Harry Mulisch - The Discovery of Heaven

Quinten had shown only moderate interest — in the last analysis, Max reflected, he was still a real arts man, just like his father. Moreover, MQ 3412 refused to conform to the pattern of the almost two thousand quasars now known. And the VLBI now turned out to have a serious teething problem, probably a defect in the incredibly sensitive communications between the hundreds of mirrors in scores of countries on different continents; or perhaps there was something wrong with an atomic clock somewhere, so that the things had not been put into the computer with absolute synchronicity. Max looked at the calculations as though at an unbelievable juggling trick for which one would actually prefer not to know the explanation. This time MQ 3412 had decided to move at infinite speed, as appeared from the desolate radio spectrum.

"In other words," said Max "our tachyonic friend is at all points on a line simultaneously with an energy of zero."

"A. Einstein would have raised his eyebrows at that," said Floris.

Max spent the rest of the day in meetings, telephoning as far as Australia, reading and sending faxes and discussing things with the engineers. One of them suggested that the mistake might be theirs. Gas was being extracted from the earth beneath Westerbork, which may have caused minute subsidences, so that the mirrors were no longer absolutely perpendicular; a few months ago a small earthquake had been recorded near Assen, with a force of 2.8 on the Richter scale. It was decided to recalibrate everything and to contact the gas board in Groningen. It struck Max as remarkable that an event deep in the earth, in the perm, might have disturbed one's vision of the edge of the universe.

Toward evening he withdrew into his little office in order to look at the data at his leisure, but he couldn't make head or tail of them. It was though a monkey at a typewriter had tried to write a sonnet. But he was also reminded of a revolutionary experiment that had been conducted three years before in Paris. It related to a fundamental conversation in the 1930s between Einstein and Bohr — that is, between the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics, which had never gotten along very well.

Einstein's putative experiment was tested in 1982, and it turned out that Bohr was right. Even then there seemed to be instantaneous, infinitely fast signals — that is, faster than light; since no one doubted that this was impossible, it indicated something in reality that no one had foreseen. Could it be connected with this? But how? Maybe the solution would only come with the VLBI in space, dish aerials on satellites, enabling a telescope to be built with a cross-section of 62,000 miles — but that would take ten years, and by that time he would probably have retired.

Around him there were tables, cases, and shelves overloaded with piles of papers; as usual with his things, though, the order among them was immediately visible. One wall was taken up by a green blackboard, on which formulas and diagrams were written in different-colored chalks — not scribbled down higgledy-piggledy in brilliant frenzy, with carelessly erased sections, but in a harmonious composition, as in a work of art.

He put the papers into a folder, rested his chin on his hands, and looked out the open window. On every side his view was blocked by the giant black skeleton of a mirror. They were calibrating. In the complete silence he heard at short intervals the soft hum of the mechanism with which the rotation of the earth on its axis was being compensated, in order to keep the observed object in focus. What kind of sinister irony was it that under the former Westerbork concentration camp it turned out that they were extracting gas?

Dusk was already falling, but in the distance visitors were still walking around the site — not looking at the telescopes, but at something that was no longer there. If those directly involved had wanted nothing more to do with the camp, in the new Jewish generation voices had recently been raised in favor of restoring it to its original state. The barrier was back in its old place and a watchtower had been restored by the buffers. There had even been a case made for ousting the observatory. If they really persisted in this, he would write a letter to the editor of the New Israel Weekly, extol the synthesis radio telescope as a "Jewish observatory," and argue that it could only be destroyed if after the complete restoration of Westerbork camp the ninety-three trains also appeared at the Boulevard des Miseres, to bring the people back from the gas chambers.

Over the years Max's relationship with Tsjallingtsje had assumed the calm character of a marriage. While she still cried out "Oh God!" when she came, the stationer's above which she had lived had been taken over by a large publishing firm, which needed her rooms for storing cut-price English art books. He had arranged for her to move into a rustic Hansel-and-Gretel-type house on the edge of the village of Westerbork, where a shy electronics engineer from Dwingeloo had entertained young farmhands until he retired.

At the same time, Max had had the end of Groot Rechteren in mind and the moment when Quinten would leave home, after which Sophia and he would go their separate ways. At the bottom of the overgrown garden a wooden shed took up the whole width, was in fact much too large for this spot, but it could be turned into a studio for him; even now he sometimes sat there when he wanted to work undisturbed. He had never talked to Tsjallingtsje about it, nor had he suggested anything in that direction; but because she knew that he had promised to bring up the child of his friend, who, moreover, had disappeared four years ago, she of course knew that a new situation would arise afterward.

In Dwingeloo she had heard about the fiasco with the VLBI, and obviously to console him, she set the table for a special meal; there was even champagne in a cooler. She was wearing a bright red ankle-length robe, making her look even bigger, and although she was the same size as he was, she embraced him like a larger person embracing a smaller one: she with her arms around his neck, he with his hands on her high hips, which immediately resulted in a change in his chemical balance.

"At least you know what becomes a disillusioned researcher," he said, taking off his coat. He sank onto the sofa and with a glass of pink champagne in his hand he told her about the worldwide astronomical debacle, which had cost hundreds of thousands of guilders, perhaps millions. "In fact isn't it wonderful that it's possible? Thousands of toddlers' playrooms could have been built, and if the experiment had succeeded, it would still have been no good to anyone. The fact that that's still possible, reconciles me a little with mankind. It means that Homo sapiens still hasn't grown out of his curious childhood. Only when shortsightedness finally takes over and the importance of things is seen as a function of their proximity will things be really going the wrong way. Listen to me: I'm speaking as though I'm writing."

"You mean that people should look farther than their nose is long."

"In my case, that's actually scarcely possible."

Perhaps it was the way she burst out laughing that attracted him to her. He couldn't remember ever seeing Sophia laugh so genuinely, or Ada; but Tsjallingstje's stern face was always ready to change into something completely different from one moment to the next, as though a light were switched on in a dark room. Perhaps a talent for laughter was true wit, more so than the ability for intellectual tours de force.

While she was busy in the kitchen, he looked down at the evening paper, which was lying next to him. He read the headlines about the changes in Moscow. There, too, it was obviously a question of something like a red shift — or rather the reverse, a violent political shift: something was approaching humanity at great speed, since the expansion of the political universe had suddenly changed into contraction. He felt tired. He put his legs on the sofa, and when he closed his eyes for a moment he again saw the absurd measurement results. Perhaps it was because of the champagne, but for some reason he suddenly had the feeling there was nevertheless a meaning hidden in them.