Harry Mulisch - The Discovery of Heaven

Thanks to the baron he was fortunately rich himself. He allowed himself a second espresso, put a five-hundred lire additional tip on the bill, and wandered into town for a little while.

In that deserted midnight Venice, with all the shutters closed, the terraces cleared away and no life anywhere, he stopped on a bridge over a narrow canal. To the left and right, weathered house walls with rainpipes rose up out of the motionless seawater; a little farther on, across a side canal, was a second bridge; at the end the view was blocked off by the refined back of a Gothic palazzo, which was of course really the front. He looked at the green seaweed-covered steps, which everywhere led down to the water from dark arches with barred gates and continued underwater. The complete silence.

Had his mother ever been here? His father? Max? Suddenly the silence filled with a scarcely audible rustling, and a little later a gondola appeared under the bridge he was standing on, the gleaming halberd on the prow. Three silent Japanese girls appeared, and then the gondolier, straightening and with the merest push steering the gondola slightly toward the side, where with an indescribably perfect movement — which formed a unity with the gondola, the water, the silence, the city — he propelled himself by pushing off from a house with his foot for a second to keep up speed.

At that moment Quinten saw a white glimpse of Marlene Kirchlechner on the other bridge, immediately disappearing when she realized that he had seen her. His eyes widened. While he slept she had been waiting for him all that time, had followed him to the restaurant, waited again, and again followed him. It was clear: he had to leave Venice at once — preferably this evening.

Maybe it was the sound of its name, Florence, that made him expect the town would be even more silvery and silent. But he found himself in a noisy, stinking cauldron of traffic that he had forgotten after five days in Venice. Moreover, if everything there was light and open, everything here was heavy, closed. The function of the sea, which protected Venice sufficiently, was here fulfilled by thick walls, colossal blocks of stone, bars, buildings like fortresses; the beauty was virtually only indoors, in palaces and museums. But exactly what distinguished Florence from Venice gave it a Citadel-like quality: that reconciled him a little with his disappointment. Because all the affordable hotels were full, he had to make do with a grubby hostel, where he shared a room with seven others, most of them students but also a few older men; apart from a bed he had only a chair to use, on which he could look at the crucifix above the door.

Surrounded by international snoring, he thought back for the first time to his room at Groot Rechteren. Or did it no longer exist? Had Korvinus gotten his hands on everything by now? Of course it wouldn't happen as quickly as that. He felt as if he had been away from home for months, but it was scarcely a week. He hadn't sent any message from Venice, and he now resolved to write to his grandmother as soon as possible. But not only did he not write a letter, even when he passed a stand with postcards on it — Piazza della Signoria, Palazzo Pitti, Ponte Vecchio, Battistero — an uncontrollable revulsion took hold of him, which prevented him buying one and writing even "Greetings from Florence" on it.

He did, however, buy a series of cards in the Uffizi, to put on the chair next to his bed. In the cataract of art treasures that was poured out into that exuberant museum street, he was struck by an Annunciation by Leonardo da Vinci: an angel who was approaching the Virgin Mary rather furtively, with his head bent and the guilty look of someone who knows that what he has in mind is no good. No wonder the Mary seemed to be thinking: "Who are you? What are you doing here?" Quinten had learned at high school that annuntiare meant "announce": the angel was going to announce to her that, at a later date, she would be impregnated by the Holy Ghost; but according to him there was something much more going on here than simply an "announcement"; this was the event itself. In a moment he was going to pounce on her. Because why wasn't Joseph there? Surely he had the right to know for certain that his fiancee had not deceived him with the window cleaner? Every woman could maintain that she had become pregnant out of pure piety. He began to look for Annunciations in the other rooms too, but in none of them was Joseph there. The sucker was obviously in the carpenter's workshop, where he was earning his daily bread by the sweat of his brow, making crosses for the Romans perhaps, while at home his bride-to-be was listening to the seductive angel patter and letting herself go with an envoy of God. Suddenly he now remembered a relief of the Annunciation on the front of the Rialto bridge in Venice. On the left-hand pillar, at the beginning of the arch, you saw the angel Gabriel, at the highest point of the bridge the dove that he had thrown up, and on the right-hand pillar Mary, waiting for the Holy Ghost in complete abandon. So that dove was no less than the angel's holy seed!

How he would have liked to talk to his father about this. Would he have agreed with him? Perhaps he would have agreed and called depictions of the Annunciation "religious peep shows"; perhaps he would have exclaimed in alarm: "The shameful thought will crush that head of yours!" He burst out laughing. The latter struck him as most probable.

Wandering among the sculptures in the Museo Bargello, on the second day of his stay, he was suddenly reminded of Theo Kern, who had of course been here too, to learn how his colleagues had removed the superfluous stone. Through the windows of the old palace he occasionally saw the Florentines in the street and in the smoky buses, and wondered how many of them had looked at these wonderful things here. Which of them knew that their city had invented the Renaissance? Perhaps the memory of most people in the world didn't extend much farther than their own lifetime; perhaps they didn't even realize that they were living a thousand years after a thousand years ago. Between their birth and their death, they were trapped in a windowless cell; for them everything was as it always had been. Of course that wasn't the case — but in a certain sense it was, because that's how it had been a thousand years ago for almost everybody, and two thousand years ago, and ten thousand. By simply living, working, having fun, eating, reproducing, they had in fact become much more eternal than the eternal masterpieces of all those unique individuals!

He stopped at an arbitrary sculpture and thought: Take that thing there. What was it? A beautiful, naked boy, with his right hand on his crown, his left hand on that of a great eagle, which was sitting at his feet and looking at him devotedly, BENVENUTO CELLINI, 1500–1571. Ganymede. He didn't know the myth, but that didn't matter; he knew in any case that there was an old story behind it. There was a story behind everything. Only someone who knew all the stories knew the world. It was almost inevitable that behind the whole world, with all its stories, there was another story that was therefore older than the world. You should find out about that story!

"Did you pose for that?"

He started. A tall man, who seemed vaguely familiar, looked at him and smiled, but he didn't like the smile. He was about fifty, balding, with dull eyes, a pointed nose, and thin lips; out of his sleeves, which were rolled up, protruded two pale arms with a golden chain around each wrist. Suddenly Quinten remembered who he was: he slept in the same room, on the other side of the gangway.

"No," he said gruffly.

"I saw your guidebook on your chair, that's how I know you're Dutch too. My name's Menne."

Quinten nodded, but he didn't intend to give his own name. What did this guy want? Had he followed him too, perhaps? Menne looked back and forth between him and the statue.