — like he himself, in fact — had had foster parents.

At the buffers the rails and sleepers had been left, neatly framed by a kind of curb. Max showed them that the buffer was new; the old one was close behind it, almost completely forgotten. The end of the rails had been bent upward by an artist, as though in that spot the last train had gone to heaven.

"It's all gone for good," said Max, letting his eyes wander over the site.

In the distance the cheerful group of worthies and astronomers walked past the majestic row of parabolas, pointing at the blue sky like the rails; their laughter resounded faintly across the plain. While neither Max nor Onno knew what to say next, Quinten looked back and forth between the mirrors and the rails, which reminded him of the antennae of a grasshopper.

"If you ask me," he said, "one day you'll be able to see here very clearly what happened during the war."

Max and Onno looked at him in alarm.

"May one ask what you mean, Quinten?" asked Onno.

"Well, it's quite logical. Max once told me that we see the stars as they used to be. So on the stars they see the earth as it used to be. If the people on a star that is forty light-years away from here look at us with a very powerful telescope, then they must be seeing what happened here forty years ago, mustn't they?"

"Is that right?" Onno asked Max.

Max shivered. "Of course."

It amazed him that he had never had that idea: the image of Westerbork as a transit camp was now rushing at the speed of light through space between Arcturus and Capell A, like that of Auschwitz with its fire-belching chimneys. "In theory it ought to be always visible somewhere in the universe. Except that doesn't mean we can see it."

"But it will be reflected back, won't it?" said Quinten.

"Reflected back?"

"With those telescopes over there you can look at a star that is twenty light-years away from here, can't you? — so you can see your mother getting into the train forty years ago, can't you?"

And getting off somewhere else, thought Max.

"You're right again. Perhaps you should think more of distant planets or moons, at least if such things exist outside our solar system, but then we first have to discover a completely new principle."

"But when that's been discovered in a hundred years' time, it will be possible to see it from a planet or a moon, which is fifty plus twenty light-years away from us."

"I can't argue with you."

"I don't feel well," said Onno. "Quinten! What's gotten into you? What kind of person are you?"

Quinten shrugged his shoulders. If you asked him, it was all pretty obvious.

While Sophia and Helga were busy in the kitchen, as in Onno's view befitted women, the gentlemen went on talking about the subject of "historical astronomy" founded by Quinten. Proctor was also there. He had dropped by to borrow some eggs. Clara and Arend were spending the night with his mother-in-law. Sophia had invited him to join them for a meal.

That everything that had ever happened on earth was still to be seen somewhere in the universe was obviously a very seductive idea of Quinten's; but according to Onno, it could never be realized. It was true that satellite photos of the earth could be enlarged down to the smallest details, at least if it was cloudless when the photo was taken — at the Defense Ministry they knew all about it — but what would be left of such an image after a journey of scores, hundreds or thousands, of years through the universe? Moreover, how was it to be reflected back? After all, planets and moons were not made of mirror glass. They were strewn with stones and dust and, besides that, convex instead of concave: the last remnants of the image would be immediately dispersed.

"And that's as it should be," he concluded. "The past is sealed for eternity, and whoever tries to break those seals — would that he had never been born. Only the Lord of Hosts sees everything."

"Of course," said Max, "your optical knowledge is astonishing, but that's what people have always said. Just imagine a boy of twelve saying to his father a hundred years ago that within a hundred years not only would man set foot on the moon, but that everyone on earth would have been able to witness it at the same moment—"

"Yes, yes, we know all about that," Onno interrupted him. "I vaguely remember your saying that eleven years ago." He gestured toward Helga, who was setting the table. "Thanks again."

Helga glanced around, and Max made a polite bow to both of them, and then continued:

"If you go on thinking of an optical image, of course it would never be possible — that's obvious. But in radio astronomy we don't work with optical images, do we? Do you have any idea how weak the signals are that we receive in Westerbork? What makes things so misleading there is that when you've got large instruments and machines, you automatically think of large forces: a large dam produces enormous quantities of energy; a huge cannon has an enormous range. But with the synthesizing radio telescope it's precisely the other way around: there, the large is intended for the small. Shall I tell you something? A bicycle lamp uses more energy in one second than all those fourteen dishes receive in a hundred years."

"Really?" asked Quinten.

"Really. And as far as that's concerned, we're getting quite a long way. In other words, in a practical sense it may not be totally impossible, but some Einstein or other would first have to find an entirely new principle, just as was necessary for television."

"If he says it," said Onno, "it's probably right. Okay, so there's a nice branch of science for you — as long as you know that Quinten has a right to share the Nobel Prize."

Quinten did not like Max contradicting his father; on the other hand he was flattered by his support, and he thought it was nice of his father to allow himself to be convinced. He also thought that it was nice that they talked for a long time about the idea that had occurred to him.

"If there's a possibility," said Max, "I think it will be even more difficult than the key to your disc. After all, you also assumed that messages from the distant past could be read on it, didn't you?"