Harry Mulisch - The Discovery of Heaven

The man was in his late twenties and noticed immediately that he was being watched. Instantly, his smile vanished completely, as though a switch had been turned off, and a cold, threatening expression remained focused on Onno. Onno averted his gaze.

"Dammit, Edgar, if you ask me there's the thirteenth. But don't look, because he's dangerous. He's dangerous because he can control his emotions, like someone else's car; what he uses to steer them with is itself not an emotion. Hopefully, he'll get run over by a car today. Who have we over there?" he said, looking at a boy who crossed the square diagonally, stopped open-mouthed, and took in the building opposite. At the same moment Onno caught his breath. He began trembling and slowly stood up.

The Pantheon! There it was! Quinten felt as though what he was looking at was not real. The Roman temple of all the gods, twenty centuries old: gray and bare, scraped clean from top to bottom by barbarians, emperors, and popes, it stood there as something not only from a different time but from a different space — like sometimes during the daytime an alarming image loomed up from the dream of the preceding night.

MAGRIPPA L•F•COS•TERTIVM•FECIT

The Quadrata! There they were, those wonderful, inspired letters on the architrave above the eight pillars, under the two triangular pediments, which Palladio had studied so closely: Marcus Agrippa, the son of Lucius, who had allegedly made this during his third consulate; but in reality it was the emperor Hadrian, as Mr. Themaat had taught him. He wondered how Mr. Spier was getting on there in his Pontrhydfendigaid.

To the left and right of the doorway and the round building behind with the cupola, grooves many feet deep had been cut down to Roman street level, which made the temple appear to be rising from the earth, like the erratic stones in Drenthe. At the front, he knew, the entrance steps were still buried below the asphalt. Slowly he walked along past the row of waiting horse carriages, toward the shadow of the high, rectangular portico, supported by another eight pillars — together making as many columns as he had years. A group of visitors was already waiting. A little later one of the bronze doors, over twenty feet high, was opened a fraction by two men, which required all their strength.

As he crossed the threshold, the colossal empty space took his breath away. As in the impenetrable interior of a crystal, the shadowless light hung on the blond marble floor, against the columns and alcoves and chapels, where the proud Roman gods had been replaced by humble Christian saints. The highest point of the cupola was occupied not by a keystone but by the blue sky, a round hole measuring almost thirty feet across, through which a diagonal beam of sunlight shone like an obelisk, producing a dazzling egg on a damaged fresco. The cupola with the hole in it reminded him of an iris with a pupil: the temple was an eye, which he was now inside. From outside, the hole must be black. The building was an observatory.

What had Mr. Themaat said again? That the Pantheon, though it might not be the building, because that didn't exist, was a "good second" and you could see it as a depiction of the world. Perhaps he had meant by that not simply nature, the earth, the moon, the sun the stars, but all the other worlds, such as for example those of numbers, geometrical figures, and music. For that matter the building was also a clock — a sundial, which indicated the time not with a shadow but with light itself. He went and stood in the middle of the space, directly beneath the opening, and took out his little compass. The entrance was due north.

He looked in the direction the needle indicated, where his attention was caught by a seedy figure by the bronze doors, who was staring at him. He was large and heavily built and was wearing a pair of dark glasses; on his shoulder sat a black crow, no, it was more like a raven. An unkempt gray beard hid the rest of his face too. His long hair had been gathered into a ponytail at the back; his grubby shirt was half open and hanging out of his trousers, exposing his navel; worn sneakers covered his bare feet. Quinten started. Not again, surely? In Venice the woman from Vienna, in Florence that sleazy type, and now a tramp — things were going from bad to worse. He felt himself turning away in irritation, but at that moment the ebony-colored bird flew off the man's shoulder, described a circle through the temple with wings flapping, sat for a moment on the ledge where the cupola rested on the rotunda, then flew up and disappeared croaking through the blue opening.

Everyone in the Pantheon watched it go. The Japanese quickly took photos, and Onno knew immediately that it would not come back. He had not intended to speak to Quinten; he just wanted to see him for a moment. He was about to call the bird back, but was frightened that Quinten would recognize his voice. Now he had not even said goodbye to Edgar — and suddenly he felt so utterly abandoned that he could not bear it.

When Quinten saw the shabby figure coming toward him, trembling and supporting himself on a stick, he would have preferred to run around him in a wide arc and dash outside; but he decided to tell him plainly that he wanted nothing to do with him — at least if he spoke French, German, or English — and then to make a dignified exit from the temple. When the man arrived opposite him, he took off his sunglasses.

Quinten felt himself changing into an image of himself. His breathing his heart, his brain, and his intestines — all came to a stop; for a moment he turned to marble as he looked into Onno's eyes, which he knew so well and through which at the same time someone completely different from his father seemed to be looking at him. Then they fell into each other's arms and for a couple of seconds stood hugging each other without moving.

"Dad…" sobbed Quinten.

Onno looked around, searching for something. "I have to sit down for a moment."

Hand in hand, they walked toward a wooden bench, a few yards away from the sarcophagus containing the bones of Raphael, where they stood and surveyed each other in silent astonishment. On the one hand Quinten had the feeling that it couldn't be true that his father was suddenly sitting there; on the other hand it was quite obvious that he had found him without really trying. How disheveled he was! It couldn't be from lack of money, and yet he looked completely down and out. Uncle Karel had been right: Auntie Helga's death had turned him into a dropout. Was what was happening really the right thing?

Onno, too, was completely confused. He realized that he had again undermined his whole life with his sudden impulse. By speaking to Quinten, he had done something irrevocable: it was of course impossible for him to say goodbye forever in a moment, and equally unthinkable that he should resume his earlier existence. At the same time he felt something like relief that everything was suddenly completely different from the past four years. When he had left Holland, Quinten had been a boy of twelve, and now there was almost a man sitting there. For the first time he was ashamed. He lowered his eyes and did not know what to say.

Quinten watched him and asked: "Shall I go?"

Onno shook his head. "Things are as they are," he said softly. "Quinten.. how are you? You look well. You've grown two heads taller."

"I suppose I have, yes."

"How long have you been in Rome?"

"Since yesterday afternoon."

"Are you here with the whole class? I came here for the first time when I was in school."

"I'm not in school anymore."

Onno, who had given up so much more, realized that he was in no position to comment; the very fact that he had not known about this deprived him of his right to speak. What's more, he heard a sort of decisiveness in Quinten's voice that dismissed all criticism in advance. He wanted to ask about Ada, but perhaps she was no longer alive.